After this there was general conversation and some serious discussion among the philosophers, in the course of which Iarchas explained that his own soul had once been in the body of another man who was a king, and that in that state he had performed this and that exploit; while Apollonius told them that he had once been the pilot of a ship in Egypt, and had accomplished all sorts of exploits which he enumerated to them. Then they put questions to each other, and received answers, which in the name of wisdom have scant title to be recorded at all. Thus we learn that Apollonius asked if they had any golden water among them. What a clever and marvellous question! And he also asked about men who live underground, and about others called pigmies, and shadow-footed men, and he asked if they had among them a four-footed animal called a martichora, which has a head like that of a man, but
After that Philostratus described a wool which the earth grew for them to supply material for their dress, from which we must infer that these philosophers plied the loom and occupied themselves with spinning wool in order to make their raiment, for we do not hear of any woman being smuggled into their community; but perhaps he means that by a miracle the wool grew of its own initiative into their sacred garments. And we hear that each of them carried a staff and a ring which was imbued with mysterious power. There follow a series of miraculous performances on the part of the Brahman,—how for example he recalled to his senses by means of a letter one who was possessed with a demon, how by stroking a man who was lame he healed his dislocated hip, how he vouchsafed to restore a man's hand that was withered, and to a blind man gave sight. Our blessings on an author who saves us so much trouble. Can we doubt that these stories are true, when his very insistence on All this is contained in the third book of Philostratus, and let us now pass on to those which follow. We learn that when he had returned from the country of the Indians to the land of Hellas, the gods themselves proclaimed him to be the companion of the gods, inasmuch as they sent on to him the sick to be healed. And, indeed, as if his visit to the Arabs and to the Magi and to the Indians had turned him into some miraculous and divine being, our author, now that he has got him home again, plunges straight into a lengthy description of his miracles. And yet one might fairly argue that if he had been of a diviner than merely human nature, then he ought long before, and not only now, after entering into relation with other teachers, to have begun his career of wonder-working; and it was And then he relates a third miracle of him, which was nothing less than that of his averting the plague. Although the author has been careful not to include this story in the final counts retained against Apollonius, probably because it was impossible for him to rebut a charge founded upon it by any defence which he could offer, we nevertheless will, if you will allow us, publish the story and give it full publicity, because our doing so will render needless any further criticism of it. For if anybody feels the shadow of doubt about the matter, the very manner in which the story is told will convince him that fraud and make-believe was in this case everything, and that if The fourth wonder which he relates is how the soul of Achilles appeared close by his own sepulchre, dressed the first time in a tunic, and five cubits high, and subsequently growing till it was twelve cubits in stature, and accusing the Thessalians for not continuing according to custom to offer him the due funeral rites, and furthermore still nursing wrath against the Trojans for the wrongs which they had committed against him, and bidding Apollonius ask him questions on five topics, such as he himself might desire to learn about, and the Fates permit him to know of. We next learn that the omniscient one, who boasted of his prescience of future events, was still ignorant of whether Achilles had been buried, and of whether the Muses and Nereids had bestowed their dirges upon him. And accordingly he asked Achilles about these matters, and enquires most earnestly whether Polyxena had been slain over his tomb, and whether Helen had really come to Troy,—questions surely of a most solemn kind, and such as to stimulate others to lead the philosophical life of the hero, besides being in themselves of much importance. Thereupon he falls to wondering if there had ever been among the Hellenes so many heroes all at one time, and whether Palamedes had ever reached Troy. Surely it was disgraceful in the extreme that one who was the companion of gods, whether seen or unseen, should know so little of such matters as to need to ask questions again and again about them? Unless, indeed, because in this scene he is introduced as associating with the dead, the What then is the reason, my good fellow, supposing that there was no devilish curiosity here at work, why he would not allow Damis, whom you admit to have been his sole and genuine and single companion, to share with him in this marvellous vision and interview? And why, too, was he not able to do all this by daytime, instead of doing it in the dead of night and alone? Why, too, did the mere cry of the cocks drive away the soul of the hero? For he says, "It vanished with a mild flash of lightning, for indeed the cocks were already beginning to crow." I cannot but think that evil demons would have found such an hour seasonable and appropriate for their devilish interviews, rather than the soul of a hero which, having been freed from the The fifth and sixth miracles however in this book do not stand in need of much argument and discussion, so thoroughly do they prove our writer's easy credulity. For Apollonius, as they say, drives out one demon with the help of another. The first of the demons is expelled from an incorrigible youth, while the second disguises itself by assuming the form of a woman: and the latter our clever author Such are the contents of the fourth book, and in the fifth book of his history, after a few remarks about his gift of prescience, our author is so lost in admiration as to add the following remark, which I repeat textually. "That then he was enabled to make such forecasts by some divine impulse, and that it is no sound inference to suppose, as some people do, that Apollonius was a wizard, is clear from what I have said. But let us consider the following facts: wizards, whom for my part I reckon to be the most unfortunate of mankind, claim to alter the course of destiny, either by tormenting the ghosts whom they encounter, or by means of barbaric sacrifices, or by means of certain incantations or anointings. But Apollonius himself submitted to the decrees of the Fates, and foretold that they must needs come to pass; and his foreknowledge was not due to wizardry, but derived from what the gods revealed to him. And when among the Indians he beheld their tripods, and their dumb waiters and other automata which I described as entering the room of their own accord, he neither asked how they were contrived, nor wished to learn. He only praised them, but did not aspire to imitate them." Such a passage as the above clearly exhibits in the light of wizards the famous philosophers of India. And a little lower down in the book he brings a flute-player upon the stage, and he relates at length how Apollonius delivered himself with great gravity of long essays upon the different modes of playing the flute, as if it were the most important and clever of the sciences. And he relates how the Emperor Vespasian offered him prayers just as if he were a god, for we learn that Vespasian said in a tone of prayer: "Do thou make me Emperor," whereupon Apollonius answered: "I have made you so." What else can anyone do but loathe this utterance for its boastfulness, so nearly does it approach downright madness, for one who was the pilot of a ship in Egypt to boast of being himself a god already and a maker of kings? For Apollonius himself has informed us a little before in the course of his conversation with the Indian that his soul had previously been that of a pilot. And to the same Emperor, when the latter asks him to notify to him those whom he most approved of among philosophers as advisers and counsellors of his policy, Apollonius replies in these words: "'These gentlemen here are also good advisers in such matters,' and he pointed to Dion and to Euphrates, because he had not yet quarrelled with the latter." And again, he said, "My sovereign, Euphrates and Dion have long been known to you In the sixth book our story-teller resumes his tale of miracles; for he brings his hero, together with his companions, on camel-back to see those whom he calls the Naked philosophers of Egypt. Here then at the bidding of one of these sages an elm-tree, we are told, spoke to Apollonius in an articulate but feminine voice, and this is the sort of thing which the Lover of Truth expects us to believe. Then he has a story of pigmies who live on the other side of their country and of man-eaters and of shadow-footed men and of a satyr whom Apollonius made drunk. From these sages Apollonius is brought back again to Hellas, where he renews his interviews and his prophesies to Titus. Then we hear about a youth who was bitten by a mad dog. He is rescued from his distress by Apollonius, who forthwith proceeds to divine whose soul it was that the dog had inside him; and we learn that it was that of Amasis, a former king of Egypt, for the sage's humanity extended to dogs. 1
565:1 Eusebius confuses the mad dog of VI 43 with the tame lion of V 42.XXV
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Footnotes
