APPOLLONIUS Tyanæus, was one of the most extraordinary persons that ever appeared in the world. He was born at Tyana in Cappadocia, towards the beginning of the first century. At sixteen years of age he became a rigid disciple of Pythagoras, renouncing wine, flesh, and women, wearing no shoes, and letting his hair and beard grow long, and cloathing himself only in linen: soon after he became a reformer, and fixed his abode in a temple of Æsculapius, where many sick persons resorted to be cured by him. Being come to age, he gave part of his estate to his eldest brother, and distributed another part to his poor relations, and kept back only a very small share to himself. He lived six years without speaking a word, notwithstanding during this silence he quelled several seditions in Cecilia and Pamphilia; that which he put a stop to at Aspenda was the most difficult of all to appease, because the business was to make those hearken to reason whom famine had driven to revolt: the cause of this commotion was, some rich men having monopolized all the corn, occasioned an extraordinary scarcity in the city; Appollonius stopped this popular commotion, without speaking a word to the enraged multitude: Appollonius had no occasion for words; his Pythagoric silence did all that the finest figures of oratory could effect. He travelled much, professed himself a legislator; understood all languages, without having learned them: he had the surprising faculty of knowing what was transacted at an immense distance, and at the time the Emperor Domitian was stabbed, Appollonius being at a vast distance, and standing in the market-place of the city, exclaimed, "Strike! strike!--'tis done, the tyrant