Philostratus: The Life of Apollonius of Tyana Book 6

Ethiopia covers the western wing of the entire earth under the sun, just as India does the eastern wing; and at Meroe it adjoins Egypt, and, after skirting a part of Libya Incognita, it ends at the sea which the poets call by the name of the Ocean, that being the name they applied to the mass of water which surrounds the earth. This country supplies Egypt with the river Nile, which takes its rise at the cataracts (Catadupi), and brings down from Ethiopia all Egypt, the soil of which in flood-time it inundates. Now in size this country is not worthy of comparison with India, not for that matter is any of the continents that are famous among men; and even if you put together all Egypt with Ethiopia, and we may regard the river as so combining the two, we should not compare the two together with India, so vast is the standard of comparison. However their respective rivers, the Indus and the Nile, resemble one another, if we consider their creatures. For they both spread their moisture over the land in the summer season, when the earth most wants it, and unlike all other rivers they produced the crocodile and the river-horse; and the religious rites celebrated over them correspond with one another, for many of the religious invocations of the Indians are repeated in the case of the Nile. We have a proof of the similarity of the two countries in the spices which are found in them, also in the fact that the lion and the elephant are captured and confined in both the one and the other. They are also the haunts of animals not found elsewhere, and of black men -a feature not found in other continents- and we meet in them with races of pigmies and of people who bark in various ways instead of talking, and other wonders of the kind. And the griffins of the Indians and the ants of the Ethiopians, though they are dissimilar in form, yet, from what we hear, play similar parts; for in each country they are the guardians of gold, and devoted to the gold reefs of the two countries. But we will not pursue these subjects; for we must resume the course of our history and follow in the sage's footsteps.

For when he arrived at the confines of Ethiopia and Egypt, and the name of the place is Sycaminus, he came across a quantity of uncoined gold and linen and an elephant and various roots and myrrh and spices, which are all lying without anyone to watch them at the crossways. I will explain the meaning of this, for the same custom still survives among ourselves. It was a market place to which the Ethiopians bring all the products of their country; and the Egyptians in their turn take them all away and bring to the same spot their own wares of equal value, so bartering what they have got for what they have not. Now the inhabitants of the marches are not yet fully black but are half-breeds in matter of color, for they are partly not so black as the Ethiopians, yet partly more so than the Egyptians. Apollonius, accordingly, when he realized the character of the market, remarked: “Contrast our good Hellenes: they pretend they cannot live unless one penny begets another and unless they can force up the price of their goods by chaffering or holding them back; and one pretends that he has got a daughter whom it is time to marry, and another that he has got a son who has just reached manhood, and a third that he has to pay his subscription to his club, and a fourth that he is having a house built for him, and a fifth that he would be ashamed of being thought a worse man of business than his father was before him. What a splendid thing then it would be, if wealth were held in less honor and equality flourished a little more and 'if the black iron were left to rust in the ground,' for all men would agree with one another, and the whole earth would be like one brotherhood.”

With such conversations, the occasions providing as usual the topics he talked about, he turned his steps towards Memnon; an Egyptian showed them the way, of whom Damis gives the following account: Timasion was the name of this stripling, who was just emerging from boyhood, and was now in the prime of life and strength. He had a stepmother who had fallen in love with him; and when he rejected her overtures, she set upon him and by way of spiting him had poisoned his father's mind against him, condescending to a lower intrigue than ever Phaedra had done, for she accused him of being effeminate, and of finding his pleasure in pederasts rather than in women. He had accordingly abandoned Naucratis, for it was there that all this happened, and was living in the neighborhood of Memphis; and he had acquired and manned a boat of his own and was plying as a waterman on the Nile. He then, was going down the river when he saw Apollonius sailing up it; and he concluded that the crew consisted of wise men, because he judged them by the cloaks they wore and the books they were hard at work studying. So he asked them whether they would allow one who was so passionately fond of wisdom as himself to share their voyage; and Apollonius said: “This youth is wise, my friends, so let him be granted his request.” And he further related the story about his stepmother to those of his companions who were nearest to him in a low tone while the stripling was still sailing towards them. But when the ships were alongside of one another, Timasion stepped out of his boat, and after addressing a word or two to his pilot, about the cargo in his own boat, he greeted the company. Apollonius then ordered him to sit down under his eyes, and said: “You stripling of Egypt, for you seem to be one of the natives, tell me what you have done of evil or what of good; for in the one case you shall be forgiven by me, in consideration of your youth; but in the other you shall reap my commendation and become a fellow-student of philosophy with me and with these gentlemen.” Then noticing that Timasion blushed and checked his impulse to speak, and hesitated whether to say or not what he had been going to say, he pressed his question and repeated it, just as if he had no foreknowledge of the youth at his command. Then Timasion plucked up courage and said: “O Heavens, how shall I describe myself? for I am not a bad boy, and yet I do not know whether I ought to be considered a good one, for there is no particular merit in having abstained from wrong.” But Apollonius cried: “Bravo, my boy, you answer me just as if you were a sage from India; for this was just the sentiment of the divine Iarchas. But tell me how you came to form these opinions, and how long ago; for it strikes me that you have been on your guard against some sin.” The youth then began to tell them of his stepmother's infatuation for himself, and of how he had rejected her advances; and when he did so, there was a shout in recognition of the divine inspiration under which Apollonius had foretold these details. Timasion, however, caught them up and said: “Most excellent people, what is the matter with you? for my story is one which calls as little for your admiration, I think, as for your ridicule.” But Damis said: “It was not that we were admiring, but something else which you don't know about yet. As for you, my boy, we praise you because you think that you did nothing very remarkable.” And Apollonius said: “Do you sacrifice to Aphrodite, my boy?” And Timasion answered: “Yes, by Zeus, every day; for I consider that this goddess has great influence in human and divine affairs.” Thereat Apollonius was delighted beyond measure, and cried: “Let us, gentlemen, vote a crown to him for his continence rather than to Hippolytus the son of Theseus, for the latter insulted Aphrodite; and that perhaps is why he never fell a victim to the tender passion, and why love never ran riot in his soul; but he was allotted an austere and unbending nature. But our friend here admits that he is devoted to the goddess, and yet did not respond to his stepmother's guilty overtures, but went away in terror of the goddess herself, in case he were not on his guard against another's evil passions; and the mere aversion to any one of the gods, such as Hippolytus entertained in regard to Aphrodite, I do not class as a form of sobriety; for it is a much greater proof of wisdom and sobriety to speak well of the gods, especially at Athens, where altars are set up in honor even of unknown gods.” So great was the interest which he took in Timasion. Nevertheless he called him Hippolytus for the eyes with which he looked at his stepmother. It seemed also that he was a young man who was particular about his person and enhanced its charms by attention to athletic exercises.

Under his guidance, they say, they went on to the sacred enclosure of Memnon, of whom Damis gives the following account. He says that he was the son of the Dawn, and that he did not meet his death in Troy, where indeed he never went; but that he died in Ethiopia after ruling the land for five generations. But his countrymen being the longest lived of men, still mourn him as a mere youth and deplore his untimely death. But the place in which his statue is set up resembles, they tell us, an ancient market-place, such as remain in cities that were long ago inhabited, and where we come on broken stumps and fragments of columns, and find traces of walls as well as seats and jambs of doors, and images of Hermes, some destroyed by the hand of man, others by that of time. Now this statue, says Damis, was turned towards the sunrise, and was that of a youth still unbearded; and it was made of a black stone, and the two feet were joined together after the style in which statues were made in the time of Daedalus; and the arms of the figure were perpendicular to the seat pressing upon it, for though the figure was still sitting it was represented in the very act of rising up. We hear much of this attitude of the statue, and of the expression of its eyes, and of how the lips seem about to speak; but they say that they had no opportunity of admiring these effects until they saw them realized; for when the sun's rays fell upon the statue, and this happened exactly at dawn, they could not restrain their admiration; for the lips spoke immediately the sun's ray touched them, and the eyes seemed to stand out and gleam against the light as do those of men who love to bask in the sun. Then they say they understood that the figure was of one in the act of rising and making obeisance to the sun, in the way those do who worship the powers above standing erect. They accordingly offered a sacrifice to the Sun of Ethiopia and to Memnon of the Dawn, for this the priests recommended them to do, explaining that one name was derived from the words signifying “to burn and be warm” 1 and the other from his mother. Having done this they set out upon camels for the home of the naked philosophers.

On the way they met a man wearing the garb of the inhabitants of Memphis, but who was wandering about rather than wending his steps to a fixed point; so Damis asked him who he was and why he was roving about like that. But Timasion said: “You had better ask me, and not him; for he will never tell you what is the matter with him, because he is ashamed of the plight in which he finds himself; but as for me, I know the poor man and pity him, and I will tell you all about him. For he has slain unwittingly a certain inhabitant of Memphis, and the laws of Memphis prescribe that a person exiled for an involuntary offense of this kind,—and the penalty is exile,—should remain with the naked philosophers until he has washed away the guilt of bloodshed, and then he may return home as soon as he is pure, though he must first go to the tomb of the slain man and sacrifice there some trifling victim. Now until he has been received by the naked philosophers, so long he must roam about these marches, until they take pity upon him as if he were a suppliant.” Apollonius therefore put the question to Timasion: “What do the naked philosophers think of this particular exile?” And he answered: “I do not know anything more than that this is the seventh month that he has remained here as a suppliant, and that he has not yet obtained redemption.” Said Apollonius: “You don't call men wise, who refuse to purify him, and are not aware that Philiscus whom he slew was a descendant of Thamus the Egyptian, who long ago laid waste the country of these naked philosophers.” Thereat Timasion said in surprise: “What do you mean?” “ I mean,” said the other, “my good youth, what was actually the fact; for this Thamus once on a time was intriguing against the inhabitants of Memphis, and these philosophers detected his plot and prevented him; and he having failed in his enterprise retaliated by laying waste all the land upon which they live, for by his brigandage he tyrannized the country round Memphis. I perceive that Philiscus whom this man slew was the thirteenth in descent from this Thamus, and was obviously an object of execration to those whose country the latter so thoroughly ravaged at the time in question. Where then is their wisdom? Here is a man that they ought to crown, even if he had slain the other intentionally; and yet they refuse to purge him of a murder which he committed involuntarily on their behalf.”. The youth then was astounded and said: “Stranger, who are you?” And Apollonius replied: “He whom you shall find among these naked philosophers. But as it is not allowed me by my religion to address one who is stained with blood, I would ask you, my good boy, to encourage him, and tell him that he will at once be purged of guilt, if he will come to the place where I am lodging.” And when the man in question came, Apollonius went through the rites over him which Empedocles and Pythagoras prescribe for the purification of such offenses, and told him to return home, for that he was now pure of guilt.

Thence they rode out at sunrise, and arrived before midday at the academy of the naked sages, who dwell, they relate, upon a moderate-sized hill a little way from the bank of the Nile; and in point of wisdom they fall short of the Indians rather more than they excel the Egyptians. And they wear next to no clothes in the same way as people do at Athens in the heat of summer. And in their district there are few trees, and a certain grove of no great size to which they resort when they meet for the transaction of common affairs; but they do not build their shrines in one and the same place, as Indian shrines are built, but one is in one part of the hill and another in another, all worthy of observation, according to the accounts of the Egyptians. The Nile is the chief object of their worship, for they regard this river as land and water at once. They have no need, however, of hut or dwelling, because they live in the open air directly under the heaven itself, but they have built an hospice to accommodate strangers, and it is a portico of no great size, about equal in length to those of Elis, beneath which the athletes await the sound of the midday trumpet.

At this place Damis records an action of Euphrates, which if we do not regard it as juvenile, was anyhow unworthy of the dignity of a philosopher. Euphrates had heard Apollonius often say that he wished to compare the wisdom of India with that of Egypt, so he sent up to the naked sages one Thrasybulus, a native of Naucratis, to take away our sage's character. Thrasybulus at the same time that he pretended to have come there in order to enjoy their society, told them that the sage of Tyana would presently arrive, and that they would have no little trouble with him, because he esteemed himself more highly than the sages of India did themselves, though he extolled the latter whenever he opened his mouth; and he added that Apollonius had contrived a thousand pitfalls for them, and that he would not allow any sort of influence either to the sun, or to the sky, or to the earth, but pretended to move and juggle and rearrange these forces for whatever end he chose.

Having concocted these stories the man of Naucratis went away; and they, imagining they were true, did not indeed decline to meet Apollonius when he arrived, but pretended that they were occupied with important business and were so intent upon it, that they could only arrange an interview with him if they had time, and if they were informed first of what he wanted and of what attracted him thither. And a messenger from the bade them stay and lodge in the portico, but Apollonius remarked: “We do not want to hear about a house for ourselves, for the climate here is such that anyone can live naked,”—an unkind reference this to them, as it implied that they went without clothes not to show their endurance, but because it was too to wear any. And he added: “I am not surprised indeed at their nor yet knowing what I want, and what I am come here for, though the Indians never asked me these questions.”

Accordingly Apollonius lay down under one of the trees, and let his companions who were there with him ask whatever question they pleased. Damis took Timasion apart and asked him the question in private: “About these naked sages, my good fellow, as you have lived with them, and in all probability know, tell me what their wisdom comes to?” “It is,” answered the other, “manifold an profound.” “And yet,” said Damis, “their demeanor towards us does not evince any wisdom, my fine fellow; for when they refuse to converse about wisdom with so great a man as our master, and assume all sorts of airs against him, what can I say of them except that they are too vain and proud.” “Pride and vanity!” said the other, “I have already come among them twice, and I never saw any such thing about them; for they were always very modest and courteous towards those who came to visit them. At any rate a little time ago, perhaps a matter of fifty days, one Thrasybulus was staying here who achieved nothing remarkable in philosophy, and they received him with open arms merely because he said he was a disciple of Euphrates.” Then Damis cried: “What's that you say, my boy? Then you saw Thrasybulus of Naucratis in this academy of theirs?” “Yes, and what's more,” answered the other, “I conveyed him hence, when he went down the river, in my own boat.” “Now I have it, by Athena,” cried Damis, in a loud tone of indignation. “I warrant he has played us some dirty trick.” Timasion then replied: “Your master, when I asked him yesterday who he was, would not answer me at once, but kept his name a secret; but do you, unless this is a mystery, tell me who he is, for then I could probably help you to find what you seek.” And when he heard from Damis, that it was the sage of Tyana, “You have put the matter,” he said, “in a nutshell. For Thrasybulus, as he descended the Nile with me, in answer to my question what he had gone up there for, explained to me that his love for wisdom was not genuine, and said that he had filled these naked sages with suspicion of Apollonius, to the end that whenever he came here they might flout him; and what his quarrel is with him I know not, but anyhow, it is, I think, worthy of a woman or of a vulgar person to backbite him as he has done. But I will address myself to these people and ascertain their real disposition; for they are friendly to me.” And about eventide Timasion returned, though without telling Apollonius any more than that he had interchanged words with them; however he told Damis in private that they meant to come the next morning primed with all that they had heard from Thrasybulus.

They spent that evening conversing about trifles which are not worth recording, and then they lay down to sleep on the spot where they had supped; but at daybreak Apollonius, after adoring the sun according to his custom, had set himself to meditate upon some problem, when Nilus, who was the youngest of the naked philosophers, running up to him, exclaimed: “We are coming to you.” “Quite right,” said Apollonius, “for to get to you I have made this long journey from the sea all the way here.” And with these words he followed Nilus. So after exchanging greetings with the sages, and they met him close to the portico. “Where,” said Apollonius, “shall we hold our interview?” “Here,” said Thespesion, pointing to the grove. Now Thespesion was the eldest of the sect, and led them in procession; and they followed him with an orderly and leisurely step, just as the jury of the athletic sports at Olympia follow the eldest of their number. And when they had sat down, which they did anyhow, and without the observing their previous order, they all fixed their eyes on Thespesion as the one who should regale them with a discourse, which he proceeded as follows: “They say, Apollonius, that you have visited the Pythian and Olympian festivals; for this was reported of you here by Stratocles of Pharos, who says he met you there. Now those who come to the Pythian festival are, they say, escorted with the sound of pipe and song and lyre, and are honored with shows of comedies and tragedies; and then last of all they are presented with an exhibition of games and races run by naked athletes. At the Olympic festival, however, these superfluities are omitted as inappropriate and unworthy of the place; and those who go to the festival are only provided with the show of naked athletes originally instituted by Heracles. You may see the same contrast between the wisdom of the Indians and our own. For they, like those who invite others to the Pythian festival, appeal to the crowd with all sorts of charms and wizardry; but we, like the athletes of Olympia, go naked. Here earth strews for us no couches, nor does it yield us milk or wine as if we were bacchants, nor does the air uplift us and sustain us aloft. But the earth beneath us is our only couch, and we live by partaking of its natural fruits, which we would have it yield to us gladly and without being tortured against its will. But you shall see that we are not unable to work tricks if we like. Heigh! you tree yonder,” he cried, pointing to an elm tree, the third in the row from that under which they were talking, “just salute the wise Apollonius, will you?” And forthwith the tree saluted him, as it was bidden to do, in accents which were articulate and like those of a woman. Now he wrought this sign to discredit the Indians, and in the belief that by doing so he would wean Apollonius of his excessive estimate of their powers; for he was always recounting to everybody what the Indians said and did.

Then the Egyptian added these precepts: he said that it is sufficient for the sage to abstain from eating all flesh of living animals, and from the roving desires which mount up in the soul through the eyes, and from envy which ends by teaching injustice to hand and will, and that truth stands not in need of miracle-mongering and sinister arts. “For look,” he said, “at the Apollo of Delphi, who keeps the center of Hellas for the utterance of his oracles. There then, as you probably know yourself, a person who desires a response, puts his question briefly, and Apollo tells what he knows without any miraculous display. And yet it would be just as easy for him to convulse the whole mountain of Parnassus, and to alter the springs of the Castalian fountain so that it should run with wine, and to check the river Cephisus and stay its stream; but he reveals the bare truth without any of this show of ostentation. Nor must we suppose that it is by his will, that so much gold and showy offerings enter his treasury, nor that he would care for his temple even if it were made twice as large as it already is. For once on a time this god Apollo dwelt in quite a humble habitation; and a little hut was constructed for him to which the bees are said to have contributed their honeycomb and wax, and the birds their feathers. For simplicity is the teacher of wisdom and the teacher of truth; and you must embrace it, if you would have men think you really wise, and forget all your legendary tales that you have acquired among the Indians. For what need is there to beat the drum over such simple matters as: 'Do this, or do not do it,' or 'I know it, or I do not know it,' or 'It is this and not that'? What do you want with thunder, nay, I would say, What do you want to be thunder-struck for?

You have seen in picture-books the representation of Heracles by Prodicus; in it Heracles is represented as a youth, who has not yet chosen the life he will lead; and vice and virtue stand in each side of him plucking his garments and trying to draw him to themselves. Vice is adorned with gold and necklaces and with purple raiment, and her cheeks are painted and her hair delicately plaited and her eyes underlined with henna; and she also wears golden slippers, for she is pictured strutting about in these; but virtue in the picture resembles a woman worn out with toil, with a pinched look; and she has chosen for her adornment rough squalor, and she goes without shoes and in the plainest of raiment, and she would have appeared naked if she had not too much regard for her feminine decency. Now figure yourself, Apollonius, as standing between Indian wisdom on one side, and our humble wisdom on the other; imagine that you hear the one telling you how she will strew flowers under you when you lie down to sleep, yes, and by Heaven, how she will regale you upon milk and nourish you on honey-comb, and how she will supply you with nectar and wings, whenever you want them; and how she will wheel in tripods, whenever you drink, and golden thrones; and you shall have no hard work to do, but everything will be flung unsought into your lap. But the other discipline insists that you must lie on the bare ground in squalor, and be seen to toil naked like ourselves; and that you must not find dear or sweet anything which you have not won by hard work; and that you must not be boastful, not hunt after vanities and pursue pride; and that you must be on your guard against all dreams and visions which lift you off the earth. If then you really make the choice of Heracles, and steel your will resolutely, neither to dishonor truth, nor to decline the simplicity of nature, then you may say that you have overcome many lions and have cut off the heads of many hydras and of monsters like Geryon and Nessus, and have accomplished all his other labors, but if you embrace the life of a strolling juggler, you will flatter men's eyes and ears, but they will think you no wiser than anybody else, and you will become the vanquished of any naked philosopher of Egypt.”

When he ended, all turned their eyes upon Apollonius; his own followers knowing well that he would reply, while Thespesion's friends wondered what he could say in answer. But he, after praising the fluency and vigor of the Egyptian, merely said: “Have you anything more to say?” “No, by Zeus,” said the other, “for I have said all I have to say.” Then he asked afresh: “And has not any one of the rest of the Egyptians anything to say?” “I am their spokesman,” answered his antagonist, “and you have heard them all.” Apollonius accordingly paused for a minute and then, fixing his eyes, as it were, on the discourse he had heard, he spoke as follows: “You have very well described and in a sound philosophic spirit the choice which Prodicus declares Heracles to have made as a young man; but, ye wise men of the Egyptians, it does not apply in the least to myself. For I am not come here to ask your advice about how to live, insomuch as I long ago made choice of the life which seemed best to myself; and as I am older than any of you, except Thespesion, I myself am better qualified, now I have got here, to advise you how to choose wisdom, if I did not find that you had already made the choice. Being, however, as old as I am, and so far advanced in wisdom as I am, I shall not hesitate as it were to make you the auditors of my life and motives, and teach you that I rightly chose this life of mine, than which no better one has ever suggested itself to me. For I discerned a certain sublimity in the discipline of Pythagoras, and how a certain secret wisdom enabled him to know, not only who he was himself, but also who he had been; and I saw that he approached the altars in purity, and suffered not his belly to be polluted by partaking of the flesh of animals and that he kept his body pure of all garments woven of dead animal refuse; and that he was the first of mankind to restrain his tongue, inventing a discipline of silence described in the proverbial phrase, “An ox sits upon it.” I also saw that his philosophical system was in other respects oracular and true. So I ran to embrace his teachings, not choosing one form of wisdom rather than another of two presented me, as you, my excellent Thespesion, advise me to do. For philosophy marshaled before me her various points of view, investing them with the adornment proper to each and she commanded me to look upon them and make a sound choice. Now they were all possessed of an august and divine beauty; and some of them were of such dazzling brightness that you might well have closed your eyes. However I fixed my eyes firmly upon all of them, for they themselves encouraged me to do so by moving towards me, and telling me beforehand how much they would give me. Well, one of them professed that she would shower upon me a swarm of pleasures without any toil on my part and another that she would give me rest after toil; and a third that she would mingle mirth and merriment in my toil; and everywhere I had glimpses of pleasures and of unrestrained indulgence in the pleasures of the table; and it seemed that I had only to stretch out my hand to be rich, and that I needed not to set any bridle upon my eyes, but love and loose desire and such-like feelings were freely allowed me. One of them, however, boasted that she would restrain me from such things, but she was bold and abusive and in an unabashed manner elbowed all others aside; and I beheld the ineffable form of wisdom which long ago conquered the soul of Pythagoras; and she stood, I may tell you, not among the many, but kept herself apart and in silence; and when she saw that I ranged not myself with the rest, though as yet I knew not what were her wares, she said: 'Young man, I am unpleasing and a lady full of sorrows; for, if anyone betakes himself to my abode, he must of his own choice put away all dishes which contain the flesh of living animals, and he must forget wine, nor make muddy therewith the cup of wisdom which is set in the souls of those that drink no wine; nor shall blanket keep him warm, nor wool shorn from a living animal. But I allow him shoes of bark, and he must sleep anywhere and anyhow, and if I find my votaries yielding to sensual pleasures, I have precipices to which justice that waits upon wisdom carries them and pushes them over; and I am so harsh to those who make choice of my discipline that I have bits ready to restrain their tongues. But learn from me what rewards you shall reap by enduring all this: Temperance and justice unsought and at once, and the faculty to regard no man with envy, and to be dreaded by tyrants rather than cringe to them, and to have your humble offerings appear sweeter to the gods than the offerings of those who pour out before them the blood of bulls. And when you are pure I will grant you the faculty of foreknowledge, and I will so fill your eyes with light, that you shall distinguish a god, and recognize a hero, and detect and put to shame the shadowy phantoms which disguise themselves in the form of men.' This was the life I chose, ye wise of the Egyptians; it was a sound choice and in the spirit of Pythagoras, and in making it I neither deceived myself, nor was deceived; for I have become all that a philosopher should become, and all that she promised to bestow upon the philosopher, that is mine. For I have studied profoundly the problem of the rise of the art and whence it draws its first principles; and I have realized that it belongs to men of transcendent religious gifts, who have thoroughly investigated the nature of the soul, the well-springs of whose existence lie back in the immortal and in the unbegotten.

Now I agree that this doctrine was wholly alien to the Athenians; for when Plato in their city lifted up his voice and discoursed upon the soul, full of inspiration and wisdom, they caviled against him and adopted opinions of the soul opposed thereto and altogether false. And one may well ask whether there is any city, or any race of men, where not one more and another less, but wherein men of all ages alike, will enunciate the same doctrine of the soul. And I myself, because my youth and inexperience so inclined me, began by looking up to yourselves, because you had the reputation of an extraordinary knowledge of most things; but when I explained my views to my own teacher, he interrupted me, and said as follows: 'Supposing you were in a passionate mood and being of an impressionable age were inclined to form a friendship; and suppose you met a handsome youth and admired his looks, and you asked whose son he was, and suppose he were the son of a knight or a general, and that his grand-parents had been furnishers of a chorus—if then you dubbed him the child of some skipper or policeman, do you suppose that you would thereby be the more likely to captivate his affections, and that you would not rather make yourself odious to him by refusing to call him by his father's name, and giving him instead that of some ignoble and spurious parent? If then you were enamored of the wisdom which the Indians discovered, would you call it not by the name which its natural parents bore, but by the name of its adoptive sires; and so confer upon the Egyptians a greater boon, than if that were to happen over again which their own poets relate, namely if the Nile on reaching its full were found to be with honey blent?' It was this which turned my steps to the Indians rather than to yourselves; for I reflected that they were more subtle in their understanding, because such men as they live in contact with a purer daylight, and entertain truer opinions of nature and of the gods, because they are near unto the latter, and live on the edge and confines of that thermal essence which quickens all unto life. And when I came among them, their message made the same impression upon me as the talent of Aeschylus is said to have made upon the Athenians. For he was a poet of tragedy, and finding the art to be rude and inchoate and as yet not in the least elaborated, he went to work, and curtailed the prolixity of the chorus 1, and invented dialogues for the actors, discarding the long monodies of the earlier time; and he hit upon a plan of killing people behind the stage instead of their being slain before the eyes of the audience. Well, if we cannot deny his talent in making all these improvements, we must nevertheless admit that they might have suggested themselves equally well to an inferior dramatist. But his talent was twofold. On the one hand as a poet he set himself to make his diction worthy of tragedy, on the other hand as a manager, to adapt his stage to sublime, rather than to humble and groveling themes. Accordingly he devised masks which represented the forms of the heroes, and he mounted his actors on buskins so that their gait might correspond to the characters they played; and he was the first to devise stage dresses, which might convey an adequate impression to the audience of the heroes and heroines they saw. For all these reasons the Athenians accounted him to be the father of tragedy; and even after his death they continued to invite him to represent his plays at the Dionysiac festival, for in accordance with public decree the plays of Aeschylus continued to be put upon the stage and win the prize anew. And yet the gratification of a well-staged tragedy is insignificant, for its pleasures last a brief day, as brief as is the season of the Dionysiac festival; but the gratification of a philosophic system devised to meet the requirements of a Pythagoras, and also breathing the inspiration in which Pythagoras was anticipated by the Indians, lasts not for a brief time, but for an endless and incalculable period. It is then not unreasonable on my part, I think, to have devoted myself to a philosophy so highly elaborated, and to one which, to use a metaphor from the stage, the Indians mount, as it deserves to be mounted, upon a lofty and divine mechanism, and then wheel it forth upon the stage. And that I was right to admire them, and that I am right in considering them to be wise and blessed, it is now time to convince you. I beheld men dwelling upon the earth, and yet not upon it, I beheld them fortified without fortifications, I beheld them possessed of nothing, and yet possessed of all things. You will say that I have taken to riddles, but the wisdom of Pythagoras allows of this; for he taught us to speak in riddles, when he discovered that the word is the teacher of silence. And there was a time when you yourselves took counsel with Pythagoras, and were advocates of this same wisdom; that was in the time when you could say nothing too good of the Indian philosophy, for to begin with and of old you were Indians. Subsequently because your soil was wrath with you, you came hither; and then ashamed of the reasons owing to which you quitted it, you tried to get men to regard you as anything rather than Ethiopians who had come from India hither, and you took every pains to efface your past. This is why you stripped yourselves of the apparel in which you came thence, as if you were anxious to doff along with it your Ethiopian nationality. This is why you have resolved to worship the gods in the Egyptian rather than in your own fashion, and why you have set yourselves to disseminate unflattering stories of the Indians, as if in maligning them you did not foul your own nest. And in this respect you have not yet altered your tone for the better; for only today you have given here an exhibition of your propensities for abuse and satire, pretending that the Indians are no better employed than in startling people and in pandering to their eyes and ears. And because as yet you are ignorant of my wisdom, you show yourself indifferent to the fame which crowns it. Well, in defense of myself I do not mean to say anything, for I am content to be what the Indians think me; but I will not allow them to be attacked. And if you are so sound and sane as to possess any tincture of the wisdom of the man of Himera, who composed in honor of Helen a poem which contradicted a former one and called it a palinode, it is high time for you also to use the words he used and say: 'This discourse of ours is not true,' so changing your opinion and adopting one better than you at present entertain about these people. But if you have not the wit to recant, you must at least spare men to whom the gods vouchsafe, as worthy of them, their own prerogatives, and whose possessions they do not disdain for themselves.

“You have also, Thespesion, made some remarks about the simplicity and freedom from pomp which characterizes the Pythian oracle; and by way of example you instanced the temple composed of wax and feathers; but I do not myself find that even this was devoid of pomp, for we have the line

'O bird bring hither your wings, and bees your wax.'

Such language betokens a carefully prepared home and the form of house. And the god I believe regarded even this as too humble and below the dignity of wisdom, and therefore desired to have another and yet another temple, big ones these and a hundred feet in breadth; and from one of them it is said that golden figures of the wryneck were hung up which possessed in a manner the charm of the Sirens; and the god collected the most precious of the offerings into the Pythian temple for ornament; nor did he reject works of statuary, when their authors brought him to his temple colossal figures of gods and men, and also of horses, oxen and other animals; nor did he refuse the gift of Glaucus brought thither of a stand for a goblet, nor the picture of the taking of the citadel of Ilium which Polygnotus painted there. For I imagine he did not consider that the gold of Lydia really beautified the Pythian fane, but he admitted it on behalf of the Hellenes themselves, by way of pointing out to them, I believe, the immense riches of the barbarians, and inducing them to covet that rather than continue to ravage one another's lands. And he accordingly adopted the Greek fashion of art which suited his particular wisdom, and adorned his shrine therewith. And I believe that it was by way of adornment that he also puts his oracles in metrical form. For if he did not wish to make a show in this matter, he would surely make his responses in such forms as the following: 'Do this, or do not do that'; and 'go, or do not go,' or 'choose allies, or do not choose them.' For here are short formulas, or as you call it naked ones. But in order to display his mastery of the grand style, and in order to please those who came to consult his oracle, he adopted the poetical form; and he does not allow that anything exists which he does not know, but claims to have counted the sands of the sea and to know their number, and also to have fathomed the depths of the sea.

“But I suppose you will call it miracle-monging, that Apollo dictates his oracles with such proud dignity and elation of spirit? But if you will not be annoyed, Thespesion, at what I say, there are certain old women who go about with sieves in their hands to shepherds, sometimes to cow-herds, pretending to heal their flocks, when they are sick, by divination, as they call it, and they claim to be called wise women, yea wiser than those who are unfeignedly prophets. It seems to me that you are in the same case, when I contrast your wisdom with that of the Indians; for they are divine, and have trimmed and adorned their science after the matter of the Pythian oracle; but you—however I will say no more, for modesty in speech is as dear to me as it is dear to the Indians, and I would be glad to have it at once to attend upon and to guide my tongue, seeking to compass what is in my power when I am praising those to whom I am so devoted, but leaving alone what is too high for me to attain unto, without bespattering it with petty disapproval. But you no doubt delight in the story which you have read in Homer about the Cyclopes, how their land, all unsown and unploughed, nourished the most fearless and lawless of beings; and if it is some Edoni or Lydians who are conducting bacchic revels, you are quite ready to believe that the earth will supply them with fountains of milk and wine, and give them to drink thereof; but you would deny to these Indians, lovers of all wisdom as enthusiastic as ever bacchants were, the unsought bounties which earth offers them. Moreover tripods, gifted with will of their own, attend the banquets of the gods also; and Ares, ignorant and hostile as he was to Hephaestus, yet never accused him merely for making them; nor is it conceivable that the gods ever listened to such an indictment as this: 'You commit an injustice, O Hephaestus, in adorning the banquet of the gods, and encompassing it with miracles.' Nor was Hephaestus ever sued for constructing handmaids of gold, nor accused of debasing the metals because he made the gold to breath. For ever art is interested to adorn, and the very existence of the arts was a discovery made in behalf of ornament. Moreover a man who goes without shoes and wears a philosopher's cloak and hangs a wallet on his back is a creature of ornament; nay, more even the nakedness which you affect, in spite of its rough and plain appearance, has for its object ornament and decoration, and it is not even exempt from the proverbial “pride of your own sort to match” 1. We must judge by their own standard the religion of the Sun and the national rites of the Indians and any cult in which that god delights; for the subterranean gods will always prefer deep trenches and ceremonies conducted in the hollows of the earth, but the air is the chariot of the sun; and those who would sing his praise in a fitting manner must rise from the earth and soar aloft with god; and this everyone would like to do, but the Indians alone are able to do it.”

Damis says that he breathed afresh when he heard this address; for that the Egyptians were so impressed by Apollonius' words, that Thespesion, in spite of the blackness of his complexion, visibly blushed, while the rest of them seemed in some way stunned by the vigorous and fluent discourse which they listened to; but the youngest of them, whose name was Nilus, leapt up from the ground, he says, in admiration, and passing over to Apollonius shook hands with him, and besought him to tell him about the interviews which he had had with the Indians. And Apollonius, he says, replied: “I should not grudge you anything, for you are ready to listen, as I see, and are ready to welcome wisdom of every kind; but I should not care to pour out the teachings I gathered there upon Thespesion or on anyone else who regards the lore of the Indians as so much nonsense.” Whereupon Thespesion said: “But if you were a merchant or a seafarer, and you brought to us some cargo or other from over there, would you claim, merely because it came from India, to dispose of it untested and unexamined, refusing us either the liberty of looking at it or tasting it?” But Apollonius repled as follows: “I should furnish it to those who asked for it; but if the moment my ship had reached the harbor, someone came down the beach and began to run down my cargo and abuse myself, and say that I came from a country which produces nothing worth having, and if he reproached me for sailing with a cargo of shoddy goods, and tried to persuade the rest to think like himself, do you suppose that one would, after entering such a harbor, cast anchor or make his cables fast, and not rather hoist his sails and put to sea afresh, entrusting his goods more gladly to the winds than to such undiscerning and inhospitable people?” “Well, I anyhow,” said Nilus, “lay hold on your cables, and entreat you, my skipper, to let me share your goods that you bring hither; and I would gladly embark with you in your ship as a super-cargo and a clerk to check your merchandise.”

Thespesion, however, was anxious to put a stop to such propositions, so he said: “I am glad, Apollonius, that you are annoyed at what we said to you; for you can the more readily condone our annoyance at the misrepresentation you made of our local wisdom, long before you had gained any experience of its quality.” Apollonius was for a moment astonished at these words, for he had heard nothing as yet of the intrigues of Thrasybulus and Euphrates; but as was his wont, he guessed the truth and said: “The Indians, O Thespesion, would never have behaved as you have, nor have given ear to these insinuation dropped by Euphrates, for they have a gift of prescience. Now I never have had any quarrel of my own with Euphrates; I only tried to wean him of his passion for money and cure his propensity to value everything by what he could make out of it; but I found that my advice was not congenial to him, nor in his case practicable; nay he merely takes it as a tacit reproach, and never loses any opportunity of intriguing against me. But since you have found his attacks upon my character so plausible, I may as well tell you that it is you, rather than myself, that he has calumniated. For though, as is clear to me, the victims of calumny incur considerable dangers, since they are, I suppose, sure to be disliked without having done any wrong, yet neither are those who incline to listen to the calumnies free from danger; for in the first place they will be convicted of paying respect to lies and giving them as much attention as they would to the truth, and secondly they are convicted of levity and credulity, faults which it is disgraceful even for a stripling to fall into. And they will be thought envious, because they allow envy to teach them to listen to unjust tittle-tattle; and they expose themselves all the more to calumny, because they think it true of others. For man is by nature inclined to commit a fault which he does not discredit when he hears it related to others. Heaven forbid that a man of these inclinations should become a tyrant, or even president of a popular state; for in his hands even a democracy would become a tyranny; nor let him be made a judge, for surely he will not ever discern the truth. Nor let him be captain of a ship, for the crew would mutiny, nor general of an army, for that would bring luck to the adversary; nor let one of his disposition attempt philosophy, for he would not consider the truth in forming his opinions. But Euphrates has deprived you of even the quality of wisdom; for how can those on whom he has imposed with his falsehoods claim wisdom for themselves? have they not deserted from it to take sides with one who has persuaded them of improbabilities?” Here Thespesion tried to calm him, and remarked: “Enough of Euphrates and of his small-minded affairs; for we are quite ready even to reconcile you with him, since we consider it the proper work of a sage to be umpire in the disputes of other sages.” “But,” said Apollonius, “who shall reconcile me with you? For the victim of lies must surely be driven into hostility by the falsehood.” … “Be it so,” said Apollonius, “and let us hold a conversation, for that will be the best way of reconciling us.”

And Nilus, as he was passionately anxious to listen to Apollonius, said: “And what's more, it behoves you to begin the conversation, and to tell us all about the journey which you made to the people of India, and about the conversations which you held there, I have no doubt, on the most brilliant topics.” “And I too,” said Thespesion, “long to hear about the wisdom of Phraotes, for you are said to have brought from India some examples of his arguments.” Apollonius accordingly began by telling them about the events which occurred in Babylon, and told them everything, and they gladly listened to him, spellbound by his words. But when it was midday, they broke of the conversations, for at this time of day the naked sages, like others, attend to the ceremonies of religion.

Apollonius and his comrades were about to dine, when Nilus presented himself with vegetables and bread and dried fruits, some of which he carried himself, while his friends carried the rest; and very politely he said: “The sages send these gifts of hospitality, not only to yourselves but to me; for I mean to share in your repast, not uninvited, as they say, but inviting myself.” “It is a delightful gift of hospitality,” said Apollonius, “which you bring to us, O youth, in the shape of yourself and your disposition, for you are evidently a philosopher without guile, and an enthusiastic lover of the doctrines of the Indians and of Pythagoras. So lie down here and eat with us.” “I will do so,” said the other, “but your dishes will not be ample enough to satisfy me.” “It seems to me,” said the other, “that you are a gourmand and an appalling eater.” “None like me,” said the other, “for although you have set before me so ample and so brilliant a repast, I am not sated; and after a little time I am come back again to eat afresh. What then can you call me but an insatiable cormorant?” “Eat your fill,” said Apollonius, “and as for topics of conversation, some you must yourself supply, and I will give you others.”

So when they had dined, “I,” said Nilus, “until now have been camping together with the naked sages, and joined my forces with them as with certain light armed troops or slingers. But now I intend to put on my heavy armor, and it is your shield that shall adorn me.” “But,” said Apollonius, “I think, my good Egyptian, that you will incur the censure of Thespesion and his society for two reasons; firstly, that after no further examination and testing of ourselves you have left them, and secondly that you give the preference to our manners and discipline with more precipitancy than is admissible where a man is making choice of how he shall live.” “I agree with you,” said the young man, “but if I am to blame for making this choice, I might also be to blame if I did not make it; and anyhow they will be most open to rebuke, if they make the same choice as myself. For it will be more justly reprehensible in them, as they are both older and wiser than myself, not to have made the choice long ago which I make now; for with all their advantages they will have failed to choose what in practice would so much redound to their advantage.” “A very generous sentiment indeed, my good youth, is this which you have expressed,” said Apollonius; “but beware lest the mere fact of their being so wise and aged should give them an appearance, at any rate, of being right in choosing as they have done, and of having good reason for rejecting my doctrine; and lest you should seem to take up a very bold position in setting them to rights rather than in following them.” But the Egyptian turned short round upon Apollonius and countering his opinion said: “So far as it was right for a young man to agree with his elders, I have been careful to do so; for so long as I thought that these gentlemen were possessed of a wisdom which belonged to no other set of men, I attached myself to them; and the motive which actuated me to do so was the following: My father once made a voyage on his own initiative to the Red Sea, for he was, I may tell you, captain of the ship which the Egyptians send to the Indies. And after he had had intercourse with the Indians of the seaboard, he brought home stories of the wise men of that region, closely similar to those which you have told us. And his account which I heard was somewhat as follows, namely that the Indians are the wisest of mankind, but that the Ethiopians are colonists sent from India, who follow their forefathers in matters of wisdom, and fix their eyes on the institutions of their home. Well, I, having reached my teens, surrendered my patrimony to those who wanted it more than myself, and frequented the society of these naked sages, naked myself as they, in the hope of picking up the teaching of the Indians, or at any rate teaching allied to theirs. And they certainly appeared to me to be wise, though not after the manner of India; but when I asked them point blank why they did not teach the philosophy of India, they plunged into abuse of the natives of that country very much as you have heard them do in their speeches this very day. Now I was still young, as you see, so they made me a member of their society, because I imagine they were afraid I might hastily quit them and undertake a voyage to the Red Sea, as my father did before me. And I should certainly have done so, yes, by Heaven, I would have pushed on until I reached the hill of the sages, unless someone of the gods had sent you hither to help me and enabled me without either making any voyage over the Red Sea or adventuring to the inhabitants of the Gulf, to taste the wisdom of India. It is not today therefore for the first time that I shall make my choice, but I made it long ago, though I did not obtain what I hoped to obtain. For what is there to wonder at if a man who has missed what he was looking for, returns to the search? And if I should convert my friends yonder to this point of view, and persuade them to adopt the convictions which I have adopted myself, should I, tell me, be guilty of any hardihood? For you must not reject the claim that youth makes, that in some way it assimilates an idea more easily than old age; and anyone who counsels another to adopt the wisdom and teaching which he himself has chosen, anyhow escapes the imputation of trying to persuade others of things he does not believe himself. And anyone who takes the blessings bestowed upon him by fortune into a corner and there enjoys them by himself, violates their character as blessings, for he prevents their sweetness from being enjoyed by as many as possible.”

When Nilus had finished these arguments, and juvenile enough they were, Apollonius took him up and said: “If you were in love with my wisdom, had you not better, before I begin, discuss with me the question of my reward?” “Let us discuss it,” answered Nilus, “and do you ask whatever you like.” “I ask you,” he said, “to be content with the choice you have made, and not to annoy the naked sages by giving them advice which they will not take.” “I consent,” he said, “and let this be agreed upon as your reward.” This then was the substance of their conversation, and when Nilus at its close asked him how long a time he would stay among the nakes sages he replied: “So long as the quality of their wisdom justifies anyone in remaining in their company; and after that I shall take my way to the cataracts, in order to see the springs of the Nile, for it will be delightful not only to behold the sources of the Nile, but also to listen to the roar of its waterfalls.”

After they had held this discussion and listened to some recollections of India, they lay down to sleep upon the grass; but at daybreak, having offered their accustomed prayers, they followed Nilus, who led them into the presence of Thespesion. They accordingly greeted one another, and sitting down together in the grove they began a conversation in which Apollonius led as follows: “How important it is,” said he, “not to conceal wisdom, is proved by our conversation of yesterday; for because the Indians taught me as much of their wisdom as I thought it proper for me to know, I not only remember my teachers, but I go about instilling into others what I heard from them. And you too will be richly rewarded by me, if you send me away with a knowledge of your wisdom as well; for I shall not cease to go about and repeat your teachings to the Greeks, while to the Indians I shall write them.”

“Ask,” they said, “for you know question comes first and argument follows on it.” “It is about the gods that I would like to ask you a question first, namely, what induced you to impart, as your tradition, to the people of this country forms of the gods that are absurd and grotesque in all but a few cases? In a few cases, do I say? I would rather say that in very few are the gods’ images fashioned in a wise and god-like manner, for the mass of your shrines seem to have been erected in honor rather of irrational and ignoble animals than of gods.” Thespesion, resenting these remarks, said: “And your own images in Greece, how are they fashioned?” “In the way,” he replied, “in which it is best and most reverent to construct images of the gods.” “I suppose you allude,” said the other, “to the statue of Zeus in Olympia, and to the image of Athena and to that of the Cnidian goddess and to that of the Argive goddess and to other images equally beautiful and full of charm?” “Not only to these,” replied Apollonius, “but without exception I maintain, that whereas in other lands statuary has scrupulously observed decency and fitness, you rather make ridicule of the gods than really believe in them.” “Your artists, then, like Phidias,” said the other, “and like Praxiteles, went up, I suppose, to heaven and took a copy of the forms of the gods, and then reproduced these by their art or was there any other influence which presided over and guided their molding?” “There was,” said Apollonius, “and an influence pregnant with wisdom and genius.” “What was that?” said the other, “for I do not think you can adduce any except imitation.” “Imagination,” said Apollonius, “wrought these works, a wiser and subtler artist by far than imitation; for imitation can only create as its handiwork what it has seen, but imagination equally what it has not seen; for it will conceive of its ideal with reference to the reality, and imitation is often baffled by terror, but imagination by nothing; for it marches undismayed to the goal which it has itself laid down. When you entertain a notion of Zeus you must, I suppose, envisage him along with heaven and seasons and stars, as Phidias in his day endeavoured to do, and if you would fashion an image of Athena you must imagine in your mind armies and cunning, and handicrafts, and how she leapt out of Zeus himself. But if you make a hawk or an owl or a wolf or a dog, and put it in your temples instead of Hermes or Athena or Apollo, your animals and your birds may be esteemed and of much price as likenesses, but the gods will be very much lowered in their dignity.” “I think,” said the other, “that you criticize our religion very superficially; for if the Egyptians have any wisdom, they show it by their deep respect and reverence in the representation of the gods, and by the circumstance that they fashion their forms as symbols of a profound inner meaning, so as to enhance their solemnity and august character.” Apollonius thereon merely laughed and said: “My good friends, you have indeed greatly profited by the wisdom of Egypt and Ethiopia, if your dog and your ibis and your goat seem particularly august and god-like, for this is what I learn from Thespesion the sage. But what is there that is august or awe-inspiring in these images? Is it not likely that perjurers and temple-thieves and all the rabble of low jesters will despise such holy objects rather than dread them; and if they are to be held for the hidden meanings which they convey, surely the gods in Egypt would have met with much greater reverence, if no images of them had ever been set up at all, and if you had planned your theology along other lines wiser and more mysterious. For I imagine you might have built temples for them, and have fixed the altars and laid down rules about what to sacrifice and what not, and when and on what scale, and with what liturgies and rites, without introducing any image at all, but leaving it to those who frequented the temples to imagine the images of the gods; for the mind can more or less delineate and figure them to itself better than can any artist; but you have denied to the gods the privilege of beauty both of the outer eye and of an inner suggestion.” Thespesion replied and said: “There was a certain Athenian, called Socrates, a foolish old man like ourselves, who thought that the dog and the goose and the plane tree were gods and used to swear by them.” “He was not foolish,” said Apollonius, “but a divine and unfeignedly wise man; for he did not swear by these objects on the understanding that they were gods, but to save himself from swearing by the gods.”

Thereupon Thespesion as if anxious to drop the subject, put some questions to Apollonius, about the scourging in Sparta, and asked if the Lacedaemonians were smitten with rods in public. “Yes,” answered the other, “as hard, O Thespesion, as men can smite them; and it is especially men of noble birth among them that are so treated.” “Then what do they do to menials,” he asked, “when they do wrong?” “They do not kill them nowadays,” said Apollonius, “as Lycurgus formerly allowed, but the same whip is used to them too.” “And what judgment does Hellas pass upon the matter?” “They flock,” he answered, “to see the spectacle with pleasure and utmost enthusiasm, as if to the festival of Hyacinthus, or to that of the naked boys.” “Then these excellent Hellenes are not ashamed, either to behold those publicly whipped who erewhile governed them or to reflect that they were governed by men who are whipped by men who are whipped before the eyes of all? And how is it that you did not reform this abuse? For they say that you interested yourself in the affairs of the Lacedaemonians, as of other people.” “So far as anything could be reformed, I gave them my advice, and they readily adopted it; for they are the freest of the Hellenes; but at the same time they will only listen to one who gives them good advice. Now the custom of scourging is a ceremony in honor of the Scythian Artemis, so they say, and was prescribed by oracles, and to oppose the regulations of the gods is in my opinion utter madness.” “’Tis a poor wisdom, Apollonius,” he replied, “which you attribute to the gods of the Hellenes, if they countenance scourging as a part of the discipline of freedom.” “It's not the scourging,” he said, “but the sprinkling of the altar with human blood that is important, for the Scythians too held the altar to be worthy thereof; but the Lacedaemonians modified the ceremony of sacrifice because of its implacable cruelty, and turned it into a contest of endurance, undergone without any loss of life, and yet securing to the goddess as first fruits an offering of their own blood.” “Why then,” said the other, “do they not sacrifice strangers right out to Artemis, as the Scythians formerly considered right to do?” “Because,” he answered, “it is not congenial to any of the Greeks to adopt in full rigor the manners and customs of barbarians.” “And yet,” said the other, “it seems to me that it would be more humane to sacrifice one or two of them than to enforce as they do a policy of exclusion against all foreigners.”

“Let us not assail,” said the other, “O Thespesion, the law-giver Lycurgus; but we must understand him, and then we shall see that his prohibition to strangers to settle in Sparta and live there was not inspired on his part by mere boorish exclusiveness, but by a desire to keep the institutions of Sparta in their original purity by preventing outsiders from mingling in her life.” “Well,” said the other, “I should allow the men of Sparta to be what they claim to be, if they had ever lived with strangers, and yet had faithfully adhered to their home principles; for it was not by keeping true to themselves in the absence of strangers, but by doing so in spite of their presence, that they needed to show their superiority. But they, although they enforced his policy of excluding strangers, corrupted their institutions, and were found doing exactly the same as did those of the Greeks whom they most detested. Anyhow, their subsequent naval program and policy of imposing tribute was modelled entirely upon that of Athens, and they themselves ended by committing acts which they had themselves regarded as a just casus belli against the Athenians, whom they had no sooner beaten in the field than they humbly adopted, as if they were the beaten party, their pet institution. And the very fact that the goddess was introduced from Taurus and Scythia was the action of men who embraced alien customs. But if an oracle prescribed this, what want was there of the scourge? What need to feign an endurance fit for slaves? Had they wanted to prove the disdain that Lacedaemonians felt for death, they had I think done better to sacrifice a youth of Sparta with his own consent upon the altar. For this would have been a real proof of the superior courage of the Spartans, and would have disinclined Hellas from ranging herself in the opposite camp to them. But you will say that they had to save their young men for the battlefield; well, in that case the law which prevails among the Scythians, and sentences all men of sixty years of age to death, would have been more suitably introduced and followed among the Lacedaemonians then among the Scythians, supposing that they embrace death in its grim reality and not as a mere parade. These remarks of mine are directed not so much against the Lacedaemonians, as against yourself, O Apollonius. For if ancient institutions, whose hoary age defies our understanding of their origins, are to be examined in an unsympathetic spirit, and the reason why they are pleasing to heaven subjected to cold criticism, such a line of speculation will produce a crop of odd conclusions; for we could attack the mystery rite of Eleusis in the same way and ask, why it is this and not that; and the same with the rites of the Samothracians, for in their ritual they avoid one thing and insist on another; and the same with the Dionysiac ceremonies and the phallic symbol, and the figure erected in Cyllene, and before we know where we are we shall be picking holes in everything. Let us choose, therefore, any other topic you like, but respect the sentiment of Pythagoras, which is also our own; for it is better, if we can't hold our tongues about everything, at any rate to preserve silence about such matters as these.” Apollonius replied and said, “If, O Thespesion, you had wished to discuss the topic seriously, you would have found that the Lacedaemonians have many excellent arguments to advance in favor of their institutions, proving that they are sound and superior to those of other Hellenes; but since you are so averse to continue the discussion, and even regard it as impious to talk about such things, let us proceed to another subject, of great importance, as I am convinced, for it is about justice that I shall now put a question.”

“Let us,” said Thespesion, tackle the subject; for it is one very suitable to men, whether they are wise or not wise. But lest we should drag in the opinions of Indians, and so confuse our discussion, and go off without having formed any conclusions, do you first impart to us the views held by the Indians concerning justice, for you probably examined their views on the spot; and if their opinion is proved to be correct we will adopt it; but if we have something wiser to put in its place, you must adopt our view, for that too is plain justice.“ Said Apollonius: “Your plan is excellent and most satisfactory to me; so do listen to the conversation which I held there. For I related to them how I had once been captain of a large ship, in the period when my soul was in command of another body, and how I thought myself extremely just because, when robbers offered me a reward, if I would betray my ship by running it into roads where they were going to lie in wait for it, in order to seize its cargo, I agreed and made the promise, just to save them from attacking us, but intending to slip by them and get beyond the place agreed upon.” “And,” said Thespesion, “did the Indians agree that this was justice?” “No, they laughed at the idea,” he said, “for they said that justice was something more than not being unjust.” “It was very sensible,” said the other, “of the Indians to reject such a view; for good sense is something more than not entertaining nonsense, just as courage is something more than not running away from the ranks; and so temperance is something more than the avoidance of adultery, and no one reserves his praise for a man who has simply shown himself to be not bad. For because a thing, no matter what, is equidistant between praise and punishment, it is not on that account to be reckoned off-hand to be virtue” “How then. O Thespesion,” said Apollonius, “are we to crown the just man and for what actions?” “Could you have discussed justice more completely and more opportunely,” said the other, “than when the sovereign of so large and flourishing a country intervened in your philosophic discussion of the art of kingship, a thing intimately connected with justice?” “If it had been Phraotes,” said Apollonius, “who turned up on that occasion, you might rightly blame me for not gravely discussing the subject of justice in his presence. But you from the account which I gave of him yesterday that the man is a drunkard and an enemy of all philosophy. What need therefore was there to inflict on him the trouble? Why should we try to win credit for ourselves in the presence of a sybarite who thinks of nothing but his own pleasures? But inasmuch as it is incumbent upon wise men like ourselves to explore and trace out justice, more so than on kings and generals, let us proceed to examine the absolutely just man. For though I thought myself just in the affair of the ship, and thought others just too because they do not practice injustice, you deny that this in itself constitutes them just or worthy of honor.” “And rightly so,” said the other, ” for whoever heard of a decree drafted by Athenians or Lacedaemonians in favor of crowning so and so, because he is not a libertine, or of granting the freedom of the city to so and so, because the temples have not been robbed by him? Who then is the just man and what are is actions? For neither did I ever hear of anyone being crowned merely for his justice, nor of a decree being proposed over a just man to the effect that so and so shall be crowned, because such and such actions of his show him to be just. For anyone who considers the fate of Palamedes in Troy or Socrates in Athens, will discover that even justice is not sure of success among men, for assuredly these men suffered most unjustly being themselves most just. Still they at least were put to death on the score of acts of injustice imputed on them, and the verdict was a distortion of the truth; whereas in the case of Aristides the son of Lysimachus, it was very justice that was the undoing of him, for he in spite of his integrity was banished merely because of his reputation for this very virtue. And I am sure that justice will appear in a very ridiculous light; for having been appointed by Zeus and by the Fates to prevent men being unjust to one another, she has never been able to defend herself against injustice.

And the history of Aristides is sufficient to me to show the difference between one who is nor unjust and one who is really just. For, tell me, is not this the same Aristides of whom your Hellenic compatriots when they come here tell us that he undertook a voyage to the islands to fix the tribute of the allies, and after settling it on a fair basis, returned again to his country still wearing the same cloak in which he left it?“ “It is he,” answered Apollonius, “who made the love of poverty once to flourish.” “Now,” said the other, “let us suppose that there were at Athens two public orators passing an encomium upon Aristides, just after he had returned from the allies; one of the proposes that he shall be crowned, because he has come back again without enriching himself or amassing any fortune, but the poorest of the Athenians, poorer than he was before; and the other orator, we will suppose, drafts his motion somewhat as follows: 'Whereas Aristides has fixed the tribute of the allies according to their ability to pay, and not in excess of the resources of their respective countries; and whereas he has endeavored to keep them loyal to the Athenians, and to see that they shall feel it no grievance to pay upon this scale, it is hereby resolved to crown him for justice.' Do you not suppose that Aristides himself would have opposed the first of these resolutions, as an indignity to his entire life, seeing that it only honored him for not doing injustice; whereas, he might perhaps have supported the other resolution as a fair attempt to express his intentions and policy? For I imagine it was with an eye to the interest of Athenians and subject states alike, that he took care to fix the tribute on a fair and moderate basis, and in fact his wisdom in this matter was conclusively proved after his death. For when the Athenians exceeded his valuations and imposed heavier tributes upon the islands, their naval supremacy at once went to pieces, though it more than anything else had made them formidable; on the other hand the prowess of the Lacedaemonians passed on to the sea itself; and nothing was left of Athenian supremacy, for the whole of the subject states rushed into revolution and made good their escape. It follows then, O Apollonius, that rightly judged, it is not the man who abstains from injustice that is just, but the man who himself does what is just, and also influences others not to be unjust; and from such justice as his there will spring up a crop of other virtues, especially those of the law-court and of the legislative chamber. For such a man as he will make a much fairer judge than people who take their oaths upon the dissected parts of victims, and his legislation will be similar to that of Solon and of Lycurgus; for assuredly these great legislators were inspired by justice to undertake their work.”

Such, according to Damis, was the discussion held by them with regard to the just man, and Apollonius, he says, assented to their argument, for he always agreed with what was reasonably put. They also had a philosophic talk about the soul, proving its immortality, and about nature, along much the same lines which Plato follows in his Timaeus; and after some further remarks and discussions of the laws of the Hellenes, Apollonius said: “For myself I have come all this way to see yourselves and visit the springs of the Nile; for a person who only comes as far as Egypt may be excused if he ignores the latter, but if he advances as far as Ethiopia, as I have done, he will be rightly reproached if he neglects to visit them, and to draw as it were from their well-springs some arguments of his own.” “Farewell then,” said the other, “and pray to the springs for whatever you desire, for they are divine. But I imagine you will take as your guide Timasion, who formerly lived at Naucratis, but is now of Memphis; for he is well acquainted with the springs of the Nile and he is not so impure as to stand in need of further lustrations. But as for you, O Nilus, we would like to have a talk to you by ourselves.” The meaning of this sally was clear enough to Apollonius, for he well understood their annoyance at Nilus’ preference for himself; but to give them an opportunity of speaking him apart, he left them to prepare and pack up for his journey, for he meant to start at daybreak. And after a little time Nilus returned, but did not tell them anything of what they had said to him, though he laughed a good deal to himself. And no one asked him what he was laughing about, but they respected his secret.

They then took their supper and after a discussion of certain trifles they laid them down to sleep where they were; but at daybreak they said goodbye to the naked sages, and started off along the road which leads to the mountains, keeping the Nile on their right hand, and they saw the following spectacles deserving of notice. The Catadupi [the first cataract] are mountains formed of good soil, about the same size as the hill of the Lydians called Tmolus; and from them the Nile flows rapidly down, washing with it the soil of which it creates Egypt; but the roar of the stream, as it breaks down in a cataract from the mountains and hurls itself into the Nile, is terrible and intolerable to the ears, and many of those have approached it too close have returned with the loss of their hearing.

Apollonius, however, and his party pushed on till they saw some round-shaped hills covered with trees, the leaves and bark and gum of which the Ethiopians regard as of great value; and they also saw lions close to the path, and leopards and other such wild animals; but they were not attracted by any of them, for they fled from them in haste as if they were scared at the sight of men. And they also saw stags and gazelles, and ostriches an asses, the latter in great numbers, and also many wild bulls and ox-goats, the former of these two animals being a mixture of the stag and the ox, that latter of the creatures from which its name is taken. They found moreover on the road the bones and half-eaten carcases of these; for the lions, when they have gorged themselves with fresh prey, care little for what is left over of it, because, I think, they feel sure of catching fresh quarry whenever they want it.

It is here that the nomad Ethiopians live in a sort of colony upon wagons, and not far from them the elephant-hunters, who cut up these animals and sell the flesh, and are accordingly called by a name which signifies the selling of elephants. And the Nasamones and the man-eaters and the pigmies and the shadow-footed people are also tribes of Ethiopia, and they extend as far as the Ethiopian ocean, which no mariners ever enter except castaways who do so against their will.

As our company were discussing these animals and talking learnedly about the food which nature supplies in their different cases, they heard a sound as of thunder; not a crashing sound, but of thunder as it is when it is still hollow and concealed in the cloud. And Timasion said: “A cataract is at hand, gentlemen, the last for those who are descending the river, but the first to meet you on your way up.” And after they had advanced about ten stades, he says that they saw a river discharging itself from the hill-side as big as the Marsyas and the Meander at their first confluence; and he says that after they had put up a prayer to the Nile, they went on till they no longer saw any animals at all; for the latter are naturally afraid of noise, and therefore live by calm waters rather than by those which rush headlong with a noise. And after fifteen stades they heard another cataract which this time was horrible and unbearable to the senses, for it was twice as loud as the first one and it fell from much higher mountains. And Damis relates that his own ears and those of one of his companions were so stunned by the noise, that he himself turned back and besought Apollonius not to go further; however he, along with Timasion and Nilus, boldly pressed on to the third cataract, of which he made the following report on their return. Peaks overhang the Nile, at the most eight stades in height; but the eminence faces the mountains, namely a beetling brow of rocks mysteriously cut away, as if in a quarry, and the fountains of the Nile cling to the edge of the mountain, till they overbalance and fall on to the rocky eminence, from which they pour into the Nile as an expanse of whitening billows. But the effect produced upon the senses by this cataract, which is many times greater than the earlier ones, and the echo which leaps up therefrom against the mountains render it impossible to hear what your companion tells you about the river 1. But the further road which leads up to the first springs of the river was impracticable, they tell us, and impossible to think of; for they tell many stories of the demons which haunt it, stories similar to those which Pindar in his wisdom puts into verse about the demon whom he sets over these springs to preserve the due proportions of the Nile.

After passing the cataracts they halted in a village of the Ethiopians of no great size, and they were dining, towards the evening, mingling in their conversation the grave with the gay, when all on a sudden they heard the women of the village screaming and calling to one another to join in the pursuit and catch the thing; and they also summoned their husbands to help them in the matter. And the latter caught up sticks and stones and anything which came handy, and called upon one another to avenge the insult to their wives. And it appears that for ten months the ghost of a satyr had been haunting the village, who was mad after the women and was said to have killed two of them to whom he was supposed to be specially attached. The companions, then, of Apollonius were frightened out of their wits till Apollonius said: “You need not be afraid, for it's only a satyr that is running amuck here.” “Yes, by Zeus,” said Nilus, “it's the one that we naked sages have found insulting us for a long time past and we could never stop his jumps and leaps.” “But,” said Apollonius, “I have a remedy against these hell-hounds, which Midas is said once to have employed; for Midas himself had some of the blood of satyrs in his veins, as was clear from the shape of his ears; and a satyr once, trespassing on his kinship with Midas, made merry at the expense of his ears, not only singing about them, but piping about them. Well, Midas, I understand, had heard from his mother that when a satyr is overcome by wine he falls asleep, and at such times comes to his senses and will make friends with you; so he mixed wine which he had in his palace in a fountain and let the satyr get at it, and the latter drank it up and was overcome. And to show that the story is true, let us go to the head man of the village, and if the villagers have any wine, we will mix it with water for the satyr and he will share the fate of Midas’ satyr.” They thought it a good plan, so he poured four Egyptian jars of wine into the trough out of which the village cattle drank, and then called the satyr by means of some secret rebuke or threat; and though as yet the latter was not visible, the wine sensibly diminished as if it was being drunk up. And when it was quite finished, Apollonius said: “Let us make peace with the satyr, for he is fast asleep.” And with these words he led the villagers to the cave of the nymphs, which was not quite a furlong away from the village; and he showed them a satyr lying fast asleep in it, but he told them not to hit him or abuse him, “For,” he said, “his nonsense is stopped for ever.” Such was this exploit of Apollonius, and, by heavens, we may call it not an incidental work in passing, but a masterwork of his passing by 1; and if you read the sage's epistle, in which he wrote to an insolent young man that he had sobered even a satyr demon in Ethiopia, you will perforce call to mind the above story. But we must not disbelieve that satyrs both exist and are susceptible to the passion of love; for I knew a youth of my own age in Lemnos whose mother was said to be visited by a satyr, as he well might to judge by this story; for he was represented as wearing in his back a fawn-skin that exactly fitted him, the front paws of which were drawn around his neck and fastened over his chest. But I must not go further into this subject; but, anyhow, credit is due as much to experience of facts as it is to myself.

When he had come down from Ethiopia the breach with Euphrates grew wider and wider, especially on account of the daily disputes and discussions; though he left them to Menippus and Nilus to conduct, and seldom himself attacked Euphrates, being much too busy with the training of Nilus.

After Titus had taken Jerusalem, and when the country all round was filled with corpses, the neighboring races offered him a crown; but he disclaimed any such honor to himself, saying that it was not himself that had accomplished this exploit, but that he had merely lent his arms to God, who had so manifested his wrath; and Apollonius praised his action, for therein he displayed a great deal of judgment and understanding of things human and divine, and it showed great moderation on his part that he refused to be crowned because he had shed blood. Accordingly Apollonius indited to him a letter which he sent by the hands of Damis and of which the text was as follows:

“Apollonius sends greetings to Titus the Roman general. Whereas you have refused to be proclaimed for success in war and for shedding the blood of your enemies, I myself assign to you the crown of temperance and moderation, because you thoroughly understand what deeds really merit a crown. Farewell.”

Now Titus was overjoyed with this epistle, and replied: “In my own behalf I thank you, no less then in behalf of my father, and I will not forget your kindness; for although I have captured Jerusalem, you have captured me.”

And after Titus had been proclaimed autocrat in Rome and rewarded with the meed of his valor, he went away to become the colleague in empire of his father; but he did not forget Apollonius, and thinking that even a short interview with him would be precious to himself, he besought him to come to Tarsus; and when he arrived he embraced him, saying: “My father has told me by letter everything in respect of which he consulted you; and lo, here is his letter, in which you are described as his benefactor and the being to whom we owe all that we are. Now though I am only just thirty years of age, I am held worthy of the same privileges which my father only attained at the age of sixty. I am called to the throne and to rule, perhaps before I have learned myself to obey, and I therefore dread lest I am undertaking a task beyond my powers.” Thereupon Apollonius, after stroking his neck, said (for had as stout a neck as any athlete in training): “And who will force so sturdy a bull-neck as yours under the yoke?” “He that from my youth up reared me as calf,” answered Titus, meaning his own father, and implying that he could only be controlled by the latter, who had accustomed him from childhood to obey himself. “I am delighted then,” said Apollonius, “in the first place to see you prepared to subordinate yourself to your father, whom without being his natural children so many are delighted to obey, and next to see you rendering to his court a homage in which others will associate yourself. When youth and age are paired in authority, is there any lyre or any flute that will produce so sweet a harmony and so nicely blended? For the qualities of old age will be associated with those of youth, with the result that old age will gain in strength and youth in discipline.”

“And for myself, O man of Tyana,” answered Titus, “can you give me any precepts as to how to rule and exercise the authority of a sovereign?” “Only such rules,” replied the other, “as you have laid upon yourself; for in so submitting yourself to your father's will, it is, I think, certain that you will grow like him. And I should like to repeat to you on this occasion a saying of Archytas, which is a noble one and worth committing to memory. Archytas was a man of Tarentum who was learned in the lore of Pythagoras, and he wrote a treatise on the education of children, in which he says: Let the father be an example of virtue to his children, for fathers also will the more resolutely walk in the path of virtue because their children are coming to resemble them. But for myself, I propose to associate with you my own companion Demetrius, who will attend you as much as you like and instruct you in the whole duty of a good ruler.” “And what sort of wisdom, O Apollonius, does this person possess?” “Courage,” he replied, “to speak the truth unabashed by anyone, for he possesses the constancy and strength of character of a cynic.” And as Titus did not seem very pleased to hear the name of dog 1, he continued: “And yet in Homer, Telemachus, when he was young, required, it appears, two dogs, and the poet sends these to accompany the youth to the market place of Ithaca, in spite of their being irrational animals; but you will have a dog to accompany you who will bark in your behalf not only at other people, but at yourself in case you go wrong, and he will bark withal wisely, and never irrationally.” “Well,” said the other, “give me your dog to accompany me, and I will even let him bite me, in case he feels I am committing injustice.” “I will write him a letter, for he teaches philosophy in Rome.” “Pray do so,” said Titus, “and I wish I could get someone to write to you in my behalf, and induce you to share with me my journey to Rome.” “I will come there,” said the other, “whenever it is best for both of us.”

Then Titus dismissed the company, and said: “Now that we are alone, O man of Tyana, you will allow me perhaps to ask you a question upon matters of grave importance to myself.” “Pray do so,” said the other, “and do so all the more readily because the matter is so important.” “It is about my own life,” said the other, “and I would feign know whom I ought most to be on my guard against. That is my question, and I hope you will not think me cowardly for already being anxious about it.” “Nay, you are only cautious,” said the other, “and circumspect; for a man ought to be more careful about this than about anything else.” And glancing at the Sun he swore by that god that he had himself intended to address Titus about this matter even if he had not asked him. “For,” he said, “the gods have told me to warn you, so long as your father is alive, to be on your guard against his bitterest enemies, but after his death against your own kith and kin.” “And,” said Titus, “in what way am I to die?” “In the same way,” said the other, “as Odysseus is said to have died, for they say that he too met with his death by the sea.” Damis interprets the above utterance as follows: Namely, that he was to be on his guard against the cusp of the fish called the trygon, with which they say Odysseus was wounded. Anyhow, after he had occupied the throne for two years, in succession of his father, he died through eating the fish called the sea-hare; and this fish, according to Damis, causes secret humors in the body worse and more fatal than anything else either in the sea or on land. And Nero, he says, introduced this sea-hare in his dishes to poison his worst enemies; and so did Domitian in order to remove his brother Titus, not because he objected to sharing his throne with his brother, but to sharing it with one who was both gentle and good. Such was their conversation in private, after which they embraced one another in public, and as Titus departed Apollonius greeted him with these last words: “Pray you, my King, overcome your enemies by your arms, but your father by your virtues.”

But the letter to Demetrius ran as follows: “Apollonius, the Philosopher, sends greeting to Demetrius the cynic.

“I have made a present of you to the Emperor Titus, that you may instruct him how to behave as a sovereign, and take care that you confirm the truth of my words to him, and make yourself, anger apart, everything to him. Farewell.”

Now the inhabitants of Tarsus had previously detested Apollonius, because of the violent reproaches which he addressed to them, owing to the fact that through their languid indifference and sensual indolence they could not put up with the vigor of his remarks. But on this occasion they became such devoted admirers of our hero as to regard him as their second founder and the mainstay of their city. For on one occasion the Emperor was offering a sacrifice in public, when the whole body of citizens met and presented a petition to him asking for certain great favors; and he replied that he would mention the matter to his father, and be himself their ambassador to procure them what they wanted; whereupon Apollonius stepped forward and said: “Supposing I convicted some who are standing here of being your own and your father's enemies, and of having sent legates to Jerusalem to excite a rebellion, and of being the secret allies of your most open enemies, what would happen to them?” “Why, what else,” said the Emperor, “than instant death?” “Then is it not disgraceful,” replied Apollonius, “that you should be instant in demanding their punishment, and yet dilatory in conferring a boon; and be ready yourself to undertake the punishment, but reserve the benefaction until you can see and consult your father?” But the king, over-delighted with this remark, said: “I grant the favors they ask for, for my father will not be annoyed at my yielding to truth and to yourself.”

So many were the races which they say Apollonius had visited until then, eager and zealous for others as they for him. But his subsequent journeys abroad, though they were numerous, were yet not so many as before, nor did he go to fresh districts which he was not already acquainted with; for when he came down from Ethiopia he made a long stay on the sea-board of Egypt, and then he returned to Phoenicia and Cilicia, and to Ionia and Achaea, and Italy, never failing anywhere to show himself the same as ever. For, hard as it is to know oneself, I myself consider it still harder for the sage to remain always himself; for he cannot ever reform evil natures and improve them, unless he has first trained himself never to alter in his own person. Now about these matters I have discoursed at length in other treatises, and shown those of my readers who were careful and hard students, that a man who is really a man will never alter his nature nor become a slave. But lest I should unduly prolong this work by giving a minute account of the several teachings which he addressed to individuals, and lest on the other hand I should skip over any important chapter of a life, which I am taking so much pains to transmit to those who never knew Apollonius, I think it time to record more important incidents and matters which will repay the remembering; for we must consider that such episodes are comparable to the visits to mankind paid by the sons of Asclepius.

There was a youth who, without having any education of his own, undertook to educate birds, which he kept in his home to make them clever; and he taught them to talk like human beings and to whistle tunes like flute-players. Apollonius met him and asked: “How are you occupying yourself?” And when he replied, and told him all about his nightingales and his blackbirds, and how he trained the tongues of stone curlews—as he had himself a very uneducated accent—Apollonius said: “I think you are spoiling the accents of the birds, in the first place because you don't let them utter their own notes, which are so sweet that not even the best musical instruments could rival or imitate them, and in the second place because you yourself talk the vilest Greek dialects and are only teaching them to stutter like yourself. And what is more, my good youth, you are also wasting your own substance; for when I look at all your hangers-on, and at your get-up, I should say that you are a delicately bred and somewhat wealthy man; but sycophants steal honey from people like yourself, being ready with tongue poised against them for a sting. And what will be the use to you of all this bird-fancying when the time comes? For if you collected all the songbirds in the world, it would not help you to shake off the parasites that cling to you and oppress you; nay you are forced to shower your wealth upon them and cast your gold before them, and you scatter tidbits before dogs; and to stop their barking you must give again and again, until at last you will find yourself reduced to hunger and to poverty.

“What you want is some splendid diversion which will instantly make some alteration in your character, otherwise you will wake up one day and find that you have been plucked of your wealth as if it were plumage, and that you are a fitter subject to excite the birds to lament than to sing. The remedy you need to effect such a change is not a very great one; for there is in all cities a class of men, whose acquaintance you have never made, but who are called schoolmasters. You give them a little of your substance with the certainty of getting it back with interest; for they will teach you the rhetoric of the Forum, and it is not a difficult art to acquire. I may add that, if I had known you as a child, and come across you then, I should have advised you assiduously to attend at the doors of the philosophers and sophists, so as to be able to hedge round your habitation with a wider learning; but, since it is too late for you to manage that, at any rate learn to plead for yourself; for remember, if you had acquired a more complete training and education, you would have resembled a man who is heavy-armed and therefore formidable; yet, if you thoroughly learn this branch, you will at any rate be equipped like a light-armed soldier or a slinger, for you will be able to fling words at your sycophants, as you would stones at dogs.” The young man took to heart this advice, and he gave up wasting his time over birds and betook himself to school, much to the improvement both of his judgment and oh his tongue.

Two stories are told in Sardes, one that the River Pactolus used to bring down gold dust to Croesus, and the other that trees are older than earth. The former story Apollonius said he accepted because it was probable, for that there had once been a sand of gold on mount Tmolus, and that the showers of rain had swept it down into the river Pactolus; although subsequently, as is generally the case in such matters, it had given out, being all washed away. But the second story he ridiculed and said: “You pretend that trees were created before the earth; well, I have been studying all this time, yet never heard of the stars being created before the heaven.” The inference he wished to convey was that nothing could be created as long as that in which it grows does not exist.

The ruler of Syria had plunged into a feud, by disseminating among the citizens suspicions such that when they met in assembly they all quarreled with one another. But a violent earthquake happening to occur, they were all cowering, and as is usual in the case of heavenly portents, praying for one another. Apollonius accordingly stepped forward and remarked: “It is God who is clearly anxious to reconcile you to one another, and you will not revive these feuds since you cherish the same fears.” And so he implanted in them a sense of what was to happen to them, and made each faction entertain the same fears as the other.

Here is another incident worth recording. A certain man was sacrificing to mother Earth in hope of finding a treasure, and he did not hesitate to offer a prayer to Apollonius with that intent. He, perceiving what he was after, said: “I see that you are a formidable man in business.” “Nay, but an unlucky one,” remarked the other, “that have nothing except a few pence, and not enough to feed my family.” “You seem,” said the other, “to keep a large household of idle servants, for you yourself seem not to be wanting in wits.” But the man shed a quiet tear and answered: “I have four daughters, who want four dowries, and, when my daughters have had their dowries assigned to them, my capital, which is now only 20,000 drachmas, will have vanished; and they will think that they have got all too little, while I shall perish because I shall have nothing at all.” Therefore Apollonius took compassion on him and said: “We will provide for you, myself and mother Earth, for I hear that you are sacrificing to her.” With these words he conducted the man into the suburbs, as if he were going to buy some fruit, and there he saw an estate planted with olive-trees; and being delighted with the trees, for they were very good ones and well grown, and there was a little garden in the place, in which he saw bee-hives and flowers, he went into the garden as if he had important business to examine into, and then, having put up a prayer to Pandora, he returned to the city. Then he proceeded to the owner of the field, who had amassed a fortune in the most unrighteous manner, by informing against the estates of Phoenicians, and said: “For how much did you purchase such and such an estate, and how much labor have you spent upon it?” The other replied that he had bought the estate a year before for the sum of 15,000 drachmas, but that as yet he had spent no labor upon it, whereupon Apollonius persuaded him to sell it to him for 20,000 drachmas, which he did, esteeming the 5,000 a great windfall. Now the man who wanted to find the treasure did not in the least understand the gift that was made him, indeed he hardly considered it a fair bargain, because, whereas he might have kept the 20,000 drachmas that he had in hand, he now reflected that the estate which he purchased for the sum might suffer from frost and hailstorms and from other influences ruinous to the crops. But when he found a jar almost at once in the field containing 3,000 darics, close by the beehive in the little garden, and when he got a very large yield from the olive-trees, when everywhere else the crops had failed, he began to hymn the praises of the sage, and his house was crowded with suitors for the hand of his daughters urging their suits upon him.

Here is another story which I came upon about Apollonius, and which deserves to be put upon record: There was a man who was in love with a nude statue of Aphrodite which is erected in the island of Cnidus; and he was making offerings to it, and said that he would make yet others with a view to marrying the statue. But Apollonius, though on other grounds he thought his conduct absurd, yet as the islanders were not averse of the idea, but said that the fame of the goddess would be greatly enhanced if she had a lover, determined to purge the temple of all this nonsense; and when the Cnidians asked him if he would reform their system of sacrifice or their litanies in any way, he replied: “I will reform your eyes, but let the ancestral service of your temple as it is.” Accordingly he called to him the languishing lover and asked him if he believed in the existence of the gods: and when he replied that he believed in their existence so firmly that he was actually in love with them, and mentioned a marriage with one of them which he hoped to celebrate shortly, Apollonius replied: “The poets have turned your poor head by their talk of unions of Anchises and Peleus and other heroes with goddess; but I know this much about loving and being loved: gods fall in love with gods, and human beings with human beings, and animals with animals, and in a word like with like, and they have true issue of their own kind; but when two beings of different kinds contract a union, there is no true marriage or love. And if only you would bear in mind the fate of Ixion, you would never have dreamed of falling in love with beings so much above you. For he, you remember, is portrayed across the heaven tortured upon a wheel; and you, unless you get out of this shrine, will perish wherever you are upon earth, nor will you be able to say that the gods have been unjust in their sentence upon you.” Thus he put a stop to this mad freak, and the man went away who said he was in love, after sacrificing in order to gain forgiveness.

At one time the cities on the left side of the Hellespont were visited by earthquakes, and Egyptians and Chaldaeans went begging about through them to collect money, pretending that they wanted ten talents with which to offer sacrifices to earth and to Poseidon. And the cities began to contribute under the stress of fear, partly out of their common funds and partly out of private. But the imposters refused to offer the sacrifices in behalf of their dupes unless the money was deposited in the banks. Now the sage determined not to allow the peoples of the Hellespont to be imposed upon; so he visited their cities, and drove out the quacks who were making money out of the misfortunes of others, and when he divined the causes of the supernatural wrath, and by making such offerings as suited each case averted the visitation at small cost, and the land was at rest.

The emperor Domitian about the same time passed a law against making men eunuchs, and against planting fresh vineyards, and also in favor of cutting down vineyards already planted, whereon Apollonius, who was visiting the Ionians, remarked: “These rescripts do not concern me, for I, alone perhaps of mankind, require neither to beget my kind nor to drink wine; but our egregious sovereign seems not aware that he is sparing mankind, while he eunuchises the earth.” This witticism emboldened the Ionians to send a deputation to the emperor in behalf of their vines, and ask for a repeal of the law which ordered the earth to be laid waste and not planted.

Here too is a story which they tell of him in Tarsus. A mad dog had attacked a lad, and as a result of the bite the lad behaved exactly like a dog, for he barked and howled and went on all four feet using his hands as such, and ran about in that manner. And he had been ill in this way for thirty days, when Apollonius, who had recently come to Tarsus, met him and ordered a search to be made for the dog which had done the harm. But they said that the dog had not been found, because the youth had been attacked outside the wall when he was practicing with javelins, nor could they learn from the patient what the dog was like, for he did not even know himself any more. Then Apollonius reflected for a moment and said: “O Damis, the dog is a white shaggy sheep-dog, as big as an Amphilochian hound, and he is standing at a certain fountain trembling all over, for he is longing to drink the water, but at the same time is afraid of it. Bring him to me to the bank of the river, where there are the wrestling grounds, merely telling that it is I who call him.” So Damis dragged the dog along, and it crouched at the feet of Apollonius, crying out as a suppliant might do before an altar. But he quite tamed it by stroking it with his hand, and then he stood the lad close by, holding him with his hand; and in order that the multitude might be cognizant of so great a mystery, he said: “The soul of Telephus of Mysia has been transferred into this boy, and the Fates impose the same things upon him as upon Telephus.” And with these words he bade the dog lick the wound all round where he had bitten the boy, so that the agent of the wound might in turn be its physician and healer. After that the boy returned to his father and recognized his mother, and saluted his comrades as before, and drank of the waters of the Cydnus. Nor did the sage neglect the dog either, but after offering a prayer to the river he sent the dog across it; and when the dog had crossed the river, he took his stand on the opposite bank, and began to bark, a thing which mad dogs rarely do, and he folded back his ears and wagged his tail, because he knew that he was all right again, for a draught of water cures a mad dog, if he has only the courage to take it.

Such were the exploits of our sage in behalf of both temples and cities; such were the discourses he delivered to the public or in behalf of different communities, and in behalf of those who were dead or who were sick; and such were the harangues he delivered to wise and unwise alike, and to the sovereigns who consulted him about moral virtue.