Philostratus: The Life of Apollonius of Tyana
The Plainspoken Classics - Scriptorium Press (First Edition, 2026)
An original AI translation made directly from the source language.
https://openscriptorium.com

Translated from the Greek of C. L. Kayser’s Teubner text (1870, Perseus digital edition) by Scriptorium Press, 2026 (83,950 Greek words, 150 batches). Claude Sonnet 5.5 translation fleet; Claude Opus 5.5 referee audit of every batch against the Greek, with every finding ruled on and fixed; Claude Opus 5.5 translation of the opening and closing of every book and of the most-read passages (the birth and Proteus vision, the Brahmans of India, the plague daemon at Ephesus, the empusa at Corinth, the trial before Domitian, the ascension stories). Zero shared 8-word runs with the public-domain English versions (Conybeare 1912, Phillimore 1912, Berwick 1809); every rewording made for that check was reviewed against the Greek by Claude Opus 5.5. The number before each paragraph is its chapter in the edition.


======== Life of Apollonius — Book I ========

1| Those who praise Pythagoras of Samos say this about him: that before he was an Ionian he had once been Euphorbus at Troy; that he came back to life after dying, and that he died as Homer's poems tell; that he refused clothing made from the hides of dead animals and kept himself clean of every food that had once had a soul, and of sacrifices too. For he refused to let blood stain the altars; the honey cake, the frankincense and the singing of a hymn, these were what went to the gods from this man, and he knew that the gods welcomed such offerings more than hecatombs and the knife laid in the basket. For he kept company with the gods, they say, and learned from them where they take pleasure in human beings and where they are displeased, and it was from that source that he spoke about nature. Other men, they say, only guess at the divine and hold opinions about it that disagree with one another; but to him Apollo had come and acknowledged that he was the god himself, and Athena and the Muses had kept company with him without acknowledging themselves, and other gods besides, whose forms and names human beings do not yet know. Whatever Pythagoras declared, his followers held to be law; they honored him as one who had come from Zeus, and they trained themselves in silence about the divine. For they heard many divine and secret things, which would have been hard to keep to themselves if they had not first learned that silence too is a kind of speech. And they say that Empedocles of Acragas also walked the road of this wisdom. For the lines

Farewell: I am to you an immortal god, no longer mortal,

and

For once already I was born a girl and a boy,

and the ox at Olympia which he is said to have made out of pastry and sacrificed, would be the work of a man who admired the teachings of Pythagoras. They tell many more stories about those who practiced philosophy in the manner of Pythagoras, but it is not my business to touch on them now, since I am hurrying on to the account I set out to complete.
2| For Apollonius pursued practices akin to these, approached wisdom in a more divine way than Pythagoras did, and rose above tyrannies; he lived at a time neither ancient nor, on the other hand, recent; and yet people do not yet know him for the true wisdom he practiced as a philosopher and with soundness of mind. One person praises one thing about the man, another praises something else; and some, because he spent time with the magi of Babylon, the Brahmans of India and the Naked Sages in Egypt, consider him a magician and slander him as one who gained his wisdom by force. They judge badly. Empedocles, and Pythagoras himself, and Democritus kept company with magi and said many things that were more than human, yet they were never charged with that art; and Plato went to Egypt and blended much from the prophets and priests there into his own discourses, laying colors over them like a painter over a sketch in outline, yet he was never thought to practice magic, though he was envied for his wisdom more than any man alive. Nor would the fact that he sensed many things in advance and knew them beforehand bring a charge of this kind of wisdom against Apollonius; otherwise Socrates too will be charged for the things he foreknew through his divine sign, and Anaxagoras for the things he foretold. And yet who does not know that Anaxagoras, at Olympia, at a time when there was no rain at all, came into the stadium under a sheepskin because he predicted rain; that he foretold a house would fall and was not proved false, for it fell; that he announced in advance that night would come out of day and that stones would be let fall from the sky around Aegospotami, and was proved right? People attribute these things to the wisdom of Anaxagoras, yet they take away from Apollonius the power to foreknow through wisdom, and say he did these things by a magician's art. It seems right to me, then, not to overlook the ignorance of the many, but to give an exact account of the man: of the times at which he said or did anything, and of the ways of wisdom by which he came near to being thought more than human and divine. I have gathered my material partly from the cities that loved him, partly from the temples whose rites had already fallen into neglect and were restored by him, partly from what others have said about him, and partly from his own letters. He wrote to kings, sophists, philosophers, Eleans, Delphians, Indians and Egyptians, about gods, about customs, about morals, about laws, and wherever there was some error among them he set it right. But the more exact information I gathered as follows.
3| There was a man named Damis, not without learning, who once lived in the ancient city of Nineveh. He studied philosophy with Apollonius and wrote an account of his travels, which he says he himself shared, and recorded his opinions, his discourses and all the things he said by way of prediction. A relative of Damis brought the tablets of these memoirs, which had not yet become known, to the attention of the empress Julia. Since I belonged to the circle around her (for she praised and cherished all rhetorical discourse), she ordered me to rewrite these conversations and to take care over the way they were told; for the man from Nineveh told them clearly, but certainly not with skill. I also came upon a book by Maximus of Aegae that collected everything Apollonius did at Aegae; and a will of Apollonius has been written down too, from which one can learn how inspired his approach to philosophy was. For we should pay no attention to Moeragenes, who wrote up four books on Apollonius but was ignorant of much concerning the man. How I brought this scattered material together, then, and how I took care to arrange it, I have told. May this account bring honor to the man about whom it has been written, and benefit to those who love learning; for they may truly learn what they do not yet know.
4| Apollonius' native city, then, was Tyana, a Greek city in the land of the Cappadocians. His father bore the same name; the family was ancient and traced its line back to the founders; its wealth was greater than anyone's there, and the region is a rich one. When his mother was carrying him, an apparition came to her of an Egyptian daemon, Proteus, the one who changes his shape in Homer. She was not at all afraid, and asked him what she would give birth to.

"Me," he said.

"And who are you?" she asked.

"Proteus," he said, "the Egyptian god."

What kind of wisdom Proteus had, why should I explain to those who listen to the poets: how changeable he was, now one thing and now another, too strong to be caught, and how he seemed to know and to foreknow everything? And we must remember Proteus, above all when, as my account goes on, it shows the man foreknowing more than Proteus did and getting the better of many difficulties and helpless situations at the very moment when he was most cornered.
5| Tradition says he was born in a meadow, beside which a temple has now been built for him. Let the manner of his birth not go unknown either. When the time for her delivery had come, his mother had a dream telling her to go to the meadow and pick flowers. When she got there, her maidservants were busy with the flowers, scattered about the meadow, while she herself lay down in the grass and was overcome by sleep. Then the swans that the meadow fed formed a ring-dance about her while she slept, and, raising their wings as they are accustomed to do, cried out all together, for there was a little west wind blowing in the meadow. She leapt up at their song and gave birth; and any sudden shock is enough to bring on a birth, even before its time. The local people say that at the very moment he was being born, a thunderbolt that seemed about to fall to earth hung suspended in the air and then vanished upward. In this, I think, the gods were revealing and foreshadowing his brilliance, his rising above everything on earth, his nearness to the gods, and all that this man came to be.
6| Near Tyana there is a water sacred to Zeus of Oaths, as they say; they call it Asbamaeum. Its spring rises cold, but it bubbles like a cauldron being heated. To those who keep their oaths it is a kindly and sweet water, but for perjurers justice is close at hand: it strikes at their eyes, their hands and their feet; they are seized by dropsy and wasting diseases; and they cannot even get away, but are held fast right there and lament beside the water, confessing the oaths they have broken. The people of the country declare Apollonius to be Zeus's son, yet he himself claims to be the child of Apollonius.
7| As he advanced to the age at which boys learn their letters, he showed a strong memory and a firm power of application; his tongue was Attic, and his speech was not corrupted by the local dialect of his people. All eyes turned toward him, for he was striking in his beauty. At the age of fourteen he was brought by his father to Tarsus, to Euthydemus the Phoenician. Euthydemus was a good rhetorician and taught him; and the boy held to his teacher, but thought the character of the city unsuitable and unfavorable to the study of philosophy. For nowhere are people more given to luxury, and they are all scoffers and insolent, and they are more devoted to fine linen than the Athenians are to wisdom; and the river Cydnus runs through the city, and they sit beside it like water-birds. The words “Stop being drunk on water” were addressed to them by Apollonius in a letter. So he asked his father to let him move his teacher to Aegae nearby, where there was a quiet suited to one who would study philosophy, a more youthful zeal for learning, and a temple of Asclepius, with Asclepius himself plainly manifest to men. There he studied philosophy alongside Platonists, Chrysippeans and Peripatetics, and he also listened to the doctrines of Epicurus, for he did not turn his back on these either; but the Pythagoreans he embraced with an inexpressible kind of wisdom. The man who taught him the doctrines of Pythagoras was not at all serious and did not practice an active philosophy; he was mastered by his belly and by the pleasures of love, and had modeled himself on Epicurus. This man was Euxenus of Heraclea on the Pontus. He knew the opinions of Pythagoras as birds know what they learn from men: for birds utter “Good day,” “Good luck,” “Zeus be gracious,” and the like, neither knowing what they say nor being disposed in any way toward the people they speak to, but having merely had their tongue trained. Apollonius was like young eagles: with the wing still soft, they fly alongside their parents and are exercised by them in flight, but when they are able to rise, fly above their parents, especially if they notice them to be greedy and flying close to the ground for the sake of the savor of meat. So Apollonius, while still a boy, attended to Euxenus and was led by him, following him step by step through his teaching; but when he had advanced to his sixteenth year he set out toward the life of Pythagoras, winged for it by some higher power. Yet he did not stop loving Euxenus; rather, he begged from his father a country property near the city for him, where there were tender gardens and springs, and said, “You live in your own way, and I shall live in the way of Pythagoras.”
8| Euxenus supposed that he was taking hold of a great design and asked where he would begin. “Where the physicians begin,” he said, “for they too purge the bowels, and some they do not even allow to fall ill, and others they cure.” With these words he renounced the eating of animal flesh, as not pure and as making the mind heavy, and ate dried fruits and vegetables, saying that whatever the earth itself gives is pure. Wine, he said, was a pure drink, coming from a plant so cultivated and gentle toward men, but it was opposed to the stability of the mind, since it clouds the aether in the soul. After the purifying of his belly had been accomplished in this way, he made going unshod his ornament and clothed himself in linen, refusing clothing from animals, and let his hair grow, and lived in the temple. The people about the temple were struck with amazement at him, and Asclepius once said to the priest that he rejoiced in healing the sick with Apollonius as his witness. The Cilicians themselves and the peoples round about then gathered at Aegae to see him, and the Cilician saying “Where are you running? To the youth?” was spoken of him, and gained the honor of a proverb.
9| It is right not to pass over what happened in the temple either, in recounting the life of a man who was himself held in esteem by the gods. A young Assyrian had come to Asclepius sick and was living in luxury and drinking, or rather was dying; he was in fact afflicted with dropsy, and, delighting in drunkenness, he took no thought for dryness. For this reason Asclepius neglected him, and not even in a dream did he visit him. When the young man complained of this, the god stood over him and said, “If you converse with Apollonius, you will be better.” So he went to Apollonius and said, “What benefit might I get from your wisdom? For Asclepius bids me keep company with you.” “It will be of great value to you in your present state,” said Apollonius; “for you are surely in need of health?” “By Zeus,” he said, “the health which Asclepius promises but does not give.” “Speak auspiciously,” said Apollonius; “he grants it to any who want it, but you are doing the opposite of what your disease requires: you give yourself to luxury, you bring dainty eating upon moist and ruined bowels, and you pour mud over water.” This oracle, I think, was plainer than the wisdom of Heraclitus; for he said that he needed someone to make drought out of a flood, when this very affliction had come upon him, and what he said was not easy to understand, nor clear; but Apollonius brought the young man to health by interpreting wise things plainly.
10| Once he saw a great quantity of blood at the altar, the entrails laid out upon it, Egyptian oxen and large swine that had been sacrificed, with men flaying some and cutting up others, and two golden dishes set up as offerings with stones in them of the most Indian and marvelous kind. Going over to the priest, he said, “What is the meaning of this? Someone is making a splendid gift to the god.” The priest answered, “You will wonder the more because he never made supplication here, nor stayed the length of time the others do, nor has he yet been healed by the god, nor has he what he came to ask for; he seems to have arrived only yesterday, yet he sacrifices so lavishly. He says he will sacrifice more and dedicate more if Asclepius receives him. He is among the wealthiest men: in Cilicia he owns more wealth than all the Cilicians together. He begs the god to give him back one of his eyes, which has run out.” Apollonius, as was his habit when he was old, fixed his eyes on the ground and asked, “What is his name?” On hearing the name, he said, “In my judgment, priest, this man should not be received into the sanctuary. A defiled person has come here, and the affliction he has suffered came upon him through no honest cause; and this very sacrificing at great cost before he has obtained anything from the god is not the act of a man sacrificing, but of one begging himself off from wretched and grievous deeds.” So much said Apollonius. Asclepius stood by the priest at night and said, “Let so-and-so go, with what is his own; he does not deserve to keep even the other of his eyes.” The priest, inquiring again into the man, learned that this Cilician had married a woman who had a daughter by an earlier marriage, and that he had fallen in love with the girl and was behaving without restraint, and that he did not even keep the union secret; for the mother, coming upon them in bed, put out both of the girl's eyes and one of his, driving in her brooch pins.
11| That those who sacrifice or make dedications should not exceed due measure was a point he philosophized about in this way. Once, when a number of people had gathered in the temple just after the Cilician had been driven out, he questioned the priest as follows: “Are the gods just?” “Most just indeed,” said the priest. “And are they intelligent?” “What could be more intelligent than the divine?” “Do they understand human affairs, or have they no experience of them?” “Here, in fact,” said the priest, “is where the gods have the greatest advantage over men: men through weakness do not even know their own affairs, but the gods know both theirs and ours.” “All this is excellent, priest, and most true. Since, then, they know everything, I think that anyone who comes to a god's temple, with a good conscience, should pray something like this: ‘O gods, grant me what is owed to me.’ For what is owed, priest, to the pious is good things, and to the base the opposite; and so the gods, who do good, send away the man whom they find sound and untouched by wickedness, garlanded not with golden crowns but with every good thing, while the man whom they see branded and corrupted they leave to justice, being the more angry with them because they dared even to enter the temples while unclean.” And at the same moment, looking toward Asclepius, he said: “You practice, Asclepius, a philosophy that is ineffable and akin to your own nature when you do not allow the base to come here, not even if they bring you everything from India and Sardinia; for they do not sacrifice and kindle these offerings in honor of the divine, but to buy off the justice which you, being most just, do not grant them.” Many such things he philosophized in the temple while still a youth. Here is another from his stay at Aegae.
12| A man ruled the Cilicians who was insolent and bad in matters of love. A report of Apollonius' beauty reached him; and he, bidding farewell to what he was doing (he was holding the assizes at Tarsus), set out for Aegae, saying that he was ill and needed Asclepius. He approached Apollonius as he walked and said privately, “Introduce me to the god.” Apollonius replied, “And why do you need someone to introduce you, if you are a good man? The gods welcome the virtuous even without those who act as sponsors.” “By Zeus, Apollonius,” he said, “the god has made you his guest-friend, but not yet me.” “But goodness has been my sponsor too,” said Apollonius; “and by practicing it, as far as is possible for a young man, I am a servant and companion of Asclepius. If you too care for goodness, go in boldly to the god and pray for whatever you wish.” “By Zeus,” he said, “I will, if I pray to you first.” “And what will you pray to me?” “What one must pray to beautiful people: we pray to share their beauty and for them not to begrudge us their bloom.” He said this softening himself, making his eyes moist, and doing all the other things that belong to those who are so licentious and unspeakable. Apollonius gave him a bull-like glare and said, “You are mad, you scum.” The man not only took this in anger but threatened to cut off his head; and Apollonius laughed at him and cried out, “O such-and-such day!” It was the third day from that one on which executioners killed that insolent man on the road, on the charge that he was plotting rebellion against the Romans together with Archelaus, king of Cappadocia. These things and many like them have been written down by Maximus of Aegae, who was also thought worthy of the post of the emperor's secretary for letters, being esteemed for his eloquence.
13| On hearing of his father's death he hurried to Tyana, and there buried him with his own hand beside his mother's tomb; she too had died not long before. The estate, which was a splendid one, he divided with his brother, who was undisciplined and fond of drink. Apollonius was twenty-three years old, an age at which one is no longer under guardians, while the brother was twenty, and the laws still held him subject to guardians. After spending more time at Aegae, and making the temple a Lyceum and an Academy (for there was an echo of every philosophy in him), he returned to Tyana, now a man and master of his own affairs. When someone told him that it was fitting for him to bring his brother to his senses and change his ways, he said, “This will seem bold, for how could I, a younger man, bring an older one to his senses? But as far as I can, I shall heal him of these afflictions.” So he handed over to him half of what was his own, saying that his brother needed more, while he himself needed little; and, catching his attention and wisely drawing him on to heed one who would bring him to his senses, he said, “Our father, who educated and admonished us, has departed; you are left to me, and I to you. So if I do any wrong, be my adviser and heal my faults; and if you yourself do wrong, put up with being taught.” And he led his brother to compliance, as those who stroke hard-mouthed and unmanageable horses do, and reshaped him, though his faults were many: he was the slave of dice and wine, and went reveling to courtesans, puffed up with pride in his hair, which he also cultivated with dyes, strutting and walking on tiptoe. When matters with his brother were in good order, he turned to the rest of his relatives, and restored those of them who were in need out of the remainder of his property, leaving himself little. It was then that he said that Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, who gave up his lands to herds and flocks, had philosophized more for sheep than for men, and that Crates of Thebes, who sank his property in the sea, was useful neither to men nor to sheep. When Pythagoras was held in good repute for the saying he uttered, that one should not go to any woman other than one's own, Apollonius said that this had been said by Pythagoras in advance for others, but that he himself would never marry nor ever enter into the company of the pleasures of love, surpassing even the saying of Sophocles: for Sophocles, he said, escaped a raging and savage master only when he had come to old age, but he, through virtue and self-restraint, was not mastered by it even as a youth; being young and strong in body he conquered it and ruled it in its rage. Nevertheless some slander him over love affairs, as having had an amorous failure and because of this having spent a year among the Scythian people; yet he never went to the Scythians, nor was he ever carried away into the passions of love. Certainly not even Euphrates ever slandered the man over love affairs, although he composed false letters against him, as we shall show in the discourses about Euphrates; he was at odds with Apollonius because Apollonius reproached him for doing everything for money, and turned him away from making money and from peddling wisdom. But let these matters be put off for me until their own times.
14| Once Euxenus asked Apollonius why he did not write, though his opinions were noble and his manner of speaking was approved and vigorous. “Because I have not yet kept silent,” he said. And beginning from that point he thought it necessary to be silent; he held back his voice, but his eyes and his mind read very many things and gathered very many things into memory. Indeed when he became a hundred years old his memory was stronger than even that of Simonides, and a hymn to Memory was sung by him, in which he says that all things are withered by time, but that time itself is ageless and immortal through Memory. Nor was he without grace in company during the time he kept silent, but his eyes and his hand and the nod of his head gave signs in answer to what was said; nor did he appear unsmiling or sullen, for he had warmth toward his companions and kindliness. He says that this way of life, which he practiced for five whole years, was the most laborious he had known: for he had to refrain from speaking when he had much to say, to refrain from hearing many things that made him angry, and, when moved to rebuke many people, to say to himself, “Endure now, heart and tongue,” and, when words clashed with him, to let the refutations pass by at that time.
15| He spent the years of his silence, part in Pamphylia and part in Cilicia, and in walking through nations so given to luxury he never uttered a sound, nor was he drawn into so much as a murmur. Whenever he met a city in civil strife (and many were in strife over unworthy spectacles), he would step forward and show himself, and by a gesture of the hand and a look of the face indicate the rebuke he was about to give, and all disorder would be removed, and they would fall silent as in the mysteries. Now to restrain people who have rushed into faction for the sake of dancers and horses is not yet a great thing, for those who riot over such matters blush when they see a man of worth, take hold of themselves, and come to their senses very easily; but a city pressed by famine is not easily taught better by a gentle and persuasive word, or made to stop its anger. For Apollonius, however, even silence was enough toward people in such a state. He came to Aspendus in Pamphylia (the city lies on the river Eurymedon and is the third city there), where vetch was on sale and necessities for food were all that kept them alive, since the powerful had shut up the grain and held it so that it might be sold off abroad out of the country. The whole population had been roused against the magistrate and was lighting a fire to burn him, though he clung to the emperor's statues, which were at that time more terrifying and more inviolable than the Zeus at Olympia, being those of Tiberius, in whose reign a man is said to have been judged guilty of impiety for striking his own slave who carried a silver drachma stamped with the image of Tiberius. So Apollonius went up to the magistrate and asked him by a gesture what this was. The magistrate replied that he was guilty of no wrong, but was being wronged along with the people, and that if he got no hearing he would perish together with the people. Apollonius turned toward the bystanders and nodded to them to listen; and they not only fell silent in astonishment at him, but also put down the fire upon the altars there. The magistrate, taking courage, named this man and that man and several others as the cause of the existing famine, for, he said, they had taken the grain and were keeping it hidden, each in a different part of the country. As the Aspendians urged one another to go to the farms, Apollonius shook his head against doing this, and said rather that they should summon those accused and obtain the grain from them willingly. When they came, he nearly burst into speech against them, moved by the tears of the multitude (for children and women had flocked together, and the aged lamented that they would die of hunger at once); but honoring the rule of silence, he wrote a rebuke on a tablet and gave it to the magistrate to read. The rebuke ran thus: “Apollonius to the grain-dealers of the Aspendians. The earth is mother to all, for she is just; but you, being unjust, have made her mother of yourselves alone; and unless you stop, I will not let you stand upon her.” Frightened by this, they filled the marketplace with grain, and the city came back to life.
16| When he had ceased from silence he also visited Antioch the Great, and went into the temple of Apollo of Daphne, to which the Assyrians attach the Arcadian myth; for they say that Daphne, the daughter of Ladon, was changed into a tree there, and a river Ladon flows for them, and the laurel plant is honored among them, the one that stands in place of the maiden; and cypresses of enormous height stand in a circle around the temple, and the place gives forth springs, abundant and quiet, with which they say Apollo is sprinkled. Here too the earth has sent up a shoot of cypress, in memory, they say, of an Assyrian youth called Cyparissus, and the beauty of the plant makes the transformation credible. Perhaps I seem to handle my account too lightly in telling tales of such things; but I do not tell them for the sake of mythology. What then is the point of my account? Apollonius, seeing that the temple was charming but that there was no earnestness in it, only half-barbarian and unmusical men, said, “Apollo, turn these voiceless people into trees, that even as cypresses they may give some sound.” Looking at the springs, which lay in calm, none of them babbling, he said, “The voicelessness here does not allow even the springs to speak.” And looking toward the Ladon, he said, “Not only your daughter has been changed, but you too, in appearance a barbarian instead of a Greek and an Arcadian.” When he decided to converse, he avoided the crowded and disorderly places, saying that he needed not mere human beings but men; but he went into the more august places and dwelt in those temples that were not closed. At sunrise he would perform certain rites by himself, which he made known only to those who had trained themselves to keep silent for four years. For the time after that, if the city was Greek and the temples well known, he would call the priests together and philosophize about the gods, and correct them if they departed anywhere from the established customs; but if the rites were foreign and peculiar, he inquired who had founded them and for what purpose they were founded, and, after learning how they are served, he would propose anything wiser that occurred to him than what was done, and then go to his disciples and bid them ask whatever they wished. For he said that those who philosophize in this manner should associate with the gods as dawn begins, with discourse about the gods as it advances, and for the time after that should hold their conversations about human affairs. When he had said to his companions what they asked, and had had enough of that kind of conversation, he would rise for the remaining discourse, addressed to everyone, not before midday, but when the day stood at its height. And after discoursing as long as he thought sufficient, he would be anointed and rubbed down and plunge into cold water, calling the baths “the old age of men.” When Antioch was barred from them for great offenses, he said, “The emperor has given you, bad as you are, more years to live.” When the Ephesians wanted to stone their magistrate to death for not heating the baths, he said, “You blame the magistrate because you bathe badly, but I blame you because you bathe.”
17| The style of discourse he practiced was not dithyrambic nor swollen with poetic words, nor again precious and excessively Atticizing (for he thought anything beyond a moderate Attic unpleasant), and he gave no place to hair-splitting; he did not drag out his speeches, nor did anyone hear him speaking with irony or walking about as he addressed his audience. Rather, when he conversed, he spoke as though from a tripod: “I know,” and “It seems to me,” and “Where are you being carried?” and “You must know.” His opinions were brief and adamantine, his words proper ones, closely fitted to the facts, and what he said had a ring about it, as though pronounced as judgments from a scepter. When one of those who spend their time on narrow quibbles asked him why he did not inquire, he said, “When I was a boy I inquired; now it is not for me to inquire but to teach what I have found.” “How then, Apollonius, will the wise man converse?” asked the man again. “As a lawgiver,” he said, “for the lawgiver must make what he has himself been persuaded of into commands for the many.” Such were his pursuits at Antioch, and he turned toward himself even the most unmusical of men.
18| After this, giving himself over to the thought of a longer journey abroad, he turned his mind to the people of India and the wise men among them, who are said to be Brahmans and Hyrcanians, saying that it was fitting for a young man to travel and to be borne beyond his own borders. He counted the magi, who dwell in Babylon and Susa, as a find, since on the way he would learn their teachings too. He disclosed his intention to his disciples, who were seven. When they tried to advise otherwise, in case he might somehow be drawn away from this impulse, he said, “I have made the gods my counselors and have told you what has been decided, but I was putting you to the test, to see whether you were strong for what I am strong for. Since, then, you are soft, farewell,” he said, “and keep on philosophizing; I must go where wisdom and the daemon lead me.” Having said this, he left Antioch with two servants, who had been his father's, one of whom wrote at speed and the other in a fine hand.
19| And he came to ancient Nineveh, where a statue is set up in the barbarian manner; it is, as it turns out, Io the daughter of Inachus, and she thrusts small horns from her temples, such as are just about to grow. While he was staying there, understanding more about the statue than the priests and prophets did, Damis of Nineveh came to him, the man who, as I said at the beginning, traveled with him, became his partner in all his wisdom, and preserved many of the man's sayings. Admiring him and eager to share his journey, he said, “Let us go, Apollonius, you following a god and I following you; and you may find me worth a great deal. If there is anything else I do not know, I at least know the road to Babylon, for I went up not long ago, and I know the cities, as many as there are, and the villages in which there are many good things; and I know the languages of the barbarians, as many as there are: one is Armenian, another Median and Persian, another Cadusian, and I can interpret them all.” “I, my friend,” said Apollonius, “understand them all, though I have learned none.” When the Ninevite expressed his wonder, Apollonius said, “Do not wonder if I know all the languages of men; for I know also what men keep silent.” When the Assyrian heard this he bowed in worship to him, and looked on him as on a daemon, and kept company with him, advancing in wisdom and remembering whatever he learned. The Assyrian's speech was adequate for his purposes, for he had no eloquence, having been educated among barbarians; but to write down their conversation and association, to set out in form whatever he heard or saw, and to compose a record of such things he was thoroughly capable, and he practiced this better than anyone. The tablet of his jottings, at any rate, carried this intention of Damis: he wished none of Apollonius' words to go unknown, but that if he even uttered something in passing, or spoke carelessly, this too should be written down; and what he said to someone who found fault with this practice is worth telling. A lazy and spiteful man was ridiculing him, saying that he recorded rightly the rest, all the man's maxims and opinions, but that gathering such small things was rather like what dogs do who eat what falls from the feast. Damis answered, “If there are feasts of the gods and the gods dine, then surely they have attendants too, who take care that not even the crumbs of ambrosia are lost.” Such a companion and devoted admirer did Apollonius obtain, with whom he traveled for the greater part of his life.
20| As they went into the land between the rivers, the tax-collector in charge of Zeugma took them to his register and asked what they were carrying out of the country. Apollonius said, “I carry out temperance, justice, virtue, self-control, courage, discipline,” and he strung together many other names, all feminine. The man, already looking to his own profit, said, “Then write down these slave-women.” Apollonius said, “That is not possible; for I am carrying out not slave-women but mistresses.” The land between the rivers is marked out by the Tigris and the Euphrates, which flow from Armenia and from the end of the Taurus and enclose a mainland containing cities, though for the most part villages, and Armenian and Arabian peoples, whom the rivers shut in and hold; many of these wander as nomads, and think themselves so much islanders that they say they are descending to the sea whenever they walk to the rivers, and make the circle of the rivers the boundary of their land; for after rounding off the mainland just described, the rivers rush to the same sea. There are some who say that most of the Euphrates vanishes in a swamp and that this river comes to its end within the land. Some take up a bolder account, saying that it flows under the earth to Egypt, appears again, and mingles with the Nile. For the sake of accuracy, and so that nothing written by Damis should be omitted by me, I would wish to tell also the things done with zeal among these barbarians as they traveled through them, but my account drives us on to greater and more wonderful matters; yet I must not neglect two things: the courage with which Apollonius passed through barbarian and bandit nations that were not yet under the Romans, and the wisdom by which, in the Arabian manner, he came to understand the voice of animals. He learned this as he traveled among these Arabians, who know it best and practice it. For it is common among the Arabians to listen to birds as they prophesy, as much as to oracles; and they come to understand the speechless creatures by eating, some say, the heart of dragons, others the liver.
21| Passing Ctesiphon and coming to the borders of Babylon, he found a guard post there set by the king, which no one could pass without being questioned about himself, his city, and the purpose of his coming. A satrap had been put in charge of this post, a kind of eye of the king, I think; for the Mede, who had only just come into power, did not allow himself to live without fear, but fearing what was and what was not, had fallen into terrors and flutterings. So Apollonius and his party were led to the satrap. He happened to have had a tent made on a wagon and to be driving somewhere; seeing a man full of squalor, he screamed like timid women and covered himself up, and, barely looking up at him, asked, “From where have you been sent upon us?”, as though he were questioning a daemon. Apollonius said, “By myself, to see whether somehow you may become men even against your will.” Again the satrap asked who he was that he entered the king's country; Apollonius said, “The whole earth is mine, and I may journey across it.” When the satrap said, “I shall have you tortured, if you do not speak,” Apollonius said, “If only it were by your own hands, in order that you might yourself be tortured by touching a man!” The eunuch was struck with amazement at him, since he saw that he did not need an interpreter but took up the language without strain and with ease, and said, “In the name of the gods, who are you?”, now entreating and changing his tone. Apollonius replied, “Since you ask this in moderate fashion and not inhumanly, hear who I am.” “My name is Apollonius, of Tyana, and I am traveling to the king of the Indians, to inquire into what is there; and I should like to meet your king too, for those who have been with him say he is no mean man, if indeed this is Vardanes, who has now recovered the rule he once lost.” “That is he, divine Apollonius; we heard of you long ago. For a wise man he would even yield his golden throne itself, and he would send you each to the Indians on a camel. I make you my guest-friend and give you some of this money,” and at once he showed him a treasury of gold, to grab by the handful as much as he liked, “and not once, but ten times.” When Apollonius declined the money, the satrap said, “Then take Babylonian wine, which the king drinks to ten of us satraps in toasts; have an amphora; and roasted pieces of swine and gazelle, and meal and loaves and whatever you wish. For the road after this for many stadia is villages not at all well supplied with food.” Then, checking himself, the eunuch said, “O gods, what has happened to me! Having heard that the man neither eats animal food nor drinks wine, I am entertaining him grossly and ignorantly.” “But you can entertain me lightly,” said Apollonius, “if you give me bread and dried fruits.” “I shall give you leavened loaves,” he said, “and dates, amber-colored and large. I shall give vegetables too, as many as the Tigris waters in its gardens.” “But wild vegetables that grow of themselves are sweeter,” said Apollonius, “than those that are forced and made by art.” “Sweeter, yes,” said the satrap, “but our country around Babylon, being full of wormwood, produces them unpleasant and bitter.” Still, he accepted the satrap's offering; and as he was leaving, he said, “My good man, do not only end well, but also begin well,” admonishing him, as it seems, about the “I shall have you tortured,” and about the words he had heard at the start, spoken like a barbarian.
22| Having gone on twenty stadia, they came upon a lioness that had been slaughtered in a hunt. The beast was huge, larger than any they had yet seen, and the people who had gathered from the village were shouting, and so, by Zeus, were the hunters, as though they saw some great marvel in it; and it was truly a marvel, for when cut open she held eight cubs. As for the bearing of the lioness: lionesses carry for six months and give birth three times, and the number of cubs at the first birth is three, at the second two, and when she undertakes the third birth she bears a single cub, large, I think, and wilder in its nature. We must not listen to those who say that the cubs tear the lionesses' wombs and are delivered out of the flesh. For nature seems to have made what is born kindly disposed toward what bears it, for the preservation of the species. Apollonius looked closely at the beast and, after pausing a long time, said, “Damis, the period of our trip abroad to the king will amount to a year and eight months, for he will not release us sooner, nor is it better for you to leave before that. We must reckon in months from the cubs and in a year from the lioness, for the complete is to be compared with the complete.” “And what will the sparrows in Homer say,” said Damis, “which the serpent devoured at Aulis, eight of them, taking the mother as the ninth? Calchas, interpreting this, proclaimed that Troy would be conquered in nine years. See to it that our journey abroad does not, as with Homer and Calchas, stretch to nine years.” “Naturally, Damis,” said Apollonius, “Homer compares the nestlings to years, for they have already come to be and exist; but I am dealing with unfinished beasts, not yet born, and perhaps never to be born; how then could I liken them to years? For what is against nature either could not come to be, or, if it does, suffers swift destruction. But follow my argument, and let us be off to pray to the gods who show us these things.”
23| When he had made his way into the Cissian country and was by now close to Babylon, a vision in a dream came to him, composed in this way by the god who revealed it: fish, cast out of the sea onto the land, were gasping, uttering a lament like that of men, mourning that they had come out of their accustomed place, and they begged a dolphin that swam along beside the land to help them, being pitiable, like men weeping in a foreign country. Not at all frightened by the dream, he worked out how and in what way it stood, but wishing to unsettle Damis, whom he knew to be among the more timid, he reported the vision to him, feigning fear as though what he had seen boded ill. Damis cried out as though he had himself seen these things and tried to turn Apollonius back from going further. “Lest somehow,” he said, “we too, like fish thrown out of our accustomed places, perish and utter many pitiable things in a foreign land, and falling somewhere into helplessness we beg some potentate or king, and he dishonors us, as the dolphins do the fish.” Apollonius laughed and said, “You do not yet philosophize, if you fear this; and I shall show where the dream is pointing. Eretrians inhabit this Cissian land, those whom Darius once carried off from Euboea, five hundred years back; and they are said, as the vision appeared, to have suffered the fate of fish at their capture: for they were all netted and taken. The gods seem to bid me go to them and look after them, if I can do anything. Perhaps too the souls of the Greeks who were allotted their portion here are leading me on for the benefit of the land. So let us turn aside from the road, asking only about the well beside which they dwell.” This well is reported to be a mixture of asphalt, oil and water, and when the one who draws it pours it out, these separate and are distinguished from one another. That he went into Cissia he himself has agreed, in what he writes to the sophist of Clazomenae; for he was so good and so honor-loving that on seeing the Eretrians he recalled the sophist and wrote to him describing what he saw and the steps he took for their sake. Throughout the letter he urges him to pity the Eretrians, and, whenever he practices a speech about them, not to refuse even to weep for them.
24| Damis has written about the Eretrians in agreement with this. They live in Media, not far from Babylon, a day's journey for a runner; the country has no city, for Cissia is all villages, with a small tribe of nomads in it who dismount from their horses only briefly. The village of the Eretrians lies in the middle of the others and is surrounded by a river-ditch, which they themselves are said to have dug around the village, making it a wall against the barbarians of Cissia. The land is soaked with asphalt and bitter to plant; the people there are extremely short-lived, for the asphalt-laden drink settles in many of the organs. They are fed by a hill within the borders of the village, which rises above the spoiled ground, and they sow it and regard it as their land. They say they heard from the natives that seven hundred and eighty of the Eretrians were captured, not all of them fighters, for there was a female element among them and an aged one, and there were also, I think, some children, since most of Eretria had fled to Caphereus and the highest part of Euboea. About four hundred men were brought up, and perhaps ten women, and the rest, beginning from Ionia and Lydia, died while being driven inland. As the hill supplied them with stone-quarrying, and some of them knew the stonemason's arts, they built Greek temples and a marketplace, as large as was likely, and set up altars, two to Darius, one to Xerxes, and several to Daridaeus. They continued to the time of Daridaeus, eighty-eight years after the capture, writing in the Greek manner, and on their ancient tombs the inscriptions read: this man, son of that man; and the letters are Greek, but of a kind, they say, they had never yet seen. There were ships engraved on the tombs, according to how each had lived in Euboea, ferrying, or fishing for purple, or working in the sea or in purple dye; and they say they read an elegiac couplet written on the monument of sailors and shipowners: “We who once sailed the deep-flowing swell of the Aegean lie in the middle of the Ecbatana plain. Farewell, Eretria, our once-renowned fatherland; farewell, Athens, neighbor of Euboea; farewell, beloved sea.” Damis says that Apollonius took up the damaged tombs, closed them, heaped earth, and brought them all the customary offerings except cutting anything or burning it; and with tears, filled with emotion, he spoke these words standing among them: “Eretrians, carried here by the lot of fortune, you at least, though far from your own country, have been buried; but those who threw you here perished around your island unburied, in the tenth year after you; for the gods reveal what befell in hollow Euboea.” And Apollonius says to the sophist at the end of the letter, “I took care of your Eretrians, Scopelian, while still young, and I helped as much as I could both their dead and their living.” How then did he take care of the living? The barbarians dwelling around the hill, whenever the Eretrians sowed it, came about harvest time and plundered what grew, so that the Eretrians, farming for others, had to go hungry. So when he came to the king, he obtained for them the use of the hill by themselves alone.
25| What happened to this man in Babylon, and what it is fitting to know about Babylon, I found to be as follows. Babylon is walled for four hundred and eighty stadia, so great is its circuit; its wall is three half-plethra in height and less than a plethron in width. The city is cut in two by the river Euphrates in an even likeness of form, and beneath the river runs a secret bridge, which joins invisibly the royal palaces on the banks. A woman, Medea, is said to have ruled the people there at one time and to have bridged the river from below in a way in which no river had yet been bridged. She heaped up stones, bronze, asphalt, and everything that men have found for binding in water, along the banks of the river, turned the stream into lakes, and dug into the now dry river bed two fathoms, making a hollow vault, so that she might come up into the palaces beside the banks as though out of the ground; and she covered it over flush with the floor of the stream. The foundations and the walls of the tunnel were set; but since asphalt needs water to harden into stone and set firm, the Euphrates was let back over the roof while it was still wet, and so the bridge was completed. The palaces are roofed with bronze, which gleams like lightning from them; the chambers, men's halls and porticoes are adorned, some with silver, some with gold-woven fabrics, some with gold itself as if with paintings; and the embroidered patterns of the robes come to them from Greek stories: Andromedas and Amymones, and Orpheus in many places. They delight in Orpheus, honoring perhaps the tiara and trousers, for certainly not the music, nor the songs with which he charmed. Woven in somewhere too is Datis dragging Naxos up out of the sea, and Artaphernes besieging Eretria, and the things of Xerxes' circle, which he claimed to be victories; for Athens is shown taken, and Thermopylae, and still more Median scenes: rivers drained out of the land, the bridge over the sea, and Athos as it was cut through. They say too that they came upon a men's hall whose roof was raised in the form of a dome, made like a heaven and roofed with sapphire stone (the stone is deep blue and heaven-like to look at), and images of the gods whom they worship are set up aloft and appear golden, as though out of the aether. Here the king gives judgment, and four golden iynxes hang from the ceiling, enjoining on him Adrasteia and not to raise himself above human beings. The magi themselves say that they tune these when they come to the palace, and they call them tongues of the gods.
26| About the magi, Apollonius has said what is sufficient, that he spent time with them, learned some things, and on leaving taught them others; but Damis does not know the discussions that took place between the man and the magi, for Apollonius forbade him to go along when he went to them. He says, however, that Apollonius went to the magi at midday and around midnight, and that on one occasion he put the question, “What of the magi?” and Apollonius replied, “Wise, but not in all things.”
27| These matters come later. When he arrived at Babylon, the satrap in charge of the great gates, learning that he had come for the sake of inquiry, held out toward him a golden likeness of the king, and unless one worshiped it one could not lawfully enter the city. For one coming as an envoy from the ruler of the Romans there is no such necessity, but for one coming from barbarians or exploring the country, unless he first pays court to the image, he is stopped and disgraced; such foolish things are administered by satraps among the barbarians. On seeing the image Apollonius said, “Who is this?” On hearing that it was the king, he said, “If the man whom you worship is praised by me and is thought good and noble, he will obtain great things.” With these words he went in through the gates. The satrap, amazed at him, followed, and holding Apollonius' hand asked through an interpreter his name, his family, what he practiced, and for what purpose he came; and having written this down on a tablet, together with his dress and appearance, he told him to wait there, and running
28| He himself went to the men who are regarded as the king's ears and described Apollonius to them, declaring beforehand that he neither wished to bow down nor looked like any ordinary man; and they bade him bring him, with honor and with no insolence. When Apollonius came, the eldest asked him what had possessed him to despise the king. “I have not yet despised him,” he said. “But would you despise him?” the man asked again. “By Zeus,” said Apollonius, “if on meeting him I find him not noble and good.” “And what gifts do you bring him?” When Apollonius answered, courage and justice and such things, the man said, “As though he lacked them?” “By Zeus, no,” he said, “but so that he may learn to use them, if he has them.” “Yet by using these,” said the man, “he recovered the kingdom you see, which he had lost, and brought back this house, not without toil, nor idly.” “And what year is this for the recovered rule?” “We are beginning the third,” the man said; “it is already two months.” Then, raising his thought as was his habit, Apollonius said, “O bodyguard, or by whatever name you should be addressed: Darius, father of Cyrus and Artaxerxes, who held this kingdom for, I think, sixty years, is said, suspecting that the end of his life was near, to have sacrificed to Justice, and to have said, ‘O mistress, whoever you are,’ as though he had long desired justice but did not yet know her, nor believed himself to have her; he reared his two sons in such ignorance that they raised arms against each other, the one wounded and the other killed by his brother. But you, now, wish that this man, who perhaps does not yet even know how to sit on the royal throne, should have taken hold of all the virtues at once, and you spur him on, bringing gain to yourself, not to me, if he should become better.” The barbarian looked at his neighbor and said, “Some god brings this man here as a windfall; for a good man, meeting a good man, will make our king much better and more temperate and more pleasant; for this much is clear in the man.” So they ran in to give the good news to everyone that a man stood at the king's doors, wise, a Greek, and a good counselor.
29| When this was reported to the king, he happened to be sacrificing, with the magi present, for the rites are performed by them. Calling one of them, he said, “Here is the dream I was telling you about today when you visited me in bed.” The dream that had come to the king was this: he seemed to be Artaxerxes the son of Xerxes and his own form seemed to have passed over into that man's, and he was in great fear that matters might already be turning toward a change, since he interpreted the change of form in that sense. When he heard that the newcomer was a Greek and wise, Themistocles the Athenian came to his mind, who once came from the Greeks and met Artaxerxes and made that king worth a great deal and proved himself so too. Holding out his right hand, he said, “Call him; for he could begin from the finest thing, sacrificing together with me and praying together.”
30| So Apollonius went in, escorted by a number of men, for they thought they were also pleasing the king, having learned that he rejoiced at his arrival; and as he passed into the palace he looked at none of the objects of wonder, but went through them as though he were walking along a road. Calling Damis, he said, “The other day you asked me what the Pamphylian woman was called, the one said to have been a companion of Sappho and to have composed the hymns they sing to Artemis of Perge in the manner of the Aeolians and the Pamphylians.” “I did,” said Damis, “yet you never told me the name.” “No, my good man, I did not, but I was explaining the musical modes of the hymns and their titles, and how she varied the Aeolian manner to its extreme and to what is peculiarly Pamphylian; after that we turned to something else, and you never raised the name with me again. She is called, then, this wise woman, Damophyle, and she is said to have gathered girl disciples in the manner of Sappho and to have composed poems, some of love, some hymns. Her hymns to Artemis, indeed, are adapted from Sappho's and are sung in the Sapphic manner.” By this he showed how far he was from being struck with amazement at the king and his pomp, in that he did not think such things were worth looking at, but talked about other matters, and, no doubt, thought those were what he was seeing.
31| The king saw him approaching from a distance (for the court of the temple was of some length) and spoke about him to those near, as though recognizing the man; and when Apollonius was already close, he cried out loudly, “This is the Apollonius whom Megabates, my brother, reports having seen at Antioch, wondered at and revered by men of worth, and he then portrayed him to me just as he has come.” When Apollonius approached and greeted him, the king, speaking Greek, addressed him and told him to sacrifice together with himself. He intended to offer to the Sun a white horse, one of the very finest Nisaean breed, decked with trappings as for a procession. Apollonius answered, “You, O king, sacrifice in your own way, and allow me to sacrifice in mine.” Taking hold of the frankincense he said, “Sun, send me over as much of the earth as seems good to me and to you; and may I know good men, and may I neither learn of the worthless nor the worthless of me.” Having said this, he cast the frankincense into the fire, and, examining it, how it rose and where it clouded, and with how many peaks it leaped up, and here and there even touching the fire, where it appeared auspicious and pure, he said, “Now sacrifice, O king, according to your own ancestral rites; for my ancestral rites are of this kind.”
32| And he withdrew from the sacrifice, so as not to share in the blood. After the sacrifice he came forward and said, “Do you know, O king, the whole Greek language, or only a little of it, perhaps to be agreeable and not seem unpleasant should a Greek arrive?” “All of it,” said the king, “equal to this native one of mine, and say whatever you wish, for that is surely why you ask.” “Then for that reason hear me,” said Apollonius. “The impulse of my journey abroad is the Indians; but I did not wish to pass by you either, hearing that you are the kind of man I already see from the claw, and needing to observe the wisdom that is native to you and practiced by your magi, to see whether they are wise in divine things, as they are said to be. My wisdom is that of Pythagoras of Samos, who taught me to serve the gods in this way, to know them both seen and unseen, to come into conversation with gods, and to be clothed in this earth-born wool, for the linen was not taken from a sheep, but grows untouched, a gift of the untouched water and earth. The very freedom of my hair I have practiced from Pythagoras, and abstaining from the food of living creatures comes to me from his wisdom. As a drinking companion, then, and a partner in ease or luxury, I would be neither to you nor to anyone else; but of cares that are hard and difficult to find a way through I could give solutions, not only knowing what must be done but knowing it beforehand.” Damis says that the man spoke these words in conversation, but Apollonius has made them into a letter; and many other things that he said in his conversations he set out in letters.
33| The king said that he rejoiced and exulted in his coming more than if he had acquired the lands of the Persians and the Indians in addition to what he had, and that he wished to make him his guest and a partner of the royal roof. “If I, O king,” said Apollonius, “had asked you, when you came to my native Tyana, to live where I live, would you have wished to live there?” “By Zeus, no,” he said, “unless I were going to live in a house large enough to receive my spearmen and bodyguards, and myself, splendidly.” “The same argument then holds from me,” said Apollonius; “for if I live above my station, I shall live badly, since excess troubles the wise more than lack troubles you. So let a private man entertain me, who has as much as I have, and I shall be with you as much as you wish.” The king agreed, so that he should not unwittingly do something displeasing to him, and Apollonius lodged with a Babylonian man, good and in other ways noble. While he was already at dinner, a eunuch of those who carry messages came and, addressing him, said, “The king presents you with ten gifts and makes you master of naming them; he asks you not to ask for small ones, for he wishes to show greatness of mind, to you and to us.” Approving the offer, Apollonius asked, “When then should I ask?” “Tomorrow,” the eunuch said; and at the same time he went to all the king's friends and relatives, bidding them be present when the man asked and was honored. Damis says he understood that Apollonius would ask for nothing, having observed his character and knowing that he prayed to the gods a prayer of this kind. “O gods, grant that I have little and need nothing.” Seeing him standing there and looking like one thoughtful, Damis supposed that he would ask, but was testing what he was about to ask. Apollonius, now in the evening, said, “Damis, I am considering by myself since when the barbarians have regarded eunuchs as temperate and bring them into the women's quarters.” “But this,” said Damis, “Apollonius, is clear even to a child: since the cutting takes away from them the exercise of love's pleasures, the women's quarters are open to them, even if they wish to sleep with the women.” “And do you suppose they have been cut off from the desire, or from the intercourse with women?” “From both,” he said; “for if the part were quenched by which the body is goaded, desire would not come upon anyone at all.” Apollonius paused briefly and said, “Tomorrow, Damis, you may learn that eunuchs too fall in love, and that the desiring part, which they take in through the eyes, does not wither in them, but remains hot, a live spark; for something must befall that will refute your argument. Even if there were some human art, powerful and masterful, able to drive such things out of the mind, I do not think I would ever enroll eunuchs in the ranks of the temperate, who have been forced to temperance and led by violent art into not loving. For temperance is not being overcome by the pleasures of love while one feels the longing and the impulse, but abstaining and showing oneself stronger than this madness.”
34| Damis answered, “We shall look into this again, Apollonius, but what you ought to answer tomorrow to the king's offer, which is splendid, it is fitting to have considered. You will, perhaps, ask for nothing; but see to it, and guard against it, that you do not seem, as they say, to refuse out of some other pride whatever the king gives, seeing where in the world we are and that we lie at his mercy. You must guard against slanders, as though you acted from contempt, and you must understand that now we have provisions enough to take us to the Indians, but that on returning from there these would not suffice, and there would be no others.” And with this sort of craft he worked on him,
35| not to scorn taking what he might give. Apollonius, as though joining him in the argument, said, “Damis, will you neglect the examples? Among them is how Aeschines, the son of Lysanias, set off for Sicily to Dionysius, after money, and Plato is said to have measured Charybdis three times for Sicilian wealth; and Aristippus of Cyrene, Helicon from Cyzicus, and Phyton the Rhegian (this last while he was in exile) sank so far into Dionysius' treasuries that they scarcely managed to surface again. And they say that Eudoxus of Cnidus, when he once came to Egypt, admitted that he had come for the sake of money and spoke to the king about this; and, not to slander more of them, they say that Speusippus of Athens became so greedy for money that he went in revel to Macedonia, to the marriage of Cassander, having composed frigid poems, and sang these publicly for money. But I think, Damis, that the wise man is in greater danger than those who sail or fight in arms, for envy comes upon him whether he is silent or speaks, whether he exerts himself or relaxes, whether he passes by or approaches someone, whether he greets him or does not greet him. The man must be fenced about and know that if a wise man is overcome by idleness, or anger, or love, or fondness for drink, or acts more readily than the occasion warrants, he might perhaps win pardon; but one who makes himself a slave to money would not be pardoned and would be hated, as having taken in all vices at once; for he would not have been overcome by money unless he had been overcome by belly, and clothing, and wine, and running after courtesans. Perhaps you think that to do wrong in Babylon is less than doing so at Athens or Olympia or Delphi, and you do not reflect that for a wise man all is Greece and no place is deserted or barbarian; the wise man will neither think so nor consider so, living as he does under the eyes of virtue, and he sees few of mankind, but is himself seen by ten thousand eyes. And if you were in company with one of those athletes, Damis, who train for wrestling and the pancratium, would you think it right for him, if he were competing at Olympia and going to Arcadia, to be noble and good, and, by Zeus, if the Pythian or Nemean games were being held, to take care of his body, since the contests are famous and the stadia are in the most esteemed part of Greece; but if Philip, having taken cities, were celebrating an Olympian festival, or his son Alexander were to hold a contest for his own victories, to prepare his body worse and not be eager to win, because he will compete in Olynthus or Macedonia or Egypt rather than among Greeks and in their stadia?” Damis says that by these words he was so affected that he covered his head at what he himself had happened to say, and begged Apollonius to forgive him if, not yet having understood him, he had rushed into advice and persuasion of such a kind. Apollonius took him up and said, “Take courage; I said this not by way of reproof, but to sketch out for you my own mind.”
36| When the eunuch arrived and called him into the presence of the king, he replied, “I shall come once things stand well for me with the gods.” So he sacrificed and prayed and went away, gazed at and admired for his bearing. When he went in, the king said, “I give you ten gifts, thinking you a man such as none has yet come here from the Greeks.” Apollonius answered, “O king, I shall not refuse all of them, but one, which I choose in place of many tens, I shall ask readily”; and at once he went through the story of the Eretrians, starting from Datis. “What I ask, then,” he said, “is that these wretched people not be cut short of their borders and the hill, but that they hold the measure of land which Darius established; for it is a terrible thing, if having fallen from their own, they should not have even what they have in its place.” The king agreed and said, “The Eretrians, up to yesterday, were enemies of me and of my fathers, since they once began hostilities against us, and they were overlooked, so that their race might vanish; but from now on they shall be registered as friends, and a good man shall be satrap over them, who will do justice to the country.” “And the nine gifts,” he said, “why will you not take them?” “Because, O king,” Apollonius said, “I have not yet made friends here.” “And do you yourself need nothing?” “Of the dried fruits and the bread,” he said, “which feed me sweetly and splendidly.”
37| While they were talking in this way to one another, a shout came out from the palace of eunuchs and women together. A eunuch had been seized lying with one of the king's concubines, doing all that adulterers do, and those from the women's quarters were hauling him by the hair, after the fashion in which the king's slaves are led. The eldest of the eunuchs said that he had long perceived that the man was in love with the woman and had told him beforehand not to converse with her, nor to touch her neck or hand, nor to adorn her alone of those within; but now he had found him in bed with her, behaving as a man toward the woman. Apollonius looked at Damis, as though the argument they had been debating, that eunuchs too feel desire, had now been proved. The king said to those present, “It is a shame, gentlemen, that with Apollonius here we should give judgment on temperance, and not he. What then do you bid us do to him, Apollonius?” “What else but live?” he said, answering contrary to the opinion of everyone. The king, blushing, said, “Is he not worthy of many deaths, creeping in this way to my bed?” “But I said this, O king, not for the sake of pardon, but for the sake of a punishment that will wear him down: for if he is to live sick and aiming at impossible things, with neither food nor drink nor spectacles to please him, the sort that will gladden you and your companions, his heart will leap often as sleep starts away from him, which they say happens above all to lovers; and what consumption will melt him so, what hunger will so crumble his inward parts? And unless he is one of those who cling to life, he himself, O king, will someday beg you to kill him, or will kill himself, lamenting much this present day on which he did not die at once.” This, then, was Apollonius' answer, so wise and so gentle, and on this the king released the eunuch from death.
38| Once, when the king was about to go hunting the beasts in the parks, in which lions, bears and leopards are kept in store for the barbarians, he asked Apollonius to be present with him at the hunt. Apollonius said, “Have you forgotten, O king, that I am not present even when you sacrifice? And besides, it is not pleasant to attack beasts that have been tormented and enslaved against their own nature.” When the king asked him how he might rule securely and safely, he said, “By honoring many, but trusting few.” Once the governor of Syria sent an embassy about two villages, I think, adjoining Zeugma, saying that in earlier times they had belonged to Antiochus and Seleucus, but now were under his charge and belonged to the Romans, and that the Arabians and Armenians did not trouble the villages, but that the king himself, crossing all that territory, took their produce as though they were his rather than the Romans'. The king, sending the envoys away, said, “Apollonius, these villages were conceded to my ancestors by the kings I have mentioned, for the feeding of the beasts, which are caught among us and go over to their land by way of the Euphrates; and they, as though forgetting this, are taking up new and unjust claims. What then seems to you the meaning of the embassy?” “Moderate, O king,” he said, “and reasonable, if what they are able to have even against your will, being in their own territory, they wish rather to obtain from a willing party.” He added that one ought not to quarrel with the Romans over villages, of which perhaps even private men possess larger ones, nor take up war even over great things. When the king was ill, Apollonius was present and went through so many and such divine things about the soul that the king drew breath again and said to those present, “Apollonius has made me not only unconcerned about the kingdom, but about death.”
39| Once the king showed him the tunnel under the Euphrates and said, “How does this marvel seem to you?” Apollonius, belittling the contrivance, said, “It would be a marvel, O king, if you walked on foot through the river, being so deep and impassable.” When the king showed him also the walls at Ecbatana and said that this was a dwelling of gods, Apollonius said, “Of gods it is not at all a dwelling, but whether of men I do not know; for the city of the Lacedaemonians, O king, is inhabited without walls.” And when the king once gave judgment in a case concerning villages and was proud before Apollonius that he had listened to the case for two days, Apollonius said, “You were slow to find the just course.” Once, when money came in a great mass from the subject provinces, the king opened the treasuries and showed the man the wealth, leading him on toward a desire for riches; but Apollonius, admiring nothing of what he saw, said, “To you, O king, these are money; to me they are chaff.” “Then by doing what,” the king asked, “might I use them nobly?” “By using them,” he said, “for you are a king.”
40| After saying many such things to the king and finding him eager to do what he advised, and now having had enough of his association with the magi, Apollonius said, “Come, Damis, let us go to the Indians. For those who sailed to the Lotus-eaters were drawn away from their native ways by the food, but we, without tasting anything here, sit on beyond a likely and reasonable time.” “I quite agree,” said Damis; “but when I considered the time which you worked out from the lioness, I waited for it to be completed. It is not yet fully over, for we have been here a year and four months already; but would it be well if we set out now?” “The king will not release us, Damis,” he said, “before the eighth month is ended; for you see he is good, and better than to rule barbarians.”
41| When it seemed time at last to depart, and the king had finally agreed to let him go, Apollonius remembered the gifts he had put off until he should have made friends.

"Best of kings," he said, "I have done my host no good, and to the magi I owe a reward. So look after them, and show my goodwill toward men who are wise and very well disposed to you."

The king was delighted. "Tomorrow," he said, "I will show you these men envied by all and honored with great rewards. But since you need nothing of mine, at least allow these men to take money from me, and whatever they want," indicating Damis and his companions.

When they too turned away from this offer, Apollonius said, "Do you see, king, my hands, how many they are and how like one another?"

"Have a guide at least," said the king, "along with camels to ride on; for the road is too long to go all of it on foot."

"Let that be done, king," he said, "for they say the road is impassable for anyone not riding in this way; and besides, the animal is easily fed and simple to graze where there is no fodder. And water too, I think, we must take as provisions and bring it along in skins, as people do with wine."

"For three days," said the king, "the country is without water, but after that there is a great abundance of rivers and springs. You should take the road by the Caucasus, for supplies there are abundant and the country is friendly."

The king asked him what gift he would bring back for him from there, and he said, "A pleasing gift, king. For if my time with those men makes me wiser, I will come back to you better than I am now."

The king embraced him when he said this. "May you come back," he said, "for that gift is a great one."

======== Life of Apollonius — Book II ========

1| From there they set out around summer, riding themselves, and the guide with them. There was a groom for the camels, and all the supplies they needed were plentiful, since the king had provided them. The country they traveled through was prosperous, and the villages received them with attentive care; for the leading camel carried a gold bridle-piece on its forehead, so that those they met should know that the king was sending one of his friends.
2| As they approached the Caucasus, they say, they noticed that the land smelled sweeter. Let us make this mountain the starting point of the Taurus range, which runs through Armenia and Cilicia toward Pamphylia and Mycale; Mycale, which ends at the sea where the Carians live, should be considered the end of the Caucasus and not, as some say, its beginning. For Mycale's height is not yet great, while the summits of the Caucasus rise so high that the sun is divided around them. With another Taurus range it also encloses the whole of Scythia that borders on India, along Lake Maeotis and the left side of the Pontus, a length of about twenty thousand stadia; for that is the extent of the earth that the arm of the Caucasus covers. As for what is said of the Taurus in our own part of the world, that it runs beyond Armenia, it was long disbelieved but is now finally confirmed by the leopards: I know that they are caught in the spice-bearing country of Pamphylia. For they delight in spices, and drawing in the scents from far away they come from Armenia through the mountains to the gum of the storax, whenever the winds blow from it and the trees are full of sap. And they say that a leopard was once caught in Pamphylia together with a collar that it wore around its neck; the collar was gold and had an inscription in Armenian letters: KING ARSACES TO THE NYSIAN GOD. Arsaces was then king of Armenia, and he himself, I think, when he saw the leopard, dedicated it to Dionysus on account of the beast's great size. For Dionysus is called Nysian, after Nysa in India, by the Indians and by all the peoples toward the sunrise. For some time the leopard had been tamed to man and allowed a hand to touch and stroke her; but when spring maddened her, the season when even leopards are overcome by desire, she bounded off into the mountains in longing for males, wearing her ornament as she was, and was caught near the lower Taurus, drawn there by the spice. The Caucasus marks the boundary between India and Media, and with another arm it reaches down to the Red Sea.
3| The barbarians tell myths about this mountain, the same ones the Greeks sing about it: that Prometheus was bound there for his love of humankind, and that another Heracles (for they do not mean the Theban one, at any rate) would not tolerate this and shot the bird that Prometheus was feeding with his entrails. Some say that he was bound inside a cave, which is indeed pointed out at the foot of the mountain, and Damis says that fetters hang from the rocks, whose material is not easy to make out. Others say he was bound on the summit of the mountain. The summit has two peaks, and they say that his hands were bound to them, though the peaks are no less than a stadium apart, so huge was he. The people who live near the Caucasus regard the bird, the eagle, as their enemy; they burn down all the nests the eagles build on the crags by shooting fire-carrying arrows, and they set traps for them, saying that they are avenging Prometheus. So completely are they in thrall to the myth.
4| After passing the Caucasus they say they saw men four cubits tall, who were already dark-skinned, and others five cubits tall when they had gone beyond the river Indus. On the journey as far as this river they came upon the following things worth relating. They were traveling by bright moonlight, and the apparition of an empusa fell upon them, becoming now one thing and now another, and then nothing at all. Apollonius understood what it was. He himself abused the empusa and ordered those with him to do the same, for this, he said, was the remedy against an attack of this kind. And the apparition took to flight with a shrill squeal, as ghosts do.
5| Crossing the summit of the mountain and walking along it, since it was steep, Apollonius questioned Damis in this way. “Tell me,” he said, “yesterday, where were we?” “In the plain,” said Damis. “And today, Damis, where?” “On the Caucasus,” he said, “unless I have forgotten myself.” “When, then, were you lower down?” he asked again. “This is not even a proper question,” said Damis; “for yesterday we were traveling through a hollow of the earth, and today we are near the sky.” “Do you think then, Damis,” he said, “that yesterday's journey was down and today's up?” “By Zeus,” he said, “unless I am mad.” “What then do you suppose makes the roads differ from one another, or what more is today to you than yesterday?” “That yesterday,” said Damis, “I walked where many walk, and today where few.” “Why, Damis, is it not possible, by turning off the highways in a city, to walk among few of mankind?” “That is not what I meant,” said Damis, “but that yesterday we were conveyed through villages and people, and today we are climbing a trackless place that belongs to the divine, for you hear from the guide that the barbarians make it a home of gods”; and at the same time he looked up toward the top of the mountain. Apollonius, leading him on to what he had asked from the beginning, said, “Can you say, Damis, what you have understood about the divine, walking near the sky?” “Nothing,” he said. “And yet,” said Apollonius, “standing upon so great and divine a contrivance, you ought now to be bringing forth clearer opinions about the heavens and about the sun and the moon, which you perhaps think you will touch with a staff, standing beside this sky.” “What I knew yesterday about the divine,” said Damis, “I know today, and no other opinion about it has yet come to me.” “Then, Damis,” he said, “you happen to be still down, and you have taken nothing from the height, and you are as far from the sky as yesterday; and I had reason to ask you what I asked at the beginning, though you thought the question ridiculous.” “And yet,” said Damis, “I thought I would come down wiser, Apollonius, hearing that Anaxagoras of Clazomenae surveyed what is in the sky from Ionia's Mimas, and Thales of Miletus from nearby Mycale, and certain others, they say, made Pangaeus their place of study and others Athos. But I, having climbed the greatest height of these, shall come down no wiser than I was.” “Nor did they,” said Apollonius; “for such lookouts show the sky bluer and the stars larger and the sun coming up from the night, which are plain even to shepherds and goatherds. But how the divine takes care of the human race, and how it rejoices to be served by it, what virtue is, and justice, and temperance, neither Athos will show those who climb it, nor Olympus, so wondered at by the poets, unless the soul discerns them; and the soul, if it touches them pure and undefiled, I for my part would say leaps much higher than this Caucasus.”
6| Having crossed the mountain, they met men already riding on elephants. These people live between the Caucasus and the river Cophen, without settled livelihood, and are riders of this herd; and camels also carried some of them, which the Indians use for fast travel, and which cover a thousand stadia in a day without bending a knee anywhere. One of the Indians rode up on such a camel and asked the guide where they were going; when he heard the purpose of the journey he reported it to the nomads, who cried out as if delighted and bade them come near, and when they arrived offered them wine, which they contrive from palm trees, and honey from the same plant, and pieces of lions and leopards, whose skins were freshly flayed. They accepted everything but the meat, drove off the Indians, and went on toward the east.
7| While they were taking their midday meal beside a spring of water, Damis poured some of the wine from the Indians and said, “Here is the cup of Zeus the Savior for you, Apollonius, since it is a long while since you last drank; for you will not, I think, refuse this wine either, as you did the wine from the vines,” and at once he poured a libation, since he had mentioned Zeus. Apollonius laughed. “Are we not abstaining from money too, Damis?” “By Zeus, you have shown it in many places,” Damis said. “Then shall we abstain from a gold or silver drachma, and not be overcome by such a coin, though we see not only private men but kings gaping at it; and if someone gave us a bronze coin as if it were silver, or one gilded and adulterated, shall we take this, because it is not what the many strive for? And the Indians have coins of orichalc and of black bronze, with which everyone who comes to the country of the Indians must buy everything. What then? If these good nomads were offering us money, would you, Damis, seeing me refuse, have admonished and instructed me that money is what the Romans stamp, or the king of the Medes, whereas this is some other material, refined for the Indians? And if you had persuaded me of this, what would you have thought me? Would I not be adulterated, and one who has thrown away philosophy more shamefully than worthless soldiers throw away their shields? And yet when a shield has been thrown away, another may come to the one who threw it away, no worse than the first, as Archilochus thinks; but philosophy, how can it be recovered by one who has dishonored it and cast it off? And now Dionysus might forgive one who is not overcome by any wine; but if I were to choose the wine from the palms before the wine from the vine, he would be vexed, I know well, and would say that his gift has been outraged. And we are not far from the god, for you hear from the guide that Mount Nysa is near, on which Dionysus does many wonderful things, I think. Moreover, Damis, drunkenness does not come upon men from grapes alone, but the palm too makes them rave in much the same way; we have already met many of the Indians possessed by this wine, and some dance as they fall, some sing as they doze, like those among us who break up from a drinking party at night and out of season. That you consider this drink wine too, you make plain by pouring a libation from it to Zeus and offering all the prayers one offers over wine. This I have said to you, Damis, about myself; for I would not lead you away from drinking, nor these attendants, and I would permit you, too, to eat meat, since I see that abstaining from it advances you toward nothing, while for me it advances toward what I have agreed with philosophy since boyhood.” Damis and his party accepted this argument and welcomed the feasting, thinking they would travel more easily if they were fed more abundantly.
8| They crossed the river Cophen, themselves in boats and the camels on foot through the water, for the river was not yet large, and came into the territory ruled by the king, in which Mount Nysa stands, stretching up to a high summit, like Tmolus in Lydia; and it is possible to climb it, for cultivation has made paths up it. When they had gone up, they say they came upon a temple of Dionysus, which Dionysus himself planted for himself, with laurels standing in a circle around it, enclosing just so much ground as suffices for a temple of moderate size; he threw ivy and vines about it, over the laurels, and set up an image of himself inside, knowing that time would make the trees grow together and give a roof from them, which is now so joined that the shrine is neither rained upon nor blown through by wind. Sickles, baskets, wine-presses and the equipment about the presses are dedicated to Dionysus, in gold and silver, as though he were gathering the vintage. The image is made like an Indian youth, and carved of white stone. When he celebrates his rites and shakes Nysa, the cities beneath the mountain hear it and are lifted up with him.
9| About this Dionysus the Greeks differ from the Indians, and the Indians from one another. We say that the Theban marched against the Indians, campaigning and reveling, using as proofs among others the offering at Delphi, which the treasuries there keep in store: it is a disk of Indian silver, on which is inscribed: DIONYSUS SON OF SEMELE AND ZEUS, FROM THE INDIANS, TO APOLLO OF DELPHI. Of the Indians, those near the Caucasus and the river Cophen claim that he arrived as an Assyrian newcomer, familiar with the Theban's doings. But the peoples occupying the country that lies between the Hydraotes and the Indus, and the mainland beyond it, which ends at the river Ganges, say that Dionysus was a son of the river Indus, and that the man from Thebes came to him, took up the thyrsus, and gave himself to the rites; that he told him he was a son of Zeus and had been housed in his father's thigh for the sake of being born, and so obtained from him the mountain Meros, which Nysa adjoins, and planted Nysa for Dionysus, bringing the knee of the vine from Thebes, where Alexander also celebrated rites. But the inhabitants of Nysa say that Alexander did not go up the mountain, but wanted to, being ambitious and given to a love of antiquity, and that, fearing that the Macedonians, coming among vines that they had not looked on in a long while, would be carried away by longing for home or would take up some desire for wine, having by now grown used to water, he rode past Nysa, after he had prayed to Dionysus and made sacrifice at the mountain's foot. I know that in writing this I do not please some, because those who campaigned with Alexander did not record even this in accordance with the truth; but I at least must have truth, and if they too had praised it, they would not have deprived Alexander of this commendation also. For to climb the mountain and revel there, as they say he did, is less, I think, than not to have climbed it at all, for the sake of the army's endurance.
10| The rock Aornus, not far from Nysa, Damis says he did not see, since it lay off the road and the guide was afraid to turn aside anywhere from the straight way; but he heard that it was taken by Alexander, and that it is called Aornus not because it rises fifteen stadia (for the sacred birds fly even above that), but they say there is a cleft at the top of the rock which draws in the birds that fly over it, as one can see at Athens in the forecourt of the Parthenon and in many places in the land of the Phrygians and Lydians, and by this the rock has been called Aornus and is so.
11| Driving on toward the Indus, they met a boy of about thirteen years riding an elephant and striking the beast. As they marveled at the sight, Apollonius said, “Damis, what is the work of a good horseman?” “What else,” said Damis, “than to sit on the horse and rule it, and to turn it with the bridle and chastise it when it misbehaves, and to look ahead, so that the horse is not carried into a pit, or ditch, or chasm, when it goes through marsh or mud?” “And nothing else, Damis, shall we require of the good horseman?” “By Zeus,” Damis said, “to give the horse its rein when it springs up a steep place, but when it goes down a slope not to give way to it but to hold it back, and to stroke its ears or mane, and not always the whip: this seems to me the mark of a skilled horseman, and I would praise the man who rides in this way.” “And for the fighting man, the horseman of war, what is needed?” “The same things, Apollonius, and in addition to these, shooting and guarding oneself, charging and retreating, rolling up the enemy, and not letting the horse be startled when a shield clashes, or helmets flash, or the shout of paean-singers and war-cries arises; this, I think, belongs to horsemanship's skill.” “What then,” said Apollonius, “will you say of this rider on the elephant?” “It is far more wonderful, Apollonius,” he said, “that a boy so small should be set over so large a beast and steer it with that goad, which you see him driving into the elephant like an anchor, and that he feels no fear at the sight of the animal, or at its height, or at its great strength. To me this seems something more than human, and by Athena I would not have believed it if I had heard it from another.” “Well then,” said Apollonius, “if someone were willing to sell us the boy, would you buy him, Damis?” “By Zeus, yes,” he said, “at the price of everything I own. For to command the greatest creature the earth feeds, sitting on it as though one had seized a citadel, seems to me the sign of a free and brilliant nature.” “What use will you make of the boy, then,” said Apollonius, “if you do not buy the elephant as well?” “I will set him over my own household and my servants,” he said, “and he will govern them far better than I do.” “And are you not able to govern your own?” “In the same way that you are, Apollonius; for I have left my affairs behind and go about, as you do, eager to learn and studying what lies in foreign lands.” “But if you did buy the boy,” said Apollonius, “ and two horses came to you, one for racing and one for war, would you put him on the horses, Damis?” “On the racing horse, perhaps,” he said, “since I see others do so; but the warhorse, the one that fights in armor, how could he mount that? For he could not carry the shield that cavalrymen need, nor a breastplate or helmet; and how could he handle a spear, who could not even brandish the shaft of a missile or an arrow, since in matters of war he is still like a child who lisps?” “Then there is something else, Damis,” said Apollonius, “that drives this elephant and sends it on, and it is not this driver, whom you all but worship in your amazement.” When Damis said, “What could that be, Apollonius? I see nothing on the beast but the boy,” Apollonius said: “This animal is the best taught of all, and once it has been compelled to live under a man, it bears everything that comes from the man and cultivates a likeness of character to him. It is glad to be fed from his hand, like the little dogs; it approaches and fawns on him with its trunk, and it lets him thrust his head into its throat and keeps its mouth open for as long as the man sees fit, as we saw among the nomads. But at night it is said to lament its slavery, by Zeus, not with the shrill cry it usually makes, but in a pitiful and piteous tone; and if a man comes upon it while it is mourning like this, the elephant checks its lament, as though ashamed. So it is itself, Damis, that rules itself, and the persuasion of its own nature leads it more than the one who sits on it and directs it.”
12| At the Indus they saw, so they say, a herd of elephants wading across, and learned the following about the animal: that some of them live in marshes, others in the mountains, and a third kind on the plains, and that men take them to use in war. For they fight equipped with towers large enough to hold ten and fifteen Indians together, from which the Indians shoot arrows and hurl javelins, as though throwing from city gates. The animal itself treats its trunk as a hand and uses it for hurling. The Libyan elephant exceeds a Nisaean horse in size by as much as the Indian elephants exceed those of Libya. About the age of the animal, and that they are the longest-lived of creatures, others have already written; but these men say too that near Taxila, the greatest city of India, they met an elephant, which the local people anoint with perfume and decorate with ribbons. For this, they said, was one of those who fought against Alexander on behalf of Porus, and because it had fought so eagerly, Alexander dedicated it to the Sun. Gold rings encircled its tusks, or horns, whichever they are, and on them was an inscription in Greek letters, reading: ‘Alexander, son of Zeus, to the Sun dedicates Ajax.’ For he gave the elephant this name, thinking so great a creature worthy of a great name. The natives reckoned that it was three hundred and fifty years since the battle, without saying how old it was when it fought.
13| Juba, who once ruled the Libyan nation, says that Libyan horsemen long ago fought one another from elephants, some of the elephants having a tower engraved on their tusks and the others nothing. When night put an end to the battle, he says, those with the mark were defeated and fled to Mount Atlas; and he himself, four hundred years later, captured one of the fugitives, and its mark was hollowed and not yet worn down by time. This Juba takes the tusks to be horns, because they grow from the same place as the temples and are sharpened against nothing else, but stay as they grew and do not fall out and grow again as teeth do. I do not accept his account. For if not all horns, at least those of deer fall out and grow again; and while the teeth of men all fall out and grow back, in no other animal would a tusk or a canine fall out of itself, nor would it return once fallen, since nature fits them into the jaws for the sake of defense. Besides, horns turn a ring around the base each year, as goats, flocks and cattle show, whereas a tusk grows out smooth, and unless something damages it, it stays the same forever, for it shares in the stony stuff and substance. Moreover, bearing horns is confined to animals with cloven hooves, whereas this animal has five toes and a many-parted foot, which, not being bound up in hooves, stands as though on something liquid. And in all horned animals nature lays down a spongy bone and grows the horn around it on the outside, but in elephants it makes the tusk solid and uniform throughout; when it is split open, only a thin channel runs through the middle, as in teeth. The tusks of the marsh elephants are livid and porous and awkward to work, for in many places hollows lie hidden within them and in many places hard lumps stand up that do not yield to the craftsman’s tools; those of the mountain elephants are smaller than these but quite white, with nothing hard to work in them; the best are the tusks of the plains elephants, for they are the largest and whitest, pleasant to carve, and they take whatever shape the hand wants. And if the characters of elephants must be recorded too, the Indians consider those caught in the marshes foolish and light, those from the mountains ill-natured and treacherous, and, unless they need something, unreliable toward men; but the plains elephants are said to be good and easy to lead and lovers of imitation. At any rate they draw and dance, they sway to the sound of the pipe, and they leap from the ground.
14| When Apollonius saw the elephants crossing the Indus, about thirty of them, I think, led by the smallest among them, and the bigger ones having taken their young up onto the projecting tusks and linked their trunks for the sake of a bond, he said: “Damis, no one gives these animals orders; they do this of themselves, from understanding and wisdom. Do you see how, like people carrying baggage, they have lifted up their young and are bringing them across, tied fast?” “I see, Apollonius,” said Damis, “how wisely and intelligently they do it.” “What, then,” said Apollonius, becomes of that foolish worry of the quibblers, whether affection toward offspring is natural or not? For even elephants cry aloud that it comes to them from nature; they certainly did not learn it from men, as they did the rest, since they have not yet lived with men at all, but possessing love by nature they care for what they have borne and rear their young. And do not name the elephants, Damis; for this animal I rank second only to man in understanding and in counsel. Rather I think of the bears, which, though the wildest of beasts, will do anything for their cubs; and of the wolves, which are always bent on plunder, yet the female guards what she has borne while the male, to keep the whelps alive, brings her food; and likewise of the leopards, which in their heat delight in becoming mothers, for then they want to lord it over the males and rule the household, and the males put up with everything from them, overcome by their love of the young. There is also a tale told of lionesses, that they take leopards as lovers and receive them on the lions’ beds in the plains, but when the womb’s time comes they flee to the mountains and the haunts of the leopards, for they bear spotted young; so they hide them and nurse them in tangled thickets, pretending to be away hunting for the day. For if the lions should detect it, they tear the cubs to pieces and rend the offspring as bastard. You have surely come across one of the Homeric lions, how fiercely he looks on behalf of his own cubs and braces himself to take up the fight. And they say that in this country, and around the Red Sea, the tigress, a most dangerous creature, rushes at ships demanding back her cubs; when she gets them she goes off glad, but if the ships sail away she howls on the shore and sometimes dies. And as for the birds, who does not know their ways? Eagles and storks will not build their nests unless they first fit into them, the one the eagle-stone and the other the lamp-stone, to help the laying of eggs and to keep snakes from coming near them. And if we look at what is in the sea, we should not wonder at the dolphins if, being kindly creatures, they love their young; but how shall we not wonder at whales and seals and the tribes that bear live young, when a seal that I saw myself at Aegae, kept shut up for the hunting shows, grieved so over its dead cub, which it had borne in its little pen, that it would not accept food for three days, though it is the greediest of beasts; and when the whale takes its young into the hollows of its throat whenever it flees from something larger than itself? And a viper was once seen licking the snakes it had borne and tending them with its tongue stretched out. Let us not, Damis, accept the foolish story that vipers are born without mothers, for neither nature nor experience has allowed it.” Damis answered: “Then you agree that Euripides is to be praised for that iambic line in which he has Andromache say: ‘For all human beings, then, children are their very life?’” “I agree,” said Apollonius, “for it was said wisely and with divine insight, but it would have been far wiser and truer had it been sung of all living creatures.” “You seem, Apollonius,” said Damis, “to be rewriting the line so that we may sing it thus: ‘For all living creatures, then, children are their very life.’ And I follow you, for it is better.”
15| “But tell me this: did we not say at the beginning of our talk that there is wisdom in elephants and intelligence in what they do?” “And with good reason, Damis, we said it,” said Apollonius, “for if intelligence did not steer this animal, neither it nor the nations in which it is found would survive.” “Then why,” said Damis, “do they make the crossing so foolishly and not to their own advantage? For the smallest leads, as you see, a slightly larger one follows him, then another bigger than that, and the greatest all come last. They ought, I think, to go in the opposite order and make the greatest their walls and bulwarks.” “But, Damis,” said Apollonius, “first of all they seem to be fleeing from pursuit by men, whom we may well meet following their tracks; and against those who press behind, it is the rear that must be fenced off, as in wars, so reckon this the most tactical of animals. Then there is the crossing. If the largest of them went in first, they would give no indication of the water, whether all would get across; for to those who are tallest the passage is easy and without difficulty, but to those who do not rise above the current it is hard and impassable. When the smallest has passed over, it already reports to the rest that the way is harmless. And besides, the bigger ones going in first would make the river deeper for the small, since the mud must settle into pits under the weight of the beast and the thickness of its feet, whereas the smaller ones would do no harm to the passage of the larger, since they dig fewer pits.”
16| I myself found in the writings of Juba that they also help one another in the hunt and stand over one who has given out, and if they drag him clear, they stand around him like physicians and smear his wounds with the juice of aloe. Many such things they philosophized about, making what was worth recounting their starting-points.
17| As for what Nearchus and Pythagoras said about the river Acesines, that it flows into the Indus and breeds snakes seventy cubits long, let such things be as they have been told, and let me reserve my account for the dragons, whose hunting Damis describes. When they had come to the Indus and were at the crossing of the river, they put it to the Babylonian whether he knew anything about the river, inquiring about the crossing; but he said that he had never made the voyage on it and had no idea where it is navigated from. “Why then,” they said, “did you not hire a guide?” “Because there is one to guide us,” he said, and at the same time showed them a letter that would accomplish this. It was then, they say, that they admired Vardanes for his kindness and care; for he had dispatched this letter to the satrap in charge of the Indus, although the man was not subject to his own rule, reminding him of a benefaction, and saying that he would not ask for any favor in return for it, since it was not in his character to demand repayment, but that if the satrap received Apollonius and sent him where he wished, he would be grateful. He also gave gold to the guide, so that if he found Apollonius in need he might give it, and Apollonius need not look to another’s hand. When the Indian received the letter, he said that he was thought worthy of great things, and that he would take as much pains over the man as if the king of the Indians were writing on his behalf. He gave him the satrap’s own ship to embark on, and other boats in which the camels were carried, and a guide for the whole country that the Hydraotes bounds; and he wrote to his own king that he should be no worse than Vardanes toward a man who was both Greek and divine.
18| So they crossed the Indus in this way, a distance of about forty stadia, for that is how much of it is navigable. About this river they write the following: that the Indus begins in the Caucasus, at the very start larger than any of the rivers of Asia, and that as it advances it makes many of the navigable rivers its own; that, acting like the Nile, it floods India, brings earth upon the land, and lets the Indians sow in the manner of the Egyptians. As for the snows of the Ethiopian and Catadupan mountains, I do not think it right to contradict, because of those who have spoken of them, yet I do not agree when I reckon that the Indus does the same as the Nile, since the country above it is not snowed upon. Besides, I know that the god shows the Ethiopians and Indians as horns of the entire earth, and makes some of them black from the rising sun and others from its setting; how could that happen to men if they did not also roast in winter? And land which the sun warms the whole year round, how could one think that it is snowed on, or that snow becomes the supplier for the rivers there to rise above their own measures? And even if snow did come to places so sunny, how could it pour out into so great a sea? And how could it suffice for a river that sinks
19| Egypt? As they were carried along the Indus, they say they met many river horses and many crocodiles, as people do who sail the Nile; and they say the Indus has flowers like those that grow up on the Nile, and that the seasons in India are mild in winter and stifling in summer, and that against this the divinity has contrived the best remedy, for the country is frequently rained on. They say too that they heard from the Indians that the king comes to this river when the seasons make it rise, and sacrifices to it bulls and black horses (for the Indians rank white below black, I suppose because of their own color); and after the sacrifice, they say, he sinks into the river a golden measure, made like the one with which grain is measured out. For what purpose the king does this, the Indians could not tell them, but they themselves guessed that the measure is sunk either for an abundance of crops, which the farmers measure out, or for a due proportion in the stream, so that it may not come in great volume and flood the land.
20| After they had traveled on beyond the river, the guide sent by the satrap led them straight to Taxila, where the Indian king had his palace. They say that the dress of the people beyond the Indus is of local linen, with sandals of papyrus and a cap for when it rains, and that the more distinguished among them are clothed in fine linen; and the fine linen, they say, comes from a tree resembling the white poplar in its trunk and the willow in its leaves. Apollonius says he was pleased with the fine linen, because it resembles a gray cloak. From India, too, this linen goes to Egypt for many of the temples. Taxila, they say, is about the size of Nineveh, and is walled in moderate proportion, like the cities of Greece; and the palace is that of a man who was then holding the rule of Porus. Before the wall they say they saw a temple not much smaller than a hundred-footer, of shell-stone, and that a sanctuary had been built within it, smaller than suited a temple of such a size and ringed with columns, yet worth admiring. For on each wall bronze plates are fastened, with the deeds of Porus and Alexander pictured on them; the pictures are made with orichalcum, silver, gold and black bronze, showing elephants, horses, soldiers, helmets and shields, while the lances, javelins and swords are all of iron; and as is said of celebrated painting, as if it were a work of Zeuxis, or of Polygnotus and Euphranor, who prized shading and the look of life and what recedes and what projects, so, they say, it shows there too, and the materials have melted together like colors. The very spirit of the picture is pleasing as well. For Porus dedicated these after the death of the Macedonian, and in them the Macedonian is victorious, and recovers Porus when he is wounded, and gives him India, which was henceforth his own to give. It is said too that Porus mourned Alexander when he died and lamented him as a noble and good king; and that while Alexander was alive, after his withdrawal from India, Porus neither spoke anything as a king, though Alexander allowed it, nor gave any order to the Indians, but like a satrap, full of self-restraint, did everything to gratify him.
21| My account does not allow me to pass over what they record about this Porus. As the Macedonian stood on the point of crossing, and some advised Porus to make allies of the peoples beyond the Hyphasis and the river Ganges, since Alexander would never then draw up against an India united in purpose, he said: “If my subject people is so constituted that it cannot be kept safe without allies, then not ruling is better for me.” When someone reported to him that Alexander had captured Darius the king, he said: “But not a man.” When the mahout had decked out the elephant on which he was to fight, and said, “This one will carry you, my king,” he said: “No, it is I who will carry him, if I prove a man true to myself.” When they proposed that he sacrifice to the river so that it would not receive the Macedonians’ rafts and Alexander would find no easy passage, he said: “Cursing does not belong to men who have weapons.” After the battle, when even Alexander thought Porus divine and beyond human nature, and one of his kinsmen said, “If you had done obeisance to him when he crossed, Porus, you would not have been beaten in battle, so many Indians would not have perished, and you yourself would not have been wounded,” Porus said: “I had heard that Alexander was most ambitious for honor, and I understood that if I did obeisance he would think me a slave, but if I fought him, a king; and I thought it better to be admired than pitied, and I was not deceived. For by presenting myself as Alexander saw me, I both lost everything and gained everything in a single day.” That is what is reported of this Indian; he was, they say, the most beautiful of the Indians, of a height such as no one had attained since the heroes at Troy, and very young when he fought Alexander.
22| During the time that he stayed in the temple, which was long, until it was reported to the king that strangers had come, Apollonius said: “Damis, is there such a thing as painting?” “Yes,” said Damis, “if truth is anything.” “And what does this art accomplish?” “It blends together all the colors there are, the blue with the green, the white with the black, and the red with the pale.” “And for what purpose,” said Apollonius, “does it mix these? For not merely for the sake of the color, as wax-painters do.” “For imitation,” said Damis, “and to make likenesses of dog and horse, man and ship, and everything the sun looks upon; and it makes likenesses even of the sun itself, sometimes on a four-horse chariot, as he is said to appear in these parts, and sometimes again blazing across the sky, when it sketches in the upper air and the home of the gods.” “Painting, then, is imitation, Damis?” “What else?” said Damis. “For if it did not do that, it would seem a foolish business of making colors for nothing.” “And what is seen in the sky,” said Apollonius, “when clouds are torn apart from each other, centaurs and goat-stags and, by Zeus, wolves and horses, what will you say of those? Are they not works of imitation?” “It seems so,” said Damis. “Then is God a painter, Damis, and does he leave the winged chariot on which he travels ordering the affairs of gods and men, and sit down then to play and paint these things, like children in the sand?” Damis blushed, because the argument seemed to have fallen into so absurd a place. Apollonius did not look down on him, for he was never harsh toward refutations, but said: “Is this not what you mean to say, Damis, that those things are carried across the sky without meaning and by chance, so far as the god is concerned, and that it is we, who have imitation by nature, who give them shape and form?” “Let us rather hold that, Apollonius,” said Damis, “for it is more plausible and far better.” “Then imitation is twofold, Damis, and we should hold that one kind copies with the hand as well as the mind, and this is painting, while the other makes likenesses with the mind alone.” “Not twofold,” said Damis; “rather we should regard as the more complete the one that is painting, which can make a likeness with both mind and hand, and the other as a part of it, since a man who is no painter understands and imitates with his mind, but would not use his hand to paint these things.” “Is he then, Damis,” said Apollonius, “maimed in his hand by some blow or disease?” “By Zeus, no,” said Damis, “but because he has never touched a stylus or any tool or color, and is unskilled in painting.” “Then we both agree, Damis, that imitation comes to men from nature, but painting from art. And this would appear to hold for modeling too. And I think you should not suppose painting itself to be only what is done with colors; for one color was enough for it in the older painters, and as it advanced it took up four and then more. But line also, and what is done without color, which is composed of shadow and light, deserves to be called painting. For in such drawings likeness is seen, and form, and thought, and modesty and boldness, though they are bereft of colors, and they do not indicate blood, or the bloom of any hair or beard, but composed in a single manner they resemble a fair-haired man and a pale one alike. And if we draw one of these Indians in white line, he will surely look black; for the snub nose, the stiff curls, the prominent jaw, and the sort of startled look about the eyes darken what is seen and mark out an Indian for those who look with understanding. For this reason I would say that those who look at the works of painting also need the faculty of imitation. For no one could praise a painted horse or bull without calling to mind the creature it is made to resemble, nor could anyone admire the Ajax of Timomachus, whom he has painted in madness, unless he took into his mind some image of Ajax, and how it is likely that, having slaughtered the herds of cattle at Troy, he sits exhausted, planning to kill himself as well. But these ingenious works of Porus, Damis, let us declare neither the work of metalworking alone, for they are made like paintings, nor of painting, since they were wrought in bronze; rather let us suppose that one man, both painter and metalworker, contrived them, like what is shown in Homer in Hephaestus’ work on the shield of Achilles. For these too are full of killers and killed, and you will say that the earth is blood-stained, though it is bronze.”
23| While the man was busy with such talk, messengers and an interpreter came from the king, saying that the king would make him his guest for three days, for it was the custom that strangers should not mix with the city for longer, and they led him to the palace. I have said what the city has in the way of a wall; they say that its streets are cut irregularly, in the Athenian manner, and that it is built up with houses which, if one sees them from outside, have a single story, but if one goes inside, turn out to have underground stories as well, with as much space below the earth as above.
24| They say they saw a temple of the Sun, to which the elephant Ajax was dedicated, and golden statues of Alexander and others of Porus, and these were of black bronze. As for the walls of the temple, gold flashes from fiery-red stones, giving off a gleam like a ray of light. The sacred image itself is composed of pearl-shell, in the symbolic manner which all barbarians use for their temples.
25| Around the palace they say they saw no massive buildings, no spearmen or guards, but, as around the houses of men of distinction, a few servants, and three or four, I think, in need of a word with the king; and they admired this orderliness more than the swollen splendor at Babylon, and much more when they passed inside; for the men’s halls, the porticoes and the whole courtyard, they say, were kept in restrained good order.
26| Apollonius thought the Indian was a philosopher, and calling the interpreter to him he said: “I rejoice, my king, to see that you are a philosopher.” “And I rejoice all the more,” said the king, “since you think so of me.” “Is this the custom among you,” said Apollonius, “or did you establish your rule on this moderate footing yourself?” “The custom is a temperate one,” he said, “and I keep it more temperately still. I have more than any man, yet I need little, for most of what I have I count as belonging to my friends.” “Blessed in your treasury,” said Apollonius, “if you draw your friends in exchange for gold and silver, from whom much good grows up for you.” “And indeed,” said the king, “I share my wealth with my enemies too. For the barbarians who have always been at odds with this country, living near and making raids across my borders, I win over with this money, and the land is guarded for me by them, and they neither come against my land themselves nor let in the barbarians who border them, who are harsh.” When Apollonius asked him whether Porus too had paid them money, he said: “Porus was in love with war, and I with peace.” With these words he quite won Apollonius over, and Apollonius was so overcome by him that once, when rebuking Euphrates for not being a philosopher, he said: “Let us have respect at least for the Indian Phraotes.” For this was the Indian’s name. When the satrap, having been honored by him with great gifts, wished to bind his head with a gold headband set with colored stones, Phraotes said: “If I were among those who covet such things, I would have refused them now and cast them from my head, having met Apollonius; but since I never before thought fit to wear them, how should I now be adorned, overlooking my guest and forgetting myself?” Apollonius then questioned him about his manner of living, and he said: “I drink only so much wine as I pour out to the Sun; what I take in hunting others eat, and for myself exercise is enough. My own food is vegetables, the hearts of palms, the fruit of the palms, and whatever the river grows in its gardens. Many things also grow for me from trees, whose cultivators are these very hands.” Hearing this, Apollonius was delighted, and kept looking toward Damis.
27| When they had talked enough about the road to the Brahmans, Phraotes gave orders for the guide sent by the Babylonian to be entertained in the way he used to entertain those who came from Babylon, and the satrap’s man to leave with provisions; and taking Apollonius by the hand, and bidding the interpreter go away, he said: “Would you make me your drinking companion?” He asked it in the Greek tongue. Apollonius was astonished and said, “Why did you not speak with me so from the start?” “I was afraid,” said Phraotes, “of seeming bold, not knowing myself, nor that fortune has made me seem a barbarian; but I have been overcome by you, since I see that you take pleasure in me, and I could not hide myself. How full I am of the Greek tongue I shall show in many ways.” “Then why,” said Apollonius, “did you not yourself invite me to the banquet, and instead tell me to invite you?” “Because I consider you better than myself,” said Phraotes, “for wisdom has more of the royal in it.” At once he took Apollonius and his party along to the place where he usually bathed. This bath was a park a stadium in length, with a pool dug in the middle that received springs of cold drinking water, and on either side were running tracks, on which he trained himself in the Greek manner with javelin and discus; for his body was strong, both from his age (he was twenty-seven years old) and from exercising in this way. When he had had enough, he would leap into the water and exercise himself by swimming. When they had bathed, they went to the common meal wearing garlands, as is the custom among the Indians whenever they drink at the king’s table.
28| It is worth not passing over the arrangement of the drinking party, which Damis has recorded clearly. The king dines on a couch of leaves, with up to five of his kinsmen nearest him, while all the rest eat together on seats. A table, like an altar, is built up in the middle to the height of a man’s knee, covering the space of a chorus of thirty men gathered together, and on it laurels are strewn, along with other boughs like myrtle, which produce a perfume for the Indians. There are laid out fish and birds, whole lions, gazelles and pigs, and the loins of tigers; for the rest of that animal they refuse to eat, since they say that this creature, as soon as it is born, lifts its forefeet to the Sun as he rises. Each guest rises, goes to the table, picks up some of these dishes and cuts off others, and returns to his own seat and fills himself, frequently eating bread with the meat. When they have had enough, mixing bowls of silver and gold are brought in, one enough for ten drinking companions, and they drink from them bending over, like cattle at the watering. Between drinks they bring in displays of daring that are dangerous and not without seriousness. A boy, like those of the dancing girls, is thrown lightly upward while an arrow is shot upward together with him, and when he is high above the ground the boy turns a somersault, lifting himself over the arrow; and if he fails in the somersault, he is certain to be struck. For the archer, before he lets fly, goes around the drinkers, showing the point and offering proof of the shaft. To shoot with a bow through a sling, to aim at a hair, and to outline his own son with arrows as he stands against a board: these they take pains over at their drinking, and they succeed at them while drunk.
29| Damis and his companions were amazed at these feats as well-aimed, and admired the precision of the archery; but Apollonius, who was dining with the king and sharing his table, paid them less attention, and said to the king: “Tell me, my king, how do you come to have the Greek tongue? And where does this philosophy of yours come from, here? For I do not think you trace it to teachers, since it is not likely there are any among the Indians who teach it.” The king laughed and said: “The ancients used to put the question to those who sailed in, whether they were pirates, regarding it as so common, though it is a grim thing; and you seem to me to ask those who visit you whether they are philosophers, as though you think that this too, though the most divine of human things, belongs to anyone who happens along. And I know that among you it is the same as piracy; for they say it is not possible to meet a man like you, but that the many have stripped it from others like spoil and wear it ill-fitting, trailing a garment that is not their own and strutting in it. And, by Zeus, just as pirates live in luxury knowing that they are under the sentence of justice, so they say those men give themselves to the belly and to love and to fine clothing. This is why: among you there are laws, I think, by which, if a man debases the coinage he is put to death, and likewise if one fraudulently enrolls a child, or whatever the penalty for that may be; but for those who counterfeit or corrupt philosophy there is no law among you, I think, and no magistrate is appointed over them.”
30| “Among us few take up philosophy, and they are tested in this way. The young man, when he reaches the age of eighteen, which I think is also the measure of an ephebe among you, must go beyond the river Hyphasis to the men to whom you are hastening, having first declared publicly that he will philosophize, so that anyone who wishes may keep him out if he comes unclean. By clean I mean first what concerns his father and mother, that no reproach appear against them; then their parents, and the third generation upward, that there be no violent man, or one without self-control, or an unjust moneymaker. When no scar appears among these, and no brand at all, then the young man himself is examined and tested: first, whether he has a good memory; then, whether he is modest by nature and not pretending it; whether he is not drunken, not greedy, not boastful, not given to laughter, not bold, not abusive; whether he is obedient to his father, his mother, his teachers and his tutors; and above all, whether he has not abused the bloom of his youth. What concerns his parents and their parents is gathered from witnesses and from records that are kept publicly. For when an Indian dies, one magistrate appointed by the laws comes to his door to record how he lived; and if the magistrate lies or is deceived, the laws forbid him from ever holding any office again, as one who has falsified the life of a man. The qualities of the youths themselves they learn by looking at them. For the eyes disclose many of the habits of human beings, and much lies in the eyebrows and cheeks for judging and observing, from which wise men and students of nature behold the minds of men as images in a mirror. For since philosophy is held in great esteem here, and has this honor among the Indians, it is wholly necessary that those who approach it be thoroughly examined and put to countless tests. How we pursue it under teachers, and how philosophy among us is subject to scrutiny, I have clearly said; and my own case stands thus.
31| I was born of a grandfather who was a king and bore my name, and of a father who was a private man. For my father was left behind a mere youth, and two of his kinsmen became his guardians according to the laws of the Indians; but they conducted the royal business on his behalf neither well, by the Sun, nor moderately, so that they appeared harsh to their subjects and the rule had a bad name. Some of the powerful men therefore conspired against them, attacked them at a festival, and killed them as they sacrificed to the Indus; and they themselves leaped into the rule and seized the state. My father’s kinsmen, then, fearing for him, since he had not yet reached his sixteenth year, sent him over the Hyphasis to the king there. This king rules over more than I do, and his country is far happier than this one. When the king wished to make him his son, my father declined, saying that he would not contend with Fortune, who had taken the rule from him, but asked the king to allow him to philosophize by going to the wise men, for so he would more easily endure the troubles at home. When the king wished also to restore him to his father’s rule, he said: ‘If you perceive that I am genuinely philosophizing, restore me; if not, let me be as I am.’ So the king himself came to the wise men and said that he would obtain great things from them if they would look after the boy, who was already noble in nature; and they, seeing something more in him, were glad to give him a share of their wisdom and taught him eagerly, since he applied himself fully to learning. In the seventh year the king fell ill, and it was then that he died; he sent for my father, appointed him partner in the rule with his son, and betrothed to him his daughter, who was of marriageable age. But my father, when he saw the king’s son overcome by flatterers and wine and such evils, and full of suspicion toward him, said: ‘Keep these things yourself and glut yourself on the whole rule; for it would be foolish for one who was unable to win even the kingdom that belonged to him to seem boldly to come after one that does not. Give me your sister instead; for this alone of your possessions is enough for me.’ And having received the marriage, he lived near the wise men in seven prosperous villages, which the king gave his sister for her girdle. I am the child of this marriage, and my father, having schooled me in the things of the Greeks, brings me to the wise men, perhaps before the proper age, for I was then twelve years old; and they brought me up just as they would their own child, for those whom they receive knowing the Greek tongue they love the more, as already belonging to them by likeness of character.
32| When my parents died, not long after one another, the wise men themselves bade me, when I was nineteen years old, to travel to the villages and see to my own affairs. But my excellent uncle had already taken the villages from me, and had not even left me the small plots my father had held, saying that they all belonged to his own rule, and that I might get great things from him if he let me live. So I gathered a contribution from my mother’s freedmen and had four attendants. And while I was reading the play The Children of Heracles, someone arrived from here bringing a letter from a man who was a friend of my father, who told me to cross the river Hydraotes and meet him about the rule here, for there were many hopes that I could recover it if I did not delay. Some god, I think, put the play into my mind, and I followed the omen; and when I had crossed the river, I heard that one of those who had seized the rule by force was dead, and that the second was being besieged in this very palace. I went on, then, pressing forward and shouting to the folk of the villages I was passing through, declaring myself the son of a certain man and on my way to my own rule; and they, rejoicing and greeting me, sent me forward, thinking me like my grandfather. They had daggers and bows, and we were always growing in number; and when I came up to the gates, the people here received me so gladly that they kindled torches at the Sun’s altar, came out in front of the gates and led me here, singing many praises of my father and my grandfather. As for the drone inside, they shut him in around the wall, although I begged that he should not be killed in such a way.”
33| Apollonius answered: “You have gone through, quite precisely, the return of the Heracleidae, and the gods are to be praised for their purpose, since they helped a noble man to return as he came to his own. But tell me this about the wise men: did they not once come under Alexander, and, being brought to him, philosophize about the sky?” “Those were the Oxydracae,” said Phraotes. “That nation is always claiming freedom and is equipped for war, and they say they practice wisdom without knowing anything good. But those who are truly wise lie between the Hyphasis and the Ganges, and Alexander never even came to this country, not because he feared anything in it, but because, I think, the sacrifices gave him a sign. And even supposing he crossed the Hyphasis and proved able to capture the country around them, the stronghold in which they dwell he could not have mastered, not if he had led ten thousand Achilleses and thirty thousand Ajaxes. For they do not fight those who approach, but, being sacred and dear to the gods, they drive them off with portents from Zeus and thunderbolts. At any rate, they say that when the Egyptian Heracles and Dionysus overran the nation of the Indians under arms, they once drove against them, devising siege engines and testing the place at the same time. The wise men offered no resistance, but, as it appeared to those men, stayed quiet; but when they themselves approached, fiery blasts drove them back, and thunderbolts whirling downward fell upon their arms; and Heracles is said to have lost his shield there, which was of gold, and the wise men made it a dedication, both for the fame of Heracles and for the figure on the shield. For Heracles himself is shown on it, marking the boundary at Gades, making the mountains his pillars, and drawing the Ocean in toward the inner lands; which makes plain that it was the Egyptian Heracles, and not the Theban, who went to Gades and became the setter of the bounds of the earth.”
34| While they were talking in this way, the hymn came in, together with a pipe; and when Apollonius asked the king what the revel meant, he said: “The Indians sing exhortations to the king when he is about to go to sleep, so that his dreams may be good and he may rise up a good king, and easy of approach for his subjects.” “How then, my king,” said Apollonius, “are you disposed toward this? For it is you, I take it, they pipe to.” “I do not laugh at it,” said Phraotes, “for it must be accepted for the sake of the custom; yet I need no exhortation, for whatever a king does moderately and well, he does rather as a favor to himself than to his subjects.”
35| After this conversation they went to rest, and when day began to show, the king himself came to the chamber in which Apollonius and his companions were sleeping, and feeling his way to the couch, he addressed the man and asked what he was thinking: “For you are surely not asleep,” he said, “drinking water and laughing at wine.” “Do you suppose,” said Apollonius, “that those who drink water do not sleep?” “They sleep,” said Phraotes, “but a thin sleep, one which we might say settles only on the tips of their eyes and not on the mind.” “On both,” said Apollonius, “and perhaps more upon the mind; since if the mind is not still, the eyes will not receive sleep either. At any rate madmen cannot sleep, because of the leaping of the mind; as their thought goes from one thing to another, they look up more fiercely and more shamelessly, like the sleepless among serpents. Since then, my king, the work of sleep has been clearly set out, and what it shows to men, let us consider what the water-drinker will lose in sleep compared with the drunken man.” “Do not play the sophist,” said the king. “If you suppose a drunken man, he will not sleep this sleep, for his mind, raving like a Bacchant, will whirl him about and fill him with disturbance. All those who try to sleep off drunkenness seem to be sent up to the roof, and again to be underground, and a whirl falls upon them, such as is said to befall Ixion. I do not ask you, then, to consider the drunken man, but the one who has drunk wine and is still sober: consider how he will sleep, and how far better than the man who takes no wine.”
36| Apollonius then called Damis and said: “The argument is against a formidable man, one well practiced in conversation.” “I see,” said Damis; “and perhaps this is what it means to meet the man with the black rump. The argument he has stated takes me quite captive too; it is time, then, for you, now you are awake, to bring it to its end.” Apollonius raised his head and said: “Well then, I shall show how much we water-drinkers have the advantage in sleeping more sweetly, holding to your own argument. That the mind is disturbed in drunkards and they are in a more frenzied state, you have said clearly; for we see those held by drink fancying that they behold a pair of moons and a pair of suns, whereas those who have drunk less, even if they are quite sober, think none of these things, but are full of cheerfulness and pleasure, which falls upon them, often not even from good fortune; such men rehearse lawsuits though they have never yet spoken in a court, and say they are rich when they have not a drachma at home. These, my king, are the experiences of frenzy; for pleasure itself stirs the mind, and I know many who think they are doing very well who cannot sleep but leap out of sleep, and this would be how even good fortune brings its cares. There are also drugs for sleep devised by men, which they drink or rub on and then sleep, stretching themselves out as though dead; and they rise with a kind of forgetfulness, and are rather somewhere else than where they seem to be.” That what is drunk, or rather what is poured over the soul and the body, brings in a sleep that is neither genuine nor natural, but either deep and half-dead, or shallow and torn apart by the things that rush in upon it, you will perhaps agree, even when the drinks are good ones, unless you care more for contentiousness than for debate. But my drinking companions see what exists as existing, and what does not exist they neither write down for themselves nor sketch in imagination; they have never yet seemed light, nor full of sluggishness or foolishness, nor merrier than is fitting, but are steady and full of reasoning, the same in the late afternoon as at the hour when the marketplace is full. For these men do not nod off, even if they keep busy far into the night. Sleep does not drive them out like a master pressing upon a neck enslaved by wine, but they appear free and upright; and when they fall asleep, they receive sleep with a clean soul, neither lifted out of it by good fortune nor leaping out of it because of some misfortune. For the sober soul is in due measure toward both of these and is overcome by neither passion, and so it sleeps most sweetly and painlessly, not driven out of its sleep.
37| Moreover, the prophecy that comes from dreams, which seems the most divine of human things, is discerned more easily by the soul when it is not clouded by wine but receives it undefiled and surveys it from every side. At any rate the interpreters of visions, whom the poets call dream-diviners, would answer no vision until they had first asked the hour at which it was seen. If it is a morning vision, from the sleep around dawn, they interpret it as the soul prophesying soundly, once it has washed off the wine; but if it comes around the first sleep or in the middle of the night, when the soul has sunk deep and is still clouded by the wine, they decline to give an answer, being wise. That the gods too approve of this, and place oracular power in sober souls, I shall show clearly. There was among the Greeks, my king, a man, Amphiaraus, a seer.” “I know,” said Phraotes, “you mean the son of Oicles, whom the earth swallowed alive as he was returning from Thebes.” “This man, my king,” said Apollonius, “now gives oracles in Attica by sending dreams to those who consult him, and the priests, taking the consultant, forbid him food for one day and wine for three, so that his soul may draw in the oracles shining clearly; but if wine were a good drug for sleep, the wise Amphiaraus would have ordered the visitors to be brought into his sanctuary prepared in the opposite way, full of wine like jars. I could name many other well-known oracles among Greeks and barbarians, in which the priest draws in water, not wine, and then utters what comes from the tripod. Consider me also inspired by a god, my king, and all who drink water; for we are seized by the nymphs and are Bacchants of sobriety.” “Will you then, Apollonius,” said Phraotes, “make me too a member of your band?” “If you will not seem tiresome to your subjects,” said Apollonius; “for philosophy in a king, if it is moderate and relaxed, produces a marvelous blend, as shows in you; but philosophy that is strict and overstretched is tiresome, my king, and appears beneath your royal state, and the envious would think it had a measure of vanity in it.”
38| After this conversation, since it was already day, they went outside. Apollonius, realizing that the king must give a hearing to embassies and the like, said: “You, my king, attend to what belongs to your rule, and give me this time for the Sun, for I must offer my customary prayer.” “And may he hear you as you pray,” said Phraotes, “for he will be gracious to all who delight in your wisdom. I shall wait for you to come back; for there are certain cases I have to judge, and if you are present at them, you will help me greatly.”
39| When Apollonius came back, when the day was already well advanced, he asked about the cases Phraotes had judged. “Today I did not judge,” said Phraotes, “for the sacrifices did not permit me.” “Do you then,” said Apollonius, “make these decisions also by sacrifices, as you do your marches and campaigns?” “Yes, by Zeus,” said Phraotes, “for here too there is danger, if the judge is carried away from what is straight.” This seemed well said to Apollonius, and he asked him again what the case was that he was to judge. “For I see you,” he said, “standing perplexed about how to cast your vote.” “I admit I am perplexed,” said Phraotes, “and so I make you my adviser. A man sold land to another, and in it a treasure lay hidden, not yet known; some time later the earth split and revealed a chest of gold. The man who sold the land says it belongs rather to himself, for he would never have parted with the land had he known in advance of the wealth in it; but the buyer claims that what he found in land that was now his own is his by purchase. Each man’s claim is just, and I should seem foolish if I ordered both men to split the gold, since even an old woman could arbitrate that.” Apollonius answered: “That these two men are not philosophers is shown by their quarreling over gold; but you will seem to me to judge best if you reflect on this: that the gods take care first of those who philosophize with virtue, and second of those who are free from fault and have never been thought to do wrong. To the philosophers they grant the power to discern rightly things divine and human, and to the others who are good they grant a sufficient livelihood, so that they may never become unjust for lack of necessities. It seems to me, my king, that you should weigh these two as on a balance and examine the life of both; for the gods would not, I think, take away from the one even the land, unless he were worthless, and give the other in addition what lies beneath the land, unless he were better than the seller.” Both came to be judged on the next day, and the seller was shown to be a violent man who had neglected the sacrifices he ought to have offered to the gods in the earth, while the other appeared a reasonable man who served the gods most piously. So the judgment of Apollonius prevailed, and the good man went away holding the treasure as from the gods.
40| When the case had gone in this way, Apollonius went up to the Indian and said: “Today is the third of the days on which you made me your guest, my king, and at tomorrow’s dawn I must go out, following the law.” “But the law,” said Phraotes, “is not yet addressing you, for you may stay tomorrow also, since you arrived after midday.” “I am glad of the hospitality,” said Apollonius, “for you seem to me to be using sophistry on the law because of me.” “If I could even have repealed it,” said Phraotes, “I would have, for your sake. But tell me this, Apollonius: the camels on which they say you ride, do they not bring you from Babylon?” “From there,” said Apollonius, “Vardanes having given them.” “Will they still be able to carry you away, having already come so many stadia from Babylon?” Apollonius was silent, but Damis said: “This man, my king, does not yet understand the length of the journey, nor the nations through which our road still lies, but, as though he would have you and Vardanes everywhere, he considers coming among the Indians a game. Indeed he has not admitted to you how matters stand with the camels; for they are in such poor condition that they are rather carried by us, and others are needed. For if they should kneel down somewhere in the deserts of India, we shall sit driving the vultures and wolves away from the camels, and none of us will drive them away from ourselves, for we shall perish as well.” The king took him up. "I will remedy that," he said. "I will give you other camels (four, I think, is what you need), and the satrap in charge of the Indus will send another four to Babylon. On the Indus I keep a herd of camels, every one of them white."

"And will you not give us a guide, king?" said Damis.

"Yes, and I will give the guide a camel too, and provisions," he said. "And I shall also send word to Iarchas, eldest of the wise men, so that he may receive Apollonius as a man no worse than himself, and you as philosophers, the followers of a divine man."

The Indian also offered gold, and gems, and linen cloths, and countless things of that kind. Apollonius said that he had enough gold, since Vardanes had given it to the guide without anyone seeing; but he accepted the linen cloths, because they resembled the worn cloak of the ancients, the truly Attic ones. And picking up one of the gems, he said, "Excellent stone, how timely and not without the gods' help I have found you!" He had perceived, I suppose, some secret and divine power in it. Damis and his companions would not accept gold either, but they took a good handful of the gems, intending to dedicate them to the gods when they returned to their own homes.
41| They stayed on the following day as well, because the Indian would not release them, and he gave them the letter to Iarchas, which was written as follows:

"King Phraotes to Iarchas his teacher and to those with him, greetings. Apollonius, a very wise man, considers you wiser than himself and has come to learn your teachings. Send him back, then, knowing all that you know; for none of your teachings will be lost, since he speaks better than anyone and has a good memory. Let him see, too, the throne on which you seated me, father Iarchas, when you gave me the kingdom. His followers too deserve praise, because they have given themselves over to such a man. Farewell to you, and to all of you."
42| They drove out of Taxila and, after traveling a two days' journey, came to the plain where Porus is said to have fought against Alexander. They say they saw gates on it which enclosed nothing, but had been built to carry trophies. For on them stood a statue of Alexander mounted on a four-pole chariot, just as he stands at Issus over the satraps of Darius. A little distance from each other, they say, two more gates had been built, one bearing Porus and the other Alexander, who had come to terms, I suppose, after the battle; for one seems to be greeting the other, and the other to be bowing down before him.
43| After crossing the river Hydraotes and passing through several peoples, they reached the Hyphasis. Thirty stadia from it they came upon altars inscribed: TO AMMON THE FATHER AND HERACLES HIS BROTHER AND ATHENA FORETHOUGHT AND OLYMPIAN ZEUS AND THE SAMOTHRACIAN CABIRI AND THE SUN OF INDIA AND APOLLO OF DELPHI. They say too that a bronze pillar had been set up, inscribed: ALEXANDER STOPPED HERE. We should consider the altars to be Alexander's, honoring the limit of his own empire; but the pillar, I think, was set up by the Indians beyond the Hyphasis, who were proud that Alexander had advanced no farther.

======== Life of Apollonius — Book III ========

1| About the Hyphasis, how far it runs through India and what is remarkable about it, this is what one should know. The springs of this river gush out of a plain and are navigable right from there, but farther on they become impassable even for boats. For tips of rock rise alternately just above the water, and the current is forced to wind around them, which makes the river unnavigable. Its breadth is like that of the Ister, which is held to be the largest among all the rivers that flow through Europe. It grows similar trees along its banks, and a perfume flows from the trees which the Indians make into an ointment for weddings; if the guests gathered for the wedding do not sprinkle the bridal couple with this perfume, the marriage is considered incomplete and not joined to win the favor of Aphrodite. They say that the grove along the river is dedicated to this goddess, and so are the peacock fish, which this river alone among all rivers breeds. They have named them after the bird, since their crests are dark blue, their scales spotted, and their tails golden and able to fold back whenever they wish. A certain creature also lives in this river, resembling a white worm. People melt it down and make oil from it, and from this oil, it turns out, fire is produced, and nothing but glass can hold it. This creature is caught for the king alone, for the capture of walls. For when the fat touches the battlements, it calls up a fire stronger than all the means of putting it out that men have devised against incendiary weapons.
2| They say that wild asses too are caught in these marshes, and that these beasts have a horn on the forehead with which they fight like bulls, and not ignobly. The Indians make this horn into a drinking cup; for whoever drinks from it, they say, will not fall ill on that day, nor feel pain if he is wounded, and he could pass through fire and could not be overcome even by the poisons that are drunk to do harm. The cup belongs to kings, and the hunt is reserved for the king alone. Apollonius says that he saw the beast and admired its nature; but when Damis asked him whether he accepted the story about the cup, he said, "I will accept it if I learn that the king of the Indians here is immortal. For a man who offers me or anyone else a drink that wards off disease and is so healthful, is it not much more likely that he would pour it out for himself and drink from this horn every day until he was drunk? For no one, I suppose, will fault getting drunk on that."
3| There, too, they say they came upon a woman who was black all over from her head to her breasts and white all over from her breasts to her feet. They themselves fled from her as from a portent, but Apollonius joined hands with the woman and perceived what she was. Such an Indian woman, it turns out, is consecrated to Aphrodite, and a dappled woman is born for the goddess, just as Apis is for the Egyptians.
4| From there, they say, they crossed the part of the Caucasus that stretches down to the Red Sea, and it is densely covered with forests of spice-bearing trees. The ridges of the mountain bear cinnamon, which resembles young vine shoots, and the test of this spice is the goat. For if someone holds out cinnamon to a goat, it will whimper at his hand like a dog, and when he goes away it will follow him with its nose pressed against the cinnamon, and if the goatherd drags it away it will wail as though torn from the lotus. On the cliffs of the mountain grow tall frankincense trees and many other kinds, among them the pepper trees, whose farmers are monkeys. They did not leave out what this tree resembles either, and I will explain it in the way it has been told. The pepper tree resembles the chaste-tree of the Greeks, both in other respects and in the cluster of its fruit. It grows on sheer crags out of reach of human beings, and a whole nation of monkeys is said to live there, in the recesses of the mountain and wherever it is hollowed out. The Indians value these monkeys highly, because they harvest the pepper, and they keep the lions away from them with dogs and weapons. For a lion attacks a monkey when it is sick, to get a remedy, since this flesh stops its sickness, and when it is old, to get food; for when lions have grown too old for hunting deer and boars, they devour the monkeys, using what strength they have left for this. The people, however, do not stand by and watch; they regard these creatures as their benefactors and take up the spear against the lions on their behalf. For what is done about the pepper-trees is this. The Indians go up to the trees below and strip off the fruit, and make small threshing-floors around the trees, and gather the pepper around them, throwing it down as though it were something worthless and of no concern to men. But the monkeys above, who have been watching this from places that cannot be reached, when night has fallen imitate the work of the Indians, and tearing off the clusters of the trees they carry them and throw them onto the threshing-floors; and at daybreak the Indians take up heaps of the spice without having labored at all, but at their ease and sleeping.
5| After crossing over the mountain, they say they saw a level plain cut up into ditches full of water. Some of these ran crosswise, others straight, drawn from the river Ganges, forming boundaries for the country and led onto the plains whenever the land was thirsty. They say that this land is the best in India and the largest of the allotments there, fifteen days’ journey in length to the Ganges, and eighteen reckoned from the sea as far as the Monkeys' Mountain, along which it extends. The whole country is plain, black-soiled, and bears everything abundantly. For in it they saw ears of grain standing as tall as reeds, and beans three times the size of the Egyptian, and sesame and millet all of extraordinary size. Here too, they say, the nuts grow, many of which are dedicated in temples in our part of the world as curiosities. The vines grow small, like those of the Lydians and Maeonians, but their wine is sweet and has the scent of flowers as soon as the grapes are gathered. Here, they say, they also came upon a tree resembling the laurel, from which a calyx grows shaped like the largest pomegranate, and an apple lies in the calyx, dark blue, like the calyces of hyacinths, and sweeter than anything that comes from the seasons.
6| As they went down the mountain they say they chanced upon a hunt of dragons, about which I must speak. For it would be very foolish if much were said by those who give their minds to such matters about the hare and how it is caught and will be caught, while we passed over an account of a noble and more than human hunt, when it was not passed over by the man about whom I have written this. The whole country of India is girdled by dragons of immense length; the marshes are crowded with them, the mountains are full of them, and no hill is bare of them. The marsh dragons are sluggish and thirty cubits long, and have no crest standing up, but are like the female dragons; their backs are quite black, and they are less scaly than the others. And Homer has touched on the matter more wisely than most poets: for the dragon at Aulis, which lived by the spring, he called blood-red on the back, whereas the other poets say that its counterpart in the grove of Nemea also has a crest, which we should not find among the marsh ones.
7| Those that live under the foothills and the hills go down to the plains to hunt, and surpass the marsh dragons in everything; for they reach a greater length, and are borne along faster than the swiftest rivers, and nothing escapes them. These also grow a crest, which on the young rises only moderately, but as they reach full growth increases with them and rises to a great height, and then they become fiery-red and saw-toothed. They also grow beards, hold their necks high, and their scales gleam like silver, while the pupils of their eyes are a stone like fire; and they say this stone has extraordinary power for many secret purposes. The plains dragon is a lucky find for the hunters when it has dragged down one of the elephants, since this destroys both beasts. And for those who catch dragons the profit is the eyes, the skin, and the teeth. The teeth in other respects resemble those of the largest boars, but thinner and twisted, and the point is not worn smooth, like those of great fish.
8| The mountain dragons show golden scales and exceed the dragons of the plain in length; they have curling beards, golden too, and their brows overhang more than those of the plain dragons, and beneath the brow lies an eye that is terrible and stares with a shameless gaze. They give out a sound like that of bronze when they ripple their way along the ground, and from their crests, which glow red as flame, a fire leaps out brighter than a torch. These dragons even catch elephants, and they themselves are taken by the Indians in this way. The Indians weave golden letters into a scarlet cloth and lay it before the dragon’s lair, having charmed the letters with a spell of sleep; by this the dragon’s eyes, which otherwise never turn aside, are overcome. They also sing over him much of their secret wisdom, by which he is drawn out, and putting his neck out of the lair he falls asleep upon the letters. Then the Indians rush upon him where he lies and drive their axes into him, and having cut off his head they carry off as plunder the stones inside it. For stones, they say, are stored in the heads of the mountain dragons, bright in appearance and flashing every color, and of an unspeakable power, like the ring which they say belonged to Gyges. Often, however, the dragon seizes the Indian, axe, craft and all, and carries him off into his own lair, all but shaking the mountain as he goes. These dragons are said to inhabit also the mountains along the Red Sea, and they say a terrible hissing is heard from them, and that they come down to the sea and swim far out into the open water. As for the length of years of this beast, it is impossible to know and incredible to tell. So much I know about dragons.
9| The city below the mountain, which is very large, is called Paraca, they say, and in the middle of it a great many dragons’ heads are dedicated, since the Indians there train for this hunt from their youth. They are also said to understand the speech and counsels of animals by eating either the heart or the liver of a dragon. As they went on, they thought they heard a pipe, as of some herdsman marshaling his flock; and it turned out that white deer were being herded, and the Indians milk them, believing their milk to be nourishing.
10| From there, traveling a four days’ journey through prosperous, well-worked country, they say they came to the stronghold of the sages. The guide ordered his camel to kneel and leapt down from it, terrified and drenched in sweat. Apollonius understood where he had come, and laughing at the Indian’s fear, he said, “This fellow, I think, even if he had sailed into harbor after crossing some long stretch of open sea, would be distressed at the land and afraid of being at anchor.” With these words he told the camel to kneel, for it was by now accustomed to such things. What made the guide so terrified was coming near to the sages; for the Indians fear them more than their own king, because the king himself, to whom the country is subject, asks these men about everything he is to say and do, just as people do who send to a god for an oracle; and they indicate to him what is better to do, and what is not better they forbid and warn him against.
11| As they were about to lodge in the village nearby — it lies less than a stadium from the hill of the sages — they say they saw a young man come running, the blackest of all the Indians, and between his brows there gleamed a crescent-shaped mark. I hear that in later times this same thing appeared on Menon, the foster son of Herodes the sophist, when he was a lad — he was of Ethiopian birth — but that as he advanced to manhood this gleam faded and vanished along with his youthful bloom. The Indian, they say, carried a golden anchor, which the Indians regard as a herald’s staff, because it holds everything fast.
12| Running up to Apollonius, he addressed him in Greek. This did not yet seem remarkable, since everyone in the village spoke Greek; but his greeting, “Hail,” followed by his name, astonished the others, while it gave Apollonius confidence about the purpose for which he had come. Looking at Damis, he said, “We have come to men who are truly wise, for they seem to know things beforehand.” At once he asked the Indian what he should do, for he was already longing for their company. The Indian said, “These men must lodge here, but you should come as you are; for they themselves command it.”
13| That “they themselves” at once struck Apollonius as Pythagorean, and he followed gladly. The hill on which the sages are settled is, they say, about the height of the Athenian acropolis, rising up from the plain, and a rock of like natural strength runs around it in a circle and fortifies it. In many places on this rock can be seen the prints of cloven hooves and the marks of beards and faces, and here and there also what look like the backs of figures that have slipped and fallen. For they say that Dionysus, when he made an attempt on the place together with Heracles, ordered the Pans to attack it, as being able to cause an earthquake; but, blasted by thunder from the sages, they fell, one this way and one that, and the rocks took the impress, as it were, of the shapes of their failure. Around the hill they say they saw a cloud, in which the Indians live, visible and invisible as they wish. Whether the hill had other gates as well they did not know; for the cloud about it does not allow it to stand open, nor yet does it appear to shut it in.
14| He himself, following the Indian, went up by the side of the hill that faces most nearly south, and first he saw a well four fathoms deep, whose gleam, of the deepest blue, was sent up to its mouth; and whenever the sun stood over it at midday, the gleam was drawn up by the ray and rose aloft, presenting the appearance of a hot rainbow. Later he learned about the well that the earth beneath it was realgar, and that they held the water to be secret: no one drinks it or draws it up, and it is regarded as the water of oaths for all the surrounding region of India. Near this, he says, was a crater of fire, which sends up a leaden flame; no smoke rises from it, nor any smell, and this crater has never overflowed, but wells up only so far that it does not spill over the pit. Here the Indians are purified of involuntary offenses, and so the sages name the well the Well of Proof, and name the fire the Fire of Pardon. They also say they saw two jars of black stone, the jars of rains and of winds. The jar of rains, if India is oppressed by drought, is opened and sends up clouds and moistens the whole land; and if rains are excessive, it is closed and holds them in. The jar of winds does the same, I think, as the bag of Aeolus: for they open the jar a little and let out one of the winds to blow in its season, and from this the land gains strength. They say they came upon statues of gods; had these been Indian or Egyptian, there would be nothing remarkable in it, but the most ancient of those among the Greeks — the statue of Athena Polias, that of Delian Apollo, that of Dionysus of the Marshes, that of the Amyclaean, and all others equally ancient — these the Indians set up and worship with Greek rites; and they say they inhabit the middle of India. They make the hill the navel of this mountain region, and on it they celebrate the rites of a fire which they say they themselves draw down from the sun’s rays; and to this fire they sing their hymn every day at midday.
15| What sort of men these are, and how they live on the hill, the man himself relates. For in one of his discourses to the Egyptians he says: “I saw Indian Brahmans living on the earth and not on it, walled without walls, and possessing nothing but what belongs to all.” This he wrote more wisely; but Damis says that they sleep on the ground, spreading the earth with grasses of their own choosing, and that he saw them walking aloft two cubits above the ground — not to work wonders, for the men decline such display, but because whatever they do in rising from the earth together with the Sun, they do as rites befitting the god. As for the fire which they draw down from the ray, although it is bodily, they neither burn it on an altar nor keep it in ovens; but like the gleams reflected from the sun and from water, so it is seen aloft and quivering in the air. The Sun they entreat for the seasons, over which he himself presides, that they may come to the earth in due time and that India may prosper; and at night they beseech the ray not to be vexed at the night but to stay as it was drawn down by them. Such, then, is the meaning of Apollonius’ saying that the Brahmans are on the earth, and yet not on it. “Walled without walls” refers to the air under which they live: for though they seem to camp in the open, they raise a shade above themselves, and rain does not sprinkle them when it falls, and they are in the sun whenever they themselves wish. “Possessing nothing, they have what belongs to all” Damis explains thus: all the springs that leap up from the earth for the bacchants, when Dionysus shakes them and the earth together, are present also for these Indians, both when they are feasted and when they feast others. So Apollonius is right to say that those who provide what they want not by preparation but on the spot have what they do not have. They make a practice of wearing their hair long, as the Lacedaemonians once did, and the Thurians, the Tarentines and the Melians, and all who held Laconian ways in esteem; they bind on a white headband, they go barefoot, and they arranged their clothing much like the exomis. The material of their clothing is a wool that the earth grows of itself, white like the Pamphylian, but the earth brings it forth softer, and a grease like oil drips from it. This they make into sacred clothing, and if anyone other than these Indians tries to pull it up, the earth will not let go of the wool. As for the ring and the staff, both of which they carry, their power, he says, can accomplish anything, but the two are honored as secrets.
16| As Apollonius approached, the other sages came forward to greet him with their hands, but Iarchas remained seated on a high chair — it was of black bronze and adorned with golden figures, while the chairs of the others were of bronze but plain and less high, for they sat below Iarchas — and seeing Apollonius he greeted him in Greek and asked for the Indian’s letter. When Apollonius marveled at his foreknowledge, Iarchas said that one letter was even missing from the epistle, naming a delta, which had slipped past the writer. And this proved to be so. After reading the letter he asked, “Apollonius, what do you think of us?” “How else,” he said, “than as my coming here on your account shows — by a road that no one from my part of the world has yet traveled?” “And what more do you suppose we know than you yourself?” “I,” he said, “consider your knowledge wiser and far more divine. But if I should find among you nothing more than what I know, I shall have learned this too, that there is nothing left for me to learn.” The Indian answered, “Other people ask those who arrive where they come from and for what purpose; but with us the first display of wisdom is not to be ignorant of who has come. Put this to the test first.” With these words he went through Apollonius’ family on his father’s side and on his mother’s, everything done at Aegae, how Damis had come to him, and whatever they had discussed on the road or had seen another discussing; all this the Indian strung together without pausing for breath and clearly, as if he had shared the journey with them. Apollonius was astounded and asked how he knew. “You too,” he said, “have come with a share of this wisdom, but not yet all of it.” “Will you teach me, then, all the wisdom?” he said. “Yes, and ungrudgingly,” he replied, “for that is wiser than to begrudge and hide what deserves earnest study; and in any case, Apollonius, I observe that you are full of Memory, whom of all the gods we love most.” “Have you then perceived,” he said, “what my nature is?” “We, Apollonius,” he said, “see all the forms of the soul, tracking them out by countless signs. But since midday is near and we must prepare what is fitting for the gods, let us now attend to that, and afterward let us converse about whatever you wish; and be present at all that we do.” “By Zeus,” he said, “I would wrong the Caucasus and the Indus, which I crossed to come to you, if I did not take my fill of all that you do.”
17| “Take your fill,” he said, “and let us go.” So they came to a spring of water, which Damis, when he saw Dirce in Boeotia later, says resembled it. First they undressed; then they rubbed their heads with an ointment like amber, which heated the Indians so much that steam rose from their bodies and the sweat ran off them as off people bathing in fire. Then they plunged into the water, and after bathing thus they walked toward the sanctuary, garlanded and wholly given to the hymn. Standing around in the formation of a chorus, with Iarchas as their leader, they struck the ground with their staves held upright, and the earth, arching like a wave, sent them up two cubits into the air. They sang a song like the paean of Sophocles which is sung at Athens to Asclepius. When they had come down to the ground, Iarchas summoned the youth who bore the anchor and told him, “See to Apollonius' friends.” He, going and coming back far more quickly than the swiftest birds, said, “I have looked after them.” When they had performed most of the rites, they rested on their seats, and Iarchas said to the youth, “Bring forth Phraotes' throne for Apollonius the wise, so that he may converse from it.”
18| When he was seated, Iarchas said, “Ask whatever you wish, for you have come to men who know everything.” So Apollonius asked whether they knew themselves too, supposing that Iarchas, like the Greeks, would consider it hard to know oneself; but he, turning the question contrary to what Apollonius expected, said, “We know everything because we know ourselves first; for none of us would approach this philosophy of ours without first knowing himself.” Apollonius, recalling what Phraotes had told him, and how one who means to practice philosophy undertakes it only after examining himself, agreed with this statement, for he was convinced of this in his own case also. So he asked again whom they considered themselves to be. “Gods,” he said. When he asked further why, “Because,” he said, “we are good men.” This seemed to Apollonius so full of good learning that he later said it to Domitian as well, in his speech in his own defense.
19| Taking up the questioning again, he said, “And what do you think about the soul?” “What Pythagoras handed down to you,” he said, “we handed down to the Egyptians.” “Would you say, then,” he asked, “just as Pythagoras declared himself to have been Euphorbus, that you too, before you came into this body, were one of the Trojans or the Achaeans, or someone or other?” The Indian replied, “Troy was brought down by the Achaeans who sailed against it in that age, but you Greeks have been destroyed by the stories about it; for since you think the only men were those who fought at Troy, you neglect men more numerous and more divine, such as your own land has borne, and the land of the Egyptians, and the Indians'. Since, then, you asked me about my earlier body, tell me which of those who came against Troy or in its defense you consider the most admirable.” “I,” he said, “consider Achilles, born of Peleus and Thetis; for Homer sings of him as the most beautiful, and great above all the Achaeans, and Homer knows great deeds of his. He also holds in high regard the Ajaxes and men like Nireus, who are sung by him as beautiful and noble next after Achilles.” “Compare with him, Apollonius,” he said, “my ancestor as well, or rather my ancestral body; for Pythagoras, too, took Euphorbus to be just that.”
20| “There was a time,” he said, “when Ethiopians lived here, an Indian race, and there was not yet any Ethiopia; Egypt had its boundary beyond Meroë and the Cataracts, itself containing the springs of the Nile and ending where the river empties. During the time that the Ethiopians lived here, subject to King Ganges, the land fed them sufficiently and the gods cared for them; but when they killed this king, they no longer seemed pure to the other Indians, nor would the land allow them to stay. For the seed they sowed in it, it destroyed before it reached the bud; it brought the women’s births to nothing; it pastured their flocks poorly; and wherever they founded a city, the ground gave way and sank beneath it. Moreover, a phantom of Ganges drove them on as they went, throwing their throng into confusion, and did not let them go until they had sacrificed to the earth the murderers and those whose hands had shed the blood. This Ganges, it seems, was ten cubits tall, and of a beauty such as no human being had ever had, and the child of the river Ganges. When his father was flooding India, he himself turned him aside into the Red Sea and reconciled him with the land; and so the land bore abundantly for him while he lived, and avenged him when he died. “Now since Homer brings Achilles to Troy for Helen’s sake, and says that he had taken twelve cities from the sea, and by land eleven, and that when his woman was taken from him by the king he was carried away into wrath, at which point he seemed unbending and savage, let us set the Indian against this. He was the founder of sixty cities, which are the most renowned in this region — and there is no one who thinks sacking cities more glorious than founding a city — and he drove back the Scythians from beyond the Caucasus when they once marched against this land. To prove oneself a good man by freeing one’s own land is far better than bringing slavery upon a city, and that on behalf of a woman who was in all likelihood carried off not unwillingly. When he had made an alliance with the ruler of the country that Phraotes now rules, and that ruler most lawlessly and wantonly took his wife from him, he did not break his oaths, saying that he had sworn so firmly that even when wronged he would not harm him.
21| “I would tell you more of the man, if I did not shrink from setting myself up for praise; for I am he, you see, and I showed this when I was four years old. This Ganges once fixed seven adamantine swords in the ground so that no terror should come near the country; and when the gods commanded people to come and sacrifice where these were fixed, but did not reveal the place in which they had been fixed, I, being a mere child, led the interpreters to a ditch and told them to dig there, saying that the swords had been deposited in that spot.
22| “And do not marvel yet at my case, that I passed from an Indian into an Indian; for this one here” — and he pointed to a youth about twenty years old — “is gifted for philosophy beyond all men, and he is strong, as you see, and nobly built in body, and he endures fire and every kind of cutting; and yet, being such as he is, he is hostile to philosophy.” “What then, Iarchas,” he said, “is wrong with the youth? It is a strange thing you describe, if one so well framed by nature does not embrace philosophy, nor love learning, and that while living with you.” “He does not live with us,” he said, “but like lions he was caught against his will, and he is kept shut in, but he glares at us from under his brows while we tame and stroke him. This youth was once Palamedes at Troy, and he had Odysseus and Homer as his bitterest opponents: the one contrived plots against him by which he was stoned to death, the other did not grant him so much as a single verse. And since the wisdom he had did him no good, and he did not find a praiser in Homer, by whom many men of no great worth were brought to fame, and he was overcome by Odysseus though he had done no wrong, he has turned against philosophy and laments what befell him. And this is Palamedes, who even writes without having learned his letters.”
23| While they were talking in this way, a messenger came to Iarchas and said, “The king will arrive in the early afternoon to consult with you about his affairs.” “Let him come,” he said, “for he may even go away a better man for having come to know a Greek.” And having said this he took up the earlier discussion again. He asked Apollonius, “Will you tell us of your earliest body, and who you were before this present one?” He said, “Since that one was undistinguished, I remember little of it.” Iarchas took him up: “So you think it undistinguished to have been the helmsman of an Egyptian ship? For that is what I see you were.” “What you say is true, Iarchas,” he said, “for that is exactly what I was; but I consider it not only undistinguished but even despised: worth as much to mankind as ruling and commanding an army, yet ill spoken of by those who have to do with the sea. At any rate, the noblest of the things I did no one at the time thought worthy even of praise.” “And what noble thing will you claim to have done? Was it doubling Malea and Sunium, reining in the ship as it was being swept away, and discerning clearly, at stern and at prow, from which quarter the winds would break loose, and bringing the hull across the reefs among the Hollows of Euboea, where many headlands jut up?”
24| Apollonius said, “Since you are launching me into talk of steering, hear what I think I did rightly then. Phoenician pirates were once lurking about the sea and went around the cities finding out who was carrying what. The pirates’ agents, then, having spotted a splendid cargo on my ship, took me aside and asked how large a share of the freight I would get. I said a thousand, since there were four of us steering the ship. ‘Do you have a house?’ they said. ‘A wretched hut,’ I said, ‘near the island of Pharos, where Proteus once lived long ago.’ ‘Would you like, then,’ they asked me, ‘to have land instead of sea, a house instead of the hut, ten times that freight, and to escape the countless troubles that the swelling sea brings down on helmsmen?’ I said I would like it, but that I did not think it right to turn to robbery, now that I had grown wiser than I used to be and had been thought worthy of crowns for my art. When they went further and said they would give me purses of ten thousand drachmas if I would become what they wanted, I urged them to speak out now, as I would fall short in nothing of becoming wholly their man. They said, then, that they were agents of pirates, and they begged me not to rob them of the capture of the ship, and not to sail back into the city once I had put out from there, but to anchor in the lee of the headland, for the pirate ships were lying in wait around it; and they were willing to swear to me that they would not kill me, and would spare from death any for whom I interceded. “I did not think it safe for myself to admonish them, for I feared that in despair they would fall upon the ship in open water and we would perish somewhere out at sea; so when I had promised to serve them in what they wanted, I said they must swear that they would truly keep to these terms. When they had sworn — for they were talking in a temple — I said, ‘Go to the pirates’ boats, for we will put out by night.’ And I seemed all the more convincing by haggling further about the money, that it should be counted out to me in good coin, and not before they had taken the ship. So they went off, and I made for the open sea, passing beyond the headland.” “Do you consider these, Apollonius,” said Iarchas, “to be deeds of justice?” “Yes,” he said, “and of humanity besides; for not to sell men’s lives, nor to barter away the merchants’ goods, and to be above money though a sailor, embraces, I think, many virtues.”
25| The Indian laughed. “You seem to think,” he said, “that justice means not doing wrong, and so, I suppose, do all the Greeks. For as I once heard from some Egyptians who came here, governors come to you from Rome with the axe held bare over your heads before they even know whether they will be ruling bad men; and you, if they do not sell their verdicts, call them just. I hear that the slave-dealers there do the same: when they arrive bringing you Carian slaves and describe their character to you, they make it a point of praise that the slaves do not steal. So you rate the rulers to whom you say you are subject by standards like these, and you polish them up with the very praises you give to slaves and send them off as men to be envied, or so you imagine. And yet your wisest poets will not allow you to be just and good, even should you desire it. Minos, who outdid everyone in cruelty and with his ships enslaved the peoples on the coasts and in the sea, they honor with a scepter of justice and seat in Hades to judge the souls; while Tantalus, because he was good and shared with his friends the immortality the gods had given him, they shut off from drink and from food. Some of them even hang rocks over him and heap terrible insults on a divine and good man, when I would rather they had made a lake of nectar well up around him, since he pledged others in it with such kindness and without stint.” And as he spoke he showed them a statue on the left, inscribed TANTALUS. The statue was four cubits high. It looked like a man of fifty and was dressed in the Argive fashion, except that he wore his cloak differently, the way the Thessalians do, and he was holding out a cup of a size sufficient for a single thirsty man, in which a draught of pure drink bubbled up without spilling over the rim. What they take it to be, and on what occasion they drink from it, I shall explain shortly. Still, we must suppose that Tantalus is hounded by the poets not for letting his tongue run loose but for sharing the nectar with human beings, and that he has not fallen out of favor with the gods; for if the gods had hated him, he would never have been judged good by the Indians, who are most dear to the gods and do nothing that lies outside the divine.
26| While they were busy with this conversation, an uproar from the village broke in on them: the king had arrived, decked out somewhat in the Median manner and full of pomp. Iarchas was annoyed. “If it were Phraotes who was lodging here,” he said, “you would have seen everything full of silence, as at a mystery.” From this Apollonius understood that this king fell short of Phraotes not in some small part but in the whole of philosophy. Seeing that the sages were taking their ease and preparing none of the things the king would need when he arrived after midday, he said, “Where will the king stay?”

“Here,” they said, “for the business he has come about we discuss at night, since that is also the better time for deliberation.”

“And will a table be set for him when he comes?” he said.

“By Zeus,” they said, “a rich one, with everything there is here.”

“So you live richly?” he said.

“We live sparely,” they said, “for though we could eat more, we are content with little; but the king needs a great deal, because that is what he wants. He will eat nothing that has had life, since that is not lawful here, but sweetmeats and roots and fruits in season, as many as India bears now and as many as next year’s seasons will bring.”
27| “But look,” he said, “here he is.” And indeed the king was advancing with his brother and his son, all of them flashing with gold and gems. When Apollonius started to rise, Iarchas held him down on his seat, saying that this was not their custom either. Damis says that he was not present at these events himself, because he spent that day in the village, but that he heard them from Apollonius and wrote them into his own account. He says, then, that as they sat there the king stretched out his hand to the men as if in prayer, and they nodded as if granting what he asked, and he was overjoyed at the promise, as though he had come to a god. The king's brother and the king's son, a most handsome youth, were treated with no more regard than if they had been slaves of the attendants. After this the Indian rose and, raising his voice, invited the king to take some food; and when he accepted this too with great pleasure, four Pythian tripods came out of their own accord, moving forward like the ones in Homer, with cupbearers of dark bronze beneath them such as the Greeks have in their Ganymedes and Pelopses. The earth spread grasses under them softer than beds. Sweetmeats and breads and vegetables and the season’s fruits for nibbling all came in their order, set out more pleasingly than if cooks had prepared them; and of the tripods two flowed with wine, while of the other two one supplied a spring of hot water and the other of cold. The stones that come from India are set into necklaces and rings among the Greeks on account of their smallness, but among the Indians they are made into wine-jugs and coolers by reason of their size, and into mixing bowls big enough to satisfy four thirsty men at the height of summer. Damis says that the bronze cupbearers drew the wine and the water in due proportion and sent the cups round, as at drinking parties. They reclined as at a common meal, yet without any place of honor for the king, the thing so highly prized among Greeks and Romans; they lay just as it happened, wherever each had made for.
28| When the drinking was well under way, Iarchas said, “I drink to you, king, and pledge you a Greek man,” pointing to Apollonius, who was reclining next to him, and indicating with his hand that he was noble and divine.

The king said, “I have heard that this man and the others lodging in the village are friends of Phraotes.”

“You heard rightly and truly,” he said, “for Phraotes is his host here too.”

“And what does he practice?” he said.

“What else but what Phraotes practices?” he said.

“Then the stranger you describe is a nobody,” he said, “embracing a pursuit that did not let even that man become noble.”

Iarchas said, “King, think more soberly about philosophy and about Phraotes. While you were a boy, your youth excused such talk; but now that you are passing into manhood, let us spare ourselves what is foolish and thoughtless.”

Apollonius, with Iarchas interpreting, said, “And you, king, what has not practicing philosophy given you?”

“All virtue,” he said, “and being identical with the Sun.”

Apollonius, putting a curb on his vanity, said, “Were you a philosopher, you would not think that.”

“And you, my good sir,” he said, “seeing that you practice philosophy, what is your view of yourself?”

“That I seem a good man,” he said, “if I am a philosopher.”

The king raised his hand to heaven. “By the Sun,” he said, “you come here full of Phraotes.”

Apollonius seized on the remark as a windfall and replied, “Then my journey has not been in vain, if I have become full of Phraotes; and if you met him now, you would certainly declare that he is full of me. He even wished to write to you for me, but since he said you were a good man, I refused the trouble of a letter, seeing that nobody wrote to him on my behalf either.”
29| That was the end of the king’s first drunken rudeness: on hearing that Phraotes praised him, he forgot his suspicion, lowered his tone and said, “Welcome, good stranger.”

“And welcome to you, king,” said Apollonius, “for you seem only now to have arrived.”

“Who brought you to us?” he said.

“These men,” he said, “gods and wise men.”

“And what do people say about me among the Greeks, stranger?” he said.

“As much as they say about the Greeks here,” he said.

“For my part,” he said, “I think nothing among the Greeks worth talking about.”

“I shall report that,” he said, “and they will crown you at Olympia.”
30| Then, leaning over toward Iarchas, he said, “Let this man get drunk. But tell me: why do you not admit these men with him, who you say are his brother and his son, to a share of the table, or to any other honor?”

“Because they expect to be kings one day,” he said, “and they must be taught, by being slighted, not to slight others.”

Seeing that the sages numbered eighteen, he asked Iarchas again what it meant that there were so many of them; for it was not a square number, nor among those numbers that are esteemed and honored, like ten and twelve and sixteen and others of that kind.

The Indian replied, “We are not slaves to number, nor is number a slave to us; we are given preference for our wisdom and virtue; at one time we are more than now, at another fewer. I hear, for instance, that my grandfather was enrolled among seventy wise men as the youngest of them, and that when he had reached a hundred and thirty years he was left here alone, because none of those men was left any longer and there was at that time nowhere in India a nature either philosophical or noble. So when the Egyptians wrote him down among the most fortunate of men because for four years he alone held this seat, he urged them to stop reproaching the Indians with the scarcity of their sages. “And we, Apollonius, who have heard from the Egyptians about the ancestral customs of the Eleans and about the Hellanodicae who preside over the Olympic games, ten in number, do not approve of the law laid down for those men. They leave the selection to the lot, which takes no forethought at all, since one of the worse men too might be chosen by the lot. But if they chose the men by merit, or else by vote, would they not still go wrong? Just as much. For since the number ten admits no exception, either, if there were more just men, it would deprive some of them of being honored for it, or, if there were not ten just men, none would be thought just. Hence the Eleans would be far wiser to vary in number from one time to another but remain the same in justice.”
31| While they were earnestly engaged in this, the king kept trying to break in, cutting them off from any conversation and constantly saying something crazy and ignorant. So he asked again what they were discussing so seriously, and Apollonius said, “We are discussing great matters, those held in the highest esteem among the Greeks; but you would think them small, since you say you are prejudiced against everything Greek.”

“Prejudiced I truly am,” he said, “but I want to hear all the same, for I suppose you are talking about the Athenians, the slaves of Xerxes.”

He said, “We are discussing other matters; but since you have brought up the Athenians so absurdly and falsely, tell me this: have you any slaves, king?”

“Twenty thousand,” he said, “and I have not even bought any of them; they were all born in my house.”

So, with Iarchas interpreting, he asked again whether the king himself fled from his own slaves, or his slaves fled from him. The king answered insultingly, “The question is fit for a slave, but still I will answer it: the one who runs away is a slave, and a bad one besides; a master would not run away from someone he is free to torture and whip to shreds.”

“Then, king,” he said, “you have just declared Xerxes a slave of the Athenians, and one who ran away from them like a bad slave; for after being beaten by them in the sea battle in the narrows, and fearing for his rafts on the Hellespont, he fled in a single ship.”

“But he burned Athens with his own hands,” he said.

Apollonius said, “For that piece of daring, king, he paid a penalty like no one else ever has: he went off running away from the very people he thought he had destroyed. For my part, when I consider the career of Xerxes, I would judge that, for the purpose with which he launched his expedition, some had good reason to believe he was Zeus; but for his flight I hold him the most ill-starred of men. For if he had died at the hands of the Greeks, who would ever have been honored with more splendid speeches? For whom would the Greeks have raised a greater tomb? What contest in arms, what contest in music, would not have been instituted in his honor? If figures such as Melicertes and Palaemon, and Pelops the Lydian newcomer, were raised by the Greeks to divine remembrance, though the former died while still at the breast and the latter enslaved Arcadia and the Argolid and the land inside the Isthmus, what honor would not have been paid to Xerxes by men who by nature welcome virtues and count praise of those they conquer as praise of themselves?”
32| As Apollonius said this the king was moved to tears. “My dearest friend,” he said, “what men you show the Greeks to be!”

“Then why, king, were you so hostile to them?”

“Stranger,” he said, “the people who come here from Egypt slander the Greek race. They make themselves out to be holy and wise, and the lawgivers of all the sacrifices and rites the Greeks observe, while they say the Greeks have nothing sound about them but are insolent, a mongrel rabble, lawlessness itself, tellers of myths and marvels, and poor into the bargain, and that they flaunt their poverty not as something to be proud of but as an excuse for stealing. But now that I hear these things from you, and how much they love honor and how decent they are, I make my peace with the Greeks from this day on: I grant them my praise, and my prayers for the Greeks, as far as I can offer them, and the Egyptians will have no credit with me.”

Iarchas said, “I too knew, king, that your ears had been corrupted by these Egyptians, but I said nothing on behalf of the Greeks until you should meet with such a witness as this. Now that a wise man has made you better, let us now share the pledge-cup of Tantalus and then sleep, because of the business we must attend to at night. In the future I will fill you full of Greek discourse, the richest discourse that human beings have, and you will enjoy it, whenever you come. As he spoke he led off the drinking, stooping to the cup first himself; and it gave all of them enough to drink, for the stream kept coming up without stint, as it does when water wells up from springs. Apollonius drank too, since this drink was devised by the Indians for friendship. They make Tantalus its cupbearer, because he was judged the friendliest of men.
33| When they had drunk, the earth received them on beds that it spread beneath them of itself. At midnight they first rose and, lifted into the air, sang a hymn to the sunbeam, as they did at midday, and then met with the king on whatever business he required. According to Damis, Apollonius was not present at what the king discussed with them, but he believes that the meeting concerned secrets of state. At daybreak the king, after sacrificing, came to Apollonius and summoned him to hospitality at the palace, claiming he would send him off to the Greeks as an enviable man. Apollonius thanked him for this but said that he would not put himself in the hands of a man so unlike himself, and that besides, having been abroad longer than was reasonable, he was ashamed before his friends at home, who would think themselves neglected. When the king said he was begging him and was now pressing him in a way unworthy of a free man, he said, “A king who speaks about what he wants in a humbler tone than befits him is plotting something.” Iarchas came up and said, “King, you wrong this holy house by taking a man away from here against his will. Besides, he is one of those who know the future, and he knows that keeping company with you will not turn out to his good, and perhaps will hold nothing good for you either.”
34| So the king went down to the village, since the rule of the sages did not permit the king to remain with them for more than one day; and Iarchas said to the messenger, “We admit Damis too to the secrets here, so let him come; but you see to the others in the village.” When he had arrived, they sat down together as they usually did and allowed Apollonius to put his questions. He asked what they held the cosmos to be made of, and they said, “Of elements.”

“Four of them?” he said.

“Not four,” said Iarchas, “but five.”

“And what fifth could there be,” he said, “besides water and air and earth and fire?”

“The ether,” he said, “which we must regard as the source from which the gods come into being; for everything that breathes air is mortal, while everything that breathes ether is immortal and divine.”

Again he asked which of the elements came into being first, and Iarchas said, “All together, for a living creature is not born a part at a time.”

“Am I to regard the cosmos as a living creature?” he said.

“Yes, if your judgment is sound,” he said, “for it brings all living things to birth.”

“Shall we call it female,” he said, “or of the male and opposite nature?”

“Both,” he said, “for in union with itself it does the work of both mother and father in begetting life, and it feels a love for itself warmer than any one thing feels for another, a love that fits it together and holds it in one; and there is nothing unreasonable in its growing together with itself. And just as the movement of a living creature is the work of its hands and feet and of the mind within it that drives it, so we should consider that the parts of the cosmos too, by virtue of its mind, make themselves serviceable to all things that are born and conceived. Even the sufferings that come from droughts come in accordance with its mind, whenever justice has been cast out and fares in dishonor among men. And this creature is shepherded not by one hand but by many hands that cannot be named, which it employs; and though it is unbridled because of its size, it moves obedient to the rein and easy to guide.
35| “I do not know what example will be adequate to a doctrine so vast and so far beyond the reach of thought, but let us suppose a ship of the kind that Egyptians construct and launch upon our sea, trading Egyptian goods for Indian cargo. There is an ancient ordinance about the Red Sea, which King Erythras laid down when he ruled that sea, that the Egyptians should not sail into it in a long ship but should use a single round-hulled merchantman. So the Egyptians contrive a vessel that is a match for many of other peoples’ ships: they brace its sides with all the joints that hold a ship together, carry its walls and its mast up high, and fix several cabins on it, such as stand on the decks. Many pilots sail this ship under the oldest and wisest of them, and many officers command at the prow, the best and ablest of seamen, men who spring up to the sails; and part of this ship’s crew is even an armed force, since the ship has to be drawn up for battle against the barbarians of the gulf, who live on the right as one sails in, whenever they come out to plunder it. Let us suppose that it is the same with this cosmos, viewing it on the model of a ship at sea. The first and most perfect seat must be given to God, the begetter of this living creature, and the next after it to the gods who pilot its parts; and let us accept the poets’ view, when they declare that heaven holds many gods, the sea many, springs and streams many, the earth’s surface many, and that some are under the earth as well. But the place beneath the earth, if indeed there is one, since they sing of it as horrible and deadly, let us exclude from the cosmos.”
36| When the Indian had finished setting this out, Damis says that he was beside himself with astonishment and cried out aloud: he would never have thought that an Indian could reach such command of the Greek tongue, nor that, even if he knew the language, he could set these things out with such fluency and grace. He praises his look as well, and his smile, and the way he seemed to bring out his opinions not without divine inspiration. Apollonius himself, he says, although he already used words with decorum and without bluster, nonetheless gained something from this Indian, and when he spoke sitting down, as he often did, he was like Iarchas.
37| When the others had praised what had been said as well as the way it was spoken, Apollonius asked again whether they considered the sea or the earth the greater. Iarchas said, “If the earth is compared with the sea, it will be the greater, since it contains the sea; but if it is viewed against the whole substance of water, we should pronounce the earth the lesser, for the water bears it up.”
38| In the middle of these conversations the messenger came up to the sages, bringing Indians who needed to be saved. He led forward a poor woman pleading for her son, who she said was sixteen years old and had been possessed by a daemon for two years; the daemon’s character, she said, was sly and deceitful. When one of the sages asked how she knew this, she said, “My son is rather good-looking, and the daemon is in love with him. It will not let him keep his wits, nor let him go to school or to the archery master, nor even stay at home, but drives him off into desolate places. The boy does not even have his own voice; he speaks in a deep, hollow tone, like a grown man, and he looks out of other eyes rather than his own. I weep over it and tear my cheeks and admonish my son as a mother should, but he does not recognize me. When I was planning the journey here, which I planned a year ago, the daemon revealed himself, using my child as his actor. He said that he was the phantom of a man who had once died in a war, and had died loving his own wife; but when his wife outraged their bed by marrying another man while he had been lying dead only three days, from then on he came to hate loving women and passed over into this boy instead. He promised that if I did not denounce him to you, he would give the boy many fine and good things. “I was somewhat taken in by this, but he has been putting me off for a long time now, and he has my house to himself, with no thought of anything decent or truthful.”

So the sage asked again whether the boy was nearby, and she said he was not; she had done much to make him come, “but he threatens cliffs and pits, and says he will kill my son if I bring a case against him here.”

“Take heart,” said the sage, “for he will not kill him once he has read this.” And drawing a letter from the fold of his robe he gave it to the woman; the letter, it turned out, was addressed to the ghost and was full of threats and terrors.
39| Then a lame man arrived too, already thirty years old, a formidable lion-hunter. A lion had sprung on him and dislocated his hip, so that one leg was out of line with the other. But once hands had stroked his hip, the young man was able to walk upright. A man whose eyes had wasted away went off with all their light restored, and another, whose hand had been powerless, left with it fully under his control. A woman who had already had difficult labor with seven pregnancies was cured in this way, when her husband pleaded for her: he told the husband that whenever his wife was giving birth he should bring a live hare under his cloak into the room where she was in labor, walk around her, and at the same time release the hare; for the womb would come out along with the baby unless the hare were carried out of doors at once.
40| Again, when a father said that he had had children but that they had died just as they began to drink wine, Iarchas replied, “They were better off dying, for they would not have escaped madness, since it seems they sprang from too hot a seed. Your offspring must therefore keep away from wine; and so that they may never even come to desire wine, if another child is born to you (and one was born seven days ago, as I see), you must watch for where the owl nests, take its eggs, and give them to the baby to chew, boiled just enough. If it eats some of these before it tastes wine, a hatred of wine will grow up in it, and it will be of the soberest disposition, tempered only by the heat that is in its nature.” So they drank their fill of all this and were amazed at the men’s wisdom in every matter, and every day they asked a great many questions and were asked many themselves.
41| Both of them took part in the conversations on dialectic; but in the secret studies, in which they examined astrology and divination, pursued foreknowledge, and concerned themselves with the sacrifices and invocations in which the gods delight, Damis says that Apollonius alone shared the philosophy of Iarchas. From that source, he says, Apollonius wrote four books on divination by the stars, which Moeragenes also mentioned, and he also wrote on sacrifices, and how one might sacrifice to each god in a way that is fitting and pleasing. For my part, I consider the lore of the stars, and all divination of that kind, to lie beyond human nature, and I do not know whether anyone possesses it; but the work on sacrifices I have found in many temples, in many cities, and in the houses of many wise men, and why should anyone try to put it into other words, when it is composed with such solemnity and carries the very ring of the man’s voice? Damis also says that Iarchas gave Apollonius seven rings, named after the seven planets, and that Apollonius wore them one at a time, according to the names of the days.
42| Once, when they were discussing foreknowledge, and Apollonius, who was devoted to this branch of wisdom, kept steering most of the conversations toward it, Iarchas praised him and said, “Those who take delight in divination, my good Apollonius, become divine through it and work for the salvation of mankind. For a man to foresee by himself, my good friend, what others must go to a god’s shrine to discover, and to foretell to others what they do not yet know, is in my view the mark of one supremely blessed, one whose power equals that of Delphic Apollo. And since the art commands those who come to a god’s shrine to consult him to arrive pure, or else it will say to them, ‘Leave the temple,’ I judge that the man who means to foreknow must also be sound in himself: no stain must be smeared on his soul, no scars of wrongdoing stamped on his mind; he must prophesy in purity, understanding himself and the tripod in his own breast. For in this way he will give out his oracles more clearly and more truly. So there is no cause for wonder if you too have mastered this science, when you carry so much aether in your soul.”
43| And at the same time, teasing Damis, he said, “And you, Assyrian, do you foresee nothing, even though you keep company with such a man?”

“By Zeus I do,” he said, “at least the things that concern me. When I first met this Apollonius, he seemed to me full of wisdom and cleverness, of self-control and of endurance rightly practiced; and when I also saw what a memory he had, how widely learned he was, and how much he was a slave to the love of learning, something more than human came over me, and I thought that if I kept company with him I would be taken for a wise man instead of an ignorant, unschooled layman, and for an educated man instead of a barbarian; that by following him and sharing his pursuits I would see the Indians and see you, and would mix with Greeks, having been made a Greek by him. So as for your prophecies, which concern great matters, count them as Delphi and Dodona and whatever else you like; but mine, since it is Damis who foresees them, and he foresees for himself alone, may count as those of some begging old woman telling fortunes about her little sheep and the like.”
44| At this all the sages laughed, and when the laughter had died down, Iarchas brought the conversation back to divination. He said that it had done mankind many good things, the greatest of them being the gift of medicine. For the wise Asclepiads would never have arrived at the science of healing had not Asclepius, being the son of Apollo, compounded remedies suited to diseases in accordance with his father’s pronouncements and oracles, and handed them on to his own sons, and taught his companions which herbs must be applied to running wounds and which to parched and dry ones, and the right measures of the medicines to be drunk, by which dropsies are drained off, bleeding is stanched, and consumptions and internal ailments of that kind are brought to an end.

“And the cures for venomous creatures, and the use of the venomous creatures themselves against many diseases — who will take these away from divination? For I do not think that without the wisdom that foreknows, men would ever have dared to mix the deadliest of all poisons into the medicines that save life.”
45| Since Damis has also recorded the following conversation, held there in earnest, about the beasts, springs and men that are the stuff of Indian legend, I must not leave it out either; for there would be profit in neither believing everything nor disbelieving everything. Apollonius asked, “Is there an animal here called the martichoras?”

“And what have you heard of the nature of this animal?” said Iarchas. “For presumably something is also said about its appearance.”

“Great and incredible things are said,” he replied. “That it has four feet, that its head resembles a man’s, that it is like a lion in size, and that the tail of this beast puts out hairs a cubit long and thorny, which it hurls like arrows at its hunters.”

And when he went on to ask about the golden water which they say gushes from a spring, about the stone that does what the magnet does, about men who live underground, and also about the Pygmies and the Shadow-feet, Iarchas took him up. “About animals or plants or springs,” he said, “that you saw for yourself on your way here, what should I tell you? It is now your business to describe them to others. But a beast that shoots arrows, or springs of golden water, I have never yet heard of here.
46| “About the stone, however, which draws other stones to itself and binds them fast, there is no call for disbelief; for you can both see the stone and marvel at everything in it. The largest grows to the size of this fingernail,” and he held up his own thumb, “and in hollow ground it is conceived at a depth of four fathoms, and it has such a surplus of breath that the earth swells up and splits open in many places while the stone is being conceived within it. No one may go searching for it, because it escapes unless it is drawn up with the proper words; but we alone, by doing certain things and saying others, take up the pantarbe, for that is its name. At night it makes day appear, as fire does, for it is fiery and full of rays; and if it is seen by day, it strikes the eyes with countless flashes. The light in it is a breath of unspeakable power, for it draws into itself everything near it. Why do I say near? You are free to drop as many stones as you wish somewhere into a river or the sea, and not even close to one another but scattered at random, and this stone, let down among them, gathers them all together by the spreading of its breath, and the stones will hang beneath it in a cluster, like a swarm of bees.”
47| Having said this, he showed them the stone itself and all that it does. The Pygmies, he said, do indeed live underground, and their home is beyond the Ganges, where they live in the manner everyone has described. But as for Shadow-feet, or Long-heads, or all the things that the writings of Scylax sing about such peoples, they live nowhere else on earth, and certainly not in India.
48| The gold that the griffins dig consists of rocks speckled with drops of gold as if with sparks, which this creature quarries with the strength of its beak. These creatures, he said, do exist in India and are held to be sacred to the Sun, and those in India who make images of the Sun harness four of them to draw his statues. They are likened to lions in size and strength, but thanks to the superiority their wings give them they set upon the lions themselves, and they surpass even elephants and serpents. They do not fly far, however, only as far as birds of short range, for they are not feathered as birds naturally are; instead their wings are webbed with flame-colored membranes, so that they fly by wheeling round and fight from the air. Only the tiger is beyond their power, since its speed makes it a match for the winds.
49| The phoenix, too, the bird that comes to Egypt once every five hundred years, spends that time flying about in India. There is only one, born from the rays of the sun and gleaming with gold, of the size and shape of an eagle, and it settles on a nest made for it out of spices near the springs of the Nile. What the Egyptians sing of it, that it makes its way to Egypt, the Indians also confirm, adding to the story that the phoenix, as it melts away in its nest, sings hymns of farewell to itself. Swans do this too, according to those who listen to them with a wiser ear.
50| Such were the conversations Apollonius had with the sages in the four months he spent there, during which he gathered in all their teachings, both open and secret. When he wished to set out, they persuaded him to send the guide and camels back to Phraotes carrying a letter, and they themselves provided another guide and camels and sent him on his way, calling both themselves and him blessed. They embraced Apollonius and told him that he would be thought a god by most people, not only after his death but even while he lived; then they went back to their retreat, turning round again and again toward the man and showing that they parted from him unwillingly. Apollonius, keeping the Ganges to his right and the Hyphasis to his left, went down toward the sea, ten days’ journey from the sacred hill. On the way down they saw many ostriches, many wild oxen, many asses, lions, leopards and tigers, and a kind of ape different from the ones in the pepper trees, since these were black and shaggy, dog-like in appearance, and the size of small men. Conversing about what they saw, as was their habit, they reached the sea, on which small trading posts had been built, and in them lay at anchor ferry-boats much like those of the Tyrrhenians. The Red Sea, they say, is a very deep blue, and was named, as I said, after King Erythras, who named that expanse of water after himself.
51| On arriving there he sent the camels back to Iarchas with a letter:

“Apollonius sends greetings to Iarchas and the other sages. I came to you on foot, and you have given me the sea; and by sharing with me the wisdom that is yours, you have given me the power to travel through the heavens as well. I shall remember these things, and I shall share your words with the Greeks as though you were there, unless I drank of Tantalus’ cup in vain. Farewell, good philosophers.”
52| He himself went aboard a ship and was carried along by a smooth and favorable wind, marveling at the mouth of the Hyphasis and at how fearsomely the river pours out through it. For toward its end, as I said, it plunges into rocky, narrow places and over cliffs, and bursting through them into the sea by a single mouth it seems a dangerous river to those who keep too close to the land.
53| They say, moreover, that they looked upon the mouth of the Indus, and that on it lies a city, Patala, surrounded by the waters of the Indus; Alexander’s fleet came there, with Nearchus, a man not unpracticed in the ordering of fleets, appointed its admiral. What Orthagoras has said about the Red Sea, that the Bear is not seen there, that sailors cannot take their bearings from the south, and that the conspicuous stars shift from their proper stations, Damis too accepts, and we must believe that these statements are sound and true to the sky in those parts. They also mention a small island named Biblus, on which the murex, mussels, oysters and the like, ten times the size of Greek ones, grow fast to the rocks. A stone is also gathered there, the pearl, found in a white shell, where it takes the place of the oyster’s heart.
54| They say that they also put in at Pegadae in the country of the Oreitae. Among the Oreitae the rocks are copper, the sand is copper, and the rivers carry down copper dust; and they regard their land as gold-bearing because of the fine quality of the copper.
55| They say that they also came upon the Fish-eaters, whose city is Stobera. These people wear the skins of very large fish, and the sheep in that country taste of fish and are strange eating, because the shepherds feed them on fish, as in Caria they feed them on figs. The Carmanian Indians, a gentle people, live by a sea so rich in fish that they do not even put fish away in store or salt them as the people of the Pontus do; they sell a few of them and give most of them back to the sea still gasping.
56| They say that they also sailed to Balara, and that Balara is a trading post full of myrtles and palms; they saw laurels there too, and the place is watered by springs running through it. It teems with every kind of orchard and every kind of flower garden, and it has harbors full of calm. Off this place lies a sacred island called Selera, a hundred stadia across the strait, and on it lives a Nereid, a fearsome daemon, who snatches away many of those who sail there and will not even allow ships to make a cable fast to the island.
57| Nor is it right to pass over the account of the second pearl, since to Apollonius too it did not seem childish; on the contrary, it is the most delightful story ever fashioned and the most wonderful of all that has to do with work on the sea. On the side of the island that faces the open sea the sea floor is bottomless, and it bears an oyster in a white shell, full of fat; for it grows no stone at all. The divers watch for a calm and smooth the sea themselves, which is done by pouring oil over it; then a man goes down to hunt the oyster, equipped in other respects like the men who cut sponges, but carrying besides an iron plate and an alabaster flask of perfume. Settling down beside the oyster, the Indian uses the perfume as bait; the oyster opens and grows drunk on it, and when it is pierced through with a spike it spits out its juice, which the man catches on the plate, into which molds have been hollowed. From then on the juice turns to stone and takes on a regular shape, just like the natural pearl; and so the pearl is white blood from the Red Sea. They say that the Arabians who live on the opposite coast also engage in this hunt. From there on, they say, the whole sea is full of beasts, and sea monsters herd together in it; as a defense against them the ships carry bells at stern and prow, and the sound frightens the beasts and does not let them come near the ships.
58| After sailing down to the mouths of the Euphrates, they say, they sailed up the river to Babylon to visit Vardanes, and found him the same man they had known. Then they came again to Nineveh, and since Antioch was as insolent as ever and cared nothing for anything Greek, they made their way down to the sea near Seleucia, found a ship, and sailed to Cyprus, putting in at Paphos, where the seat of Aphrodite is. Apollonius, they say, admired the image, set up as it is in symbolic form, and after giving the priests much instruction about the holy rites of the temple he sailed to Ionia, where he was greatly admired and held in high honor by those who value wisdom.

======== Life of Apollonius — Book IV ========

1| When the people of Ionia saw the man come to Ephesus, not even the artisans stayed at their trades any longer, but followed him, one admiring his wisdom, one his looks, another his manner of living, another his carriage, and some all of these together. Reports about him went the rounds. Some came from the oracle at Colophon, which proclaimed the man a sharer in its own wisdom, wise without qualification, and the like; others came from Didyma, and others from the sanctuary near Pergamum, for the god there bade many of those in need of healing to go to Apollonius, saying that this was his own wish and the decree of the Fates. Embassies too came to him from the cities, who looked on him as their guest-friend and sought his counsel about how to live and about the setting up of altars and statues; and he put each of these matters right, partly by letter and partly by promising to come in person. When Smyrna also sent an embassy, which did not say what it wanted of him but begged him earnestly to come, he asked the envoy what they wanted him for.

“To see you,” he said, “and to be seen by you.”
2| “I will come,” said Apollonius. “And grant, you Muses, that we may also fall in love with one another.”

His first discourse he delivered to the Ephesians from the steps of the temple, not in the manner of the Socratics. Instead he drew them away from all other pursuits and talked them out of them, and counseled them to hold to philosophy alone, and to make Ephesus full of earnest effort rather than of the idleness and insolence he found there in such abundance. For they were enthralled by dancers and wholly given over to pyrrhic dances, and everything was full of pipes, full of effeminate men, full of din. And although the Ephesians had come over to his side, he would not overlook these things, but rooted them out and made them odious to the people.
3| His other discourses he gave in the groves beside the covered running-tracks. Once, when he was speaking about sharing and teaching that people ought to feed one another and be fed by one another, some sparrows were sitting silent in the trees, when one of them flew up to them crying out loudly, as though urging the others to something; and the others, when they heard it, set up a cry themselves, rose, and flew off after that one. Apollonius kept on with his discourse, knowing why the sparrows had flown off but not explaining it to the crowd. But when everyone looked up at the birds and some foolishly took the thing for a portent, Apollonius turned aside from his discourse.

“A boy,” he said, “who was carrying wheat in a basin slipped, gathered the grain up carelessly, and went off, leaving a great deal of it scattered in such-and-such an alley; and this sparrow, who happened upon it, has come to show the others the windfall and to make them his table companions.”

Most of his hearers ran off at once to see, while Apollonius went on with the discourse on sharing that he had set before those who remained. And when they came back shouting and full of wonder, he said, “See how the sparrows look after each other and rejoice in sharing; but we disdain it. Indeed, if we see a man sharing with others, we call it prodigality and luxury and the like, and those who are fed by him we call parasites and flatterers. “And what is left for us, then, but to shut ourselves up like birds being fattened for the table and stuff our bellies in the dark until we grow so fat that we burst?”
4| When a plague was creeping into Ephesus, before the disease had broken out in full, Apollonius sensed its onset, and sensing it he foretold it. Again and again in his discourses he would cry, “O earth, stay as you are!” and he would utter, with a threat in his voice, such words as “Save these people!” and “You shall not pass this way!” But they paid no heed and took such sayings for mere wonder-mongering, all the more because he was seen going to all the temples, as though trying to turn the thing aside and praying it away. Since they were so foolish about their danger, he thought he need not help them any further, and went round the rest of Ionia, setting things right in each city and always discoursing on something that would save his hearers.
5| When he was arriving at Smyrna the Ionians came out to meet him, for they happened to be celebrating the Panionian festival. He read an Ionian decree in which they asked him to join them in their assembly, and coming upon a name that was anything but Ionian, for a certain Lucullus had signed the motion, he sent a letter to their league rebuking them for this barbarism; he had also found a Fabricius and others of that sort among the signatories of their decrees. How vigorously he rebuked them is shown by his letter on the subject.
6| On another day he came forward to the Ionians and said: “What is this mixing bowl?” They said it was the Panionian. Drawing from it and pouring a libation, he said: “O gods, leaders of the Ionians, grant that this fair colony may use a safe sea, that nothing evil from the sea may come reveling upon the land, and that Aegaeon the earth-shaker may never shake its cities.” He uttered such a prayer as a seer, foreseeing, I think, what happened in later times at Smyrna, at Miletus, at Chios and Samos, and in many of the cities of Ionia.
7| Seeing the Smyrnaeans eagerly taking up every kind of discourse, he encouraged them and made them more earnest, and told them to take pride in themselves rather than in the appearance of their city; for even if it is the fairest of the cities under the sun, and makes the sea its own, and has the sources of the west wind, yet it is a pleasanter crown for it to be wreathed with men than with porticoes and paintings and more gold than it has. For buildings stay where they are and are seen nowhere except in that part of the earth where they stand, whereas good men are seen everywhere and everywhere heard, and they show the city that bore them to be as large as the extent of land they can reach. He said that cities so beautiful resemble the statue of Zeus made by Phidias at Olympia, for it sits, as the maker saw fit; but that men who go everywhere resemble nothing so much as the Homeric Zeus, whom Homer has composed in many forms, more wonderful than the ivory one; for the one appears on earth, while the other is understood to be present in all things in the heavens.
8| He also philosophized with the Smyrnaeans about how cities might be safely governed, seeing that they were quarreling with one another and not agreed in their opinions. For he said that a city to be rightly governed needs a concord that is factious. When this seemed to be said unpersuasively and inconsistently, Apollonius, understanding that the many did not follow the argument, said: “White and black could never become the same, nor can the bitter be soundly mixed with the sweet; but concord will be factious for the sake of the cities’ safety. What I mean, let us understand thus: let the faction that leads to swords and to stoning one another stay away from a city, which needs the rearing of children, laws, and men, with whom there are words and deeds; but the rivalry with one another on behalf of the common good, how one man might propose a better opinion, another take the lead in office better than another, one go on an embassy, another build more splendidly than another did in his term of office, this, I think, is a good strife and a faction against one another on behalf of the common good. That each should pursue a different thing and contribute to the city’s benefit seemed foolish to the Lacedaemonians long ago, for they trained at warfare and were all strong in that and laid hold of that alone; I, however, think it best for each person to do what he knows and is able to do. For if one man will be admired for his leadership of the people, another for wisdom, another for spending his wealth on the public, another for being kind, another for being grave and not forgiving to those who err, another for having clean hands, the city will be well settled, or rather will stand upright.”
9| As he was going through these matters, he saw a ship of the three-rigged kind sailing out, and the sailors each doing something different to get it under way. Turning the attention of those present to it, he said: “Do you see the people of the ship, how some have boarded the tow-boats as oarsmen, others heave up the anchors and hang them, others hold out the sails to the wind, and others keep watch from stern and prow? If one of these should fall short in any part of his work, or lay hold of seamanship ignorantly, they will have a bad voyage and will themselves seem the storm. But if they compete with one another and strive, each not to seem worse than the other, then good harbors await this ship, and everything will be full of calm and good sailing, and their good counsel among themselves will seem Poseidon the Securer.”
10| With discourses of this kind he held Smyrna together. But when the plague fell upon the Ephesians and nothing could hold out against it, they sent an embassy to Apollonius, making him the physician of their affliction. He thought he ought not to put off the journey, but simply said, “Let us go,” and was in Ephesus, doing, I suppose, what Pythagoras did when he was in Thurii and Metapontum at once. He gathered the Ephesians together and said, “Take heart, for today I will put a stop to the plague.” With these words he led people of every age to the theater, where the statue of the Averter stands. There an old man seemed to be begging, artfully keeping his eyes shut as though blind; he carried a wallet with a crust of bread in it, was dressed in rags, and had a squalid look about his face. Apollonius made the Ephesians stand in a ring around him and said, “Pelt this enemy of the gods, gathering as many stones as you can.” The Ephesians wondered what he meant, and thought it a terrible thing to kill a stranger who was in such a wretched plight, for the man was begging them for mercy and saying much to move their pity; but Apollonius pressed on, urging the Ephesians to bear down on him and not let him go. When some of them began to throw stones at him from a distance, the man who had seemed to keep his eyes shut suddenly looked up and showed eyes full of fire. Then the Ephesians recognized the daemon, and stoned him so thoroughly that they heaped a cairn of stones over him. After a short pause Apollonius told them to remove the stones and see what beast they had killed. When the one they thought they had stoned was uncovered, he had vanished, and in his place they saw a dog, like a Molossian hound in form but the size of the largest lion, crushed by the stones and spewing foam as mad dogs do. The statue of the Averter, who is Heracles, stands near the spot where the apparition was struck down.
11| Having purged the Ephesians of the plague, and having had enough of affairs in Ionia, he set out for Greece. He went first to Pergamum, where he took pleasure in the temple of Asclepius; he advised those who were supplicating the god what they should do to obtain dreams of good omen, and he healed many of them as well. Next he arrived in the land of Ilium, and after filling himself with all the ancient lore of the place he paid a visit to the tombs of the Achaeans. He spoke at length over them and offered many bloodless and pure sacrifices; then he told his companions to go on to the ship, saying that he himself would spend the night on the mound of Achilles. His companions tried to frighten him out of it, for by now men like Dioscorides and Phaedimus and all that sort of company had joined Apollonius, and they said that Achilles still appeared in terrifying form, for that was what the people of Ilium believed about him.

“And yet,” he said, “I know very well that Achilles delights in company. He was very fond of Nestor of Pylos, because Nestor always had something worthwhile to tell him; he made it his custom to honor Phoenix, calling him foster father and attendant and the like, because Phoenix entertained him with stories; he looked most gently even on Priam, his bitterest enemy, once he had heard him speak; and when he met Odysseus in a time of quarreling, he showed such restraint that Odysseus found him handsome rather than terrifying. “His shield, and the helmet whose crest, as they say, nods so terribly, are aimed, I believe, at the Trojans, since he remembers what he suffered from them when they broke faith with him over the marriage. But I have no part in Ilium, and I shall converse with him more agreeably than his companions did in those days; and if he kills me, as you say he will, I shall lie, no doubt, beside Memnon and Cycnus, and perhaps Troy will lay me in a hollow trench, as it buried Hector.” After speaking to his companions in this mixture of jest and earnest, he went up to the mound alone, and they walked off to the ship, for it was already evening.
12| Apollonius, coming about dawn, said: “Where is Antisthenes of Paros?” This man had already been attending him for seven days at Ilium. When Antisthenes answered, Apollonius said: “Are you related to Troy in some way, young man?” “Very much,” said Antisthenes, “for I am a Trojan from of old.” “Is it of the house of Priam?” “By Zeus, yes,” he said, “and from this, I think, I am good and come from good men.” “Reasonably, then,” said Apollonius, “Achilles prohibits my consorting with you. For when he told me to go as ambassador to the Thessalians about the things he charges against them, and I asked what else I might do for his pleasure besides this, he said: ‘Do not make the youth from Paros a partner in your wisdom; for he is Priamid enough, and does not cease singing the praises of Hector.’”
13| Antisthenes went away unwillingly. When day came and the wind from the land freshened and the ship was ready to put out, more people kept streaming toward it, small as it was, wishing to sail with Apollonius, since autumn had already come and the sea was less to be trusted. They all considered the man stronger than storm and fire and the most dreadful things, and wanted to embark with him, and begged to be given a share in the voyage. Since the crowd was many times what the ship could hold, he looked about for another, larger ship (there were many around the Aianteion) and said: “Let us embark here, for it is good to be saved along with more people.” Having rounded the Trojan headland, he told the helmsman to put in at the country of the Aeolians, which lies opposite Lesbos, and to make the anchorage rather toward Methymna. For it was somewhere there, Achilles said, that Palamedes lies, and there is a statue of him a cubit high, older in appearance than Palamedes should be. And as he was stepping out of the ship he said: “Men of Greece, let us take care of a good man, through whom all wisdom came to be; for we shall be better even than the Achaeans if we honor for his virtue the man whom they killed with no justice at all.” They leaped out of the ship, and he reached the tomb, and found the statue buried next to it. On the base of the statue was inscribed: “TO THE DIVINE PALAMEDES.” So he set it up, as I too have seen, and built a shrine around it, about as large as those who honor Enodia make (about ten drinking companions can feast in it), and offered this prayer: “Palamedes, forget the wrath with which you once raged among the Achaeans, and grant that many wise men be born. Yes, Palamedes, through whom come words, through whom the Muses, through whom I.”
14| He also went into the sanctuary of Orpheus, anchoring off Lesbos. They say that Orpheus once took delight here in prophecy, until Apollo took notice of him. For when men no longer went to Gryneion for oracles, nor to Clarus, nor to where the Apollonian tripod stands, and Orpheus, a head newly come from Thrace, alone gave oracles, the god stood over him as he was prophesying and said: “Leave off meddling with my affairs; I have put up with you enough even while you sang.”
15| As they afterward sailed the sea off Euboea, which Homer too considers among the hard and difficult to measure, the sea appeared smooth and better than the season, and talk arose about the islands, since they came upon many famous ones, and about shipbuilding and navigation, suitable for sailors. But Damis kept discrediting some of the topics, cutting off others, and not letting others be asked about, and Apollonius understood that he wished a different subject to be pursued, and said: “What is the matter, Damis, that you cut short what is asked? You are not seasick, or ill from the voyage, that you turn the conversation away; for the sea, you see, has laid itself beneath the ship and sends it on. Why then are you vexed?” “Because,” said Damis, “a great subject lies before us, which it would be fitting to ask about rather, and we are asking about stale and ancient matters.” “And what,” said Apollonius, “would this subject be, on account of which you think the others superfluous?” “You have been with Achilles, Apollonius,” said Damis, “and have perhaps heard many things not yet known to us; yet you do not recount these things, nor do you sketch for us the form of Achilles, but sail around the islands and build ships in talk.” “Provided I shall not seem to be boasting,” said Apollonius, “everything shall be told.”
16| When the others too asked for this account and were eager to hear it, he said: “Well, I did not dig a pit like Odysseus’, nor lure the soul with the blood of lambs, to come into conversation with Achilles; but I prayed as the Indians say one should pray to heroes, and said: ‘Achilles, most men say that you are dead, but I do not agree with the saying, nor does Pythagoras, the forefather of my wisdom. If we are speaking the truth, show us your form; for you would greatly profit from my eyes if you use them as witnesses of your being.’ At this there was a slight earthquake about the mound, and a youth five cubits tall rose up, in the Thessalian cloak. His look was not that of a braggart, as Achilles seems to some, and though terrible to see he did not depart from a radiant look; and his beauty seems to me not yet to have been given the praise it deserves, though Homer has said much about him, but to be beyond words, and to be diminished by the one who sings him rather than sung in a way equal to itself. Though he appeared at the size I have said, as I looked he grew larger, to double that and beyond; at least he appeared to me twelve cubits tall when he reached his fullest, and his beauty kept growing along with his height. His hair, he said, he had never cut, but kept inviolate for the Spercheius, for of rivers he used the Spercheius first; and his beard had its first shoots. Greeting me gladly, he said: ‘I have met you, having long needed such a man. For the Thessalians have for a long time now neglected the offerings to me; and I do not yet think fit to rage, for if I raged they would be destroyed more than the Greeks once were here, but I use fair counsel, that they not transgress the customary rites, nor be shown worse than these Trojans, who, though deprived by me of so many men, sacrifice to me publicly, offer me the first fruits of the seasons, and, laying down suppliant branches, ask for a truce, which I will not give. For the oaths they broke against me will never allow ancient Ilium to take back its former form, nor to reach the prime that came to many cities that were destroyed, but they will dwell in it no better than if it had been taken yesterday. So that I may not make the fortunes of the Thessalians like theirs, go as ambassador to their common assembly about what I have said.’ ‘I will go as ambassador,’ I said, for the purpose of the embassy was that they not perish. ‘But I, Achilles, have something I ask of you.’ ‘I understand,’ he said, ‘for it is clear you will ask about the Trojan matters; ask five questions, such as you yourself wish and the Fates allow.’ I asked first whether he had received a tomb as the poets say. ‘I lie there,’ he said, ‘as was sweetest to me and to Patroclus, for we came together as very young men, and a golden amphora holds us both lying as one. As for the laments of the Muses and the Nereids, which they say were made for me, the Muses never came here at all, but the Nereids still visit.’ After this I asked whether Polyxena had been slaughtered over him, and he said this was true, though she was killed not by the Achaeans; she came to the mound of her own will, and, to do great honor to the love between herself and him, fell upon an upright sword. As my third question I asked: ‘Achilles, did Helen come to Troy, or did Homer see fit to invent this?’ ‘For a long time,’ he said, ‘we were deceived, sending envoys to the Trojans and waging battles on her behalf, as though she were in Ilium; but she was living in Egypt, in the house of Proteus, having been carried off by Paris. When this was believed, we fought for Troy itself thereafter, so that we should not depart in disgrace.’ I took up a fourth question, and said that I wondered whether Greece had borne so many men together, and of such quality, as Homer musters against Troy. Achilles said: ‘The barbarians too were not much behind us, so far had the whole earth flowered with virtue.’ As the fifth I asked: ‘What possessed Homer that he does not know Palamedes, or knows him but leaves him out of the story of you?’ ‘If Palamedes,’ he said, ‘had not come to Troy, there would have been no Troy; but since he, a man most wise and most warlike, died, as Odysseus saw fit, Homer does not bring him into his poems, so as not to sing the shames of Odysseus.’ And Achilles, lamenting over him as the greatest and fairest, the youngest and most warlike, one who surpassed all in self-restraint and contributed much to the Muses, said: ‘But you, Apollonius, since such things are fitting between wise men, take care of the tomb and take up the statue of Palamedes, which has been carelessly thrown aside; it lies in Aeolis over against Methymna in Lesbos.’ Having said this, and last of all what concerned the young man from Paros, he departed with a moderate flash of lightning, for the cocks were already beginning to crow.”
17| Such were the events on the ship. He sailed into the Piraeus around the time of the mysteries, when the Athenians hold the most crowded festival in Greece, and went up from the ship to the city in haste. As he went on he met many of the philosophers going down to Phalerum, some of whom were basking naked (for autumn is sunny at Athens), some studying from books, some practicing by heart, and some disputing. None passed him by, but all, judging that he was Apollonius, turned about with him and greeted him gladly. Ten young men, coming upon him together, said, stretching out their hands to the Acropolis: “By that Athena, we were just now walking to the Piraeus to sail to Ionia to you.” He welcomed them and said he rejoiced with them for philosophizing.
18| It was the day of the Epidauria. At the Epidauria, after the proclamation and after the victims have been brought here, it is an ancestral custom of the Athenians to initiate at a second sacrifice; they established this for the sake of Asclepius, because they initiated him when he arrived from Epidaurus late for the mysteries. Most of the people, neglecting to be initiated, gathered around Apollonius and were more eager for this than to go away initiated; but he said that he would be with them again, and told them to attend to the rites for the present, for he himself was going to be initiated. The hierophant, however, was unwilling to give him the rites, saying that he would never initiate a sorcerer, nor open Eleusis to a man not pure in matters divine. Apollonius, not at all lessened by this, said: “You have not yet named the greatest charge that could be brought against me: that, though I know more about the rite than you, I have come to be initiated as though by a man wiser than myself.” When those present applauded that he had answered so boldly and in his usual manner, the hierophant, since in shutting him out he seemed to be acting against the wishes of the many, changed his tone and said: “Be initiated, for you seem to have come as a wise man.” But Apollonius said: “I shall be initiated later; and a certain man will initiate me, using foreknowledge, the hierophant after this one, who will take charge of the sanctuary in four years.”
19| Damis says that Apollonius held very many discussions at Athens, but that he did not set down every one of them, only those that were necessary and were pursued about great matters. In his first discourse, since he saw that the Athenians were fond of sacrifice, he spoke about sacrifices, and how one should offer, pour libations, or pray in the manner proper to each of the gods, and at what hour of the day and night; and one may come upon a book of Apollonius in which he teaches these things in his own voice. He went through these things at Athens, first in the interest of wisdom, his own and theirs, and then refuting the hierophant for what he had said impiously and ignorantly; for who would still have supposed that the man who philosophizes about how the gods are to be served is not pure in matters divine?
20| While he was speaking about pouring libations, a young man of the dainty sort happened to be present at the talk. He had such a reputation for wantonness that he had once even become the subject of a song sung from the wagons. His native city was Corcyra, and he traced his descent to Alcinous the Phaeacian, the host of Odysseus. Apollonius was explaining the pouring of libations, and told them not to drink from the cup that was used for it, but to keep it for the gods, untouched by lips and undrunk. He also told them to fit the cup with handles, and to pour the libation by the handle, the part from which people drink least. At this the young man burst out into a loud and wanton laugh at his words. Apollonius raised his eyes to him and said, "It is not you who commit this insolence, but the daemon who drives you when you do not know it." And in fact the young man was possessed without being aware of it: he laughed at what made no one else laugh, he would change to weeping for no reason, and he talked to himself and sang. Most people thought that it was the exuberance of youth that carried him into these ways, but he was really acting under the daemon's influence, and seemed to be misbehaving drunkenly in what he was in fact doing in his possession. When Apollonius fixed his eyes on him, the phantom let out cries, fearful and angry, of the kind made by those who are being burned and tortured, and swore that it would leave the young man alone and would never enter into any human being. Apollonius spoke to it with anger, as a master speaks to a cunning, knavish and shameless slave, and ordered it to give a sign as it departed. "I will knock down that statue," it said, pointing to one of the statues around the Royal Stoa, beside which this was taking place. The statue first shook slightly and then fell. Why should one write of the uproar that this caused, and how they clapped in amazement? The young man, as if waking from sleep, rubbed his eyes and looked toward the rays of the sun. He drew modesty upon himself, since everyone had turned to look at him, and he no longer appeared wanton or disorderly in his gaze, but returned to his own nature no less than if he had taken a drug. Casting off his fine mantles, his soft wraps and all the rest of his luxury, he fell in love with squalor and the rough cloak, and stripped himself into the ways of Apollonius.
21| He is also said to have rebuked the Athenians about the Dionysia, which they celebrate at the season of Anthesterion. He had supposed that they gathered in the theater to hear solo songs, lyric compositions, parabases and the rhythms that belong to comedy and tragedy; but when he heard that at the signal of a flute they dance twirling dances, and that in the midst of the epic poetry and theology of Orpheus some of them act as Hours, some as Nymphs, and some as Bacchants, he set himself to rebuke this. "Stop," he said, "dancing out the men of Salamis and many other good men who lie dead. If this is a Laconian dance, well done, soldiers, for you are training for war, and I will dance with you. But if it is soft and hurries toward the womanish, what shall I say of the trophies? For they will not stand against Medes or Persians, but against you, the people who set them up, if you forsake them. Where do you get such saffron robes, such purple, such scarlet dye? Not even Acharnae was dressed like this, nor did Colonus ride out like this. And why do I mention these things? A woman, a ship's commander from Caria, sailed against you with Xerxes, and there was nothing womanish about her, but a man's dress and weapons. You, softer than the wives of Xerxes, dress yourselves up against yourselves, old men and young men and the ephebes alike, who once, when they went to the shrine of Agraulus, swore to die for their country and to take up arms, but now will perhaps swear to play the Bacchant for their country and to take up the thyrsus, the ephebe now wearing no helmet but, in the words of Euripides, shamefully conspicuous in a womanish shape. I hear that you even become winds and are said to shake out light cloaks, billowing these trappings up into the air. Yet you ought at least to have respect for these winds, who were your allies and blew mightily on your behalf, and not to make Boreas, your kinsman by marriage, who among all the winds is male, into a female. For Boreas would never have fallen in love with Oreithyia if he had seen her too dancing like this."
22| He also set right the following matter at Athens. The Athenians used to gather in the theater under the Acropolis and attend human slaughters, and this was pursued there more eagerly than it is now at Corinth. Adulterers, prostitutes, housebreakers, cutpurses, kidnappers and similar classes of people were bought at great prices and led in, and the organizers armed them and ordered them to fight one another. Apollonius took up this matter too, and when the Athenians called him to their assembly, he said that he would not enter a place that was unclean and full of gore. He said this in a letter. He said that he wondered how the goddess had not already abandoned the Acropolis, when you shed such blood before her. "For it seems to me that when you go in procession at the Panathenaea, you will sacrifice to the goddess no longer oxen, but hecatombs of men. And you, Dionysus, do you come to the theater after such blood? And do the wise Athenians pour libations to you there? Depart from here too, Dionysus. Cithaeron is cleaner." Such were the most serious of the philosophical matters that I found him dealing with at Athens at that time.
23| He also went as an envoy to the Thessalians on behalf of Achilles, at the meetings at Pylaea, where the Thessalians conduct the business of the Amphictyony; and they, in fear, voted to take up what belonged to the tomb. He all but embraced the monument of Leonidas the Spartan, admiring the man. As he walked to the mound on which the Lacedaemonians are said to have been buried under the arrows, he heard his companions disputing with one another about what was the highest point in Greece; the dispute arose because Mount Oeta was before their eyes. He went up onto the hill and said, "I think this the highest, for the men who died here for freedom matched it against Oeta and raised it above many Olympuses. I admire these men, but I admire even before them Megistias the Acarnanian, for he knew what they were going to suffer and longed to share it with the men, not because he feared to die, but because he feared not to die with such men as these."
24| He also visited all the Greek sanctuaries, the one at Dodona, the one at Delphi, and the one at Abae; he went to those of Amphiaraus and Trophonius, and climbed to the Museum on Helicon. As he went to the sanctuaries and set them in order, the priests accompanied him, his disciples followed, and mixing bowls of discourse were set up, from which the thirsty drew. When the Olympic games were coming and the Eleans invited him to take part in the contest, he said, "You seem to me to be discrediting the reputation of the Olympic games, if you need embassies to those who will come from the place itself." When he was at the Isthmus, the sea near Lechaeum bellowed, and he said, "This neck of land will be cut through," and then, "or rather, it will not." This was his foretelling of the cutting through of the Isthmus a little later, which Nero planned seven years afterward. For he left his palace and came to Greece to enter himself in the heralded contests of the Olympic and Pythian games, and he won also at the Isthmus; his victories were in lyre-singing and in heralding, and at Olympia he won also against tragic actors. At that time he is said to have taken in hand the novel scheme concerning the Isthmus, making a circuit by water and joining the Aegean to the Adriatic, so that not every ship would sail round beyond Malea, and most would be carried through the cleft, cutting short the long way round. But how did the saying of Apollonius turn out? The excavation began at Lechaeum and advanced perhaps four stadia, with men digging continuously. Nero is said to have stopped the cutting, according to some because the Egyptians, who had studied the seas for him, told him that the open water beyond Lechaeum would flood over and wipe out Aegina; according to others, because he feared for his rule that there might be a revolution. Such, then, was the saying of Apollonius, that the Isthmus would be cut and would not be cut.
25| At that time Demetrius happened to be teaching philosophy in Corinth, a man who had taken hold of the whole strength of the Cynic way, and whom Favorinus later mentioned, and not ungenerously, in many of his own discourses. Demetrius was affected toward Apollonius as Antisthenes is said to have been affected toward the wisdom of Socrates: he followed him, eager to be his pupil, devoted himself to his teaching, and steered the more distinguished of his own followers toward Apollonius. Among these was Menippus the Lycian, twenty-five years old, of sound enough judgment and well made in body; in fact he looked like a handsome athlete of gentlemanly bearing. Most people thought Menippus was loved by a foreign woman. The woman appeared beautiful and quite refined, and she claimed to be rich; but none of this, it turned out, was real at all — it was all appearance. For as he was walking alone along the road to Cenchreae, a phantom met him, became a woman, and took his hand, saying that she had long been in love with him, that she was Phoenician and lived in a suburb of Corinth, and she named some suburb or other. “Come there in the evening,” she said, “and you will have song, for I will sing for you, and wine such as you have never yet drunk, and no rival will trouble you; and I will live, beautiful, with a beautiful man.” The young man was taken in by this — for though he was strong in the rest of philosophy, he was beaten where love was concerned — and he went to her toward evening, and from then on visited her constantly, as one visits a beloved, not yet aware that she was a phantom. Apollonius looked at Menippus the way a sculptor does, sketching the young man in his mind and studying him, and once he had judged him he said, “You, the handsome one, hunted by handsome women — you are keeping a snake warm, and a snake is keeping you warm.”

Menippus was astonished, and Apollonius said, “You have a woman who is not your wife. Well? Do you think she loves you?”

“By Zeus,” he said, “since she behaves toward me like a woman in love.”

“And would you marry her?” he asked.

“Yes, since marrying a woman who loves me would be a pleasure.”

So he asked, “When is the wedding?”

“Any moment now,” he said, “perhaps tomorrow.”

Apollonius, then, waited for the hour of the banquet, and coming upon the guests just as they had arrived, he said, “Where is the refined lady on whose account you have come?”

“Here,” said Menippus, half rising and blushing.

“And the silver and the gold and the rest of the things with which the hall is adorned — which of you do they belong to?”

“To the woman,” he said, “for this is all that is mine” — and he pointed to his own threadbare cloak.

Then Apollonius said, “Have you seen the gardens of Tantalus, how they are and are not?”

“In Homer, yes,” they said, “for we have not gone down to Hades.”

“Consider this finery the same way,” he said, “for it is not matter but the semblance of matter. And so that you may understand what I am saying: this fine bride is one of the empusas, whom most people take for lamias and bogeys. They fall in love, and with sexual pleasure too, but above all they love human flesh, and they use sexual pleasure to lure those they mean to feast on.” “Hold your tongue!” she said, and “Away with you!”, and she seemed disgusted at what she was hearing, and every so often she even jeered at philosophers as people forever talking nonsense. But when the golden cups and the supposed silver were shown to be made of wind and all of it flew out of their sight, and the wine-pourers and cooks and the whole retinue of that kind vanished as Apollonius exposed them, the phantom seemed to be weeping, and it begged him not to torture it or force it to confess what it was. But as he pressed it and would not let go, it said that it was an empusa and that it was fattening Menippus with pleasures in order to devour his body, for it was its habit to feed on bodies that were beautiful and young, since their blood is pure. I have had to tell this story at length, since it happens to be the best known of Apollonius’ deeds; for a good many people know it, because it took place in the middle of Greece, but they have received it only in summary — that he once caught a lamia in Corinth. What she was doing, though, and that it concerned Menippus, they do not yet know; but it has been told by Damis, and by me from his account.
26| At that time he also clashed with Bassus of Corinth. This man was both thought and believed to be a parricide; he laid false claim to wisdom, and there was no bridle on his tongue. When Bassus abused him, Apollonius put a stop to it by the letters he sent and the discourses he delivered against him. For everything he said about him as a parricide was taken to be true, since such a man would never have stooped to abuse, or said what was not so.
27| What the man did at Olympia was as follows. As Apollonius went up to Olympia, envoys of the Lacedaemonians met him, seeking his company. Nothing Laconian showed in them; they were softer than they should have been and full of luxury. Seeing men with smooth legs, glossy hair, no use for beards, and soft even in their dress, he wrote to the ephors in such terms that they made a public proclamation: they removed the pitch from the baths, drove out the depilators, and restored everything to the old way. From this the wrestling grounds bloomed again, so did the serious pursuits, the common meals returned, and Lacedaemon became like itself. When he learned that they were setting their affairs at home in order, he sent from Olympia a letter shorter than a Laconian dispatch-staff. It is this: "Apollonius to the ephors, greetings. To err not at all belongs to men; to perceive it when they do err belongs to the noble."
28| Looking at the statue at Olympia, he said, "Hail, good Zeus, for you are so good that you share even yourself with human beings." He also explained the bronze Milo and the account of his posture. Milo seems to stand on a discus with both feet together, holds a pomegranate in his left hand, and his right hand has its fingers upright, as though threaded through one another. Now the traditions of Olympia and Arcadia report that this athlete was immovable and could never be forced out of the place where he stood; the grip of the fingers around the pomegranate is said to show his tenacity, and the fingers, held upright, with the joints well fitted together, show that they could never be pulled apart even if someone struggled against a single one of them. The fillet that he wears they take as a symbol of self-control. Apollonius said that these ideas were cleverly invented, but that the truer ones were wiser. "So that you may understand Milo's meaning: the people of Croton made this athlete priest of Hera. What the headband is to be understood as, why should I still explain, having recalled a man who was a priest? The pomegranate is the only plant that grows for Hera. The discus under his feet is a little shield, on which the priest stands to pray to Hera, and the right hand indicates this too. As for the work of the fingers and their not yet being parted, let that be put down to the old style of sculpture."
29| Attending the proceedings, he approved of the Eleans, because they took care over them and acted with good order, and considered that they themselves were being judged no less than the athletes who were to compete, and took thought not to err either willingly or unwillingly. His companions asked what opinion he held of the Eleans in their arrangement of the Olympic games, and he said, "Whether wise, I do not know; sophists, though, certainly."
30| How hostile he was to those who thought themselves writers, and how he regarded as ignorant those who took up a larger theme, may be learned from the following. A young man who fancied himself wise met him near the sanctuary and said, "Support me eagerly tomorrow, for I am going to read something aloud." When Apollonius asked what he would read, he said, "I have composed a speech on Zeus." At the same time he showed it under his cloak, proud of the thickness of the book. "What then will you praise in Zeus?" Apollonius said. "The Zeus here, and that nothing on earth is like him?" "That," he said, "and many other things before that and after it; for the seasons, and what is on the earth and above the earth, and the winds and the stars, all belong to Zeus." Apollonius said, "You seem to me a very great maker of encomia." "For that reason," said the other, "I have also composed an encomium of gout, and of being blind or deaf." "Then do not disown dropsy or catarrh from your wisdom either," said Apollonius, "if you want to praise such things. You will be better still if you follow the dying and go through praises of the diseases that killed them, for then fathers and children and those close to the dead will grieve less over them." Seeing the young man bridled by the argument, Apollonius said, "Writer, will the encomiast praise better what he knows or what he does not know?" "What he knows," he said, "for how could anyone praise what he does not know?" "Have you ever praised your own father, then?" "I wanted to," he said, "but since he seems to me great and noble, the handsomest of the men I know, able to manage a household and to use wisdom in everything, I passed over the praise of him, so that I should not shame my father with an inferior speech." Apollonius was disgusted, as he always was with vulgar people. "Then, you scum," he said, "you think you could never praise adequately your own father, whom you know every bit as well as you know yourself, yet you so easily pronounce a eulogy upon the father of men and gods, the maker of the whole, of all that is around us and above us. You neither fear the one you are praising, nor understand that you are setting about a theme greater than a human being!"
31| Apollonius' discussions at Olympia dealt with the most useful matters: wisdom, courage, self-control, and in short all the virtues. He spoke on these from the base of the temple, astonishing everyone not only by his thoughts but by the forms of his speech. The Lacedaemonians stood around him and made him a guest of theirs beside Zeus, and called him father of their young men at home, lawgiver of their way of life, and the honor of their old men. A Corinthian, out of ill temper, asked whether they would hold a festival of the god's appearing in his honor, and one of them said, "Yes, by the Twin Gods, we are ready." Apollonius turned them away from such things, so that he would not be envied. After crossing Taygetus and seeing Lacedaemon active and the ancestral laws of Lycurgus flourishing, he thought it not unpleasant to meet also the magistrates of the Lacedaemonians on the matters they wished to ask about. When he arrived they asked how the gods should be served; he said, "As masters." Again they asked how the heroes should be served: "As fathers." When they asked a third time, how human beings should be served, he said, "That question is not a Laconian one." They asked also what he thought of the laws among them, and he said, "The best teachers; and the teachers will win good repute if the pupils do not grow careless." When they asked what advice he gave about courage, he said, "What will you use courage for?"
32| At about this time there happened to be a young Lacedaemonian who was accused among them of wrongdoing in his habits. He was a descendant of Callicratidas, who had commanded the fleet at Arginusae, but he was in love with shipowning and paid no attention to public affairs; he had built ships and sailed out to Carthage and Sicily. Hearing that he was being tried for this, Apollonius thought it dreadful to stand by while the young man was brought into court, and said, "My good man, why do you go about so anxious and full of thought?" "A public suit has been announced against me," he said, "because I am occupied with shipowning and neglect public affairs." "Was your father a shipowner, or your grandfather?" "Far from it," said the young man, "they were gymnasiarchs and ephors and patronomoi, every one of them; and Callicratidas my ancestor was among those who commanded fleets." "Surely you do not mean the one at Arginusae?" "That is the man," he said, "the one who died in his command." "Did your ancestor's death not make the sea hateful to you?" "By Zeus, no," he said, "for I do not sail to fight a sea battle." "But can you name a more wretched race than merchants and shipowners? First they wander about, seeking a market that is doing badly; then they mingle with brokers and hucksters, sell and are sold, and, pledging their own heads at unholy interest, hurry to recover the original sum. If they prosper, the ship has a good voyage, and they make a great point of never having wrecked it, whether willingly or not. But if the trading does not bring in enough for the debts, they turn to the tenders, run the ships aground, and call it the necessity of a god; and so, sailors as they are, they rob other people of their livelihood in the most godless way, and not even unwillingly. Even if the seafaring and sea-working race were not like that, still, for a Spartan, the descendant of fathers who once lived in the middle of Sparta, to lie in a hollow ship, forgetting Lycurgus and Iphitus, and mindful of cargo and the exact points of seamanship, what shame is he free of? If nothing else, he ought at least to reflect on Sparta herself: while she held to the land, she was thought to reach heaven, but when she conceived a desire for the sea, she was sunk and made to vanish, not in the sea alone, but on the land as well." With these words he so overcame the young man that he bowed his head toward the ground and wept, because he heard how far he had fallen short of his fathers; and he sold the ships in which he made his living. When Apollonius saw him steadied and embracing the land, he led him down to the ephors and obtained his release from the suit.
33| Here is another episode from Lacedaemon. A letter came to the Lacedaemonians from the emperor, bringing a rebuke to their community on the ground that they were behaving insolently beyond what freedom allows; it had been written to them as a result of slanders by the governor of Greece. The Lacedaemonians were at a loss, and Sparta quarreled with herself over whether to write back in a tone of deprecating the emperor's anger or one of disdain. On this they made Apollonius their adviser on the tone of the letter. When he saw them divided, he came before their assembly and spoke briefly as follows: "Palamedes invented letters not only for the sake of writing, but also for the sake of knowing what one must not write." In this way he kept the Lacedaemonians from appearing either rash or cowardly.
34| After spending some time in Sparta following the Olympic games, when winter ended he came to Malea at the beginning of spring, intending to set out for Rome. While he was considering this, he had a dream of this kind: he thought that a woman, very large and very old, embraced him and begged him to meet with her before he sailed to Italy. She declared herself the nurse of Zeus, and on her head was a crown containing everything from land and sea. Giving thought to the vision, he understood that he must sail first to Crete, which we believe to be the nurse of Zeus, since he was brought to birth there; and the crown might perhaps signify another island as well. There were several ships at Malea about to set out for Crete, and he boarded one large enough for the whole company; by "company" he meant both his companions and the slaves of his companions, for he did not overlook even them. Sailing to Cydonia and on past it to Cnossus, when his companions wished to see the Labyrinth that is shown there, which once, I suppose, held the Minotaur, he allowed them to do so, but said that he himself would not be a spectator of the injustice of Minos. He went on to Gortyn out of longing for Ida. Having gone up and met with what is told of the gods there, he proceeded also to the sanctuary at Lebena. It is a sanctuary of Asclepius, and as Asia gathers to Pergamum, so Crete gathers to this sanctuary, and many from Libya cross over to it as well. For it faces the Libyan sea, at least opposite Phaestus, where a little rock holds back the great expanse of water. They say the sanctuary is called Lebenaean because a headland stretches down from it that is shaped like a lion, as the chance formations of rocks often produce; and they tell a story about the headland, that this lion was once one of the draft animals of Rhea. Once, around midday, as Apollonius was discoursing here, and he was talking to many men by whom the sanctuary was served, an earthquake suddenly struck Crete, thunder rang out from the earth, not from clouds, and the sea drew back about seven stadia. The greater part were afraid that the sea, as it withdrew, would drag the sanctuary after it and that they would be carried off, but Apollonius said, "Take courage, for the sea has given birth to land." They thought he meant the harmony of the elements, and that the sea would do the land no harm; but a few days later some people arrived from the district of Cydonia and reported that on the very day and at midday, when the sign from Zeus occurred, an island had been thrown up out of the sea in the strait that runs between Thera and Crete. Leaving aside a long account, then, let us go on to his activities at Rome, which came after his stay in Crete.
35| Nero would not allow people to practice philosophy, but those who philosophized appeared to him meddlesome, and to be covering divination with a screen; and the philosopher's rough cloak was once even brought into a court as the garb of divination. I leave the others aside, but Musonius the Babylonian, a man second only to Apollonius, was put in chains for his wisdom, and was in danger while he remained there; he would have died, as far as the one who bound him was concerned, if he had not been very strong.
36| With philosophy in such a condition, he happened to be approaching Rome, and when he was a hundred and twenty stadia away he fell in with Philolaus of Citium near the grove at Aricia. Philolaus was a man of composed speech, but rather soft when it came to endurance. He was leaving Rome, looked himself like a man in flight, and urged every philosopher he met to do the same. Greeting Apollonius, he told him to give way to the moment and not to visit Rome while philosophy was in disrepute, and he related what was going on there, turning round again and again lest someone behind him overhear. "You," he said, "are marching along with a whole chorus of philosophers, an object of hostility, without knowing the men Nero has stationed at the gates, who will seize you and these others before you are inside." "What, Philolaus," said Apollonius, "is the emperor said to be busy with?" "He drives a chariot in public," he said, "and goes on stage to sing in the theaters of the Romans, and lives with the gladiators; he fights as a gladiator himself and cuts men's throats." Apollonius took this up. "Then, my good friend, do you think there could be any greater spectacle for educated men than to see an emperor behaving disgracefully? According to Plato's view, man is a plaything of god; but an emperor who becomes the plaything of men and gives his own shame to the crowds as a favor, what arguments will he not supply to those who study philosophy?" "Yes, by Zeus," said Philolaus, "provided it can happen without danger. But if you are carried off and destroyed, and Nero eats you raw before you have seen anything of what he does, meeting him will cost you dear, dearer than it cost Odysseus when he went to the Cyclops. For he lost many of his companions by longing to see him and by being overcome by a strange and savage sight." Apollonius said, "Do you suppose that this man is any less blind than the Cyclops, if he does such things?" And Philolaus: "Let him do what he likes," he said,
37| "but save these men yourself." He said this in a rather loud voice and looked as if he were weeping. At this Damis, fearing for the young men, lest they become worse than they were through Philolaus' fright, took Apollonius aside and said, "This hare will ruin the young men, filling everything with trembling and despondency." Apollonius said, "Of the many good things that have often come to me from the gods without my even praying for them, I should say that I have had the greatest benefit from this very thing now. For a test of the young men has fallen in our way, and it will thoroughly expose those among them who are philosophers and those who are pursuing something other than that." And at once the weak among them were exposed. Led away by the words of Philolaus, some said they were ill, some that they had no provisions, some that they were homesick, some that they had been frightened by dreams; and from thirty-four disciples who had been accompanying him, Apollonius was left with eight to go on with him to Rome. The others fled from Nero and from philosophy together, and went away.
38| He gathered together those who were left, among whom were Menippus, who had had his encounter with the empusa, Dioscorides the Egyptian, and Damis, and said, "I will not abuse those who have deserted us, but will rather praise you, because you are men like me. Nor, if someone went away from fear of Nero, shall I consider him a coward; but if someone proves stronger than this fear, he will be called a philosopher by me, and I will teach him everything I know. It seems best to me first to pray to the gods, through whom these thoughts have come into your mind and into theirs, and then to make them our leaders, for apart from the gods we are in nothing else. We must enter a city that rules so many parts of the inhabited world. How could anyone enter it unless those gods led him, especially when a tyranny is established in it so harsh that it is not permitted to be wise? Let no one think it foolish to take courage on a road that many philosophers flee. For first, I do not think that anything among human affairs can become so fearful that the wise man should ever be struck with terror by it; and next, I should not set courage forth as a practice unless it is gained among dangers. Besides, having traveled over more land than any other man ever has, I have seen very many wild beasts of Arabia and India, but as for this beast that most people call a tyrant, I do not know how many heads it has, nor whether it has crooked claws and jagged teeth. And yet this beast is said to be a civic creature and to live in the midst of cities; yet it is more savage than the beasts of mountain and forest by this much: lions and leopards, when flattered, are sometimes tamed and change their disposition, but this creature, puffed up by those who stroke it, becomes wilder than itself and gulps down everything. Of wild beasts you could not say that they ever feasted on their own mothers, but Nero has gorged himself on this food. And if the same did happen with Orestes and Alcmaeon, they at least had fathers as a pretext for the deed, the one killed by his own wife, the other sold for a necklace; but this man, who through his mother was adopted by an aged emperor and inherited the rule, killed his mother by a shipwreck, constructing a vessel for her by which she perished near the land. If anyone, because of this, thinks Nero fearsome and for that reason leaps away from philosophy, believing it unsafe to do anything to provoke his anger, let him know that the fearsome part belongs to those who lay hold of self-control and wisdom; for to these the favor of the gods is secure. Let him regard the acts of the insolent as idle babble, just like those of the drunk; for we too regard such people as foolish, but not as fearsome. Let us go, then, to Rome, if we are strong, for against Nero's proclamations, by which he shuts philosophy out, we can say what Sophocles has said: 'It was not Zeus at all who proclaimed this to me, nor the Muses, nor Apollo, speaker of oracles.' It is likely that Nero himself knows these iambic lines, since he delights in tragedy, as they say." At this point someone who recalled Homer's lines, how, when a speech has fitted warlike men together, they become one helmet and one shield, would, I think, find that very thing happening to these men. For, welded together by the words of Apollonius, they were strong to die for philosophy and to appear better than those who had run away.
39| They approached the gates, and the guards asked nothing, but looked them over, studied their appearance and marveled; for their manner seemed sacred and nothing like that of beggars. They put up at an inn near the gates and were having supper, since it was already evening, when a drunk man came along as if to a revel, with a voice not lacking in sweetness. He went round and round Rome singing the songs of Nero, and was hired to do so; he had been given permission to haul off, as impious, anyone who listened carelessly or did not pay the fee for the hearing. He had a lyre and all the equipment that belongs to lyre-playing, and he even kept in a case a string, already fitted and stretched, which he said he had bought for two minas from Nero's lyre, and that he would sell it to nobody unless that man were one of the best lyre-singers and about to compete at Delphi. After a prelude, in his usual way, and after running through a short hymn to Nero, he went on to songs, some from the Oresteia, some from the Antigone, some from whatever tragedies he sang, and turned the melodies, as many as Nero twirled and ruined in the turning. When they listened rather sluggishly, he said that Nero was being treated impiously by them and that they were enemies of the divine voice, but they paid no attention. Menippus asked Apollonius how he heard the man saying this. "How," he said, "but as when he was singing?" "Still, Menippus, let us not be provoked by this, but pay him the fee for his performance and let him go sacrifice to the Muses of Nero."
40| So far, then, went that drunken outrage. At daybreak Telesinus, one of the two consuls, summoned Apollonius and asked, "What is this garb?" "Pure," he said, "and from no mortal creature." "And what is your wisdom?" "Inspired knowledge of the divine," he said, "and how one should pray to the gods and sacrifice." "Is there anyone, philosopher, who does not know these things?" "Many," he said. "And even if someone does know them rightly, he would become much better for hearing from a wiser man that what he knows, he knows well." Telesinus listened to this; he happened in fact to be a quiet devotee of the divine, and it dawned on him who the man was, from what he had long heard about him. He did not think he should ask his name in public, lest the man wish to remain unnoticed, but he brought him back to the discourse on the divine, for he himself had a taste for discussion, and said, "As a wise man, what do you pray for when you go to the altars?" "I pray," he said, "that justice may exist, that the laws not be overthrown, that the wise be poor, and that the others be rich, but without fraud." "Do you expect to obtain so much by asking?" "Yes, by Zeus," he said, "for I string everything together into one prayer, and when I go to the altars I pray thus: 'Gods, give me what is due.' If I am among the good, I shall receive more than I have said; but if the gods set me among the worthless, the opposite will come to me from them, and I shall not blame the gods if I am thought worthy of evils when I am not good." Telesinus was struck by these words, and wishing to do him a favor, said, "Visit all the sanctuaries, and I shall write to the priests, instructing them to receive you and to yield to you when you set things in order." "And if you do not write," he said, "will they not receive me?" "By Zeus, they will not," he said, "for this is my office." "I am glad," said Apollonius, "that being a noble man you hold a great office. But I would like you also to know this about me: I like to live in those sanctuaries that are not securely locked, and none of the gods refuses me, but they make me a sharer of their roof. Let this too be granted to me, since even the barbarians allowed it." And Telesinus said, "The barbarians have beaten us to a great tribute that should have been Rome's, for I should have wished this to be said of us." So he lived in the sanctuaries, changing and moving from one sanctuary to the next; and when he incurred blame for this, he said, "The gods themselves do not dwell in heaven the whole time, but travel to Ethiopia, and travel to Olympus and Athos, and I think it strange that the gods should visit all the nations of men, while men should not visit all the gods. Yet masters who neglect their slaves will not at once be blamed, for perhaps they despise them as worthless; but slaves who do not wait on their masters in every way would be destroyed by them as accursed and as slaves hateful to the gods."
41| As he held his discussions at the sanctuaries, the gods were served more devoutly, and people gathered in the sanctuaries, expecting to receive more good things from the gods. His gatherings were not yet slandered, because they were conducted in public and addressed to everyone, for he did not haunt doors, nor spend his time among the powerful; he welcomed those who came to him, and spoke to them just as he did to the people.
42| Demetrius, who had been won over to Apollonius, as I said in my account of the affairs at Corinth, later came to Rome and attended Apollonius, while letting himself loose against Nero. This was suspected to be the man's contrivance, and Apollonius himself was thought to have put Demetrius up to it, much more so when a gymnasium was completed for Nero, the most marvelous of those there, and Nero himself, the great senate and the equestrian order of Rome sacrificed in it on a white day. Demetrius stepped forward into the gymnasium itself and delivered a speech against those who bathed, saying that they were dissolute and defiled themselves, and he showed that such expenditure was superfluous. For this, what helped him not to be put to death on the spot was that Nero that day was singing in a finer voice than ever, and he sang in a tavern built into the gymnasium, wearing a loincloth and naked, like the most licentious of tavern-keepers. Nevertheless Demetrius did not escape being endangered for what he said. Tigellinus, in whose hands Nero's sword lay, drove him out of Rome as having demolished the bath by what he said, and he secretly tracked Apollonius, in case he too should say something open to attack or provocative.
43| Apollonius was neither visibly mocking nor yet anxious, like those who guard against some danger, but spoke fully about the matters before him, with Telesinus joining him in his philosophy and other men who, although philosophy was in a dangerous way, did not think they would be in danger while pursuing it with him. He was suspected, as I said, much more for what he said about a sign from Zeus. For once, when thunder pealed during a solar eclipse, a thing that seems least likely to happen in an eclipse, he looked up at the sky and said, "There will be something great, and there will not be." Those present at the saying could not yet interpret it, though on the third day following the eclipse they all understood what he meant. For as Nero was at dinner, a thunderbolt fell on the table and went through the cup that was in his hands and not far from his mouth; it was this, Nero's coming so close to being struck, that Apollonius had meant when he said that something would happen and would not happen. When Tigellinus heard this saying, he was afraid of the man, as one wise in matters of the daemonic. He did not think he should bring open charges against him, lest he suffer some unseen harm from him, but he watched him with every eye that the government has, as he conversed, as he was silent, sitting or walking, what he ate and with whom, and whether he sacrificed or did not sacrifice.
44| When a disease broke out in Rome that the doctors call catarrh, from which coughs arise and the voice goes bad for those who talk, the sanctuaries were full of people beseeching the gods, since Nero's throat was swollen and he had a hoarse voice. Apollonius was bursting with indignation at the folly of the many, but rebuked no one; and he even checked and calmed Menippus, who was angered by such things, telling him to forgive the gods if they enjoy comic mimes. When this remark was reported to Tigellinus, he sent men to bring him into the court to defend himself against the charge of impiety toward Nero. An accuser was also prepared against him, who had already destroyed many and who had a full tally of such Olympic victories, and he held in his hands a tablet with the charge written on it, and brandishing it like a sword against the man, said that it was sharpened and would destroy him. But when Tigellinus unrolled the tablet and found in it no trace of writing, but came upon a book without a mark, he was brought to the thought of a daemon. This, too, Domitian is said later to have experienced in his dealings with him. Tigellinus, then, took Apollonius aside and brought him into the secret court, where this office tries the gravest cases out of public view, and having sent everyone out he pressed him with questions about who he was. Apollonius named his father and his country and the purpose for which he used his wisdom, and said that he used it for knowing the gods and for understanding men, since knowing another is harder than knowing oneself.

“And the daemons, Apollonius,” he said, “and the apparitions of phantoms — how do you expose them?”

“As I do murderous and impious men,” he said. He said this as a jibe at Tigellinus, since he was Nero’s instructor in every cruelty and debauchery.

“Would you prophesy, if I asked you to?” he said.

“How could I,” he said, “when I am no prophet?”

“And yet they say,” he said, “that you are the one who said that something great would happen and would not happen.”

“What you heard is true,” he said, “but do not credit it to prophecy; put it down rather to wisdom, which a god discloses to wise men.”

“And why are you not afraid of Nero?” he said.

“Because,” he said, “the god who grants him to seem fearsome has granted me to be without fear.”

“And what do you think of Nero?” he said.

Apollonius said, “Better than you do. For you think him fit to sing, and I think him fit to keep silent.”

Tigellinus was astounded and said, “Go, but put up sureties for your person.”

And Apollonius said, “And who will stand surety for a body that no one will bind?” To Tigellinus these words seemed more than human and beyond the reach of a man, and as though he were on his guard against fighting a god, he said, “Go wherever you wish, for you are too strong to be ruled by me.”
45| This too is a wonder of Apollonius. A girl of marriageable age seemed to have died, and her bridegroom was following the bier, crying out all the laments that belong to a marriage left unfulfilled, and Rome was mourning with him, for the girl happened to belong to a family of consular rank. Apollonius, then, came upon the mourning and said, “Set down the bier, for I will put an end to your tears for the girl.” At the same time he asked what her name was. Most people thought he was going to deliver a speech, the sort given at funerals, which rouses lament; but he did nothing except touch her and say something over her that no one could hear, and he woke the girl from her seeming death. The girl spoke aloud and went back to her father’s house, like Alcestis brought back to life by Heracles. When the girl’s relatives offered him a hundred and fifty thousand, he said he would give it to the girl as an addition to her dowry. Now whether he found a spark of soul in her that had escaped the notice of those tending her — for it is said that Zeus was sending a fine drizzle and that a vapor was rising from her face — or whether he rekindled and recovered a soul that had gone out, the grasp of this has proved beyond words, not for me alone but also for those who were present.
46| At about this time Musonius too happened to be held in Nero’s prisons, the man who is said to have practiced philosophy more perfectly than anyone. They did not converse openly with each other, because Musonius declined to, so that they should not both be put in danger; instead they kept up their exchanges by letter, with Menippus and Damis going back and forth to the prison. Leaving aside the letters about matters of no great importance, we shall set out the essential ones, from which one can see something great.

“Apollonius to Musonius the philosopher, greetings. I want to come to you and share your conversation and your roof, so that I may be of some use to you — provided you do not doubt that Heracles once freed Theseus from Hades. Write what you wish. Farewell.”

“Musonius to Apollonius the philosopher, greetings. For what you have intended, praise will be laid up for you; but the real man is the one who stands his trial and shows that he has done no wrong. Farewell.”

“Apollonius to Musonius the philosopher, greetings. Socrates the Athenian, unwilling to be freed by his own friends, went into court and died. Farewell.”

“Musonius to Apollonius the philosopher, greetings.
47| Socrates died because he did not prepare himself for his defense; but I shall make my defense. Farewell.”

When Nero was setting out for Greece, having proclaimed publicly that no one was to teach philosophy in Rome, Apollonius turned to the western regions of the earth, said to be bounded by the Pillars, to see the ebb tides of Ocean and Gadeira. For he had also heard something about the philosophy of the people there — that they had advanced far in matters divine. All his followers went with him, praising both the journey and the man.

======== Life of Apollonius — Book V ========

1| As for the Pillars, which they say Heracles planted as the boundaries of the earth, I will leave aside the legendary material and instead set out what is worth hearing and recording. Two headlands, of Europe and of Libya, enclosing a strait of sixty stadia between them, let the Ocean into the inner seas. The Libyan headland, whose name is Abinna, has lions ranging over it along the brows of the mountains that rise into view inland; it borders on the Gaetulians and the people of Tingis, both of them savage Libyan peoples, and for one sailing out into the Ocean it stretches as far as the mouth of the Salex for nine hundred stadia, and beyond that no one could reckon how far, for after this river Libya is barren of life and there are no more people. The promontory of Europe, which is called Calpis, occupies the right-hand side of the entrance, six hundred stadia in length, and ends at ancient Gadeira.
2| The turnings of the Ocean’s tide I have seen for myself among the Celts, and they are as they are reported; and having conjectured in many directions about the cause that makes so boundless a sea advance and draw back, I believe that Apollonius perceived the truth. For in a letter of his to the Indians he declares that the Ocean, impelled by undersea winds from many chasms which the earth affords beneath it and around it, moves outward and then withdraws again whenever the wind sinks back, like breath. He confirms this also from the sick around Gadeira: for during the time the water is at flood, souls do not leave the dying, which would not happen unless breath were also flowing in over the land. And what they say is seen in the moon as she is born, waxes full and wanes, this I know to hold for the Ocean, for it keeps pace with her measures, shrinking with her and filling with her.
3| Day follows night and night follows day among the Celts with the darkness or the light giving way little by little, as it does here; but around Gadeira and the Pillars they are said to strike the eyes all at once, like flashes of lightning. They say too that the Isles of the Blessed are marked off by the Libyan extremity, rising toward the uninhabited promontory.
4| Gadeira lies at the extremity of Europe, and its people are exceptionally devout in matters of religion. They have set up an altar to Old Age, and they alone of mankind sing hymns of praise to Death; there are altars there also to Poverty and to Art, and to the Egyptian Heracles, and others to the Theban. For they say that the Theban drove as far as nearby Erytheia, when he captured Geryon and his cattle, and that the Egyptian, devoting himself to wisdom, measured out the whole earth to its end. They also say that the people of Gadeira are Greek and are educated in our own manner; at any rate they esteem the Athenians above all other Greeks and sacrifice to Menestheus the Athenian; and out of admiration for the wisdom and courage of Themistocles, the victor at sea, they have set up a bronze statue of him, deep in thought, as though pondering an oracle.
5| They say too that trees can be seen there such as grow nowhere else on earth: that they are called Geryonean, that there are two of them, that they grow out of the tomb that stands over Geryon, passing from pine and fir into a form of their own, and that they drip with blood, as the poplar of the Heliads drips with gold. The island on which the temple stands is just the size of the shrine, and there is nothing rocky about it; it looks like a polished starting-sill. In the temple, they say, both Heracleses are honored, but there are no statues of them; there are two altars of the Egyptian, of bronze and without inscription, and one of the Theban — the hydras and the mares of Diomedes and the twelve labors of Heracles are carved here too, they say — which is of stone. The golden olive tree of Pygmalion is also dedicated in the Heracleum; it is worth admiring, they say, for the branches it imitates, but it would be admired still more for its fruit, which teems with emerald. They say too that a golden belt of Teucer son of Telamon is on display, but how he came to sail to the Ocean, or for what purpose, Damis says he could neither work out himself nor learn from them. The pillars in the temple, they say, are made of gold and silver melted together into a single color, and they stand more than a cubit high, of square workmanship, like anvils, and their capitals are inscribed with letters that are not Egyptian, not Indian, and not of any sort that one could make out. But Apollonius, since the priests would say nothing, said, "Heracles the Egyptian does not permit me to withhold what I know. These pillars are the bonds of earth and Ocean. He inscribed them in the house of the Fates, so that no strife might arise among the elements, and that they might not dishonor the friendship they have for one another."
6| They say too that he sailed up the river Baetis, which shows especially well the nature of Ocean: for whenever the sea is in flood, the river runs back toward its sources, since a wind of the sea, I suppose, thrusts it back. The mainland of Baetica, of which this river is the namesake, they call the best of mainlands: it is well supplied with cities and pasture, the river is led through to all the towns, and the land is full of every kind of farming and of seasons like the Attic autumn and the season of the Mysteries.
7| Damis says that Apollonius held many discussions on the things that came up there, but that these are worth recording. Once, as they were sitting in the temple of Heracles, Menippus, who had been recalling Nero, laughed aloud and said, "What are we to think of the noble fellow? In what contests, he says, has he been crowned? Do not the best of the Greeks go to the festivals with unrestrained laughter?" Apollonius said, "As I was hearing from Telesinus, the excellent Nero is afraid of the scourges of the Eleans. When his flatterers urged him to win the Olympic games and to proclaim Rome victor, he said, 'Provided the Eleans do not bewitch me with envy, for they are said to scourge, and to think themselves above me.' He also proclaimed many other things even more foolish than these. I say that Nero will win at Olympia, for who is so bold as to set himself against him? But he will not win the Olympic games, since they are not even being held in their season. For though the Olympic games belonged by ancestral custom to last year, Nero ordered the Eleans to postpone them until his own visit, so that they would sacrifice to him in preference to Zeus. And he has announced tragedy and lyre-singing to men who have neither theater nor stage for such things, but a natural stadium and everything bare; and for him to win victories at which he ought to hide his face, and to throw off the dress of Augustus and Julius and put on instead that of Amoebeus and Terpnus, what will you say of that? And he is so exact about the roles of Creon and Oedipus that he fears lest he somehow err about a door, a robe or a scepter, yet he so lapses in what concerns himself and the Romans that instead of enacting laws he sings them, and begs outside the doors, when the king ought to sit inside, giving audience about land and sea. There are many tragic actors, Menippus, among whom Nero enrolls himself. What then? If one of them, after playing Oenomaus or Cresphontes, left the theater so full of the mask that he wished to rule over others and thought himself a tyrant, what would you call him? Would he not need hellebore and the drug that purges the mind? But if the tyrant himself brings his affairs to tragic actors and craftsmen, smoothing his voice and fearing the man from Elis or the man from Delphi, or, not fearing them, yet acting his own art so badly that he does not expect to be scourged by those over whom he himself is appointed to rule, what are we to say of the unfortunate people who live under such a scoundrel? And what do you think of the Greeks, Menippus? Xerxes with his burning, or Nero with his singing?" For if you consider the provisions they have to bring in for his songs, how they are driven out of their houses, how they are not allowed to own anything of worth, either goods or slaves, what dreadful things they will suffer over their women and children when Nero picks out the forbidden pleasures from every household, and how many lawsuits will spring up, leaving aside the others, over the theaters and the songs (Did you not come to hear Nero? Or you were there but listened carelessly; you laughed; you did not applaud; you did not sacrifice for his voice that it might come to Delphi more brilliant), you will think the Greeks are living through many Iliads of suffering as his audience. As for whether the Isthmus will be cut or not (and it is being cut now, so they say), I learned that long ago when a god revealed it." Damis took this up and said, "But to me, Apollonius, the work of the cutting seems to outdo everything Nero does, for you see how great the design is." "It seems so to me too, Damis," he said, "but its being unfinished discredits him, as one who sings unfinished and digs unfinished. When I read through the deeds of Xerxes I praise the man, not for having bridged the Hellespont, but for having crossed it. Nero, however, I see neither sailing through the Isthmus nor reaching the end of the digging, and I think he will also retreat from Greece full of fear, unless the truth has perished."
8| After this one of the couriers who run the swift courses arrived at Gades and told them to sacrifice thank-offerings with singing for Nero, thrice Olympic victor. The people of Gades understood about the victory, and that there was some famous contest in Arcadia, since, as I said, they take a keen interest in Greek affairs. But the cities neighboring Gades did not know what the Olympic games were, nor what a contest or a competition was, nor for what they were sacrificing; instead they were led off into ridiculous notions, thinking this was a victory in war, and that Nero had captured some people called Olympians. They had never yet been spectators of tragedy or of lyre-singing.
9| At any rate, Damis says that the inhabitants of Hipola, which is also a city of Baetica, had an experience with a tragic actor that I too think worth mentioning. As the cities were sacrificing often for the victories, since the Pythian games had also now been reported, a tragic actor, one of those not thought worthy to compete against Nero, went about the western cities collecting money, and using his art he was well regarded among the less barbarous, first for the very fact of coming to people who had not yet heard tragedy, and then because he claimed to reproduce Nero's songs exactly. When he came forward at Hipola, he looked fearsome to them even during the time he was silent on the stage. The people saw him walking with great strides, with his mouth gaping so wide, standing on such high buskins, with the monstrous garments about him, and they were not without fear of the sight. But when he raised his voice and let it ring out, most took to flight, as if a daemon had bellowed at them. Such were the manners of the barbarians there, and so primitive.
10| The governor of Baetica earnestly wished to meet Apollonius, but Apollonius said that his meetings seemed unpleasant to those who do not practice philosophy; the governor pressed his request. As he was said to be a good man and hostile to Nero's mimes, Apollonius wrote him a letter so that he would come to Gades, and the governor, laying aside the pomp of office, came with a few of the people closest to him. They greeted one another and sent away those present, and what they said to each other no one knows, but Damis infers that they came to an understanding against Nero. For after three days of private conversation the governor went away, embracing Apollonius, and Apollonius said, "Farewell, and remember Vindex." What was this? While Nero was singing in Achaea, Vindex, a man fit to cut the strings that Nero played so unskillfully, is said to have stirred up the western nations. To the legions that had been placed under him he delivered a speech against Nero, such as a man might breathe forth against a tyrant out of truly noble philosophy. He said that Nero was anything rather than a lyre-singer, and a lyre-singer rather than an emperor. He reproached him with madness, avarice, cruelty and every kind of licentiousness, but did not reproach him with the most savage of his acts, for he had killed his mother justly, since she bore such a child. Apollonius, foreseeing that these things would happen, was lining up the governor of the neighboring province alongside Vindex, all but taking up arms himself on behalf of Rome.
11| With the regions of the west in turmoil, they turned from there toward Libya and the Tyrrhenians, traveling partly on foot and partly by ship, and put in at Sicily, where Lilybaeum is. Sailing along toward Messina and the strait, where the Tyrrhenian sea, meeting the Adriatic, makes Charybdis dangerous, they say they heard that Nero had fled and Vindex had died, and that some were laying hold of the empire from Rome itself, others from whatever province they happened to be in. When his companions asked him where these events would lead and whose the empire would finally be, he said, "Of many Thebans." For he compared the strength that Vitellius, Galba and Otho used for a short time to the strength of the Thebans, who for the briefest while were pushed to the front in Greek affairs.
12| That he foreknew such things by a movement from the divine, and that the argument of those who consider the man a sorcerer is unsound, is shown by what has been said, but let us consider the following as well. The sorcerers, whom I consider the most wretched of men, some go to the testing of phantoms, some to barbarian sacrifices, some to casting a spell or applying an ointment, and say that they change what is fated; and many of them, when brought under accusation, have confessed to being adept in such things. He, however, followed what comes from the Fates, foretold that these things must come to pass, and foreknew them not by sorcery but from what the gods revealed. On seeing among the Indians the tripods, the cupbearers and all the self-moving things which I described as going about, he neither asked by what device they worked nor sought to learn it; he praised them, but did not think them worth emulating.
13| When they arrived at Syracuse, a woman of no obscure position gave birth to a portent such as had never been delivered before. The infant had three heads, each on its own neck, but all of them belonged to a single body. Some, with crude interpretation, said that Sicily (for it is Trinacria) would be destroyed unless it were of one mind and breathed together; and indeed many of the cities were in faction against themselves and against one another, and life in good order was absent from the island. Others said that Typho, who has many heads, was threatening Sicily with revolution. Apollonius said, "Go, Damis, and look at it, to see whether it is put together in this way." For the infant had been exposed publicly for those who know how to interpret portents. When Damis reported that it had three heads and was male, Apollonius gathered his companions and said, "Three emperors of the Romans, whom I recently called Thebans. None of them will bring his rule to completion; but they will perish, some in Rome itself, one in the regions bordering Rome, once they have gained power, and they will cast off the mask more quickly than the tyrants of the tragedians." And the saying soon came to light. Galba died in Rome itself after laying hold of the empire; Vitellius also died, having dreamed of ruling; and Otho died among the western Gauls and did not even get a splendid tomb, but lies like a private man. Fortune flew through all this in a single year.
14| Going on to Catane, where the mountain Aetna is, they say they heard from the people of Catane that Typho is bound there and that fire rises from him, which smokes Aetna; but they themselves arrived at more plausible accounts, suited to those who study philosophy. Apollonius began by putting this question to his companions, "Is there any such thing as mythology?" "Certainly, by Zeus," said Menippus, "at least the kind the poets praise." "And what do you think of Aesop?" "A teller of tales and a story-maker through and through." "Which of the two are wise, the myths of the poets or his?" "Those of the poets," he said, "since they are sung as things that happened." "And what of Aesop's?" "Frogs," he said, "and donkeys, and nonsense of the sort that old women and children chew over." "And yet," said Apollonius, "it seems to me that Aesop's are better suited to wisdom." "For the tales about the heroes, to which all poetry holds, corrupt their hearers, since the poets set forth strange loves, marriages of brothers and sisters, slanders against the gods, the eating of children, ignoble villainies and lawsuits; and the fact that these are told as having happened leads the lover, the jealous man, and the man who desires to be rich or to be a tyrant, toward the very ends of the myths. Aesop, by his wisdom, first of all did not place himself in the common company of those who sing such things, but turned onto a road of his own. Then, like those who feast well on plainer dishes, he teaches great things from small matters; and having set forth his story, he adds to it the 'do this' or 'do not do this.' Then he has a closer hold on the love of truth than the poets do. For they force their stories to appear credible, whereas the man who announces a story that is false, as everyone knows, tells the truth in this very fact, that he does not speak of real events. The poet, having told his story, leaves it to the sound hearer to test whether it happened; but the one who tells a false story and adds an admonition, as Aesop does, shows that he has used the falsehood for the useful end of the hearing. It is charming of him, too, to make even the creatures without reason more pleasant and worth people's attention. For having grown up with these stories from boyhood and been nursed on them as infants, we take up opinions about each kind of animal: that some are kingly, some simple, some clever, some honest. The poet, saying 'many are the forms of the divine powers,' or something of that kind, dances off after adding it; but Aesop, after pronouncing his moral on his own story like an oracle, closes the lesson with the point he had set before it.
15| As for me, Menippus, when I was a quite small child my mother taught me a tale about the wisdom of Aesop: that Aesop was once a shepherd, and pastured his flocks near a shrine of Hermes; that he loved wisdom and prayed to the god for it; and that many others who asked the same thing also visited Hermes, one bringing gold, another silver, another an ivory herald's staff, another hanging up some such splendid offering. But Aesop was so placed that he had none of these things, and was sparing even of what he had; he poured out milk for him, as much as a ewe gave when milked, and carried a honeycomb to the altar, as much as would fill his hand. He thought to entertain the god also with myrtle berries, and set before him a very few roses or violets. 'For why, Hermes,' he used to say, 'should I weave garlands and neglect the sheep?' When the appointed day came for the distribution of wisdom, Hermes, being a god of speech and of gain, said: 'You, take philosophy,' presumably to the one who had dedicated the most; 'You, go to the ways of the orators,' to the one who had given second; 'For you, astronomy; for you, to be a musician; for you, to be a poet in heroic meter; for you, in iambic.' But when, for all his eloquence, he had unintentionally used up every portion of philosophy and had not noticed that Aesop had been left out, he recalled the Hours, who had raised him on the peaks of Olympus, and how, while he lay in swaddling clothes, they had told a story about the cow, which the cow told the man about herself and the earth, and so made him fall in love with the cattle of Apollo. And from this he gives mythology to Aesop, saying, 'Have it, the portion still left in the house of wisdom, the thing I learned first.' So the many forms of the art came to Aesop from there, and this is how the matter of mythology turned out. But perhaps I have been foolish.
16| "I intended to turn you toward accounts more natural and more true than those most people sing about Aetna, but I myself was carried off into praising fables. The digression has not been without charm; for the story that we reject is not of the kind told by Aesop, but one of the more theatrical sort, which the poets chatter about. They say that Typho or Enceladus is bound under the mountain and, struggling in death, breathes out this fire. I say that there were giants, and that bodies of such a kind are shown in many places of the earth when their tombs have burst open, but that they did not come to a contest with the gods; they may perhaps have committed outrages against their temples and statues, but to say that they leaped up to heaven and would not allow the gods to be on it is madness to say, and madness to believe. And let that other account too not be honored, although it seems more reverent, that Hephaestus has the care of forging in Aetna and that some anvil is struck there by him. For there are many other burning mountains in many places of the earth, and we would never be done attaching giants and Hephaestuses to them.
17| What, then, is the cause of mountains like these? Earth that contains a mixture of bitumen and sulphur smolders by its own nature, but does not yet give out flame; if it happens to be full of hollows and a wind runs beneath it, it lifts a blaze at once. The flame, when it has gained the upper hand, flows off the mountains like water and pours out into the plains, and goes toward the sea as a mass of fire, making outflows like those of rivers. Let the place of the Pious, around whom the fire flowed, be spoken of here too; but let us hold that for those who do holy things all the earth is a safe place, and the sea is passable, not only to those who sail but also to those who try to swim." For he always brought his discourses to rest on the useful part of the lesson.
18| When he had spent a time philosophizing in Sicily, which gave him sufficient occupation, he set out for Greece about the rising of Arcturus. The voyage was untroubled, and when he put in at Leucas, he said, "Let us get off this ship, for it is not better for it to sail to Achaea." Nobody paid attention to the remark except those who knew the man; he himself, with those who wished to sail with him, put in at Lechaeum on a ship of Leucas, and the Syracusan ship sank as it sailed into the Crisaean gulf.
19| He was initiated at Athens, the hierophant who initiated him being the one whom he himself had foretold to the previous hierophant, and there he met Demetrius the philosopher. For after the affair of Nero's bath and what he said about it, Demetrius had lived at Athens so nobly that he did not leave Greece even during the time when Nero was behaving outrageously in the contests. Demetrius said that he had met Musonius at the Isthmus, in chains and ordered to dig; that he himself spoke the fitting words of encouragement, but that Musonius, holding his mattock and striking the earth vigorously, looked up and said, "Do I grieve you, Demetrius, by digging the Isthmus for Greece? What would you have felt if you had seen me singing to the lyre, as Nero does?" And let the rest of what Musonius did, which is more and more admirable, be passed over, so that I may not seem to take liberties with the man who told them carelessly.
20| After spending the winter in all the Greek sanctuaries, Apollonius set out about spring on the road to Egypt, having rebuked the cities on many points, advised them on many, and praised them on many, for he did not hold back from praise whenever something was being done soundly. When he went down to the Piraeus, a ship was riding at anchor with sails ready, about to leave for Ionia, but the merchant would not allow him to board, saying that he was running it on a private charter. Apollonius asked, "What is the cargo?" "I am taking images of gods to Ionia," he said, "some of gold and stone, some of ivory and gold." "To set them up, or what?" "To sell to those who wish to set them up." "Are you afraid, my good man, that we shall plunder the images on the ship?" "That is not what I fear," he said, "but I think it dreadful that they should sail with many persons and be filled with base company and the way of life that sailors lead." "And yet, my excellent friend," said Apollonius, "you seem to me to be an Athenian: the gods boarded the ships that you employed against the barbarians, though these were filled with the disorder of sailors, and they did not think themselves defiled by you; and you so foolishly drive philosophers away from your ship, men in whom the gods most delight, and you the one who has made the gods an article of trade?" "The old art of making statues did not do this, nor did they go around the cities selling the gods; they merely brought along their own hands and the tools for working stone and ivory, set out the raw material in the sanctuaries themselves, and carried out their works there. But you, treating the gods like Hyrcanian and Scythian goods (and may it be far from me to say which), bringing them to harbors and marketplaces, do you think you are doing nothing impious? And besides, some people scrounge a living, hanging on themselves some image of Demeter or Dionysus, and say that they are nourished by the gods they carry. But to feed on the gods themselves, and never to have your fill of that, is a dreadful trade, and I would say folly, if you fear nothing from it." With such rebuke, he sailed on another ship.
21| Sailing down to Chios, he did not even set foot on the land, but leaped across to the ship next to his, which was advertising a voyage to Rhodes. His companions leaped across too without a word, for they practiced philosophy chiefly by following him in what he said and did. Crossing with a favorable wind, he busied himself in Rhodes as follows. Damis asked him, as he drew near the statue of the Colossus, what he thought greater than that. He said, "A man who practices philosophy soundly and without guile." At that time Canus the flute-player, who was thought the best flute-player of all men, was living in Rhodes. Apollonius called him and said, "What does the flute-player accomplish?" "Whatever," he said, "the hearer wishes." "And yet many of those who listen," said Apollonius, "would rather be rich than hear a flute. Do you make rich the people whom you perceive to desire this?" "Not at all," he said, "though I would like to." "What then? Do you make the young among your hearers handsome, since all those in the bloom of youth wish to seem fair?" "Not that either," he said, "though I have a great deal of Aphrodite in my flute." "What is it, then," said Apollonius, "that you think the hearer wishes?" "What else," said Canus, "but that the one who is grieved should have his grief put to sleep by the flute, that the one who rejoices should become more cheerful than he was, the lover more ardent, and the lover of sacrifice more inspired and more ready to sing hymns?" "Now this," said Apollonius, "Canus, does the flute itself accomplish it, because it is made of gold and brass and the shinbone of deer, or, in some cases, of asses, or is it something else that can do this?" "Something else," he said, "Apollonius. For the music, the modes, the mingling and the easy shifting of the playing, and the characters of the harmonies: these attune the hearers and shape their souls as they wish." "I understand," said Apollonius, "what your art does, Canus. For its variety and its range into all modes: this you practice and offer to those who come to you. To me, however, in addition to what you have said, the flute seems to need other things too: good breath, a good mouth, and the player's having good hands. There is good breath if the breath is clear and clean and the throat does not make a knocking sound, for that resembles an unmusical note; a good mouth, if the lips, taking in the reed of the flute, play without the face swelling; and I count a flute-player with good hands as worth much, if the wrist does not tire as it bends back and the fingers are not slow to fly over the notes, for quickness in changing from one mode to another belongs rather to those with good hands. If you provide all these things, play with confidence, Canus, for Euterpe will be with you."
22| There happened to be a young man at Rhodes, newly rich and uneducated, who was building a house and gathering for it paintings of every kind and stones from all nations. Apollonius inquired how much money he had laid out on teachers and education. "Not a drachma," he said. "And on the house, how much?" "Twelve talents," he said, "and I would spend as much again." "What do you want the house for?" "There will be splendid living for my body, for there are running tracks in it and groves, and I shall go little to the marketplace, and those who come in will greet me more pleasantly, as if visiting a sanctuary." "Are men more enviable," said Apollonius, "because of themselves or because of what surrounds them?" "Because of wealth," he said, "for money has the greatest power." "Young man," said Apollonius, "will the better guardian of money be the educated man or the uneducated?" When he fell silent, Apollonius said, "You seem to me not to possess the house, but the house to possess you. As for me, when I go into a sanctuary I would far rather see in a small one an image of ivory and gold than in a great one a cheap image of clay."
23| Seeing a young man who was fat and proud of eating the most of any man and drinking the most wine, he said, "Are you then the one who stuffs his belly?" "And I sacrifice for it," he said. "What benefit, then, have you got from this gorging?" "To be admired and stared at. For you have probably heard about Heracles, that his meals were celebrated just as much as his labors." "Heracles being what he was," said Apollonius. "But what virtue have you, you scum? For being stared at is left to you in one thing only, that you burst."
24| Such were his doings at Rhodes; and in Alexandria, when he sailed in, what happened was this. Alexandria loved him even in his absence, and longed for Apollonius, as one man for another, and upper Egypt too; both were full of theology and prayed that he would visit their ways. For since many came from here to Egypt and many came here from Egypt to mix with them, Apollonius was sung of among them and the Egyptians' ears were pricked up for him. As he went from the ship to the city, they looked upon him as upon a god and stepped aside for him in the alleys, as for those who carry sacred objects. While he was being escorted with more pomp than the governors of provinces, twelve men were being led to death, accused of robbery. He looked at them and said, "Not all of them; for one of them goes off falsely accused." And he said to the executioners who were leading them, "I tell you to slacken your pace and to come to the pit more slowly, and to kill this man last, for he has no share in the charge. And you would be doing a holy thing if you spared for a short part of the day these men, whom it were better not to kill at all." And at the same time he lingered over what he said, stretching his speech out at a length unusual for him. What he had in mind became clear at once. When eight had already had their heads cut off, a horseman rode hard to the pit shouting, "Spare Pharion!" For he was not a robber, but had falsely accused himself through fear of being tortured, and when others were tortured he had been acknowledged to be an honest man. I pass over the stir in Egypt and how much they applauded at this, being given to wonder at any rate.
25| When he went up to the sanctuary, the ornament around it and the account given for each part appeared divine and composed with wisdom; but the blood of bulls, the geese and everything else that was sacrificed he did not approve of, nor did he count such things as banquets for the gods. When the priest asked him what he had learned that made him not sacrifice in this way, he said, "Rather you answer me: what have you learned that makes you sacrifice this way?" The priest said, "And who is so clever as to set right the practices of the Egyptians?" "Everyone is wise," he said, "if he comes from India." He added, "I shall burn an ox down to coals today; you share the smoke with us, for you will not be vexed over your portion if the gods feast on that one too." As the molded figure melted, he said, "Look at the omens." "Which?" said the Egyptian, "for I see nothing here." Apollonius said, "Did the Iamids and the Telliads and the Clytiads and the oracle of the Melampodids talk nonsense, my good man, who said so much about fire and gathered so many utterances from it? Or do you think the fire from pine and the fire from cedar is prophetic and sufficient to reveal something, but that the fire from the richest and purest tear is not much more to be chosen? If you were quick to understand the wisdom of fire, you would see many things also made clear in the circle of the sun when it rises."
26| With these words he rebuked the Egyptian as ignorant of divine things. Alexandria was devoted to horses and flocked to the hippodrome for this spectacle, and they were murdering one another over it; Apollonius rebuked them for this, and going forward into the sanctuary said, "How far will you carry on dying, not for children or sanctuaries, but so that you stain the sanctuaries, coming to them full of gore, and perish inside a wall? Troy, it seems, was sacked by a single horse, which the Achaeans then contrived; but against you chariots and horses are yoked, because of which you cannot live with a gentle rein. At any rate you are being destroyed not by the Atreidae, nor by the Aeacidae, but by one another, which not even the Trojans did in their drunkenness. At Olympia, where there are prizes for wrestling, boxing and the pancratium, no one has died for athletes, although there would perhaps be some pardon if a man were over-zealous for his own kind; but here for the sake of horses you have naked swords against one another, and stones ready to throw. Fire upon such a city, where there is wailing and outrage of those who kill and are killed, and the earth flows with blood. Respect the Nile, the common mixing bowl of Egypt. But why do I mention the Nile to people who measure the risings of blood rather than of water?" He said many other things in this rebuke, as Damis relates.
27| Vespasian was planning the imperial power among the provinces bordering Egypt and advancing toward Egypt, and Dio and Euphrates, of whom I shall speak a little later, urged them to rejoice. For after the first emperor, through whom Roman affairs had been put in order, tyrannies so harsh prevailed for fifty years that not even Claudius, who ruled thirteen years in the middle of them, seemed good. And yet he came to power at fifty years of age, when the mind is soundest in men, and he was thought to be a lover of all learning; but even he, at that age, suffered many boyish things and gave up the empire as a pasturage for women, by whom he died so carelessly that, although he knew in advance what he was going to suffer, he did not guard against even what he foresaw. Apollonius rejoiced over these things in a manner similar to Euphrates and Dio, but did not hold forth on them before everyone, considering such a form of speech too rhetorical. As the emperor approached, the sacred things met him before the gates, and the magistracies of Egypt and the districts into which Egypt is divided, and philosophers likewise and all wisdom; but Apollonius took no trouble over any of these things, and was busy in the sanctuary. The emperor spoke nobly and gently, and after a short discourse said, "Is the man of Tyana in the city?" "Yes," they said, "having made us better." "How then could he meet us? For I very much need the man." Dio said, "He will meet you near the sanctuary, for he promised me this when I came here." "Let us go," said the emperor, "to pray to the gods and to meet a noble man." From this arose a story that the empire had come to weigh upon his mind while he was besieging Jerusalem, and that he sent for Apollonius to take counsel about it, but Apollonius begged off from coming to a land that its inhabitants had defiled by what they had done and what they had suffered; and so he himself came to Egypt, already holding the empire, to talk with the man about what I shall make clear:
28| After sacrificing, and before he had yet given audience to the cities in due form, he addressed Apollonius, and as if praying to him said, "Make me emperor." Apollonius said, "I have done so. For in praying already I asked the gods for an emperor just, noble and self-controlled, adorned with gray hair and the father of legitimate sons, and that, of course, was you." The emperor was delighted at this, for the crowd in the sanctuary shouted in agreement with the saying, and he said, "How did Nero's rule seem to you?" And Apollonius said, "Nero perhaps understood tuning a lyre, but he disgraced the empire through slackness and through tension." "Do you then order the ruler to be moderate?" "Not I," he said, "but the god, who has defined equality as the mean. And good advisers on these matters are these men here," pointing to Dio, and to Euphrates, who had not yet come into his quarrel with him. Then the emperor, raising his hands, said, "Zeus, may I rule over the wise, and may the wise rule over me." And turning to the Egyptians he said, "Draw, as from the Nile and from me."
29| So Egypt lifted up its head in this way, having already given up hope because of the pressures it was under. As he came down from the sanctuary, he took Apollonius by the hand and led him into the palace and said, "Perhaps I seem boyish to some, laying hold of royal power about the sixtieth year of my life. I shall therefore give an account of myself, so that you may defend me to the others. I know that I was never beaten by wealth even as a youth, and I managed the offices and the splendors that belong to the Roman empire so moderately and sensibly that I seemed neither arrogant nor cowering. I did not contemplate revolution even against Nero; but since he held the empire, even if not according to the laws, at least as received from an emperor, I yielded to him on account of Claudius, who had made me consul and an adviser in his own affairs. By Athena, whenever I saw Nero behaving shamefully, tears fell from me as I thought of Claudius, and of what a scoundrel inherited the greatest of his possessions. But seeing that even when Nero was out of the way human affairs did not change for the better, but the empire was so dishonored that it lay in the hands of Vitellius, I am now going to it with confidence, first because I wish to show myself to men as worth much, and then because the contest will be against a man in the grip of a hangover. For Vitellius bathes in perfume more than I bathe in water, and I think that if he were struck by a sword he would give out perfume rather than blood. He joins wine to wine and is mad; he gambles, afraid that the dice may trip him up, yet he plays with the empire as a stake; he lies beneath courtesans and leaps on married women, saying that love affairs with danger are sweeter. I leave aside the more licentious things, so that I do not say such things in your presence. May I never let the Romans be ruled by such a man; rather, making the gods my leaders, may I become a man like myself. For this reason, Apollonius, I make my mooring cable fast to you, for they say that you perceive more of the gods' will than anyone; and I make you my adviser in cares that concern land and sea, so that, if the signs from the gods appear favorable, I may do these things, but if they are contrary and not on my side or on that of the Romans, I may avoid troubling gods who are unwilling."
30| Apollonius, invoking the god upon the speech, said, "Capitoline Zeus, for I know you to be the arbiter of the present affairs, guard yourself for this man, and guard this man for yourself; for the temple that unjust hands burned yesterday it is fated that this man shall raise up for you." The emperor wondered at the saying, and Apollonius said, "The events themselves will make it plain, and you do not need me; carry out what you have rightly resolved." What had happened, in fact, at Rome was this: Domitian, the son of Vespasian, had been drawn up in battle against Vitellius for his father's rule, and when a siege enclosed him in the Capitol, he escaped his besiegers, but the temple was burned. This appeared to Apollonius far sooner than if it had been done in Egypt. After this much business, Apollonius went away from the emperor, saying that the ancestral customs of the Indians did not permit him to do at midday anything other than what they do; and the emperor shone out all the more, and did not let events slip away from him, but held on to them as secure and already pledged to him, because of what he had heard.
31| On the next day, about dawn, Apollonius came to the palace and inquired of the guards what the emperor was doing. They said that he had been awake for a long time and was at his letters. Hearing this, he went away, saying to Damis, "The man will rule." Coming back about sunrise, he found Dio and Euphrates at the doors; when they asked eagerly about the meeting, he went through the account of himself that he had heard from the emperor, but kept silent about his own opinions. Called in first, he said, "Emperor, Euphrates and Dio, who have long been known to you, are at the doors, not without concern for your affairs. Call them also to a common discussion, for they are wise men." "I keep my doors unlocked to wise men," he said, "and as for you, my very breast seems to you to be open."
32| When they had been called in, he said, "Gentlemen, I made my defense about my intentions yesterday to the noble Apollonius." "We heard your defense," said Dio, "and it had sense." "Today, then," he said, "my dear Dio, let us philosophize together about what has been resolved, so that I may do everything as well as possible and for the safety of mankind. For I consider first Tiberius, how he changed the empire into something inhuman and cruel; then Gaius after him, how, frenzied for Dionysus, wearing Lydian dress and winning wars that did not exist, he shamefully played the Bacchant over all the affairs of the Romans; then the good Claudius, how, overcome by women, he forgot not only to rule but to live, for he died by their hands, as they say. As for Nero, why should I attack him, when Apollonius has delivered a brief and compact speech about the slackness and tension with which Nero disgraced the empire? What could I say of the arrangements of Galba, who died in the middle of the marketplace, adopting as sons for himself Otho and Piso, men who had played the courtesan? And if we were to hand the empire to Vitellius, the most licentious of all, Nero would live again. Seeing, then, gentlemen, that rule has been discredited by the tyrannies I have named, I make you my advisers on how I might manage it, now that it has already offended mankind." To this Apollonius said, "A flute-player, one of the very wise, used to send his pupils to the poorer flute-players to learn how not to play the flute. You have learned, emperor, how not to rule, from those who ruled badly; as to how one ought to rule, let us now take that up with earnestness."
33| Euphrates had already been secretly envying Apollonius, seeing the emperor attach himself to him more than visitors attach themselves to oracles; but now, swollen beyond measure and raising his voice above his usual pitch, he said that one ought not to flatter impulses, nor be carried away senselessly along with men who act without the reins, but ought to bring them into measure, if we are philosophers. “For on matters where we ought to be seen deliberating whether it is fitting to do them at all, you bid us say in what way they will be done, though you have not yet learned whether the discussion concerns things that should be done. I, for my part, urge that Vitellius be overthrown, for I know the man to be foul and drunk with every kind of licentiousness; but knowing you to be a good man and preeminent in nobility, I say you should not set Vitellius’ affairs right while not yet knowing your own. As for how monarchies behave with insolence, you need not learn it from me, for you have said it yourself; and you would understand that youth leaping at a tyranny does what perhaps befits itself, since for the young to be tyrants is much like being drunk or being in love; and a young man who has been a tyrant is not yet thought bad, even if he seems bloodthirsty, cruel and licentious in his tyranny. But when an old man comes to a tyranny, the first charge is that he wanted such things. For even if he appears humane and orderly, people do not credit this to him, but to his age and to his having settled into things, and he will be thought to have desired it long ago, while still young, and to have failed to get it; and such failures are put down partly to misfortune, partly to cowardice. “For a man is thought either to have condemned his own fortune and to have let his intention of ruling pass, or to have given way to another who was aiming at the tyranny because he feared him, evidently, as a real man. Let the matter of misfortune be set aside; but how will you plead off the charge of cowardice, when you are thought to have feared Nero, the most cowardly and most slothful of men? For what Vindex had in mind against him, by Heracles, called you first. You had an army, and the force that you were leading against the Jews was better suited to punishing Nero. Those people have long since revolted not only from the Romans but from all mankind; for men who have discovered a way of life that cannot be shared, who have no common table with other people, no libations, no prayers, no sacrifices, are farther removed from us than Susa and Bactra and the Indians beyond them. So it was not even reasonable to punish these people for revolting, whom it would have been better not even to possess. But Nero—who would not have prayed to kill him with his own hand, a man who all but drank human blood and sang in the midst of slaughters? And yet my ears were pricked up for the reports about you, and whenever someone arrived from there saying that thirty thousand Jews had been destroyed by you, and fifty thousand in the battle that followed, I would take the newcomer aside and ask him calmly, ‘And what of the man? Nothing greater than this?’ But since you have made Vitellius an image of Nero and are marching against him, do what you have planned, for that too is a fine thing; but as for what comes after this, let it stand as follows. “For the Romans, to be governed as a democracy is worth a great deal, and many of their possessions were acquired under that form of government. Abolish monarchy, concerning which you have spoken in such terms, and give the Romans the rule of the people, and to yourself the glory of having begun their freedom.”
34| When Euphrates had said this much, Apollonius saw that Dion was agreeing with his view, since Dion showed this both by a nod and by the things he praised in the speaker; and he said, “Surely, Dion, you are not adding something to what has been said?” “By Zeus,” he said, “in some respects the same, in others different. That he would have been far better employed overthrowing Nero than setting right the affairs of the Jews, I think I too have said to you; and you seemed to be struggling that Nero should never be overthrown. For whoever arranged the confusion of that man’s affairs well was in effect strengthening him against all those against whom he had been strong in evil. But I praise the move against Vitellius; for I think it greater not even to let a tyranny grow than to put an end to one already established. As for democracy, I welcome it—for even if this constitution is inferior to aristocracy, it is nonetheless more to be chosen by sensible men than tyrannies and oligarchies—but I fear that these tyrannies, having already made the Romans tame, will make the change difficult, and that they will be unable either to act as free men or to lift their eyes to democracy, like people who after darkness look suddenly at a full blaze of light. For this reason I say that Vitellius must be thrust out of affairs, and let it be done as quickly and as well as it can be; and it seems to me best to prepare as though for war, yet not to proclaim war against him beforehand, but rather punishment, if he does not let go of the rule. And once you have captured him (and I think that will come to you without any effort), give the Romans the choice of their own government, and if they choose democracy, concede it. “For this will be greater for you than many tyrannies and many Olympiads; you will be written up everywhere in the city, and everywhere you will stand in bronze, and you will give us occasions for speeches to which neither Harmodius nor Aristogeiton will be compared. But if they should accept monarchy, to whom is there left but you for all to vote the rule? For what you already hold and will hand over to the commonwealth, they will surely give to you rather than to another.”
35| Silence followed this, and the emperor’s face showed the struggle in his mind, since he seemed, though he was transacting and doing everything as an emperor, to be led away from this plan. Then Apollonius said, “You seem to me to be making a mistake, in dissuading the emperor about matters already decided, falling into a chatter that is boyish and slower than the occasion. For if I possessed as much power as this man, and were deliberating what good I could do to people, and you were advisers in such matters, your speech would be to the point—for philosophic opinions set right those hearers who are philosophers—but when you counsel a man who is a consul and used to ruling, and for whom, once he falls from power, destruction is ready, what need is there to upbraid him if he does not push away what fortune offers, but receives it as it comes, and takes counsel how to use sensibly what he has? Just as if we saw an athlete, well equipped in spirit and in stature and fitted in the harmony of his body, already walking through Arcadia to Olympia, and came up to him and encouraged him against his opponents, but told him that when he had won at Olympia he should not be proclaimed for the victory, nor offer his head to the wild olive, we would seem to be talking nonsense or mocking the labors of others. So let us think of the man in this way: how great a spear-point surrounds him, how much bronze flashes, how great a multitude of horses, and himself how noble, sensible, and fit to hold on to what he intends; let us send him on toward what he has set out for, speaking auspicious words to him, and urging him on with words even more auspicious than these. “For you have not considered this either: that he has two sons who already command armies, and if he does not hand the rule over to them, he will find them his bitterest enemies—and what is left then but to be at war to the end with his own house? But if he accepts the rule, he will be served by his own sons, he will lean on them and they on him, and he will have bodyguards who are, by Zeus, neither hired nor compelled nor putting on a friendly face, but the most devoted and dearest. I care for no constitution, for I live under the gods; but I do not think it right that the herd of mankind should perish for want of a herdsman who is just and sensible. For just as one man preeminent in virtue changes a democracy into the rule of the one best man, so the rule of one man who looks ahead in everything to the common advantage is rule by the people. ‘You did not overthrow Nero,’ he says. And you, Euphrates? And Dion? And I? Yet no one reproaches us with this, nor thinks us cowards, if when countless philosophers have already pulled down tyrannies, we fell short of being thought to do something for freedom. And yet, as far as I was concerned, I did array myself against Nero, speaking in a good many hostile terms and cutting short the cruel Tigellinus as he listened; and what help I gave Vindex in the western regions was surely a fortress built against Nero. But I will not say on this account that I overthrew the tyrant myself, nor, since you did not do these things, will I hold you softer than befits philosophy. “A philosopher will say whatever comes into his mind, and he will, I think, take care not to say anything senseless or frenzied; but for a consul who has in mind to overthrow a tyrant, first there is need of much more counsel, so that he may approach the matter from concealment, and then of a suitable pretext so as not to seem to break his oath. For if he is going to use arms against the very man who appointed him general, and to whom he swore to counsel and do the best, he must first make his defense to the gods, as one breaking an oath in a holy manner; and he needs more friends, for such things must not be done without palisade or fence; and as much money as possible, to win over the forces; and this when he is attacking a man who holds everything over the whole earth. What delay there is in these matters, and what lengths of time! Take these things however you wish, for let us not go into an examination of what this man, as is likely, has had in mind, and which fortune has brought together for him without his even struggling. But to this what will you say? The man who yesterday was in power and was being crowned by the cities in the temples here, and was transacting business brilliantly and lavishly, this man you bid proclaim publicly today that he is henceforth a private citizen, and that he came to power out of madness? For just as, by carrying out what has been resolved, he will win over eager bodyguards, in whom he trusted when he formed this plan, so by coming to withdraw from what he resolved he will find in them an enemy, and one he cannot trust from then on.”
36| The emperor heard this gladly, and said, “If you lived in my soul, you could not have reported more clearly what I had in mind. I follow you, then, for I consider everything that comes from you divine; and teach me all that a good emperor ought to do.” And Apollonius said, “You ask me for things that cannot be taught; for kingship is the greatest of human things, but unteachable. Yet whatever I think you would do soundly in acting, that I will tell you. Count as wealth not what is stored away—for what is better about it than sand brought together from anywhere?—nor what comes in from people who lament their taxes; for gold is counterfeit and dark if it comes from tears. You would use wealth best of all emperors by helping those in need, and by giving those who own much security for their wealth. Be afraid of being permitted everything you wish, for you will then use it more sensibly. Do not cut off the tall ears of grain that rise above the rest—for the saying of Aristotle is unjust—but rather root out the ill-disposed, as one roots the thorns out of the crops; and seem formidable to those who attempt revolution not in the act of punishing but in the prospect of punishing. Let law, O emperor, rule over you too; for you will legislate more sensibly if you do not look down on the laws. Serve the gods more than before; for you have received great things from them, and you pray for great things. And what belongs to the rule, do as an emperor; what belongs to the body, as a private man.” “As for dice and drunkenness and love affairs, and setting yourself against such things, what advice could I give you, who they say did not approve of these even at the age for them? You have two sons, O emperor, and fine ones, as they say. Rule these above all, for their errors will surely bring discredit on you. Let there also be a threat toward them, that you will not hand the rule over to them unless they remain men of honor and goodness, so that they may regard the rule not as an inheritance but as a prize of virtue. As for the pleasures that have taken up citizenship in Rome, and these are many, it seems to me, O emperor, that you should check them in due measure; for it is hard to change a people all at once into soberness, but one must instill rhythm into their minds little by little, correcting some things openly and some unobserved. And as for the luxury of freedmen and slaves whom the rule gives you, let us do away with it, accustoming them to think humbly in proportion as the master they belong to is greater. What is left but to speak of the governors who go out to the provinces—not those whom you yourself will send out, for you will surely give the offices to the best men, but those who will obtain the office by lot? Of these I say that you should send those suited to the provinces they have been allotted, as the lot falls: those who speak Greek to govern Greek peoples, those who speak Latin to govern peoples of the same tongue and voice. And I will say where I got this idea. In the times when I was living in the Peloponnese, a man who did not know the affairs of the Greeks was governing Greece, and the Greeks understood nothing of him. “So he did wrong, and was himself led astray in most things; for his assessors and partners in the judgment in the courts, taking the governor in hand like a slave, kept selling the lawsuits. This, O emperor, is what occurs to me today; and if anything else comes to mind, we shall meet again. For now, do what belongs to the rule, lest you seem idle to your subjects.”
37| Euphrates said, “I agree with what has been decided; for what more could I do by teaching otherwise? But as for philosophy, O emperor—for from now on it will be addressing you—praise and welcome the kind that accords with nature, but refuse the kind that claims to listen to the gods; for by lying about the divine, such people puff us up with many foolish notions.” These words were said by him against Apollonius; but Apollonius did not turn around, and went off with his own followers, having finished what he had come to do. When Euphrates wished to say something rather bolder about him, the emperor understood, and fending him off said, “Call in those who have petitions for the government, and let the senate resume its own form.” In this way Euphrates unwittingly discredited himself; for he seemed to the emperor spiteful and insolent, and to have spoken his words on behalf of democracy not as he really thought, but to contradict Apollonius because of what Apollonius thought about the rule. The emperor, however, did not cast him off, nor did he show any anger at this. And Dion he did not praise for having sided with Euphrates’ view, yet he did not stop being fond of him; for Dion seemed charming in his discourses and avoided quarrels, and he gave his speeches a bloom like the breath that comes from temples, and he also had the ability to speak extemporaneously better than any man. The emperor not only was fond of Apollonius, but also lay at his feet as he went through old stories, told of the Indian Phraotes, described the rivers and the wild beasts that inhabit India, and foretold all the things that the gods were revealing about the rule. When he was leaving Egypt, which had been resettled and was growing young again, he made Apollonius a companion on the road; but Apollonius did not think this good, saying that he had not yet seen Egypt in all its extent, and had not yet come to conversation with the Naked Sages, being very eager to weigh the wisdom of India against that of Egypt. “Nor have I drunk of the Nile at the place where it begins.” The emperor understood that he was setting out for Ethiopia, and said, “And will you not remember us?” “By Zeus,” he said, “if you remain a good emperor and remember yourself.”
38| After this the emperor sacrificed in the temple and announced gifts for him in public. Apollonius, as though about to ask, said, “And what gifts, O emperor, will you give?” “Ten now,” he said, “and when I come to Rome, everything of mine.” And Apollonius said, “Then I must spare your goods as though they were mine, and not squander them now, when they are to be laid up for me all together. But look after these men instead, O emperor, for they seem to be in need.” He was pointing, as it turned out, to the circle of Euphrates. The emperor told them to ask with confidence; and Dion, blushing, said, “Reconcile me, O emperor, with my teacher Apollonius, for the things on which I seemed to contradict him, though I had never before contradicted the man.” The emperor praised this and said, “I asked that yesterday and it is already granted; but ask for a gift.” And Dion said, “There is a certain Lasthenes, from Apamea in the nation of the Bithynians, who philosophized with me and has fallen in love with the military cloak and a soldier’s life. Since he now says he is in love with the philosopher’s cloak again, release him from the service; he asks this himself. You will oblige me by making him a good man, and him by letting him live as he wishes.” “Let him be released,” he said, “and I give him also what is given to those who have served, since he is in love with wisdom and with you.” After him the emperor turned to Euphrates, who had composed a letter about what he was asking. He held out the letter, as though the emperor would read it by himself, but the emperor, wishing to hand over some argument against him, read it aloud to all in public. Euphrates was seen to be asking some things for himself and some for others, and of the gifts some were money and some were means of getting money. Apollonius laughed and said, “Was it then on behalf of democracy that you gave counsel, when you were about to ask the emperor for so much?”
39| Such is what I found about the difference that arose between Apollonius and Euphrates. When the emperor had set out, they attacked each other in public, Euphrates with anger and abuse, Apollonius in the manner of a philosopher and rather with refutation. All that he charged Euphrates with, as acting in a way unbecoming to philosophy, one can learn from Apollonius’ letters to him, which are quite many; I must hold back from the man, for I did not set out to slander him, but to hand down the life of Apollonius to those who do not yet know it. As for the story about the stick, it is said that Euphrates raised it against Apollonius as he was talking, but did not strike; most people ascribe this to the cleverness of the one who was to be struck, but I ascribe it to the reasoning of the one who was about to strike, through which he became master of an anger that had already prevailed.
40| Dion’s philosophy seemed to Apollonius too rhetorical and more fitted for giving pleasure; so correcting him he says, “Charm with the flute and the lyre rather than with speech,” and in many places in his letters to Dion he rebukes this kind of popular oratory.
41| Why it happened that Apollonius never again came to the emperor or met with him after Egypt, though the emperor summoned him and wrote often about it, I wish to make clear. Nero had left Greece free, having reached a more sensible decision than was his wont, and the cities returned to Dorian and Attic ways, and everything grew young again in the concord of the cities, such as Greece had not had even in old times; but Vespasian, when he came, took this from her, putting forward civil strife and other pretexts not yet worthy of so great an anger. This seemed bitter not only to those who suffered it but also to Apollonius, and harsher than suits the character of imperial rule; so he wrote to the emperor as follows. “Apollonius to the emperor Vespasian, greetings. You have enslaved Greece, as they say, and you think you have something more than Xerxes had, but you do not notice that you have less than Nero; for Nero had it and gave it up. Farewell.” To the same: “You are so ill-disposed toward the Greeks that you enslave them though they are free; what need is there of my company? Farewell.” To the same: “Nero freed the Greeks in play, but you in earnest have enslaved them. Farewell.” Such were the things that set Apollonius against Vespasian; but when he heard that Vespasian was governing well throughout the rest of his reign, he made no secret of his pleasure, and considered that a good thing was being done for himself.
42| This too was thought a wonder of Apollonius in Egypt. A man was leading a tame lion on a leash, like a dog, and it fawned not only on the man who led it but on anyone who came near. It went about collecting alms in many of the cities, and it was even admitted into the temples because it was pure: it did not lick up the blood of the victims, nor did it lunge at the sacrificial animals as they were being flayed and jointed, but it lived on honey cakes and bread and sweetmeats and boiled meat, and you could even come upon it drinking wine without its nature changing. It came up to Apollonius as he sat in the temple, whimpered against his knees and entreated him as it entreated no one else — for a reward, as most people thought. But Apollonius said, “The lion is asking me to inform you what man’s soul it has. This, then, is Amasis, the king of Egypt in the Saite nome.” When the lion heard this, it let out a pitiful, mournful roar and, sinking down on its knees, it lamented, shedding tears. Apollonius stroked it and said, “I think the lion should be sent to Leontopolis to be dedicated to the temple there; for I do not think it right that a king transformed into the most royal of the beasts should go begging like the beggars among men.” Thereupon the priests gathered and sacrificed to Amasis, and having decked the beast with a collar and ribbons, they escorted it up into Egypt, playing pipes and singing hymns and songs composed in its honor.
43| Having seen enough of affairs at Alexandria, he set out for Egypt and Ethiopia to meet the Naked Sages. Menippus, since he was by now one of those able to discourse and was formidable in speaking his mind, he left behind there to keep watch on Euphrates; and seeing that Dioscorides was not in good shape for the journey, he excused him from the trip. He gathered the rest — for after the desertions near Aricia a good many others had joined him — and spoke to them about the journey, beginning in this way: “I need to give you an Olympic proclamation, gentlemen. An Olympic proclamation would run something like this. When the Olympic festival comes round, the Eleans train the athletes for thirty days in Elis itself. And whereas, when they assemble them, the Delphian at the time of the Pythian games and the Corinthian at the time of the Isthmian say, ‘Go into the stadium and prove yourselves men who can win,’ the Eleans, when they are setting off for Olympia, address the athletes like this: ‘If you have trained in a manner worthy of coming to Olympia, and have done nothing lazy or ignoble, go forward with confidence; but those who have not trained so, go wherever you please.’” His followers understood what he meant, and about twenty stayed behind with Menippus, while the rest, ten in number, I think, prayed to the gods, offered something like a sacrifice for setting sail, and went straight for the pyramids riding on camels, keeping the Nile on their right. In many places they crossed the river by boat to learn about everything along it; for there was no city, no temple, no sacred precinct anywhere in Egypt that they passed by without a word, but they were always learning and teaching some sacred lore, and the boat that Apollonius boarded was like a sacred ship carrying a festival embassy.

======== Life of Apollonius — Book VI ========

1| Ethiopia holds the western horn of all the land beneath the sun, as India holds the one toward the dawn. At Meroe it borders on Egypt, and after passing through a part of unexplored Libya it ends at the sea that the poets call Ocean, giving that name to all the water that surrounds the earth. It gives Egypt the river Nile, which begins at the Cataracts and brings down from the Ethiopians the whole of Egypt that it floods. In size this country does not deserve to be compared with India — nor does any other of the continents with a name among men; and even if we joined all of Egypt to Ethiopia — and let us suppose that the river does exactly this — the two together are still not a match for India, combined on such a scale as they are. But the rivers of the two are alike, if one reckons up the features of the Indus and the Nile: they water their lands at the season of the year when the earth longs for it; they alone among rivers yield the crocodile as well as the river horse; and the stories of the rites connected with them are the same, for much of what is Indian is held sacred at the Nile too. The likeness of the two lands may be confirmed by the spices that grow in them, and confirmed too by the lions and by the elephant, which in each is captured and put to service. They also nurture beasts found nowhere else, and black men, which no other continents do, and in them are races of Pygmies and of people who bark, in one place and another, and wonders of that kind. India's griffins and Ethiopia's ants, though unlike in form, have, so they say, the same purpose: in each land they are sung of as guardians of gold, devoted to the gold-bearing soil of these lands. But no more on this; let my account return to its own business, and let us keep to the man.
2| Arriving at the boundary between the Ethiopians and the Egyptians — they call the place Sycaminus — he came upon unminted gold, linen, ivory, roots, perfume and spices, all lying unguarded at a fork in the road. I will explain what this means, for the custom is still observed in our own day. The Ethiopians bring a market of what Ethiopia produces; the Egyptians gather it all up and carry to the same place a market of Egyptian goods of equal value, buying with what they have what they lack. Those who live on the border of the two lands are not yet black but of a color shared with both, for they are less black than the Ethiopians and more so than the Egyptians. Apollonius, grasping the character of the market, said, “But our fine Greeks say they cannot live unless an obol breeds an obol and they can push up the prices of their goods by peddling or hoarding them — one pleading a daughter of marriageable age, another a son already coming of age as a man, another a club subscription to be paid up, another that he is building a house, another that he would be ashamed to be thought a worse moneymaker than his father. How well things went, then, back when wealth had no honor and equality flourished, and the black iron lay put away, with men at one with each other, and the whole earth seemed one.”
3| Holding discourses of this kind, and letting the occasion, as was his custom, shape his discourse, he went on toward Memnon. Their guide was an Egyptian youth, about whom Damis records the following. Timasion was the name of this youth; he had just passed out of his adolescence and was still in the full bloom of youth. He was chaste, and a stepmother who was in love with him beset him and turned his father against him — not by contriving anything like what Phaedra did, but by slandering him as effeminate and as taking more pleasure in male lovers than in women. He had left Naucratis, for that was where this happened, and was living near Memphis; he had acquired a boat of his own and worked as its skipper on the Nile. Sailing downstream himself, he saw Apollonius sailing up, and he realized that the company was made up of wise men, judging by their threadbare cloaks and the books they were poring over; and he begged them to grant him a share in their voyage, since he was a lover of wisdom. Apollonius said, “This young man is chaste, friends; let him be granted what he asks,” and he told the story about the stepmother to those of his companions who were near him, in a low voice, while the youth was still sailing toward them. When the boats came alongside, Timasion crossed over, said something to his own helmsman about the cargo, and greeted the men. Apollonius told him to sit down where he could see him and said, “Egyptian youth — for you seem to be one of the people of this country — tell me what bad thing or what good thing you have done, so that for the one you may receive absolution from me on account of your age, and for the other you may be praised and join in philosophy with me and with these men.” Seeing Timasion blush and shift the movement of his mouth between speaking and not speaking, Apollonius pressed his question repeatedly, as though he had no foreknowledge of him. Timasion took courage and said, “O gods, what shall I call myself? I am not bad; but whether I should be thought good, I do not know, for not doing wrong is not yet praise.” And Apollonius said, “Bravo, young man, how you talk to me as if from among the Indians! For these are the opinions of the divine Iarchas too. But tell me how you came to hold them, and from what; for you seem to be on your guard against doing some wrong.” When Timasion began to speak, saying that his stepmother had made advances toward him and that he had withdrawn from her in her passion, a cry arose, because Apollonius had foretold it so divinely; but Timasion broke in and said, “My good friends, what has happened to you? What I have said is as distant from a marvel as, I think, from a joke.” And Damis said, “We marvelled at something else, which you do not yet know. And we praise you too, young man, because you think you have done nothing brilliant.” “Do you sacrifice to Aphrodite, young man?” Apollonius asked, and Timasion said, “By Zeus, every day; for I consider the goddess to be great in both human and divine affairs.” Apollonius, greatly pleased, said, “Let us vote, gentlemen, that he is crowned for self-control even before Hippolytus the son of Theseus. For Hippolytus offended against Aphrodite, and perhaps for this reason was not overcome by the pleasures of love, nor did any desire revel toward him, but he belonged to the ruder and harder portion; whereas this young man, who says he is overcome by the goddess, suffered nothing toward the woman who loved him, but went away, fearing the goddess herself, lest he fail to guard against being badly loved. And to be set against any one of the gods whatever, as Hippolytus was against Aphrodite, I do not count as self-control; for it is more self-controlled to speak well of every one of the gods, and this at Athens, where altars even of unknown daemons are set up.” So much serious attention he gave to Timasion. He did, however, call him Hippolytus, on account of his eyes, with which he had looked at his stepmother. He also seemed to take care of his body and to engage in gymnastics with charm.
4| Under this guide, they say, they entered the sacred precinct of Memnon. About Memnon Damis writes the following. He was a son of Dawn, and he did not die at Troy, since he never even came to Troy, but ended his life in Ethiopia after reigning over the Ethiopians for five generations. And they, since they are the longest-lived of men, lament Memnon as an exceedingly young man, and weep for him as for one dead before his time. The place where he is set up, they say, resembles an ancient marketplace, such as the marketplaces left in cities once inhabited, offering the wreckage of stelae and traces of walls and seats and doorposts and statues of Hermes, some destroyed by hands and some by time. The statue is turned toward the sun’s ray, still beardless, and is of black stone; both feet are joined together in the manner of statue-making that goes back to Daedalus, and the hands are pressed straight against the seat, for it is seated as if on the point of rising. This posture, and the intent of the eyes, and all that of the mouth which suggests it is about to speak, they say they marvelled at less at other times, for these did not yet appear active; but when the ray struck the statue, and this happens at sunrise, they could not contain their wonder; for it spoke immediately when the ray reached its mouth, and it seemed to hold its eyes bright toward the light, like those of men who love the sun. At that point, they say, they understood that it seems to rise slightly for the Sun, just like those who worship what is higher while standing. So they sacrificed to the Ethiopian Sun and to Memnon the Dawn-born—for this is what the priests said, naming the one from burning and warming, and the other from his mother—and then travelled on camels to the abodes of the Naked Sages.
5| They met a man dressed in the manner of the Memphites, wandering aimlessly rather than travelling with purpose, and Damis and his companions asked who he was and why he roamed. Timasion said, “Ask me, not him; for he would not tell you his own misfortune, out of shame at the calamity he is in; but I, since I know the man and pity him, will tell you everything about him. He killed a certain Memphite unintentionally. The laws of Memphis command one who flees for an involuntary killing—and he must flee—to put himself in the hands of the Naked Sages, and if he is cleansed of the blood, to return home, now pure, after first going to the slain man's tomb and sacrificing something small there. For the time during which he has not yet met the Naked Sages, he must wander about these borders until they have regard for him as a suppliant.” Apollonius asked Timasion what the Naked Sages thought about the man in exile. He said, “I do not know; for this is the seventh month he has been begging here, and there is still no release.” Apollonius said, “You are not speaking of wise men, if they do not cleanse him and do not recognize that Philiscus, whom this man killed, was descended from Thamus the Egyptian, who once ravaged the land of the Naked Sages.” Timasion, astonished, said, “What do you mean?” “Just as I said, young man,” he replied, “and so it was done.” “For once Thamus was plotting revolution against the Memphites, and the Naked Sages exposed him and caught him; and he, having failed in his attempt, ravaged all the land they inhabit, for he was strong as a bandit around Memphis. I see that Philiscus, whom this man killed, is the descendant of this Thamus in the thirteenth generation, and accursed, evidently, to those whose land Thamus was then plundering. And where is the wisdom in not cleansing this man, who ought to have been crowned even if he had killed with forethought, when his killing was involuntary and was done on their behalf?” The young man, astonished, said, “Stranger, who are you?” And Apollonius said, “Whom you would find among the Naked Sages. Since it is not yet right for me to address one who is in blood, tell him, young man, to take courage, for he will be pure at once, if he comes to where I am lodging.” When the man came, Apollonius performed over him all that Empedocles and Pythagoras prescribe for purifications, and told him to go to his own dwelling, as one now clean of the charge.
6| From there they set out at sunrise, and arrived before noon at the school of the Naked Sages. These Naked Sages, they say, live on a hill of moderate size, a short distance from the bank of the Nile, and they fall short of the wisdom of the Indians more than they surpass the Egyptians; they go about naked in the same way as those who bask in the sun at Athens. In the district there are few trees and one small grove, in which they gather about common matters; their shrines are not all in one place, as among the Indians, but each is set up at a different part of the hill and held in honor, as the accounts of the Egyptians have it. They serve the Nile most of all, for they consider this river to be earth and water. They themselves need no hut or house, living in the open and under the sky itself; but for strangers they built a lodging sufficient for them, a stoa not large, equal in length to those of the Eleans, under which the athlete waits for the noon proclamation.
7| Here Damis records a deed of Euphrates, which we should consider not boyish but less honorable than befits philosophy. For when he heard Apollonius often saying that he wished to weigh Indian wisdom against Egyptian, he sent Thrasybulus of Naucratis to the Naked Sages to slander the man. Thrasybulus said that he had come for the sake of association with them, and that the man from Tyana would come too, and that this was no small contest for them; for he was prouder than the wise men of the Indians, whom he exalts in every speech, and had prepared countless refutations against them, and yielded nothing to the sun, or to heaven and earth, for he himself moves and carries these and rearranges them as he wishes.
8| Having composed such a tale, the man of Naucratis went away; and the Naked Sages, believing it true, did not refuse Apollonius’ company when he came, but pretended to be busy with great matters and absorbed in them, saying they would come to talk with him if they had leisure and had learned what he wanted and what he was eager for in coming. The messenger from them also told Apollonius and his party to lodge in the stoa; but Apollonius said, “Do not talk about a roof, for the sky here allows everyone to live naked”—slandering them as naked not by endurance but by necessity—“and what I want and why I have come, I do not wonder that they do not yet know; but the Indians did not ask me this.”
9| Apollonius then reclined under one of the trees and conversed with his companions about whatever they asked; and Damis, taking Timasion aside, asked him privately, “These Naked Sages, my good man—for you have been with them, as is likely—in what way are they wise?” “In many and great ways,” he said. “But surely, noble friend,” said Damis, “their conduct toward us is not wise. For not to have met such a man on the subject of wisdom, but to treat him with haughtiness—what to call it I do not know, unless it is conceit, friend.” “Conceit? I never saw it in them before, though I have already come twice; for they were always moderate and kind to those who visited them. Just recently, perhaps fifty days ago, Thrasybulus was in the country here, doing nothing brilliant in philosophy, and they received him gladly, because he had enrolled himself with Euphrates.” And Damis said, “What are you saying, young man? You have seen Thrasybulus of Naucratis in this school?” “And more,” he said, “I carried him on my own boat when he went down from here.” “I have it all, by Athena,” said Damis, crying out and exclaiming in indignation, “for some villainy seems to have been worked.” Timasion replied, “As I asked him yesterday who he was, the man did not think me worthy of the secret yet; but you, if this is not a mystery, say who he is, for perhaps I too could contribute something to the hunt for what is sought.” When he heard Damis say that it was the man of Tyana, he said, “You have grasped the matter. “For Thrasybulus, as he sailed down the Nile with me, when I asked him why he was going up there, told me of a wisdom of his own that was not good, saying that he had filled these Naked Sages with suspicion against Apollonius, so that he would be slighted when he came; and what he has against him I do not know, but to fall into slanders I think womanish and uneducated. I could find out how they are disposed by addressing the men, for they are my friends.” Timasion came back toward evening, saying nothing to Apollonius except that he had greeted them, but reporting privately to Damis that they would come the next day, full of what they had heard from Thrasybulus.
10| That evening they spent in moderate matters not worth writing down, and went to sleep where they had dined. At daybreak Apollonius, as was his custom, served the Sun and stood intent on some thought, and Nilus, youngest of the Naked Sages, ran up to him and said, “We have come to you.” “Naturally,” said Apollonius, “for I too have come the road from the sea to you.” With these words he followed Nilus. When they had greeted and been greeted—they met each other near the stoa—Apollonius said, “Where shall we meet?” “Here,” said Thespesion, pointing to the grove. Thespesion was the eldest of the Naked Sages and led them all, and the others followed the eldest as the Hellanodikai follow theirs, with a walk at once orderly and leisurely. When they sat down, just as they happened to, for this they no longer did in order, all looked to Thespesion as the host of the discourse, and he began thus: “They say that you, Apollonius, have visited Pytho and Olympia, for Stratocles of Pharos reported this here, saying he met you there. Pytho sends those who come to it on their way with the flute, songs and the harp, and treats them to comedies and tragedies, and then provides the naked contest, late, after these; but Olympia has removed such things as unsuitable and not useful there, and provides those who go to it with naked athletes, Heracles having established this. Think of our ways here, set beside the wisdom of the Indians, as being just this. “For they, as though inviting people to Pytho, sway them with various charms, but we, as at Olympia, are naked. The earth here spreads nothing under us, nor gives milk or wine as to Bacchants, nor does the air carry us aloft; but with the earth itself spread beneath us we live, sharing in what it gives according to nature, so that it may give these things gladly and not be tormented unwilling. And to show that we are not incapable of clever feats: you there, tree,” he said—it was an elm, the third from the one under which they were conversing—“greet the wise Apollonius.” The tree greeted him, as it was bidden, with a voice that was articulate and feminine. He pointed this out against the Indians, thinking to move Apollonius from his opinion of them, since Apollonius went through all the sayings and deeds of the Indians. He added also that it is enough for the wise man to be pure of food, so far as it has breath, and of desire, which comes through the eyes, and of envy, which comes as a teacher of the unjust to hand and mind; and that the truth does not need wonder-working and forceful art. “Consider,” he said, “the Delphic Apollo, who holds the middle of Greece for the foretelling of oracles. There, as you yourself know, the one who needs the utterance asks a brief question, and Apollo, working no marvels, says what he knows. “And yet it would have been easy for him to shake all Parnassus, to pour wine from Castalia by changing its springs, and to forbid the Cephisus to be a river; but he boasts of none of these things and shows the truth itself. Let us suppose that neither gold nor the apparently splendid dedications come to him willingly, nor does Apollo rejoice in his temple even if it were shown twice as large as it is now; for this god once lived also in a plain dwelling, and a small hut was moulded for him, for which bees are said to have contributed wax and birds feathers. For plainness is a teacher of wisdom and a teacher of truth, and in praising it you will seem altogether wise, forgetting the tales among the Indians. For ‘do this’ or ‘do not do this,’ ‘I know’ or ‘I do not know,’ ‘this, but not that’—what need is there of din? What need of thundering, or rather of being thunderstruck? “You have seen, among the stories of painting, the Heracles of Prodicus: Heracles is a youth, not yet at the choosing of his life, and Vice and Virtue, taking him between them, lead him to their own sides; the one is dressed in gold and necklaces and a sea-purple garment, with the bloom of her cheeks and braided locks and painted eyes, and she has a golden sandal too, for she is painted strutting in this as well; the other resembles one who has toiled, with a rough look, making squalor her adornment; Virtue is barefoot and plain in dress, and she would appear naked if she did not know what is seemly among women. Think of yourself, Apollonius, as standing midway between Indian wisdom and ours, hearing the one say that she will spread flowers under you as you sleep, and by Zeus will give you milk to drink and nourish you with honeycombs, that you will have nectar from her and wings whenever you wish, that tripods will be wheeled to you as you drink, and golden thrones, and that you will toil at nothing, but everything will go to you of itself; and the other say that it befits you to sleep on the ground in squalor, to appear naked, toiling as we do, to count neither dear nor sweet what came to you without toil, to be no boaster or hunter of vanity, and to keep away even from the sights of dreams, such as lift one from the earth. “If you choose as Heracles did, and hold to an adamantine resolve, not dishonoring truth nor refusing the plainness that accords with nature, you will say that you have taken many lions, that many hydras, Geryons and Nessuses and all that man’s labors have been cut down for you; but if you embrace the way of the beggars, you will flatter eyes and ears, you will not seem wiser than another, and you will become the prize of an Egyptian, a Naked Sage.”
11| When he had said this, all turned to Apollonius, his own companions knowing that he would reply, and Thespesion’s people wondering what he would say in answer. He praised Thespesion for his fluency and vigor and said, “You are not adding anything?” “By Zeus, no,” said Thespesion, “for I have said it.” And when Apollonius asked, “None of the other Egyptians?” he said, “You have heard everyone through me.” Pausing a little, and fixing his eyes on what had been said, Apollonius spoke thus: “The choice of Heracles, which Prodicus says he made as a youth, has been soundly told by you, and in keeping with the spirit of philosophy, O wise men of the Egyptians; but it does not apply to me. For I have not come to make you advisers on my life, having long since chosen the one that seemed right to me; and since I have come as the eldest of you except Thespesion, I would more fittingly be advising you on the choice of wisdom, if I had found you not yet having chosen. Still, being of this age and having reached this degree of wisdom, I will not hesitate to use you as auditors of my own deliberation, teaching you that I chose rightly the things than which nothing better has yet come into my mind. “For having seen something great in Pythagoras—that through an unspeakable wisdom he knew not only who he was but who he had once been; that he approached altars pure, and kept a stomach unstained by animate food, and a body pure of all garments made of dead things; that he was the first of men to hold his tongue, having found in the doctrine of silence an ox to set upon it; and that he established the rest of philosophy as oracular and true—I ran to his doctrines, not choosing one wisdom out of two, as you counsel, excellent Thespesion. For philosophy set before me all her opinions, however many they are, and having clothed them each with the adornment proper to it, told me to look at them and choose soundly. “The bloom of all of them was august and divine, and one might have shut his eyes before some of them in awe; but my eye stayed fixed on all, for they themselves also emboldened me, drawing me on and proclaiming beforehand all that they would give. One of them said that she would pour on me, without toil, a great swarm of pleasures; another, that she would give rest after toil; another, that she would mix delights into the toil; and everywhere pleasures shone through, with loosened reins for the belly, a ready hand for wealth, no bridle for the eyes, but loves and desires and such passions allowed. One of them boasted that she held back from such things, yet she was brazen and fond of abuse, and elbowed everything aside. Then I saw the unspeakable form of wisdom, by which even Pythagoras was once overcome; and she was not standing among the many, but had been set apart from them and was silent. Perceiving that I did not agree with the others, but did not yet know her ways, she said, ‘Young man, I am unpleasant and full of toils. “‘For if anyone comes to my dwelling places, he must be ready to have every table of living things removed; to forget wine, and not to cloud the mixing-bowl of wisdom, which stands in souls without wine; nor will a cloak warm him, nor wool, which was shorn from a living creature; I give them shoes of papyrus and sleep wherever it happens; and if I perceive them overcome by the pleasures of love, I have pits, down which Justice, the attendant of wisdom, carries and pushes them. And I am so severe toward those who choose my ways that I keep bonds of the tongue upon them. But what you will have if you endure these things, learn from me: self-control and justice at once; to regard no one as enviable, and to be rather a terror to tyrants than to lie beneath them; to appear more pleasing to the gods when you sacrifice small things than those who pour out to them the blood of bulls; and to you, being pure, I will give foreknowledge, and fill your eyes so with light that you will distinguish a god, recognize a hero, and expose shadowy phantoms whenever they counterfeit the shapes of men.’ This is the choice of life I made, O wise men of the Egyptians, and having chosen it soundly and in accord with Pythagoras, I neither lied nor was lied to; for I became what one who philosophizes should become, and all that she said she would give to one who philosophizes, I have. For I philosophized about the birth of the art and where its beginnings are, and it seemed to me to belong to extraordinary men who have examined divine things and the soul best, of which the immortal and unbegotten are the springs of generation. “Now this doctrine did not seem to me to belong properly to the Athenians, for they themselves slandered Plato’s account, which he uttered there so divinely and wisely about the soul, and took up opinions about the soul that are opposed to this and not true; and one ought to look at what city, or what nation of men, there is, among whom not one man says it and another does not, but every age utters the same about the soul. As for me, with youth leading me so, and not yet understanding, I looked to you, since you were said to know a great deal beyond ordinary; and I went through these matters with my own teacher. He stopped me and said, ‘Suppose you happened to be one of those who are in love, or of an age to be in love, and then met a beautiful boy and admired him for his bloom, and you asked whose child he was; and suppose he was the son of a father who bred horses and was a general, and his grandfathers had been choregoi, and you called him the son of some trierarch or phylarch—do you think you would win the beloved over by such things, or that you would not seem disagreeable, naming the boy not from his father but from a foreign and bastard seed? So you, in loving wisdom, which the Indians discovered, do not name her from her natural fathers but from adoptive ones; and do you give the Egyptians something greater than if the Nile were again to rise for them, as they themselves sing, mixed with honey?’ “This is what turned me toward the Indians before you, as I reflected about them that such men, consorting with purer rays, are subtler in understanding, and truer in their opinions about nature and the gods, being close to the gods and dwelling near the sources of the life-engendering and hot substance. And on meeting them I felt something toward the promise of those men, of the kind that the Athenians are said to have felt toward the wisdom of Aeschylus. This man was a poet of tragedy, and seeing the art unequipped and not yet adorned, he drew in the choruses that had been sprawling, or invented the interchange of speeches among the actors, refusing the length of the solos, or devised having people die behind the scene so as not to slaughter in the open. Let it not be said that even these things lack wisdom, and let it be granted that they could give an idea to another, less skilful, in his poetry. But he, thinking of himself, how he should speak in a way worthy of making tragedy, and thinking of the art, how it was akin to grandeur rather than to the lowly and what lies under foot, took in hand stage-equipment made in the likeness of the forms of the heroes, set the actors up on the high boot so that they would walk as equals to those, and was the first to adorn them with garments fitting for heroes and heroines. For this the Athenians considered him the father of tragedy, and even called for him when dead to the Dionysia; for by their decree Aeschylus’ plays were staged again and won afresh. “Yet the charm of a well-adorned tragedy is small, for it delights in a small part of the day, like the hour of the Dionysia; but the charm of a philosophy that is composed, as Pythagoras saw fit, and inspired by the divine, as the Indians were before Pythagoras, is not for a short time, but without limit and beyond number. So I do not think I have suffered anything unreasonable in being overcome by a well-adorned philosophy, which the Indians, sending it forth in its fitting dress, wheel out upon a lofty and divine machine. And that I rightly admired them, and rightly consider them wise and blessed, it is time to learn: I saw men living on the earth and not on it, fortified without walls, and possessing nothing but the possessions of all. If I touch on riddles, the wisdom of Pythagoras allows these things, for he handed down also the art of speaking in riddles, having found a doctrine of silence as teacher. Of this wisdom you too were advisers to Pythagoras, in the time when you were praising the ways of the Indians, being Indians of old long ago; but when out of shame at the account, because of which you came here from the wrath of the earth, you wished to seem anything rather than Ethiopians come from the Indians, everything was done by you to that end.” “Hence you stripped yourselves of such equipment as came from there, as though undressing from being Ethiopians together with it; you voted to serve the gods in the Egyptian manner rather than your own; and you took to speaking of the Indians in unfriendly terms, as though you did not slander yourselves in slandering the very people from whom you came; and you have not yet changed this habit, you who even today have made an exhibition of it, abusive and iambic, saying that the Indians practice nothing good but only marvels and enchantments, some for the eyes and some for the ears. Not yet knowing my wisdom, you show yourselves insensible to the repute that attends it. About myself I will say nothing, for may I be what the Indians take me to be; but of the Indians I do not allow you to lay hold. But if the wisdom of the man of Himera holds good for you also—he who, singing of Helen, called his song a recantation against his former account, saying, ‘This account is not true’—it is time for you too to speak, taking on a better opinion about them than the one you now hold. And if you are unmusical for a recantation, you should at least spare men whom the gods deem worthy of what is theirs, while the gods for their part do not disdain what those men possess. You went through some account, Thespesion, about Pytho too, as giving its oracles simply and without artifice, and as an example for your argument you gave the temple built of wax and feathers. “To me not even this seems unadorned; for ‘Bring your feathers, birds, and your wax, bees’ was the speech of one who was furnishing a house and the shape of a house; and he, I think, considering these things small and beneath his own wisdom, needed another temple, and another, and great ones now, of a hundred feet; and in one of these he is said to have hung even golden charms, which held the persuasion of some of the Sirens. He gathered the most famous of the dedications to Pytho for the sake of adornment, and he did not drive away the sculptor's art that brought him colossi into the sanctuary, some of gods, some of men, some of horses and bulls and other animals; nor Glaucus coming with his stand for the bowl; nor the capture of the citadel of Ilium, which Polygnotus paints there. For he did not consider the Lydian gold an ornament of Pytho, but he brought that in on behalf of the Greeks, showing them, I think, the wealth of the barbarians, so that they might long for that rather than for plundering one another; and the Greek manner, fitting to his own wisdom, he furnished and made Pytho splendid with it. I think that for the sake of adornment he even puts the oracles into meters. For if he were not displaying this, he would make his answers like these: ‘Do this or do not do this, go or do not go, make allies or do not make them’—short things, doubtless, or, as you say, naked. But so that he might sound grand and be more pleasing to those who ask, he fitted poetry to them, and does not think there is anything he does not know, but says he knows even the sand, how much it is, having counted it, and has embraced all the measures of the sea. Or do you set this down to marvel-mongering, because Apollo says it with solemnity and with a proper pride? And if you will not be vexed at the remark, Thespesion, there are old women who go to shepherds, carrying sieves, and sometimes to cowherds, healing the sick among the animals by divination, as they say, and they claim to be called wise, and wiser than genuine seers. This is how you appear to me, set beside the wisdom of the Indians: they are divine and adorned like the Pythia, but you—but nothing more shall be said, for fair speech is dear to me, and dear to the Indians, and I welcome it as attendant and guide of the tongue, hunting what I can attain with praise and love for it, and leaving what I cannot reach untouched by blame. “You, when you hear Homer in the Cyclops episode, that the earth, unsown and unploughed, feeds the wildest and most lawless, delight in the story; and if some Edonians or Lydians revel as Bacchants, you do not disbelieve that the earth will give them springs of milk and wine and give them drink; but from the Bacchants of all wisdom you will take away the gifts that come of themselves from the earth? Tripods go of their own accord even to the banquets of the gods, and Ares, ignorant though he is and hostile, has never yet indicted Hephaestus over them, nor have the gods ever heard such an indictment as this: ‘You do wrong, Hephaestus, adorning the banquet of the gods and setting wonders around it.’ Nor did he ever incur blame over the golden handmaidens, as one corrupting his materials, when he made gold breathe; for every art will take care for adornment, because the very existence of the arts was invented for the sake of adornment. Going barefoot and in a rough cloak, with a wallet hung on, is an invention of adornment; for going naked, as you do, looks like an unadorned and plain fashion, but it is cultivated for adornment, and the charge, as they say, of conceit of another kind is not absent from it either. As for the ancestral rites of the Sun and the Indians, and the manner in which the Sun delights to be served, let them keep their own law; for chthonic gods will welcome pits and rites performed in the hollow earth, but the air is the Sun’s vehicle, and those who are to sing to him fittingly must be lifted from the earth and wander the heights with the god. All wish this, but only the Indians can do it.”
12| Damis says he drew breath when he heard this; for the Egyptians were so affected by Apollonius’ words that Thespesion, though black, was visibly blushing, and some astonishment showed in the rest too at what they had heard from the man speaking so vigorously and fluently. The youngest of the Egyptians, whose name was Nilus, leapt up, he says, in wonder, moved over to Apollonius, clasped his hand, and begged him to tell of the meetings he had had with the Indians. Apollonius, he says, replied, “To you I would not begrudge any account, for you, as I see, are a lover of listening and welcome all wisdom; but to Thespesion, and anyone else who thinks the ways of the Indians nonsense, I would not pour out the accounts from there.” At this Thespesion said, “If you were a merchant or shipowner and brought some cargo to us from there, would you think it right, because it came from the Indians, to dispose of it untested, and offer neither a taste of it nor a sample?” Apollonius answered, “I would offer it to those who wanted it. But if someone came to the sea when the ship had just put in, and abused the cargo and slandered it as coming from a land that brings nothing sound, and reproached me for sailing for no worthy freight, and persuaded the others to think so—do you think anyone arriving in such a harbor would drop an anchor or a cable, and not rather shake out the sails and raise the ship out to the open sea, entrusting his goods to the winds more gladly than to unjudging and inhospitable ways?” “But I,” said Nilus, “take hold of the cables, and I beg you, shipowner, to share with me the merchandise you bring; and I would embark on your ship, as a passenger and as the one who keeps the record of your cargo.”
13| Thespesion, seeking to put an end to such talk, said, “It gladdens me, Apollonius, that you are vexed at what you heard; for you would then forgive us too for being vexed at what you said in slander of the wisdom here, before you had even come to any trial of it.” Apollonius was startled for a moment by the remark, since he had not yet heard anything about Thrasybulus and Euphrates; but conjecturing what had happened, as he was accustomed to do, he said, “The Indians, Thespesion, would not have suffered this, nor would they have paid attention to Euphrates putting out such stories, for they are wise at foreknowing. As for me, I had no private quarrel with Euphrates; but in turning him away from money and from approving gain by any means, I seemed to give him counsel neither suitable nor possible for him, and he regards this as a charge against him and never ceases composing something against me. And since he seemed to you plausible in slandering my character, consider that he slandered you before me. For I see no small dangers for the one who is slandered—he will be hated, though he has done no wrong—but those who listen to slanders are not free of danger either, if first they are caught honoring falsehood and thinking it worthy of the same regard as truth, and then lightness and gullibility—and to be overcome by these is shameful even in a boy—and they will seem envious, making their envy the teacher of an unjust hearing, and they themselves more liable to the slanders which they believe true of others; for the natures of men are readier to do what they do not disbelieve. “May a man who is ready for such things not become a tyrant, nor stand at the head of a people, for even the democracy will become a tyranny under him; nor sit as a judge, for he will decide nothing rightly; nor captain a ship, for the ship will fall into factions; nor command an army, for the enemy will prosper; nor philosophize, being so disposed, for he will form no opinion in line with the truth. And Euphrates has taken from you even your being wise; for how could men whom he has led astray by a lie think themselves worthy of wisdom, which they abandoned for one who persuaded them of what is not credible?” Thespesion, calming him, said, “Enough of Euphrates and of small-minded talk; for we might even become reconcilers between you and him, thinking that to arbitrate among the wise is itself wise.” “But who,” said Apollonius, “will reconcile me to you? For one who has been lied about must surely be at war on account of the falsehood. Let it stand so,” Apollonius went on, “and let us take up serious matters, for this will reconcile us more.”
14| Nilus, desiring to hear the man, said, “You should begin the serious discussion by recounting for us your journey to the nation of the Indians and the serious pursuits you carried on there, which were surely brilliant.” And Thespesion said, “I too long to hear of the wisdom of Phraotes, since you are said to bring from the Indians images of his words.” Apollonius, taking the events at Babylon as the starting point of his account, went through them all, and they listened gladly, devoted to his story. When it was noon they broke off their serious business, for at that hour the Naked Sages too attend to the sacred rites.
15| As Apollonius and his company were dining, Nilus stood by them with vegetables, loaves and dried fruits, some carried by himself and some by others, and said, “The wise men send you these gifts of hospitality, very handsomely, for you and for me; for I shall dine with you, not uninvited, as the saying goes, but inviting myself.” Apollonius said, “It is a pleasant gift of hospitality that you bring, young man, yourself and your own character, for you seem to philosophize without guile, and to welcome the ways of the Indians and of Pythagoras. Recline here and dine with us.” “I am reclining,” he said, “but you will not have food enough to fill me.” “You seem,” said Apollonius, “to be a good eater and a mighty one at table.” “Mighty indeed,” he said; “for when a banquet so great and so splendid has been set before me by you, and I am not yet filled, but after a short pause come back to eat again, what will you say but that I am insatiable and a dreadful glutton?” “Fill yourself,” said Apollonius; “and as for the resources of discourse, as many as there are, you supply some yourself, and I shall supply the others.”
16| When they had dined, Nilus said, “For the rest of the time I served in the ranks with the Naked Sages, ranking myself with them as though with some light troops or slingers; but now I shall serve as a hoplite, and your shield will adorn me.” “But I think,” said Apollonius, “Egyptian, that you will be blamed by Thespesion and the others, because, without even putting us to any closer test, you will throw yourself into our ways more readily than a choice of life allows.” “I think so,” he said; “but if there will be blame for one who chooses, perhaps there is blame also for one who does not, and they will be found guilty rather, if they choose the same things I do; for the fact that, being both older and wiser, they did not choose long ago what I choose now would give just ground of complaint against them, since, with such advantages, they did not choose the better course for their use.” “That is not an ignoble speech, young man,” said Apollonius; “but see that they do not appear, by this very thing, in respect of wisdom and of age, to have chosen those ways rightly and to be declining these on reasonable grounds, and that you do not seem to take up a bolder argument, establishing yourself rather than following them.” The Egyptian replied, against Apollonius’ expectation, “What it is fitting for a young man to follow in his elders is not neglected by me. For when I thought there was wisdom among those men, such as does not belong to any other people, I attached myself to them; and my reason for the impulse was this. “My father once sailed willingly to the Red Sea, and he was in command of the ship that the Egyptians send to the nation of the Indians; mingling with the Indians on the coast, he brought back reports about the wise men there, close to the accounts you have given us. And hearing from him also such an account as this—that the Indians are the wisest of men, that the Ethiopians are colonists of the Indians, and that these keep their ancestral wisdom and look to what is at home—when I became a youth I let go my father’s estate to those who wanted it, and naked I frequented these Naked Sages, to learn the ways of the Indians, or ways at least akin to theirs. They appeared to me wise, but not in that way; and when I asked them why they did not philosophize in the Indian manner, they fell into slanders of the Indians much like those spoken to you today, and they enrolled me, young as you see me still, into their own company, fearing, I think, that I would leap away from them and sail to the Red Sea as my father once did. By the gods, I would not have let that pass; for I would have gone forward even as far as the hill of the wise men, if some god had not sent you here as my helper, so that without sailing the Red Sea or putting in among the Colpitae I might taste Indian wisdom. I am not making my choice of life today, but chose long ago, and did not have what I thought I would have. For what is strange if a man who has missed something goes back to what he was hunting? “And if I should also bring those men over to this, and become adviser to them of what I have persuaded myself of, what bold thing, tell me, would I be doing? For youth is not to be driven off from thinking of something better than old age does; and whoever becomes adviser to another in a wisdom he has himself chosen escapes, surely, the charge of urging on others what he is not himself persuaded of; and whoever takes the good things that come to him from fortune and uses them alone wrongs the goods, for he deprives them of appearing pleasant to more people.”
17| When Nilus had strung together such words, and so youthfully, Apollonius answered, “About payment, will you not first talk with me, since you are in love with my wisdom?” “Let us talk,” said Nilus, “and ask whatever you wish.” “I ask you,” he said, “to keep to the choice you yourself have made, and not to trouble the Naked Sages by counseling what you will not persuade.” “I shall obey,” he said, “and let the payment be agreed.” They spent their time in such serious matters; and when Nilus afterward asked for how long a time he would spend among the Naked Sages, he said, “As long as the wisdom of these men deserves from one who keeps their company. Then we shall make our way to Catadupa for the sake of the springs; for it is a delight to see the Nile's beginnings, and moreover to hear it roaring.”
18| After conversing thus and recalling some Indian matters, they slept on the grass; and at daybreak, having offered the customary prayers, they followed Nilus, who led them to Thespesion. Having greeted one another and sat down together in the grove, they began a discussion, and Apollonius opened it. “How much it is worth not to hide wisdom,” he said, “yesterday’s speeches make clear. For the Indians taught me all of their wisdom that I thought pertained to me, and I remember my teachers and go about teaching what I heard from them; and I would be a gain to you as well, if you sent me away knowing your wisdom too; for I would not cease recounting your teachings to the Greeks and writing of them to the Indians.”
19| “Ask,” they said, “for speech follows a question.” And Apollonius said, “I shall ask you first about the gods: what did you learn that made you hand down to the people here, with few exceptions, strange and ridiculous forms of the gods? Few, did I say? Very few indeed are the figures set up wisely and in a godlike form; the rest of your sanctuaries appear to be honors paid to irrational and obscure animals rather than to gods.” Thespesion, annoyed, said, “And how will you say the images among you are set up?” “In the most beautiful and god-pleasing way,” he said, “that gods can be fashioned.” “You mean the Zeus at Olympia, I suppose,” said Thespesion, “and the seat of Athena, and the Cnidian and the Argive, and all that are so beautiful and full of youth.” “Not only these,” said Apollonius, “but I say that once and for all the image-making of others touches what is fitting, while you laugh at the divine rather than believe in it.” “Did the Pheidiases,” said Thespesion, “and the Praxiteleses perhaps go up to heaven, take impressions of the forms of the gods, and make them by their art? Or was it something else that set them to modelling?” “Something else,” he said, “and a thing full of wisdom.” “What?” said Thespesion; “for you could not name anything but imitation.” “Imagination,” said Apollonius, “wrought these works—an artist wiser than imitation. Imitation will make what it has seen; imagination will make even what it has never seen, for it will conceive it by reference to what is real. Imitation is often thrown off by shock, imagination by nothing, for it advances undismayed toward what it has itself conceived. “One who has in mind the form of Zeus must see him together with heaven and the seasons and the stars, as Pheidias then set out to do; and one who is about to fashion Athena must think of armies and counsel and the arts, and how she leapt up out of Zeus himself. But if you fashion a hawk, an owl, a wolf, or a dog and bring it into the sanctuaries in place of Hermes and Athena and Apollo, the beasts and birds will seem enviable among images, while the gods will stand far short of their own glory.” “You seem,” said Thespesion, “to examine our things without testing them. For it is wise, if anything of the Egyptians is, not to be bold with the forms of the gods, but to make them symbolic and hinted at; for so they appear more august.” Apollonius laughed and said, “O men, you have gained much from the wisdom of the Egyptians and Ethiopians, if a dog and an ibis and a goat will appear more august and godlike than you! For this I hear from the wise Thespesion. What is august or awe-inspiring in these? The perjurers and temple-robbers and buffoonish peoples more likely despise such sanctuaries than fear them; and if these things are more august when merely hinted at, the gods in Egypt would fare far more august if no image of them were set up at all, and if you used some other way of speaking of the gods, wiser and more secret. “For it was possible to build temples for them and mark out altars, and to prescribe what should be sacrificed and what should not, and when, and how much, and with what words or acts, but not to bring in an image, and to leave the forms of the gods to those who enter the sanctuaries; for the mind draws and moulds something better than craftsmanship. But you have taken from the gods both their being well seen and their being hinted at.” To this Thespesion said, “There was a certain Socrates of Athens, senseless, like us, an old man, who counted the dog, the goose, and the plane tree as gods, and swore by them.” “Not senseless,” said Apollonius, “but divine and truly wise; for he swore by these not as gods, but so as not to swear by gods.”
20| After this Thespesion, as though changing the subject, asked Apollonius about the Laconian whip, and whether the Lacedaemonians are beaten publicly. “Blows from men, Thespesion,” he said, “are received by the freeborn and reputable themselves most of all.” “And what do they do to servants who commit wrongs?” “They no longer kill them,” he said, “as Lycurgus once allowed, but the same whip falls on them.” “And how does Greece judge them?” “They gather,” he said, “as for the Hyacinthia and the Gymnopaidiai, to watch with pleasure and every eagerness.” “Then are the good Greeks not ashamed,” said Thespesion, “either at seeing those who once ruled them whipped in public, or at having been ruled by men who are publicly whipped? And how did you not set this right? For they say you took care of the Lacedaemonians too.” “What could be set right,” said Apollonius, “I advised, and they zealously did it; for they are the most free of the Greeks, and alone obedient to one who counsels well. But the custom of the whips is performed for the Artemis from the Scythians, since oracles, they say, direct it; and to oppose the gods by law is madness, I think.” “You have not called the gods of the Greeks wise, Apollonius,” said Thespesion, “if they became counselors of whips to those who practice freedom.” “Not of whips,” said Apollonius, “but of sprinkling the altar with the blood of men, since among the Scythians this was demanded; and the Lacedaemonians, devising a way out of the inescapable sacrifice, came to the contest of endurance, by which it is possible not to die and yet make an offering to the goddess from their own blood.” “Why then,” said Thespesion, “do they not sacrifice strangers to Artemis, as the Scythians once held right?” “Because,” he said, “it is in keeping with no Greek to practice barbarian customs.” “And yet they would seem more humane if they sacrificed one or two strangers somewhere than by using expulsion of foreigners against all.” “Let us not attack Lycurgus, Thespesion,” said Apollonius; “for one must understand the man, and that his refusal to let strangers linger did not mean a lack of intercourse, but the health of their practices, with outsiders not mingling in Sparta.” “For my part,” said Thespesion, “I would have considered the Spartans men such as they claim to seem, if living together with strangers they did not depart from their ways at home; for it was necessary, I think, to acquire the virtues not by being like when others are absent, but by being seen alike when they are present. But they, though they used expulsions of foreigners, had their practices corrupted, and appeared to act like those whom they most hated of the Greeks. At any rate their affairs at sea, and the levying of tribute afterward, were planned in a more Attic fashion, and what they thought they had to make war on the Athenians for, they came to do themselves, winning in the fighting against the Athenians but being defeated in what the Athenians chose to practice. “And the bringing in of the deity from the Taurians and Scythians was itself the act of men who held foreign things as customary. If this was from oracles, what need was there of a whip? Why make a slavish endurance? It would have been more Laconian, in respect of strength against death, I think, for a Spartan youth to be willingly sacrificed on the altar; for this would have shown Sparta braver, and kept Greece from setting itself against them as equals. And if it was reasonable to spare the young for war, still the law among the Scythians for men of sixty was more fitting for the Lacedaemonians to practise than for the Scythians, if they praise death genuinely and not for boasting’s sake. I do not say this against the Lacedaemonians, but to you, Apollonius; for if we bitterly examine ancient customs, too hoary for their reasons to be known, setting up an examination of the divine as to why it delights in them, many strange arguments of this sort of philosophy will spring up. We might lay hold even of the rite at Eleusis, asking why this and not that, and of what the Samothracians perform, since not this but that is done by them, and of the Dionysia and the phallus and the form at Cyllene, and we should quickly be slandering everything. Let us go, then, to whatever other subject you like, honoring also the saying of Pythagoras, which is ours; for it is good, if not about everything, then at least about such matters, to keep silent.” Apollonius replied, “If you had wanted, Thespesion, to make the discussion serious, Lacedaemon would have seemed to you to say many noble things on behalf of what it practices soundly and above all the Greeks; but since you so wave the subject off that you do not even consider it holy to speak about such matters, let us go to another subject, one of great worth, as I persuade myself. I shall ask something about justice.”
21| “Let us take up the subject,” said Thespesion, “for it concerns the wise and the not wise alike. But so that we do not confuse it by weaving in the opinions of the Indians and go away without result in the discussion, first tell what the Indians held about justice; for it is likely that you tested this matter there, and if the opinion is right, we shall agree, and if we should say something wiser ourselves, you will agree, for this too is part of justice.” “Excellent, Thespesion,” said Apollonius, “and you have spoken most pleasingly for me. Listen, then, to what was studied there. I told them how I had once become the captain of a great ship, when my soul was caring for another body, and how I thought myself most just, because pirates hired me to betray the ship by putting in where they were going to ambush it for what it carried, and I promised this, so that they would not attack us, but sailed past them and went beyond the place.” “Did the Indians accept this as justice?” said Thespesion. “They laughed,” said Apollonius, “and said that not doing wrong is not justice.” “Rightly,” said Thespesion, “did the Indians reject it; for neither is not thinking something foolish prudence, nor is not leaving one’s post courage, nor is not falling in with adulterers self-control, nor is it worthy of praise not to appear bad; for everything that stands equally apart from honor and from punishment is not yet virtue.” “How, then, Thespesion,” Apollonius asked, “shall we award the just man a crown, and for what conduct?” “Would you not,” he said, “have studied justice more fully and fittingly than when a king ruling so great and so prosperous a land came upon you philosophizing on kingship, the most just possession?” “If it had been Phraotes who came,” said Apollonius, “you would rightly blame our not having studied justice in his presence; but since you saw the man, in what I told yesterday about him, drunk and vexed at all philosophy, why was it necessary to cause a disturbance? Why should we put ourselves to the effort of display before a man who regarded everything as Sybaritic luxury? But since justice is to be tracked down by wise men like us rather than by kings and generals, let us go to the truly just man. For what I considered myself to be when the ship was in question, and others who do not lay hold of wrongs, you say are not yet just, nor worthy to be honored.” “And reasonably,” said Thespesion; “for neither at Athens nor at Lacedaemon would a motion ever be written to crown so-and-so because he is not one of those who have prostituted themselves, or to make so-and-so a citizen because he does not rob the temples. Who then is the just man, and doing what? For I know of no one crowned for justice, nor a motion written for a just man that so-and-so should be crowned since by doing such-and-such he appears just; for to anyone who thinks of the story of Palamedes at Troy and of Socrates at Athens, justice will not seem even to be fortunate among men, for these men, being most just, suffered the most unjust things. “Yet these men perished on a reputation of wrongdoing, a vote having been cast against what was straight; but Aristides son of Lysimachus justice itself once destroyed, and such a man, for such a virtue, went off into exile. I know that justice will seem ridiculous; for being ordained by Zeus and the Fates so that men may not be wronged, it nowhere ordains for itself that it not be wronged. But for me the case of Aristides is enough to show who is the man not unjust and who is the just man. Tell me: is this not that Aristides of whom you who come from the Greeks say that he sailed to the islands about the tribute, set it at a moderate level for them, and returned in the same cloak?” “This is he,” said Apollonius, “through whom the love of poverty once flourished.” “If then,” said Thespesion, “two popular leaders at Athens were to praise Aristides just back from the allied territory, and one proposed to crown him because he has not come back rich, nor having gathered any living for himself, but is the poorest of the Athenians and poorer than he had been before; and the other in turn were to write a decree of this sort: ‘Since Aristides, not setting the tribute beyond what the allies could bear, but according to what land each had, took care of their concord with the Athenians and of their appearing to bear it without resentment, let it be decreed that he be crowned for justice’—do you not think that he himself might speak against the first motion, as unworthy of the life he had lived, if he were to be honored for things in which he does no wrong, while the second perhaps he himself would approve, as aiming at what he had in mind? For looking to the advantage of both the Athenians and their subjects he took care of the proportion of the tribute, and this was shown more clearly after Aristides; for when the Athenians transgressed what had been decided by him and assessed the islands more heavily, their naval power, by which they were most formidable, was torn apart, that of the Lacedaemonians advanced to the sea, nothing of their power held together, and the whole subject empire rushed toward revolt and set about breaking away. The just man, then, Apollonius, by straight reckoning, is not the man who is not unjust, but the man who does just things himself and also sets others on the way to not doing wrong; and from such justice other virtues will grow, but above all the judicial and the legislative. For such a man will judge far more justly than those who swear over the cut victims, and will legislate, as the Solons and the Lycurguses did; for with them too justice began the writing of laws.”
22| So much, says Damis, did they discuss about the just man, and Apollonius agreed with the argument, for he assents to what is soundly said. After philosophizing also about the soul, that it is immortal, and about nature, in terms much like the opinions of Plato in the Timaeus, and after discussing at greater length the laws among the Greeks, Apollonius said, “For me the road here came about for your sake and for the sake of the sources of the Nile; having come as far as Egypt, I might be forgiven for not knowing them, but having advanced to Ethiopia, as I have, it would bring reproach to pass them by and not draw some accounts from them.” “Go, and good fortune to you,” said Thespesion, “and pray to the springs whatever is dear to you, for they are divine. I think you will make as guide the man once of Naucratis, now of Memphis, Timasion; for he is familiar with the springs and so pure that he has no need of sprinkling. But to you, Nilus, we wish to say something among ourselves.” The sense of these words was not hidden from Apollonius, for he understood that they were ill-disposed, since Nilus was devoted to him; and leaving the conversation to them, he went off to make preparations, to set out at dawn. Not long after Nilus came, and reported nothing of what he had heard, but laughed often to himself; and no one asked about the laughter, but they spared the secret.
23| That evening, after dining and talking there of nothing of great importance, they went to sleep; and at daybreak, after bidding the Naked Sages farewell, they set out on the road that leads into the mountains, keeping to the left of the Nile, and saw the following things worth mentioning. The Catadupa are earthy mountains, similar to the Tmolus of the Lydians, and from them the Nile rushes down, drawing along the earth with which it makes Egypt. The echo of the stream as it breaks down from the mountains and with a crash falls into the Nile seems harsh and unbearable to hear, and many who had advanced beyond a moderate distance turned back, having lost their hearing.
24| As Apollonius and his company went forward, breast-like hills appeared, bearing trees whose leaves, bark and gum the Ethiopians count as fruit; and they saw lions near the road and leopards and other such beasts, and none attacked them, but they leapt away from them as though struck with awe at the men. Deer and gazelles and ostriches and wild asses were seen in great numbers too, but most of all the boagri and the butragi; these animals are composed, the one of deer and bull, the other of those from which it has taken its name. They also came upon bones of these and half-eaten bodies; for lions, once they have glutted themselves on warm prey, scorn what is left over, trusting, I think, that they will hunt again.
25| Here live the nomad Ethiopians, who have their cities on wagons, and near them the people who hunt elephants and, after cutting the animals up, make a market of them, which is how they got their name, from the selling of elephants. The Nasamones, the Man-eaters, the Pygmies and the Shadow-feet are likewise Ethiopian nations, and they reach down to the Ethiopian Ocean, which no one sails into except those carried there against their will.
26| As the men were talking about the wild beasts and philosophizing about nature, which feeds one creature one way and another another, an echo struck them like thunder, though not yet hard thunder, but hollow and still within the cloud. Timasion said, “The cataract is near, gentlemen, the last for those going down and the first for those going up.” They went forward perhaps ten stadia, and they say they saw a river issuing from the mountain, no smaller than the Marsyas and Maeander are at their first meetings of waters. After praying to the Nile they went on, and they no longer saw any wild beasts, since these are timid by nature and live beside calm waters rather than torrential and roaring ones; but after about fifteen stadia they heard a second cataract, which was by now harsh and unbearable to perceive, for it was twice the size of the former one and fell from higher mountains. Damis says that his own ears, together with those of a certain companion, were so battered that he himself turned back and begged Apollonius not to go further; but Apollonius, vigorously, together with Timasion and Nilus, pressed on to the third cataract, and on coming back reported the following. Peaks hang over the Nile there to a height of about eight stadia, and the bank facing the mountains is a brow of quarried rock beyond description; the springs hang down from the mountains and spill over onto the rocky bank, and from there they pour into the Nile, surging and white. The violent action that happens around these falls is many times greater than at the earlier ones, and the echo leaping from them against the mountains makes the investigation of the stream hard to hear. As for the road ahead, leading to the first springs, they say it is impassable to travel and impassable even to imagine, for there are many tales about daemons, such as Pindar has sung wisely about the daemon whom he sets over these springs to keep the Nile in due measure.
27| After the cataracts they lodged in a small village of Ethiopia, and toward evening they were at dinner, mixing seriousness with play, when they heard a great shout from the women of the village urging one another to catch something and drive it off. They called their own husbands too to share in the work, and the men, snatching up sticks and stones and whatever came to each man’s hand, called their neighbors together as if their marriages had been wronged. For a phantom of a satyr, it seems, had been haunting the village for ten months now, raging after the women, and it was said to have slain two of them, the ones it seemed to love most. When his companions were shaken, Apollonius said, “Do not be afraid; some satyr is behaving outrageously here.” “Yes, by Zeus,” said Nilus, “one that we Naked Sages, though he has been outrageous for a long time, have not yet stopped from leaping about.” “But there is a remedy,” he said, “against these outrageous creatures, which Midas is said once to have used. This Midas belonged to the race of the satyrs, as his ears showed, and a satyr, because of the kinship, came in revel against him, slandering Midas’s ears, and not only singing but also playing the pipe at him. Midas, I think, had heard from his mother that a satyr hunted with wine, when he falls asleep, becomes sober and is reconciled; so he mixed the spring that was by his palace with wine and let the satyr loose upon it, and the satyr drank and was caught. And to show that the story is not false, let us go to the village headman, and if the villagers have wine, let us mix it for the satyr, and he will undergo the same as Midas’s satyr.” This was agreed, and when he had poured four Egyptian jars of wine into a trough from which the village sheep drank, he called the satyr, rebuking him in some unseen way. The satyr was not yet visible, but the wine kept sinking, as though being drunk; and when it had been drunk up, Apollonius said, “Let us pour a libation to the satyr, for he is asleep.” So saying, he led the villagers to a cave of the Nymphs, not yet a plethron from the village, and showing the satyr asleep in it, told them to refrain from striking or reviling him, for he had ceased from his folly. This act was of that kind, and it was, by Zeus, no side-work of Apollonius’s journey but a work done in passing; and if anyone comes upon the man’s letter, in which, writing to a youth who was behaving outrageously, he says that he brought a satyr daemon to his senses in Ethiopia, he should remember this account. Let us not disbelieve that satyrs exist and lay hands on matters of love; for I know that on Lemnos, in the case of one of my own contemporaries, whose mother, it was reported, had been visited by a satyr, he looked just as this story would lead one to expect, since he seemed to have a fawn skin grown to him and worn across his back, the front hooves of which clasped the neck and were attached to his chest. But let me say no more about this, for neither is experience to be disbelieved nor am I.
28| When he came down from Ethiopia, the quarrel with Euphrates grew greatest at that time, through the daily discussions; he left these to Menippus and Nilus, himself rebuking Euphrates only slightly, while he took great care of Nilus.
29| When Titus had taken Jerusalem and everything was full of corpses, and the neighboring nations were crowning him, he did not think himself worthy of this, saying that he had not done these things himself, but had lent his hands to a god who had shown his anger. Apollonius praised this, for there appeared in the man good judgment and an understanding of things human and divine, and not to be crowned for blood was full of temperance. He therefore composed a letter to him, making Damis its bearer, and wrote as follows: “Apollonius to Titus, general of the Romans, greetings. Since you did not wish to be proclaimed for the spear, nor for enemy blood, I give you the crown of temperance, since you know for what deeds one should be crowned. Farewell.” Titus, greatly delighted with the letter, said, “I am grateful to you for myself and for my father, and I will remember these things. For I have taken Jerusalem, but you have taken me.”
30| Proclaimed emperor in Rome and judged worthy of these prizes of valor, he was leaving to share the rule equally with his father; and thinking of Apollonius, how greatly valuable he would be to him even if he spent only a short time with him, he begged him to come to Tarsus. And embracing him when he came, he said, “My father wrote to me about everything on which he made you his adviser, and see, here is the letter, in which you are written down as his benefactor and as everything that we are. I am just thirty years old, yet I am thought worthy of what my father received at sixty, and I am called to rule before I know, perhaps, how to be ruled; I am afraid that I am laying hold of greater things than I should.” Apollonius felt his neck, for it was strong, like the body of athletes, and said, “Who will force a bull to put so strong a neck under a yoke?” “The one who from my youth,” said Titus, “raised me like a calf.” He meant his own father, and that he would be ruled by him alone, since his father had accustomed him from boyhood to heed him. “I am glad,” said Apollonius, “first to see you prepared to follow your father, by whom even those who are not his children by nature are glad to be ruled, and ready to attend his doors, where you will be attended together with him. And when youth goes along with old age toward rule, what lyre, what pipe will sing so sweet and blended a harmony? For the older will be matched with the young, so that old age will have strength and youth will not run into disorder.”
31| “And for me, Tyanean,” he said, “what will you advise about rule and kingship?” “What you have persuaded yourself of,” he said, “for since you are subordinate to your father, it is clear that you will become like him. And I would now tell the saying of Archytas, for it is noble and worth learning. Archytas was a man of Tarentum, wise in the doctrines of Pythagoras. Writing about the upbringing of children, he says: Let a father be a pattern of virtue for his sons, since fathers too will walk more earnestly toward virtue if their sons become like them. And I will introduce to you Demetrius, my own companion, who will be with you for as long as you wish, teaching what the good ruler ought to do.” “And what is this man’s wisdom, Apollonius?” “Frankness,” he said, “and speaking the truth, and being struck with awe by no one; for he belongs to the Cynic power.” When Titus heard the word “dog” with displeasure, he said, “Yet in Homer the young Telemachus seemed to need two dogs, and they were sent with the youth as attendants to the assembly of the Ithacans, though they were without reason; but with you will be a dog who will bark wisely and not without reason, on your behalf at others and at you yourself, if you do any wrong.” “Give me the attendant dog,” he said, “and I permit him even to bite me if he perceives me doing any injustice.” “A letter will be written to him,” he said, “for he is philosophizing at Rome.” “Let it be written,” he said. “And I should like to write one to you on my behalf, so that you might become our companion on the road to Rome.” “I will come,” said Apollonius, “when it is better for both of us.”
32| Titus sent away those present, and when they were by themselves, said, “Tyanean, we are alone; for you allow me, I suppose, to ask about what matters most to me?” “Ask,” said Apollonius, “and I will answer all the more eagerly, the greater the matters.” “My question will be about my own soul, and whom I should most guard against, unless I seem a coward for fearing these things already.” “That is a cautious and watchful question,” said Apollonius, “for this is what one must foresee above all.” And looking up to the sun, he swore by it that he himself was going to speak to him about these matters even without being asked, for the gods had shown him that he should warn Titus, while his father lived, to fear those most hostile to his father, and after his father’s death those closest to himself. “And in what manner shall I die?” he said. “The manner,” said Apollonius, “that Odysseus is said to have died, for they say that his death too came from the sea.” Damis interprets this as follows: that he should guard against the barb of the stingray, with which they say Odysseus was struck, and that after holding the empire for two years after his father he would die by the sea-hare; and this fish provides juices unspeakable, deadlier to men than anything in the sea and on land. Nero, he says, introduced this hare into his own dishes against his bitterest enemies, and Domitian did so against his brother Titus, not thinking it terrible to rule with a brother, but with one who was gentle and good. When they had talked in this way in private, they embraced each other in public, and as Titus left, Apollonius addressed him, saying, “Conquer, emperor, your enemies with arms and your father with virtues.”
33| This was the letter to Demetrius: “Apollonius the philosopher to Demetrius the Dog, greetings. I give you to the emperor Titus as a teacher of the character of kingship; do me the favor of speaking the truth to him, and be everything to him except angry. Farewell.”
34| The people who live in Tarsus had at other times been vexed with Apollonius, both because of his rebukes, since he made them intense, and because, being slack and luxurious, they could not endure even the force of his speech; but now they were so overcome by the man that they thought of him as their founder and the pillar of the city. For the emperor was sacrificing publicly, and the city assembled and made supplication for matters of the greatest weight, and he said he would remember these things before his father and would himself serve as ambassador for what they asked. Apollonius came forward and said, “And if I should convict some of these men of being enemies of you and of your father, men who sent embassies for the sake of revolution to Jerusalem, hidden allies of your most manifest enemies, what will they suffer?” “What else,” said Titus, “than to perish?” “Then is it not shameful,” said Apollonius, “to exact penalties at once but to grant benefactions late, and to make the one on your own judgment but to put off the other to a sharing of opinion?” The emperor, delighted, said, “I grant the gifts, for my father will not resent my being worsted by the truth, and by you.”
35| Such were the nations, they say, that Apollonius visited, both in his own earnestness and in being the object of others’ earnestness. The journeys that followed were many for the man, though no longer so many, nor to any nations other than those he knew; for after he came down from Ethiopia he spent a long time in Egypt by the sea, and among the Phoenicians, the Cilicians, the Ionians, the Achaeans and the Italians he again nowhere failed to show himself the same. For while knowing oneself is thought difficult, I for my part consider it harder for the wise man to remain like himself; for he will not change those who are wicked by nature for the better unless he has first practiced not changing himself. On this I have spoken sufficiently in other writings, teaching those who read them with some diligence that the true man will neither change in any respect nor be enslaved. But so that we do not go on at great length by teaching precisely what he philosophized among each people, nor again appear to skip over an account that we are taking pains to hand on to those who do not know the man, it seems to me best to go through the more serious of these matters and as many as will be thought worthy of memory. Let us regard them as like the visits of the Asclepiads.
36| A youth who kept himself uneducated was educating birds and making them his housemates for the sake of their wisdom; he taught them to talk the way men do and to trill the way pipes do. Meeting him, Apollonius said, “What are you practicing?” And when the youth went through for him his nightingales and blackbirds and all the fine speech he was teaching his plovers, though his own speech was plainly uncultivated, Apollonius said, “You seem to me to be ruining the birds, first by not allowing them their own utterance, which is so sweet that not even the musical instruments could be brought to imitate it, and then by making them pupils of voicelessness, since you yourself speak Greek worse than anyone. And you are wearing down, young man, your own house too; for looking at your attendants and how you are furnished, you appear to me to be one of the delicate and not of the poor, and men of that sort are milked by the informers, who lift up their tongues against them as stings. And what will you do with your love of birds then? For even all the songs of all the nightingales together will not chase them away as they press and push upon you, but you must keep bailing out from what you have and throw them the gold, as one throws sops to dogs, and if they bark, give again and again, and then yourself go hungry later and be at a loss. You need a clean break now and some change in your ways, so that you do not shed your wealth like feathers before you notice it and are living in a way more deserving to be lamented by birds than sung by them. “The remedy for the change is not great. For there is in every city a kind of men whom you do not yet know, and they call them teachers. Give these a little from your property and you will safely keep the greater part, for they will teach you rhetoric, the kind of the marketplace, and the art is easy. If I saw you still a boy, I would advise you to go to the doors of philosophers and sophists and fence your house with all wisdom; but since you happen to be past the age for this, at least learn to speak on your own behalf, considering that if you had learned the more complete things, you could look like a man who fights as a hoplite and is fearsome, but having learned these you will have the equipment of light-armed troops and slingers; for you would pelt the informers as you would dogs.” The youth understood this, and leaving his occupation with birds he went to teachers, by whom both his judgment and his tongue were strengthened.
37| Of two stories told at Sardis, one that the Pactolus once carried gold dust to Croesus, the other that trees are older than the earth, he said that the former was believed with good reason, for there was once gold in the sandy soil of Tmolus and the rains swept it down into the Pactolus, and in time, as such things tend to do, it was washed away and ran out. But laughing at the other story, he said, “You say that trees are older than the earth, but I, who have philosophized for so long a time, have not yet come to know that the stars are older than the heaven,” teaching that nothing could come to be before that in which it grows exists.
38| When the governor of Syria was stirring up Antioch to faction, casting suspicions among the people by which the city, meeting in assembly, was divided, a mighty earthquake struck, and they cowered and, as is the custom in portents from Zeus, prayed on one another’s behalf. Apollonius came forward and said, “The god has plainly become your reconciler, and you would not fall into faction again, fearing the same things.” And he brought them to consider what they would suffer, and that they would fear the same things as the others.
39| It is worth recalling this too. A man was sacrificing to Earth for a treasure and did not shrink from praying to Apollonius for it as well. Apollonius, considering what things he longed for, said, “I see a formidable money-maker.” “An unlucky one, rather,” said the man, “who has nothing except a few things, which do not suffice to feed his house.” “You seem,” said Apollonius, “to support many idle servants, for you yourself do not appear to be one of the unwise.” The man wept quietly and said, “I have four little daughters and need four dowries, and I now have perhaps twenty thousand drachmas; and when this is divided among the daughters, they will seem to have received little, and I shall perish having nothing.” Apollonius, moved toward him, said, “I will take care of you, and so will Earth, for they say you sacrifice to her.” And saying this he went out into the suburbs like one who is buying crops, and seeing a plot full of olive trees, pleased with the trees, how fine they were and large, and with a little garden in it in which beehives and flowers were to be seen, he went into the garden as if to examine something further, and after praying to Pandora he walked back into the city. He went to the owner of the field, a man whose wealth had been acquired by the most lawless means, by denouncing the property of Phoenicians, and said, “The plot at such and such a place, how much did you pay for it, and what have you spent on it?” The man said that he had bought the field last year, for fifteen thousand, and had not yet worked anything on it; and Apollonius persuaded him to sell it to the man for twenty thousand, making a windfall of the five thousand for him. The man who longed for the treasure did not yet understand the gift, and did not even think he had an equal amount, but so much less, in that the twenty thousand in his hands would be at his own disposal, while the field in exchange for it would lie exposed to frosts and hail and the other things that destroy crops. But when he promptly found a jar of three thousand darics right by the beehive in the garden, and got a rich harvest of olives while the rest of the land was not then bearing richly, hymns were sung by him to the man, and everything was full of suitors courting him.
40| I found these things too about the man worth remembering. A certain man seemed to be in love with the statue of Aphrodite that stands naked at Cnidus; he set up some offerings and said he would set up others for the sake of marriage. To Apollonius this seemed absurd in any case, and since Cnidus did not object, but said the goddess would appear the more manifest if she were loved, Apollonius decided to purify the temple of this folly. When the Cnidians asked him whether he wished to correct anything in the sacrifices or the prayers, he said, “I shall correct eyes, and let the ancestral customs of the temple stay as they are.” So he called the man who was being so soft and asked him whether he believed in gods; and when the man said that he believed in gods so much that he even loved them, and mentioned the marriage that he thought he would sacrifice for, Apollonius said, “The poets puff you up by saying that Anchises and Peleus were wedded to goddesses, but I know this about loving and being loved: gods love gods, men love men, beasts love beasts, and in short like loves like, for the begetting of true and kindred offspring; and what is of another kind, coming together with what is unlike, is neither union nor love. And if you reflected on the story of Ixion, you would not come to the thought of loving what is unlike. He, made like a wheel, is racked through the heavens, but you, if you do not leave the temple, will be destroyed throughout all the earth, unable even to say that the gods did not judge justly in your case.” Thus the drunken folly was quenched, and the man who claimed to be in love went away after sacrificing for pardon.
41| Once, when earthquakes had gripped the cities on the Hellespont’s left side, Egyptians and Chaldeans went around them collecting money, claiming they would offer sacrifices of ten talents to Earth and Poseidon. The cities contributed, some from public funds and some from private households, in the grip of fear; and these men said they would not sacrifice on the cities’ behalf unless the money was first deposited on the bankers’ tables. The man resolved not to abandon the people of the Hellespont. He went into the cities and drove these men out as people who had made a treasure-house of other people’s misfortunes; then, discovering the causes of the divine anger and sacrificing as befitted each city, he warded off the visitation at small cost, and the earth stood still.
42| At about the same time the emperor Domitian made laws forbidding the making of eunuchs and the planting of any more vines, and ordering that those already planted be cut down. Apollonius came before the Ionians and said, “These decrees are not aimed at me, for I am perhaps the only man who needs neither genitals nor wine; but our most admirable ruler fails to notice that he is sparing men and gelding the earth.” This gave Ionia the courage to send an embassy to the emperor on behalf of the vines and to ask for the repeal of a law that ordered the land to be laid waste and left unplanted.
43| This too they tell in song about the man at Tarsus. A mad dog had fallen upon a young man, and the bite had reduced the youth to everything a dog does: he barked and howled and ran on all fours, putting his hands down beneath him as he ran. He had been ill for thirty days when Apollonius, who had just arrived in Tarsus, came to see him and ordered the dog that had done this to be tracked down for him. They said that they had not come across the dog, since the youth had been attacked outside the walls while practicing with javelins, nor were they able to find out from the sick man what the dog looked like, since he did not even know himself anymore. Apollonius paused, then said, “Damis, the dog is white, shaggy, a sheepdog, like an Amphilochian hound, and it is standing at such-and-such a spring, trembling, for it both craves the water and dreads it. Bring it to me at the bank of the river where the wrestling grounds are, and just tell it that I am calling it.” Dragged there by Damis, the dog crouched at Apollonius’ feet, whimpering like suppliants at an altar. He tamed it still further and soothed it with his hand, and he set the youth close beside him, holding him himself; and so that a great secret should not escape the crowd, he said, “The soul of Telephus the Mysian has passed into this boy, and the Fates intend the same things for him.” With these words he ordered the dog to lick the bite all over, so that the one who had wounded him might in turn become his healer. From then on the boy turned back to his father and recognized his mother, greeted the companions of his own age, and drank from the Cydnus. Nor was the dog overlooked: Apollonius prayed to the river for it too and sent it across. And when it had crossed the Cydnus, it stood on the bank and barked, which is the last thing that happens with mad dogs, and laying back its ears it wagged its tail, knowing that it was well; for water is the remedy to drink for madness, if the mad creature can bring itself to face it.

Such, then, were the man’s deeds on behalf of temples and cities, his dealings with peoples and on behalf of peoples, on behalf of the dead or the sick, with the wise and the unwise, and with the emperors who made him their counselor in virtue.

======== Life of Apollonius — Book VII ========

1| I know that tyrannies are the best touchstone of men who practice philosophy, and I am willing to examine in what respect each of them proved more or less of a man than another. But my account is driving toward this point. In the years when Domitian was tyrant, accusations and indictments closed in around Apollonius. How they began, from what quarter, and what name each of them bore, I shall make clear shortly. But since I must relate what he said and what kind of man he showed himself to be when he left the trial, having convicted the tyrant rather than been convicted himself, it seems best to me first to go through all the deeds of wise men against tyrants that I found worth recounting, and to set them beside those of Apollonius. That, surely, is how the truth ought to be sought.
2| Zeno of Elea, then, who is thought to have founded dialectic, was caught trying to bring down the tyranny of Nearchus the Mysian. Under torture he kept silent about his own fellow conspirators, but he slandered those who were loyal to the tyrant as disloyal, and they were put to death as though the charges were true, while he brought the Mysians to freedom by making the tyranny trip over itself. Plato says that he took up the struggle for the freedom of the Sicilian Greeks, having joined Dion in that purpose. Phyton, banished from Rhegium, took refuge with Dionysius the tyrant of Sicily; but being honored beyond what an exile could expect, he understood the tyrant's mind and that he coveted Rhegium. He was caught writing to the people of Rhegium about it, and the tyrant tied him alive to one of his siege engines and brought it up against the walls, so that the Rhegians would not shoot at the engine out of regard for Phyton. But Phyton shouted to them to shoot, for he was the target to shoot at for the sake of their freedom. Heraclides and Python, who killed Cotys the Thracian, were both young men, but by admiring the teaching of the Academy they became wise and, in that way, free. And who has not heard what became of Callisthenes of Olynthus? On one and the same day he praised the Macedonians and reviled them, when they were at the height of their power, and he died thought odious. Then there are Diogenes of Sinope and Crates of Thebes. Diogenes went straight to Chaeronea and rebuked Philip on behalf of the Athenians, because, while claiming to be a Heraclid, he was destroying by force of arms the people who had once taken up arms for the Heraclids. Crates, when Alexander said that for his sake he would rebuild Thebes, replied that he would have no need of a fatherland which anyone strong in arms could raze to the ground. Many more such stories could be told, but my account does not permit length, since I am obliged also to argue against these, not on the ground that they are not fine or not famous among all men, but that they fall short of those of
3| Apollonius, however much they may appear superior to those of others. The deed of the Eleatic, then, and that of the men who killed Cotys, are not yet of much account. Thracians and Getae are easy to enslave, and it is foolish to set them free, for they take no pleasure in freedom, since, I suppose, they do not consider slavery shameful. As for Plato, whether he suffered something unwise by trying to set Sicily right rather than Athens, or whether he was deservedly sold into slavery after being deceived and deceiving in turn, I do not say, because of those who would listen with displeasure. The man from Rhegium dared what he did against Dionysius at a time when Dionysius' tyranny over Sicily was not secure; and since he would certainly have died at Dionysius' hands even if the Rhegians had not shot at him, he did nothing remarkable, I think, in choosing death for the freedom of others rather than death for his own servitude. Callisthenes would not escape the reputation of a base man even now. For by praising and reviling the same people, he either reviled those he thought worthy of praise, or praised those he should have been seen reviling. And in any case, the man who takes up abusing good men cannot avoid seeming malicious, while the man who flatters the wicked with praise will himself carry off the blame for their misdeeds, for bad men become worse when they are praised. Diogenes, had he said these things to Philip before Chaeronea, might have kept him clean of the war against the Athenians; but coming upon him after the deed was done, he reproached him, yet did not correct him. Crates, moreover, might even be blamed by a lover of his city for not supporting Alexander in the plan he followed to rebuild Thebes. Apollonius, however, neither feared for a native land in danger, nor gave up on his own life, nor was led into foolish arguments, nor acted on behalf of Mysians or Getae, nor against a man who ruled a single island or a small country, but against one under whom lay the sea and all the land; against him, since he ruled as a harsh tyrant, he drew himself up for the benefit of the ruled, employing this same purpose against Nero too. So let anyone regard as mere skirmishes
4| those actions, since he did not come to close quarters, but by strengthening Vindex and terrifying Tigellinus he made the tyranny more rotten. And a boastful remark arises here, that there was nothing noble in attacking Nero, who lived the life of some harpist or flute-girl; but what will they say about Domitian? He was strong in body, and of pleasures he rejected those from instruments and clatterings which wither the spirited part, but he drew into the realm of delight the griefs of others and whatever anyone lamented. Distrust he called a safeguard of peoples against tyrants, and of tyrants against everyone. Night, he held, should bring an emperor rest from all other business but be the time to begin his murders; so the senate was maimed of its most esteemed men, and philosophy cowered so much that some of its people threw off the cloak and fled to the Celtic west, others into the empty lands of Libya and Scythia, and some were swept into making speeches that abetted his crimes. But Apollonius, as Tiresias is made by Sophocles to say of himself to Oedipus, “I do not live as your slave, but Loxias’s,” so, having made wisdom his mistress, was free of Domitian’s onslaught, having prophesied to himself the words of Tiresias and Sophocles, fearing nothing for himself, but pitying the things that were destroying others. Hence he banded together against him the youth, as much as the senate had, and the intelligence that was seen in some of them, going about to the provinces and philosophizing with the governors to show that the power of tyrants is not immortal and that by seeming fearsome they are the more readily taken. He went through for them also the Panathenaea of Attica, on which Harmodius and Aristogeiton are sung, and the deed from Phyle, which took the thirty tyrants together, and he went through also their own Roman ancestral history, how they too, being anciently a people, drove out tyrannies with arms.
5| A tragic actor came to Ephesus with the play Ino, and the governor of Asia was listening, who, though young and evidently marked out among the consuls, was thinking rather timidly about these matters. The actor was already finishing the iambic lines in which Euripides says that tyrants, grown great through long years, are taken by small things, when Apollonius leapt up and said, “But this coward understands neither Euripides nor me.”
6| And again, when a report came that Domitian had made a splendid purification of the Roman Hestia, because he had put to death three of the Vestals on a charge about the girdle and for not being pure from marriage, women who were supposed to serve the Trojan Athena and the fire there in holiness, Apollonius said, “If only you too, Helios, might be purified of the unjust murders of which the whole inhabited world is now full.” And he proclaimed and prayed this not in private, like cowards, but in the crowd and to everyone.
7| When Domitian, having killed Sabinus, one of his own kinsmen, was marrying Julia, who had been the wife of the slain man and Domitian’s niece, a daughter of Titus, Ephesus was offering sacrifice for the wedding, and Apollonius, coming upon the sacrifices, said, “O night of the Danaids of old, how you were one.” And indeed what was done by him in Rome went as follows:
8| Nerva seemed fitted for rule, which he took up with moderation after Domitian, and the same opinion held of Orfitus and Rufus. Domitian said these men were plotting against him, and the two were confined on islands, while Nerva he ordered to live at Tarentum. Apollonius, who was a friend to them, during the time when Titus ruled together with his father and after his father, was always writing something to the men about temperance, recommending them to the emperors as good men; but from Domitian, since he was harsh, he detached the men and strengthened them for the freedom of all. He thought advice by letter unsafe for them, for many men in power were betrayed even by slaves and friends and wives, and no house at that time held a secret. So he would take aside the most temperate of his own companions, now one, now another, and say, “I am making you the bearer of a brilliant secret. You must go to Rome to such and such a man, and talk with him, and become, for the persuasion of the man, everything that I am.” When he heard that they were in exile, having shown some impulse against the tyrant but having fallen away from their purposes through hesitation, he discussed Fates and necessity in the grove of Smyrna,
9| in which there is the Meles; and knowing that Nerva would shortly rule, he went through the argument, saying that not even tyrants can compel what comes from the Fates; and there was a bronze statue of Domitian set up near the Meles, and turning the bystanders toward it, he said, “Fool, how far you miss the Fates and necessity; for whoever is destined to be tyrant after you, even if you kill him, will live again.” This reached Domitian through the slanders of Euphrates, and about which of the men he was giving this oracle, no one understood; but the tyrant, thinking to set his own fear to rest, set out to kill the men. So that he should not appear to be acting without a pretext, he summoned Apollonius to defend himself about the secret dealings with them. For if Apollonius came and he condemned him, he would not seem to have killed the men without trial, but as convicted in Apollonius; or if by some wisdom he slipped out of sight, they would be the more certainly destroyed, as having been condemned even by their partner in the charge.
10| While he was thinking this and already writing to the governor of Asia that Apollonius should be seized and brought up, the Tyanean foresaw it all, divinely and as he was accustomed to do, and told his companions that he needed a secret journey abroad. Some of them were struck by the reputation of the ancient Abaris, and that he had set out for something of the same kind; but he, without even disclosing his purpose to Damis, sailed with him to Achaea, and landing at Corinth, and doing for the Sun about noon all that he was accustomed to do, he put out toward the nation of the Sicilians and Italians at evening. With a fair wind and a certain good current running beneath the sea, he arrived at Dicaearchia on the fifth day. He met Demetrius, who was thought the boldest of the philosophers, since he lived not far from Rome, and understood that he had withdrawn out of the tyrant’s way. “I have caught you,” he said, “living in luxury for leisure’s sake and dwelling in the most blessed part of fortunate Italy, if indeed it is fortunate, where Odysseus too, living with Calypso, is said to have forgotten the smoke of Ithaca and his home.” Demetrius embraced him and, calling out some words of good omen, said, “O gods, what will become of philosophy, in danger over such a man?” “And what is its danger?” said Apollonius. “What you have come foreseeing,” said Demetrius; “for if I do not know your mind, I do not know my own. But let us not speak here; rather let us go where our company will be of us alone, and let Damis be present too, whom I, by Heracles, count as the Iolaus of your labors.”
11| With these words he led them to the estate of Cicero of old, which lies near the city. When they had sat down under a plane tree, the cicadas, with the breeze playing an accompaniment to them, were at their songs, and Demetrius looked up at them and said, “O blessed ones, truly wise, how the Muses taught you a song that has never been led into lawsuits or slanders, and made you stronger than the belly, and settled you beyond human envy in these trees, where in your bliss you sing of the happiness that is yours and the Muses’.” Apollonius understood where this was tending, and dismissed it as falling short of what it professed; then he said, “If you wished to go through a praise of cicadas, why did you not deliver it openly, instead of cowering here, as if a public law had been laid down that no one should praise cicadas?” “I did not say this for the sake of praise,” said Demetrius, “but to show that to these their own haunts of the Muses are left free, while for us not even a grunt is forgiven, and wisdom has been found a crime; and the writ of Anytus and Meletus says, ‘Socrates does wrong by corrupting the young and introducing new divine beings,’ while against us they write thus: ‘So-and-so does wrong, being wise and just, and understanding the gods, and understanding men, and knowing much about laws.’ And you, as you are the wisest of us, so a wiser accusation has been found against you; for Domitian wishes you to share in the charges for which Nerva and those with him are in exile.” “And for what are they in exile?” said Apollonius. “For the greatest of the present charges,” said Demetrius, “as the prosecutor thinks; for he says that they have been caught leaping at his rule, and that you urged the men on to this, having cut a boy, I suppose.” “Surely not so that the empire might be overthrown by a eunuch?” said Apollonius. “That is not what we are slandered with,” said Demetrius, “but they say that you sacrificed a boy for the sake of divination, which the fresh entrails reveal; and added to the writ are charges about your clothing and your diet, and that there are some by whom you are worshiped. For I heard this from Telesinus, a man friendly to me and to you.” “It would be a lucky find if we could meet Telesinus,” said Apollonius; “you mean the philosopher, who held office among the consuls under Nero?” “Him I mean,” said Demetrius, “but in what way could you meet him? For tyrannies are more suspicious toward everyone of standing if they enter into common talk with people under such a charge as you now have; and Telesinus slipped away under the proclamation that has now been made against all philosophy, welcoming exile as a philosopher rather than staying as a consul.” “Let the man not run risks on my account,” said Apollonius, “for he runs enough for philosophy. But tell me this, Demetrius: by saying or doing what do I seem to you likely to settle my fear well?” “Not by jesting,” said Demetrius, “nor by saying that you are afraid of what you dread; for if you thought these things fearful, you would have gone away, running from having to defend yourself over them.” “And would you have run,” said Apollonius, “if you were in danger as I am?”
12| “No, by Athena,” said Demetrius, “not if someone were to judge me; but when it is without trial, and from one who would not even listen if I defended myself, or would listen but kill even one who did no wrong, I would. You would not, at least, ever have allowed me to choose so cold and slavish a death in place of the one that befits philosophy. And what befits philosophy, I think, is to die either freeing a city, or defending one’s parents and children and brothers and the rest of one’s kin, or contending for friends, who for wise men are more to be chosen than kin or those acquired by bargain out of love; but to die not on true charges but on contrived ones, and to give the tyrant a reputation for wisdom, is much heavier than if someone, as they say of Ixion, were racked hanging on a wheel. And for you, I think, the very coming here will begin the contest; for you attribute it to the soundness of your mind and to your not having dared the journey here if you were guilty of any wrong, but Domitian will not think so, but will think that you hold some secret power and are boldly strong. For the fact that he summoned you, as they say, not yet ten days ago, and that you have come to the trial not even having heard yet that you will be tried, will lend sense to the accusation; for you will appear to have known beforehand, and the account concerning the boy will gain force. And look out lest what concerns Fates and necessity, about which they say you have lectured in Ionia, come upon you, and when fate wishes something absurd you go compelled toward it, not knowing that to guard oneself is always the wiser course. “And if you have not forgotten the days of Nero, you know my own case, and that I am not servile before death. But those days had something easier about them. For the lyre seemed to knock Nero out of the bearing that suits an emperor, yet in other respects it suited him not unpleasantly, since it often brought him certain truces, and he held back from murders. At any rate he did not kill me, though I was drawing the sword against myself because of your words and mine, which I went through concerning the bath; and the cause of his not killing me was that his voice had just then improved and that he had, as he thought, mastered a brilliant melody. But now to what fine voice, to what lyre, shall we sacrifice? For all is without music and full of gall, and this man could be charmed neither by himself nor by others. And yet Pindar, praising the lyre, says that it charms even the spirit of Ares and holds it back from war; but this man, although he has established a musical contest here and publicly crowns the winners, has killed some of them, who, they say, played the pipe and sang for the last time in a musical contest. You must take counsel also for the sake of the men, for you will destroy them too, whether by seeming bold or by saying what you will not persuade. Your safety is at your feet. Of these ships, and they are many, as you see, some will leave for Libya, some for Egypt, some for Phoenicia and Cyprus, some straight for Sardinia, and some beyond Sardinia. Boarding one of them you will best be carried to whichever of these nations you please; for tyrannies are less harsh toward conspicuous men if they perceive them approving of not living in public.”
13| Damis, won over by Demetrius’s words, said, “But you, as a friend present with him, could do this man some great good, for my word is small, if I advise him not to tumble onto upright swords, nor to hurl himself against a tyranny than which none has been reckoned harsher. As for the journey here, if I had not met you, I did not even know his purpose; for I follow him more readily than one follows oneself, but if you asked me where I am sailing or for what, I would be a laughingstock for the voyage, measuring Sicilian seas and Tyrrhenian gulfs and not knowing for what. And if I were running the risk on the strength of a prediction, I could say to those who ask that Apollonius is in love with death and I sail with him as a rival lover; but since I know nothing, it is now mine to speak about what I know, and I shall say it on behalf of the man. For if I should die, philosophy will not yet suffer anything terrible, for I am like the baggage-carrier of a brave soldier, thought worthy of mention only because I follow such a man; but if there should be someone who will kill him, and tyrannies are well supplied at fabricating some things and inflating others, a trophy, I think, will stand over philosophy defeated in the person of the man who philosophized best of mankind, and there will be many Anytuses and Meletuses against us, and writs, some from here and some from there, against those who have been with Apollonius: that one man laughed when he attacked the tyranny, another encouraged him as he spoke, another allowed him to say something, another went away with praise of what he heard. “I say that one ought to die for philosophy as for temples and walls and tombs, for to save such things many famous men were glad to die; but may neither I die so that philosophy is lost, nor anyone who loves her and Apollonius.”
14| To this Apollonius replied, “Damis, who has spoken cautiously about the present situation, deserves forgiveness; for being an Assyrian and having lived beside the Medes, where they bow before tyrannies, he thinks nothing great about freedom. But you, I do not know what defense you will make to philosophy, putting forward fears; even if some truth had appeared in them, you ought rather to have led away from them a man who does not dread even what he is likely to suffer, instead of bringing him within reach of fear. Let a wise man die for what you have named; but someone not wise might die for these things too, for dying for freedom is laid down by law, while dying for kin or friends or beloved ones is fixed by nature; nature and law enslave all men, nature even the willing, law the unwilling. But for the wise it is more fitting to end their lives for what they have practiced; for what they themselves have cultivated out of strength and boldness, without the command of law or the birth-pang of nature, on behalf of these, if someone tried to abolish them, let fire come upon the wise man, let the axe come, for none of these will defeat him, nor will he be driven into any falsehood at all, but he will hold on to all he knows, no less than what he was initiated into. I know most things of any man, as one who knows all; and of what I know, some things I know for the serious, some for the wise, some for myself, some for the gods, and for tyrants nothing. That I do not come for the sake of foolish things, you can see: “I run no risk for my own body, nor could I be killed by a tyranny, not even if I myself wished it; but I understand that I am running a risk for the men; whether the tyrant makes me their leader or an appendage to them, I am whatever he wants. But if I betrayed them, whether by delaying or by slackness toward the accusation, what would I seem to the serious? And who would not justly kill me, as one trifling with men to whom what I asked of the gods was entrusted? That I could not escape seeming a betrayer, I wish to make plain. There are two kinds of tyrannies: some kill without trial, others kill after bringing the accused before courts; the former are like the hot and ready of the wild beasts, the latter like the softer and sluggish. That both are harsh is plain to everyone who takes as examples Nero for the one that rushes forward and tries no one, and Tiberius for the one that lies in wait; for the one destroyed people who had not even supposed anything, and the other people who had long been afraid. But I consider harsher the tyrannies that pretend to judge and to vote in accordance with the laws; for they do nothing according to the laws, and vote the same as those who have judged nothing, putting the name of law on the delay of their anger; and dying as condemned deprives the wretched even of the pity of the many, which ought to be brought like a funeral gift to those who depart unjustly. “The form of this tyranny I see to be judicial, but it seems to me to end in no judgment; for those whom he condemned before judging, he brings to trial as though never yet judged; and the one convicted by vote in that trial says plainly that he has been destroyed by one who did not judge according to the laws, while the one who abandons standing trial, how could he escape having voted against himself? And with men of this sort now resting on me, to run away from my own contest and theirs, where on earth will it let me seem clean? Suppose that you have said these things, and that I obey them as rightly said, and that those men have been slaughtered: what prayer for fair sailing is there for such a man? Where will he anchor? To whom will he go? For I think he must leave all the land that the Romans rule and come to men who are friendly and do not live in the open, and such would be Phraotes, and the Babylonian, and Iarchas the divine, and Thespesion the noble. If I were to set off to the Ethiopians, what, my good sir, should I tell Thespesion? For if I were to hide these things, I should seem a lover of falsehood, or rather a slave; and if I went to report them, I should need words of this sort: ‘Euphrates, Thespesion, has slandered me to you, for things I am not conscious of in myself: For he said that I am a boaster and a wonder-monger and an insulter of all the wisdom the Indians have; but I am none of these, I am a betrayer of my own friends and a butcher and nothing to be trusted and the like, and I have come to be crowned with a crown of virtue, if there is one, for this, since I destroyed the greatest houses of Rome so that they will not even be inhabited any more.’ You blush, Demetrius, as you hear this, for I see it. What then, if you thought of Phraotes, and of me fleeing to that man among the Indians, how could I look at him? What could I say about what I am fleeing? Surely not that I came to him earlier as a good and noble man, not fainthearted before death for the sake of friends, but that after I became his companion I threw away at your feet, dishonored, this most divine thing among men? Iarchas will not even ask me anything when I come, but as Aeolus once ordered Odysseus, who had made bad use of the gift of fair sailing, to leave the island without honor, so he will surely drive me from the hill, saying that I have proved false to the cup of Tantalus, for they want whoever has bent down to it to share the dangers of his friends too. I know how clever you are, Demetrius, at cutting short all arguments, and so you seem to me likely to say something like this to me: ‘Then do not go to these, but to men with whom you have not yet mingled, and your running away will be well placed, for you will more easily escape notice among those who do not know.’ But let this argument also be put to the test, to see how it stands as to plausibility. “For about it I think as follows. I hold that the wise man does nothing privately or on his own account, and would not conceive anything so unwitnessed that he himself were not at least present to himself; and whether the inscription at Pytho is Apollo’s own, or that of a man who truly knew himself and for that reason made it a maxim for all, it seems to me that the wise man, knowing himself and having his own mind as a companion at his side, would neither cower at any of the things the many fear, nor dare any of the things that others take in hand shamelessly. For being slaves of tyrannies they have even set out to betray their dearest to them, fearing what is not fearful and not fearing what one must fear. Wisdom does not allow this; for besides the Pythian inscription it commends also the line of Euripides, who considers that the disease that destroys men is conscience, whenever they reflect that they have done evil. For this, surely, is what showed Orestes the shapes of the Eumenides when he was mad over his mother; for mind is master of what is to be done, and conscience of what has seemed good to it. “If, then, the mind chooses what is good, conscience sends the man to every temple, every street, every sanctuary, every haunt of men, applauding and singing, and will sing over him even as he sleeps, setting beside him a well-omened chorus from the people of dreams; but if the mind’s standing slips into worthless things, conscience does not allow that man to cast a straight glance at any person, nor to utter a sound from a free tongue, and it drives him away from temples and from praying; it does not even permit him to raise a hand to the statues, but cuts down those who raise them, as the laws do those who threaten; it banishes them from every gathering and terrifies them as they sleep, and what they see by day, and whatever they think they hear or say, it makes dreamlike and windy to them, and the dim and fanciful fears it makes true and persuasive through terror. That conscience will convict me, if I should become a betrayer of the men, whether I come among those who know or those who do not, I think I have clearly shown, as the truth makes plain; and I shall not betray even myself, but I shall contend against the tyrant, adding the word of noble Homer: ‘Enyalius is common to all.’”
15| Damis says that these words left him so disposed that he regained his impulse and his courage; and that Demetrius did not despair of the man, but praised him and agreed with what he had said, invoked the gods’ favor for him, for the cause for which he was in danger and for philosophy itself, for which he endured these things, and offered to lead them to where he happened to be lodging. Apollonius declined this and said, “It is already evening, and at the lighting of the lamps we must put out for the harbor of the Romans, for this is the rule for these ships. We shall dine together when my affairs go well; for now a charge could be constructed against you as having dined with the emperor’s enemy; and do not even come with us to the harbor, lest even having shared conversation with me expose you to the charge of secret plotting.” Demetrius agreed, embraced them and went away, turning back and wiping away his tears. Apollonius turned his eyes to Damis and said, “If you are strong and confident as I am, let us both go to the ship; but if you are disheartened, it is time for you to stay here, for you will spend this time with Demetrius, a man friendly to you and to me.” Damis answered, “What shall I take myself to be, if, after you have today spoken such words about friends and the sharing of the dangers that come upon them, I, deaf to the argument, flee from you and leave you to the hazard, I who have never before been thought a coward on your behalf?” “Rightly said,” said Apollonius, “and let us go, I as I am, but you must remake yourself into something more ordinary, and not let your hair grow, as it is now, and exchange this linen cloak for a rough one, and give up these shoes; why I want this, I must explain. For it is better to endure even more before the trial; and I do not want you to share these troubles with me by being arrested, for you would be arrested, since the dress is under suspicion, but as one who is not a philosopher, but otherwise a friend to me, to follow and be present at what I do.” That is how it came about that Damis changed the Pythagorean dress; for he says he gave it up not as worse, nor in repentance, but praising the skill he adopted for the advantage of the moment.
16| Sailing from Dicaearchia, on the third day they came ashore at the mouths of the Tiber, from which the voyage up to Rome is of moderate length. The emperor’s sword was at that time in the hands of Aelian, and this man had long loved Apollonius, having once been with him in Egypt; and he said nothing openly about him to Domitian, for the rule did not allow it, since how could he commend to the emperor a man who seemed to be hated by him, or how plead for him as a friend of his own? But all the arts that defend unseen he used on his behalf, even in the time before Apollonius came, when he was being slandered; he said, “Emperor, sophists are a light-talking thing and their art is a boasting one, and since they get no good out of being alive, they long for death, and do not wait for its coming of itself, but draw death upon themselves by provoking those who hold swords. This, I think, is what Nero too had in mind when he was not led on by Demetrius into killing him; for when he perceived that Demetrius was hungry for death, he let him off from death not out of mercy but out of disdain for killing him. And Musonius the Tyrrhenian too, who opposed the government in many ways, he confined on the island called Gyara, and so much do the Greeks yield to these sophists that then they all sailed there for the sake of his company, and now to see the spring; for on the island, which was waterless before, a spring became the discovery of Musonius, which the Greeks sing as much as they do the spring of the horse on Helicon.”
17| With such talk Aelian entertained the emperor before Apollonius came; and when he arrived, he turned to wiser measures. He ordered that Apollonius be seized and brought to him; and when the man who had composed the accusation abused Apollonius as a sorcerer and one skilled in the art, Aelian said, “Keep yourself and your case against this man for the emperor’s court.” Apollonius said, “If I am a sorcerer, how am I being tried? And if I am being tried, how am I a sorcerer? Unless he means that false accusation is so strong that not even sorcerers can defeat it.” When the accuser wished to say something rather ignorant, Aelian cut him off and said, “Leave to me the time before the trial, for I shall make a test of the sophist’s mind in private and not in front of you; and if he admits to wrongdoing, the speeches in court will be cut short and you will go away in peace; but if he denies it, the emperor will judge.” Then, going into the secret court, in which great matters are both exposed and kept silent, he said, “Leave this place, and let no one listen, for this is the emperor’s pleasure.”
18| When they were alone, he said, “I was a youth, Apollonius, at the time when the emperor’s father went to Egypt to offer sacrifice to the gods and to ask your counsel about his affairs; the emperor was bringing me with him as a tribune, one who already knew military matters; and you were so kind to me that, while the emperor was giving audience to the cities, you drew me aside and told me what country I came from, what my name was, and how I stood with my father, and you foretold this office to me, which seems to most men the greatest, and greater than all human things together, but to me appears a burden and an ill fortune; for I am the guardian of a harsh tyranny, and if I trip it up, I fear what will come from the gods. How well disposed I am to you, I have shown; for the man who has said what I have said would never cease to love you, so long as there is any remembering of those things. And my willingness to ask you privately about what the accuser has composed was no poor device for the sake of meeting you, so that you might be confident about what lies with me, and know beforehand what lies with the emperor. For what he will vote about you I do not know, but he is disposed like those who desire to condemn, but are ashamed that it is not on true grounds, and he makes you a pretext for the destruction of men of consular rank; for he wishes what he should not, and does it by fitting it into the appearance of justice. “I too need, then, a pretense and an attack on you; for if he suspects me of letting you off, I cannot tell which of us will perish the sooner.”
19| To this Apollonius said, “Since we are speaking soundly, and you have said whatever the heart holds and it is right for me to say it too, and you philosophize about your own affairs like those who have spent much time with me, and, by Zeus, you are so kindly disposed toward us as to think you share my danger, I shall tell you my mind. It was possible for me to escape you all to many parts of the earth that do not heed you, and to come to men wise, and wiser than I, and to serve the gods with right reason, having gone to the haunts of men more beloved of the gods than those here, among whom there is neither denunciation nor any writ, for by the very fact that they neither do wrong nor suffer it they have no need of courts. But fearing to take the charge of being a traitor, if I myself fled the defense and those who were in danger through me were to perish, I have come to defend myself. Now tell me what I must defend myself against.”
20| “The forms of the writ,” said Aelian, “are varied and several; for they slander your clothing and your other way of life, and that you are worshiped by some, and that at Ephesus you once gave an oracle about a plague, and that you have spoken against the emperor, some things secretly, some openly, some as one who heard them from the gods. And there is one thing, most implausible to me, for I know that you do not even bear the blood of sacrifices, but most plausible to the emperor, which is alleged against you: they say that you went to the country to Nerva, and cut open an Arcadian boy for him as he sacrificed against the emperor, and that you encouraged him with these rites, and that this was done by night as the month was already waning. Since this charge is much greater, let us not consider the others as anything apart from it; for the man who lays hold of your dress and your way of life and your foreknowing is surely driving at this, and says that these things gave you the lawlessness against him and the boldness for the sacrifice. So you must have your defense on these matters prepared, and let your speech not show disdain for the emperor.” And Apollonius said, “Let it be proof to you that I do not disdain him that I have come to make a defense; and even if my affairs were so bold as to rise above tyrannies, yet to you I have submitted myself, being the man you are and loving me.” “For to seem wicked to an enemy is not yet terrible, since enemies hate not for what a man is publicly slandered with but for what he has privately offended in; but to receive from a friend the charge that one appears bad is heavier than all the things of enemies together, for he could not escape being hated even by the others for the very things for which he was bad.”
21| It seemed to Aelian that he spoke well, and after urging him to be of good courage he collected himself, seeing that the man would not be dismayed even if a Gorgon’s head were raised against him. Then he called those assigned to such tasks and said, “I order you to hold this man until the emperor learns that he has come and that he has said all that he has said,” and he looked like men who are very angry. Going into the palace, he did the business that belonged to his office. Here Damis recalls a deed at once like and unlike what happened once at Athens in the time of Aristides: the Athenians drove Aristides out by the shell for his virtue, and when he was already outside the wall one of the country people came up and asked him to write something for him on a shell against Aristides; he knew neither the man nor even writing, but only the envy against the just. Here a tribune, one of those who knew Apollonius very well, addressed him and asked him insolently what he was in danger for; and when Apollonius said that he did not know, he said, “But I know. Your being worshiped by men has slandered you, as being thought worthy of equality with the gods.” “And who,” said Apollonius, “is the one who worshiped me?” “I,” he said, “in Ephesus, when I was still a boy, when you healed us of the plague.” “You do well,” said Apollonius, “you yourself and the saved city of the Ephesians.” “For this reason,” he said, “I have prepared a defense for you on your behalf, which will free you from the charge. “Let us go outside the wall, and if I cut off your neck with the sword, the charge is discredited and you are let off; but if you terrify me and I let go of the sword, you must be considered divine and be tried as on true grounds.” By so much was this man more boorish than the one who drove out Aristides; and he said these things chewing his words and with laughter. Apollonius, as though he had not heard, talked with Damis about the Delta, around which they say the Nile divides.
22| When Aelian called him and ordered him to stay in the free prison, “until the emperor has leisure,” he said, “for he wishes to meet you privately first,” Apollonius left the court, and, going into the prison, said, “Let us talk with those here, Damis; for what else would one do during the time in which the tyrant will be discussing with me what he needs?” Damis said, “They will think us babblers if we divert them from what they will defend, and besides it is odd to walk among men who are in low spirits.” “And yet these,” said Apollonius, “most need someone to talk with them and tend them. For if you recall the verses of Homer, in which Homer says that Helen poured into the mixing bowl the drugs from Egypt so that the sorrows of the soul would be washed away, it seems to me that Helen, having learned Egyptian words, was chanting over the despondent in the bowl, healing them with speech mixed together with wine.” “That is likely,” said Damis, “if she really went to Egypt and conversed with Proteus, or, as Homer thinks, met Polydamna the wife of Thon. But for now let these men wait, for I wish to ask you something.” “I know what you will ask,” said Apollonius; “you want to hear the words that passed between me and the man, and what he said, and if he was fearsome or gentle.” And he went through them all. Damis bowed and said, “I do not disbelieve that Leucothea once gave Odysseus her veil after the ship, from which he had fallen and was measuring the sea with his own hands; for with us too, who have stepped into helpless and fearful things, one of the gods holds a hand over us, I think, so that we do not fall out of all safety.” Apollonius, rebuking the speech, said, “Where are you stretching this, fearing these things and not yet knowing that wisdom strikes with awe everything that understands it, and is itself struck by nothing?” “But we,” said Damis, “have come before a man without understanding, who is not only not awed by us, but does not even think there is anything that will awe him.” “Do you understand, Damis,” he said, “that he is puffed up and senseless?” “I understand; how could I not?” said Damis. “Then you ought to despise the tyrant all the more, the more you know him.”
23| While they were talking thus, someone came up to them and said, “I am a Cilician, gentlemen, and I am in danger over wealth.” And Apollonius said, “If you are wealthy from sources that are not lawful, such as piracy or poisons that kill men, or from disturbing tombs, such as those of the kings of old that are rich in gold and treasure, you must not only be tried but destroyed, for this is wealth, but accursed and savage; but if you inherited it, or it came from a trade that is honorable and not huckstering, who is so heavy as to take from you, under a show of law, what you acquired by the laws?” The man said, “What I have comes from several kinsmen, and arrives in one house, mine; and I use it neither as another’s, for it is mine, nor as mine alone, for it is held in common for me with the good. The informers slander me, saying that I have acquired my wealth not for the good of the tyranny, for it would be a supply for me if I tried to make revolution, and for another, to whom I might attach myself, my means would be no small weight. Charges have already been divined against me: that all wealth beyond measure breeds insolence, and that the wealth that exceeds that of the many sets the neck high and raises the pride, and does not allow a man to obey the laws, and as for the governors who visit the provinces, it all but slaps them on the jaw, enslaving them with money or despising them because of the strength of wealth.” “When I was a youth, before I had acquired an estate of a hundred talents, I thought everything laughable and feared little for what I had; but when five hundred talents came to me in a single day, on the death of my father’s brother, who left them to me, my mind changed as much as horses are changed by those who train them out of an untaught and unruly character. As my wealth grew, bringing some from the land and some from the sea, I was so enslaved by the fear around it that I pumped out of my property a part to the informers, who had to be soothed with this scrap, a part to the officials, so that I should have strength against those who plotted against me, a part to my kinsmen, so that they should not envy the wealth, and a part to the slaves, so that they should not become worse by claiming to be neglected; and a splendid herd of friends was pastured for me, for these, foreseeing my needs, did some things themselves and told me others beforehand. Yet though we thus palisaded the wealth and walled it so securely, we are now in danger over it, and it is not yet clear that we shall even remain unharmed in body.” And Apollonius said, “Take courage, for you have your wealth as a guarantor of your body. You are bound because of it, but it will let you go, and you will be freed not only from this prison but from serving the informers and the slaves to whom you were subject because of it.”
24| Another again said that he was facing a charge because, sacrificing at Tarentum, where he was governor, he had not added to the public prayers that Domitian was a child of Athena. “You thought,” said Apollonius, “that Athena, being a virgin for all time, would not give birth; but you did not know, I think, that this goddess once bore a dragon to the Athenians.”
25| Another had been shut up on a charge of this kind. He owned an estate in Acarnania near the mouths of the Achelous, and sailed around the Echinades in a small boat; having looked over them, he chose one that was already joined to the mainland, planted it with fruit trees in season and with vines that gave sweet wine, and fitted out in it a dwelling sufficient for the body, and some water too was brought in from the mainland, enough for the island. From this a writ arose, that this Acarnanian was not pure, and, conscious of deeds not to be borne, was withdrawing from the rest of the earth and keeping away from it as defiled for him, and had chosen the release of Alcmaeon son of Amphiaraus, by which he lived at the mouths of the Achelous after his mother’s death, if not for like deeds, then perhaps for dreadful ones not far from those. But he said it was not this, but that, loving a life without business, he had lived there, and that lawsuits had come around to him, on account of which he had been shut up.
26| Many came up to Apollonius inside and lamented such things; there were about fifty in this prison, and some of them were sick, some were letting themselves go in despondency, some were holding out for death, and others were crying out for their children and parents and wives. “Damis,” he said, “these men seem to me to need the drug I mentioned at the beginning. Whether it is Egyptian, or grows in all the earth, wisdom digging it up from her own gardens, let us give some of it to these wretched men, lest their own minds destroy them first.” “Let us give it,” said Damis, “for they seem to be in need.” So Apollonius called them together and said, “Men who share this roof with me, I pity you, that you are being destroyed by yourselves, not yet knowing whether the accusation will destroy you. For you seem to me to be killing yourselves ahead of the death that you think might be voted against you, and to be confident of what you fear and to fear what you are confident of. It is not fitting, but rather, remembering the saying of Archilochus of Paros, who calls steadfastness in grief endurance and says it is a discovery of the gods, to lift yourselves above these grievous things, as men who rise above the surge by skill when the wave stands higher than the ship, and not to think these things hard, to which you come unwilling and I willing. “For if you agree with the charges, the day should be lamented rather, on which your reasoning rushed you into unjust and savage acts and made you stumble; but if you will not say that you lived on the island in the Achelous for the reasons the accuser gives, nor you that you ever set up your wealth as a challenger lying in wait against the throne, nor you, willingly, that you deprived the ruler of seeming to come from Athena, nor does any one of you, who have come here in danger for these things, say that they are true, what, he says, does this lament over things that are not mean? For the more you call upon your nearest and dearest, the more you must be strong, for those are surely the prizes of this endurance. Or do you say that being shut up here is terrible, and living in a prison? Or do you suppose it the beginning of what you will suffer? Or a punishment in itself, even if you should suffer nothing in addition? But I, knowing human nature, will teach you a word that is not at all like the food of doctors, for it puts strength into you and will not let you die: we human beings are in a prison for this time, which is named life; for this soul, bound in a perishable body, endures many things, and is a slave to all that visits a human being; and those by whom houses were first devised seem to me not to have realized that they were throwing another prison around themselves; and indeed those who live in palaces, securely fitted out in them, let us suppose to be more bound than those whom they themselves will bind. “When I think of cities and walls, these seem to me to be common prisons, so that men are bound when they buy and sell, bound when they hold assemblies and watch spectacles and send processions. And the Scythians who live in wagons are no less bound than we are; for the Ister bounds them, and the Thermodon and the Tanais, rivers not easy to cross unless they stand frozen with the cold, and houses are set up on their wagons and carried about, but they cower in them. And if the argument is not childish, they say that even Ocean has been thrown around the earth for the sake of binding. Go, poets, for these are your matters, and chant to these despondent men how Cronus was once bound by the counsels of Zeus, and Ares, the most warlike, in heaven earlier by Hephaestus, and on earth by the sons of Aloeus. Reflecting on these, and on the many wise and blessed men whom insolent peoples bound and tyrannies maltreated, let us accept these things too, so that we do not fall short of those who accepted them.” So much did what was said change the men in the prison that most of them took food and stopped weeping and went on in hope that they would suffer nothing, being with him.
27| On the next day he talked again, directing his words to the same purpose, and a man was sent in by Domitian, planted as a listener to his talks. His demeanor was downcast, and he seemed to be in some great danger, as he claimed, and his tongue was not unpracticed, like that of those informers who have collected eight words or ten. But Apollonius, understanding the trick, talked of things that did not advance the man’s purpose: he mentioned rivers and mountains to them, and went through beasts and trees, by which the others were entertained, while the man accomplished nothing. When he tried also to lead him into abusing the tyrant, Apollonius said, “My good man, say what you like, for you will not be slandered by me; and whatever blame I have for the emperor, I shall say it to him.”
28| Other episodes occurred in this prison, some contrived and some as they happened to fall out, not really important, nor worth my taking trouble over; Damis, I think, mentioned them so as not to leave out any of them, but I give those that are worth telling. It was evening, and Apollonius had been shut up for the fifth day already, when someone came into the prison, Greek in speech, and said, “Where is the Tyanean?” And taking him aside he said, “Tomorrow the emperor will talk with you; take it that you have heard this from Aelian.” “I understand the secret,” said Apollonius, “for only he could know it.” “And what is more, the officer in charge of the prison has been told,” the man said, “to be at your service in everything you want.” “You do well,” said Apollonius, “but I live the life here and the life outside the same; for I converse about whatever comes up, and I need nothing.” “Not even someone to advise you, Apollonius, how you will talk with the emperor?” “Yes, by Zeus,” said Apollonius, “if he could persuade me not to flatter.” “And what if he persuaded you not to look down on him, nor to be arrogant toward him?” “That would be the best advice,” said Apollonius, “and I have so persuaded myself.” “It is on these matters that I have come,” the man said, “and I am glad to see you moderately prepared; but you must also be prepared for the emperor’s voice and the ill-tempered look of his face, for he speaks in a heavy voice even when he speaks gently, and the brow rests upon the expression of the eye, and the cheek is full of gall, for this above all it shows. These things, Tyanean, let us not be dismayed by, for they belong rather to nature and are always alike.” And Apollonius said, “Odysseus, however, going into the cave of Polyphemus without having heard beforehand how big he was, or what he ate, or how his voice thundered, took courage against him, although he was afraid at the start, and left the cave with a reputation as a man; but for me it is enough to get out, having saved myself and the companions for whom I am in danger.” After speaking thus with the visitor and reporting it to Damis, he went to sleep.
29| About dawn a clerk of the imperial court came and said, “The emperor orders you, Apollonius, to come to the palace when the agora is full, not yet to make your defense, but he wishes to see who you happen to be and to meet you alone.” “Why then,” said Apollonius, “do you tell me this?” “Why, are you not Apollonius?” said the clerk. “Yes, by Zeus,” said the Tyanean. “To whom then should I say this?” said the clerk. “To those who will lead me,” said Apollonius, “for I must surely go as from a prison.” “That has been ordered to those others first,” said the clerk, “and I shall come at the proper time, but now I came to give notice, for these orders were given late in the evening.”
30| The clerk went away, and Apollonius, lying back on his couch, said, “I need sleep, Damis, for the night has been hard for me, as I wished to recall what I once heard from Phraotes.” “And yet,” said Damis, “you ought rather to stay awake and prepare yourself for what has been announced, great as it is.” “And how could I prepare,” said Apollonius, “since I do not even know what he will ask?” “Then will you improvise about your life?” said Damis. “Yes, by Zeus, Damis,” said Apollonius, “for I use it improvised. But what I recalled of Phraotes I want to relate to you, for it will seem useful to you too for the present: the lions that men tame, Phraotes says, one should neither strike, for they bear a grudge if they are struck, nor pamper, for they become haughty from that, but stroking them with a threat one should lead them into tractable ways. He did not say this about lions, for we were not concerned with the training of beasts, but he was giving a rein for use on tyrants, by using which he thought they would not fall out of moderation.” “This saying,” said Damis, “has been said very well for the characters of tyrants, but there is also in Aesop a lion in a cave; Aesop says that he was not sick but pretended to be, and seized the beasts that came to him, and the fox said, ‘What shall we make of this one, from whom no one comes back, and no footprint of any who go out is shown?’” And Apollonius said, “But I should have thought the fox wiser if, having gone in, she had not been caught, but had come out of the cave showing her own footprints.”
31| Having said this, he drew in only a very little sleep, as much as came to his eyes; and when day came, he prayed to the Sun, as is possible in a prison, and talked with those who came to him, answering whatever they asked. And so, when the agora was full, a clerk arrived, ordering him to be at the door already, “lest we be summoned even sooner.” He said, “Let us go,” and went forward with vigor. As he walked, four spear-bearers followed him, keeping at a greater distance than those who accompany a man to guard him, and Damis followed too, afraid, but looking like one who is deep in thought. All looked toward Apollonius, for his very bearing drew their gaze and the awe about his appearance seemed divine, and the very fact of his coming to run risks for others made even those who had envied him earlier friendly toward him then. Standing at the palace and watching those who were being waited upon and those who waited, and hearing the din of those entering and leaving, he said, “It seems to me, Damis, that this is like a bath-house, for I see those outside hurrying in, and those inside hurrying out, and some are like those who have bathed, others like the unwashed.” This saying I bid my readers keep inviolate, and not attribute it to this man or that, since it is so much Apollonius’s own that he even wrote it down in a letter. Seeing a very old man who desired to rule and for that very reason was being ruled and attending this emperor, he said, “Damis, not even Sophocles has yet persuaded him to escape the raging and savage master.” “The very one,” said Damis, “Apollonius, that we ourselves have also chosen; that is why we are standing at such doors.” “You seem to me, Damis,” said Apollonius, “to think that Aeacus, who is said to be in Hades, is the keeper of these gates, for you look like a dead man.” “Not a dead man,” said Damis, “but one about to die.” And Apollonius said, “You are unfit for death, Damis, as you seem to me, although you have been with me a long time, philosophizing from youth. I thought that you were prepared for it and knew all the tactics in me. For just as for men who fight in line there is need not of good courage alone but also of an order that interprets the moments of the battle, so philosophers too must take care of the moments in which they will die, so that they are not disorderly, nor hungry for death, but carry themselves into it with the best choice. That I chose to die in the best way and at the moment fitting for philosophy, if anyone should wish to kill me, I have defended to others with you present, and I am worn out with teaching it to you yourself.”
32| So much for this. When the emperor had leisure, having pushed aside everything at hand, to come to words with the man, the officials in charge of such matters led him into the palace, not allowing Damis to follow him. The emperor, wearing a wreath of green shoots, had just happened to sacrifice to Athena in the court of Adonis, and the court was blooming with flowers in gardens, which the Assyrians make for Adonis for his rites, planting them under the same roof as himself. While at the sacrifices he turned around, and, struck by the appearance of the man, said, “Aelian, you have brought a daemon in to me.” But Apollonius, not at all dismayed, and seizing on what he had heard, said, “I thought, Emperor, that Athena was taking care of you in the way she once took care of Diomedes at Troy; for she took away the mist, by which men see worse, from the eyes of Diomedes and gave him to distinguish gods and men; but the goddess has not yet cleansed you, Emperor, with this cleansing. She surely ought to, so that you might see Athena herself better, and not rank men among the forms of daemons.” “And you, philosopher,” said Domitian, “when did you cleanse this mist?” “Long ago,” said Apollonius, “and from the time I began to philosophize.” “How then,” said Domitian, “have you thought the men most hostile to me gods?” “And what war do you have,” said Apollonius, “with Iarchas or Phraotes the Indians, whom alone of men I consider both gods and worthy of this name?” “Do not lead off to the Indians,” said Domitian, “but speak about your dearest Nerva and those who share the charge with him.” “Am I to defend him in something, or—” said Apollonius. “Do not defend,” said Domitian, “for he has been taken doing wrong; but show me this: how you yourself are not doing wrong, being privy with him to such things.” “If you want to hear what I am conscious of,” said Apollonius, “hear it, for why should I hide the truth?” The emperor thought that he would hear brilliant secrets and that everything would bear on the destruction of the men, while he, with the emperor lifted up on high by this opinion
33| "I know Nerva," he said, "to be the most self-controlled of men and the gentlest, the one most devoted to you, a good ruler and so wary of the weight of affairs that he even fears honors. And those around him—you mean Rufus, I think, and Orfitus—are also self-controlled men, as far as I know, and hostile to wealth, slow to act even on what is permitted; they would never contemplate a revolution themselves, nor join with another who did." The emperor, swollen with rage at what he heard, said: "So you have caught me out as a false accuser in their case, since those whom I found the vilest of men and assailing what is mine—you say they are good, and sluggish? For I think that if those men were questioned about you, they would say that you are no sorcerer, no reckless adventurer, no boaster, no lover of money, no one who thinks himself above the laws. That is how badly you have conspired together, you accursed heads! But the accusation will convict you of everything; for all that has been sworn among you, and about what, and when, and what you sacrificed, I know no less than if I had been present and taken part." Apollonius, not even shaken by this, said: "It is shameful, emperor, and contrary to the laws, either to sit in judgment on matters you are already convinced of, or to be convinced of matters you have not judged. If that is how things stand, allow me to begin my defense from this very point: you think badly of me, emperor, and you wrong me more than the informer does; for what he said he would teach you, you have been convinced of before hearing it." "Begin your defense wherever you like," the emperor said. "I know both where I shall stop and where it is already fitting to begin."
34| From this point begins the outrage against the man: Domitian had his beard and his hair cut off and had him bound among the worst criminals. And Apollonius said: "I did not know, emperor, that I was in danger over my hair. But as for the bonds, if you think me a sorcerer, how will you bind me? And should you bind me, how will you say I am a sorcerer?" "And I will not release you," said the emperor, "until you become water, or some beast, or a tree." "That," he said, "I would not become even if I could, lest I ever betray those who are in danger without any justice. But being what I am, I will submit myself to everything you do to this body, until I have made my defense on behalf of the men." "And who," said the emperor, "will make the defense on behalf of you?" "Time," he said, "and the breath of the gods, and the love of wisdom with which I live."
35| Such is the prelude to the defense, the one that took place for him privately with Domitian, as Damis describes it. But those who have composed these matters out of spite say that he made his defense first and was bound afterward, and that it was then that his hair was cut. They also forged a letter, composed in the Ionic dialect and tiresome in its length, in which they want Apollonius to become a suppliant of Domitian, begging to be released from his bonds. Now Apollonius does set out his own testaments in the Ionic manner, but I have never yet come upon a letter of Apollonius composed in Ionic, though I have collected very many of his; nor have I ever found long-windedness in the man's letters, for they are all brief and, as it were, "from the scytale." Moreover, he left the court having won the charge, so how could he ever have been bound after the vote of acquittal? But let us not yet speak of what happened in the court. First let us tell the matter of the haircut and the things that were said, for they deserve attention.
36| When the man had been bound for two days, someone came to the prison, claiming that he had bought the right to approach him and that he had come as an adviser toward his rescue. He was a Syracusan, Domitian's mind and tongue, planted as the earlier man had been, but with more persuasive matter: for the first began from far off, while this one took his start from the circumstances at hand. "O gods," he said, "who would ever have thought that Apollonius would be bound?" "The man who bound me," Apollonius said, "for he would not have bound me if he had not thought so." "And who would ever have thought that those ambrosial locks would be cut off?" "I," he said, "who wore them." "And how do you bear these things?" "As is likely," he said, "for a man who came to them neither willingly nor unwillingly." "And how does your leg endure?" "I do not know," he said, "for my mind is on other things." "But surely the mind is on the part that hurts," the man said. "Not at all," said Apollonius, "for the mind in such a man will either not feel pain or will make the pain stop." "And what is it, then, that the mind is thinking of?" "The very not thinking of these things," he said. When the man again called up the locks and turned the conversation back to them, Apollonius said: "You are fortunate, young man, not to have been one of the Achaeans at Troy; for I think you would have lamented bitterly the locks of Achilles cut off for Patroclus, if they were indeed cut, and would have fainted over them. You say you pity mine, which had gray hairs in them and squalor; what would you not have suffered over those, so carefully tended and golden?" These things were said with a scheme behind them, so that the man might learn what Apollonius was pained about and, by Zeus, whether he reviled the emperor for what he had suffered. Checked by what he heard, he said to Apollonius: "You have been slandered to the emperor on more counts, and especially on those for which Nerva's circle are being prosecuted as wrongdoers. For some slanders have reached him even about the speeches in Ionia, which you spoke in opposition to him and with hatred; but he disregards these, they say, since he has been roused to anger over greater matters; and yet the man who slanders those too stands high in repute." "What an Olympic victor you have named," Apollonius said, "if he claims to lay hold of repute while strong in slanders! I understand that it is Euphrates, whom I know to be doing everything against me. And I have been wronged by him in other, greater ways: for once, when he perceived that I was on the point of going to the Naked Sages in Ethiopia, he set about slandering me to them, and had I not understood the plot, perhaps I would have gone away without even seeing those men." The Syracusan, astonished at this account, then said: "Do you think being slandered to the emperor a greater thing than seeming not to be a good man to the Naked Sages because of what Euphrates let loose?" "Yes, by Zeus," said Apollonius, "for there I was going to learn, but here I have come for the sake of teaching." "Teaching what?" "That I am an honorable man," he said, "and this the emperor does not yet know." "But you can put your own affairs in good order," he said, "by teaching him the things which, had you said them before coming here, would have kept you from being bound at all." Understanding, then, that the Syracusan was forcing him into the same argument as the emperor, and thinking that, worn down by the bonds, he would lie against the men, Apollonius said: "My good man, if I was bound for telling Domitian the truth, what shall I suffer for not telling the truth? For to him the truth seems deserving of bonds, to me the lie."
37| The Syracusan, admiring him as one who was philosophizing beyond measure—for that is what he said as he went away—left the prison, and Apollonius, looking at Damis, said: "Do you grasp this Python?" "I grasp," Damis said, "that he was lying in wait for you and trying to lead you on; but what Python has to do with you and what the meaning of the name is, I do not know." "There was," Apollonius said, "Python of Byzantium, a good orator, they say, at persuading men of bad things. He went as envoy from Philip son of Amyntas to the Greeks to speak about their enslavement; the others he let be, but among the Athenians themselves, when they were strongest in rhetoric, he claimed that Philip was being wronged by them and that the Athenians were doing terrible things in setting the Greek world free. Python was pouring this out in abundance, they say, but Demosthenes of Paeania, speaking alone against him in his boldness, counts his standing up to him among his own labors. But I would never call it a labor of mine not to be led into what this man had in mind; I said that he is doing the same as Python, since he came as the hireling of a tyrant and an adviser of absurd things."
38| Apollonius conversed at greater length in this vein, but Damis says that he himself was at a loss about the present situation and saw no release from it, except such as had come from the gods to some who had prayed, even out of much harder circumstances. A little before midday, he says, he said: "Man of Tyana"—for Apollonius was very pleased with the address—"what will we suffer?" "What we have suffered," Apollonius said, "and nothing beyond it; and no one will kill us." "And who is so invulnerable?" Damis said. "And when will you be released?" "As far as the judge is concerned, today," he said, "as far as I am concerned, right now." And with these words he drew his leg out of the shackle and said to Damis: "I have given you a demonstration of my own freedom; take courage." Then for the first time, Damis says, he understood exactly Apollonius' nature, that it was divine and greater than human: for without sacrificing—and how could he, in a prison?—or praying for anything, or saying anything, he had laughed at the bond, and then fitted his leg back in and did what a bound man does.
39| The more simple-minded among people refer such things to sorcerers, and they are subject to this in many human matters. For athletes need their art, and all contestants need it because of their eagerness to win; yet nothing contributes to their victory, and whatever they win by luck, the wretches take away from themselves and credit to this art. Nor do even those of them who are beaten disbelieve it; for they say and think such things as: "If I had sacrificed this and burned incense for that, victory would not have escaped me." It haunts the doors of merchants in the same way, for we would find that they too credit the good fortune of their trade to the sorcerer, and the misfortunes to their own thrift and to not having sacrificed as much as they should. But the art clings most of all to lovers: for since they suffer from a disease so easily led astray that they discuss it even with old women, they do nothing surprising, I think, in going to these sophists and listening to such talk from them. These men give them an embroidered girdle to carry, and stones, some from the secrets of the earth, some from the moon and stars, and spices of every kind that India cultivates; and they exact splendid sums for these, but contribute nothing. For if the beloved are moved somewhat toward their lovers, or are won over by gifts, and the love affair advances, the art is hymned as capable of everything; but if the attempt fails, the blame is carried to what was left out: that he did not burn this or that, or sacrifice, or melt it down, and that this is a great and difficult matter. Now the methods by which they also work portents and signs from Zeus and many other marvels have been written down by some who laughed broadly at the art; but let it be my declaration that young men should not keep company even with those, lest they grow accustomed to playing at such things. The digression is enough. Why should I attack the matter further, when it is condemned both by nature and by law?
40| When Apollonius had shown himself to Damis and had talked at greater length, about midday someone arrived and announced by word of mouth the following: "The emperor releases you, Apollonius, from these bonds, on the advice of Aelian, and permits you to stay in the free prison until the defense takes place, and perhaps you will make your defense on the fifth day." "Who, then," he said, "is to move me from here?" "I," the man said. "Follow." And when those in the free prison saw him, they all embraced him, as men who had not even expected him to return. For the longing that children have for a father who sets them right with admonitions both pleasant and measured, or who recounts to them the doings of his own youth, was the same longing they had for Apollonius, and they admitted it; and he never ceased giving them some counsel.
41| On the following day he summoned Damis and said, “My defense will take place on the appointed day. But you take the road to Dicaearchia, for it is better to go on foot; and when you have greeted Demetrius, turn your steps toward the sea where the island of Calypso lies, for you will see me appear to you there.” “Alive,” said Damis, “or how?” Apollonius laughed and said, “Alive, as I believe; risen from the dead, as you believe.” Damis says that he went away unwillingly, neither despairing of him as a man about to perish nor confident that he would not perish. On the third day he reached Dicaearchia, and there he heard about the storm that had broken out in those days: a rain-laden wind had burst upon the sea, sunk some of the ships that were sailing that way, and driven others off toward Sicily and the strait. Then he understood why Apollonius had told him to make the journey on foot.
42| What comes next Damis records from what he says he heard Apollonius tell Demetrius and himself. A youth from Messene in Arcadia, conspicuous for his beauty, had come to Rome. Many fell in love with him, but Domitian more than all, and the others were so in love that they did not even fear being Domitian's rivals. But the youth kept himself chaste and guarded his own bloom. Now if he had disdained gold, or money, or horses, or the other baits by which some lure their favorites, let us not praise him, for a man ought to be equipped for that; but this youth, who might have been granted more than all those together whom the eyes of emperors have drawn to them, would not consider himself worthy of what he was being offered. So he was put in chains, for that was what his lover decided. He came up to Apollonius and seemed to want to say something, but with shame as his counselor to silence he did not yet dare. Apollonius understood, and said, “You are not even of an age to do wrong, and yet you are imprisoned, just like us dangerous men.” “Yes,” he said, “and I shall die too, for the laws of our day punish chastity with death.” “So did the laws in Theseus’ day,” said Apollonius, “for Hippolytus was destroyed for his chastity by his own father.” “My father too has destroyed me,” he said. “I am an Arcadian from Messene, and he did not educate me in Greek learning, but sent me here to learn the ways of the law; and when I came here for that purpose, the emperor looked on me with an evil eye.” Apollonius, as though he did not understand what he meant, said, “Tell me, young man, surely the emperor does not think you grey-eyed, when your eyes, as I see, are dark? Or crooked of nose, when it is squarely set, like the noses on finely wrought Herms? Or that your hair is other than it is? It is, I think, sunny and gleaming. And indeed your mouth is so well proportioned that it suits silence and speech alike, and your neck is so free and proud. What else, then, will the emperor take you for, since you say he looked on you ill?” “That is the very thing that has destroyed me,” he said. “Once he was drawn into loving me, he does not spare what he praises, but intends to dishonor me, as men do who are in love with women.” Apollonius admired him, and he let pass the questions about what he thought of lying together and whether it was shameful or not, and all such questions, since he saw that the Arcadian was blushing and spoke with decorum; instead he asked him this: “Do you own slaves in Arcadia?” “By Zeus, yes,” he said, “many.” “Then what do you consider yourself in relation to them?” “What the laws make me,” he said, “for I am their master.” “And ought slaves to obey their masters,” said Apollonius, “or may they refuse what seems good to the owners of their bodies?” The youth, perceiving the kind of answer toward which he was being led round, said, “The power of tyrants is irresistible and harsh, I know; that, I suppose, is just why they want to be masters of free men too. But of my own body I am master, and I shall keep it inviolate.” “How?” said Apollonius, “for your contest is with a lover who comes reveling against your beauty with a sword.” “By offering my neck instead,” he said, “for that is what the sword needs.” Apollonius praised him and said, “I see that you are an Arcadian.” And he mentions this youth in a letter as well, and describes the affair far more charmingly than I do here; praising him for his chastity to the person he is writing to, he says that this youth was not even put to death by the tyrant, but, having been admired for his firmness, sailed off to Malea, more envied by the people of Arcadia than those who win the contests of endurance under the lash among the Lacedaemonians.

======== Life of Apollonius — Book VIII ========

1| Let us go to the courtroom, then, to hear the man defend himself against the charge. The sun is already rising, and the way in has been opened to the people of note. Those who live with the emperor say that he has not even touched food, being occupied, I suppose, with studying the business of the trial; and indeed they say he has a document in his hands, which he handles sometimes with anger and sometimes with less. We must picture him as a man vexed with the laws for having invented law courts.
2| We shall also find Apollonius thinking that he was going to hold a discussion rather than run a race for his life, as we may judge at least from what happened before he entered the court. On the way he asked the clerk who was escorting him where they were headed, and when the clerk said he was taking him to the courtroom, he said, “Against whom am I to plead?” “Against your own accuser,” he said, “and the emperor will be the judge.” “And who will judge between me and the emperor?” said Apollonius. “For I shall show that he wrongs philosophy.” “And what does the emperor care for philosophy,” said the clerk, “even if he does happen to wrong it?” “But philosophy cares a great deal for the emperor,” said Apollonius, “that he may rule as he ought.” The clerk praised this, for he was in fact fairly well disposed toward Apollonius, as he had shown from the beginning, and said, “By how much water will you measure your speech? I need to know this before the trial.” “If the trial allows me to say as much as it demands,” said Apollonius, “not even the Tiber would suffice to measure it out; but if only as much as I shall be asked, then the questioner is the measure of the one who answers.” “You have practiced opposite virtues,” said the clerk, “if you claim to be both brief and expansive on the same matters.” “Not opposite,” said Apollonius, “but alike; for the man who is capable of the one would not fall short in the other. And the balance struck between the two I would not call a third virtue of speech, but rather the first; and I know of silence in a courtroom as a fourth.” “Useless, surely,” said the clerk, “to yourself and to anyone about to stand in danger.” “And yet,” said Apollonius, “it did great good to Socrates the Athenian when he was defending himself against the indictment.” “And how was it of use to him,” said the clerk, “when he died because he kept silent?” “He did not die,” replied Apollonius, “but the Athenians believed he had.”
3| In this way he was prepared against everything that might come from the tyrant. As he stood waiting in front of the courtroom, another clerk came up to him and said, “Man of Tyana, go in naked.” “Are we going to bathe, then,” said Apollonius, “or to stand trial?” “This order is not about clothing,” he said, “but the emperor forbids you to bring in here any amulet, or book, or any other writing whatever.” “Not even a cane,” said Apollonius, “against those who have so foolishly persuaded him of these things?” At this the accuser cried out, “Emperor, the sorcerer is threatening me with a beating, for it was I who persuaded you of this.” “Then you are more of a sorcerer than I am,” said Apollonius, “for you claim to have persuaded the emperor that I am what I have never yet persuaded him I am not.” While the accuser was hurling these insults, there stood beside him one of Euphrates’ freedmen, whom Euphrates was said to have sent to report on Apollonius’ discourses in Ionia, together with money, which was handed over to the accuser.
4| Such were the skirmishes before the trial. What happened at the trial itself was this. The courtroom had been arranged as though for an audience at a festival oration, and all the notable people were present, since the emperor was making a point of convicting Apollonius before as many witnesses as possible on the charge concerning the men. But Apollonius so disregarded the emperor that he did not even look at him. When the accuser attacked this disdain and ordered him to look at the god of all mankind, Apollonius lifted his eyes to the ceiling, showing that he was looking to Zeus, and that he considered the one who was impiously flattered to be worse than his flatterer. The accuser also shouted things like this: “Measure out the water now, Emperor, for if you allow him lengthy speeches, he will choke us. I also have this document here, in which the charges he must answer are written out; let him make his defense against them one at a time.”
5| The emperor praised this as excellent advice and ordered Apollonius to make his defense in the way the informer advised. But he passed over the other charges, as not worth bringing anyone to account for, and confined himself to four, which he thought baffling and hard to answer. He put his questions thus: “What possessed you, Apollonius,” he said, “that you do not wear the same dress as everyone else, but a peculiar and singular one?” “Because the earth that feeds me also clothes me,” said Apollonius, “and I do not trouble wretched animals.” Next he asked, “For what reason do men call you a god?” “Because every man who is thought good,” he said, “is honored with the title of god.” Where Apollonius drew this doctrine from in his philosophy I have shown in my account of the Indians. Third, he asked about the plague at Ephesus. “Prompted by what,” he said, “or drawing on what conjecture, did you foretell to Ephesus that they would fall sick?” “Because I live on a lighter diet, Emperor,” he said, “I was the first to sense the danger. If you wish, I will also tell you the causes of plagues.” But the emperor, afraid, I suppose, that Apollonius would ascribe such diseases to his injustice, his impure marriages and the other unreasonable things he was doing, said, “I have no need of an answer like that.” When he came to put the fourth question, about the men, he did not rush at it directly, but after a long pause and much deliberation, like a man seized by dizziness, he asked it in a way no one expected. For they had supposed that he would throw off the pretense, would not refrain from naming the men, and would cry out in outrage about the sacrifice. He did not do so, but, creeping up on the question, said, “Tell me: when you left your house on such and such a day and went into the country, to whom did you sacrifice the boy?” Apollonius, as though rebuking a youngster, said, “Hush! For if I left my house, I was in the country; if I was in the country, then I sacrificed; and if I sacrificed, then I ate. But let men worthy of belief say so.” When Apollonius had said this, and applause had gone up greater than an imperial court allows, the emperor, thinking that those present were bearing witness in his favor, and being somewhat struck by the answers, since they were strong and sensible, said, “I release you from the charges, but you will remain here until we have spoken in private.” Apollonius, gathering his strength, said, “I thank you, Emperor. But because of these accursed men the cities are ruined, the islands are full of exiles, the mainland of lamentation, the armed forces of cowardice and the Senate of suspicion. Grant me a hearing too, if you will; if not, send someone to seize my body, for my soul cannot be seized. Or rather, you could not seize even my body, for ‘you shall not kill me, since I am not one whom fate decrees to die.’” With these words he vanished from the courtroom. In this he was making good use of the present moment, since the tyrant was plainly going to question him not simply but at gratuitous length, priding himself, no doubt, on not having put him to death; and he was taking care in advance not to be drawn into such questioning. He thought the best way to secure this was for his nature not to remain unknown, but to be recognized as such that he could never be caught against his will. And his fear for the men was by now well settled: since the tyrant had not even ventured to ask him anything about them, how could he put them to death with any plausibility on charges that had not been established in court? Such is what I found about the trial.
6| Since a speech was also written for him, as for one who would let loose his defense against the water-clock, and since the tyrant confined him to the questions I have mentioned, let the speech be recorded as well. For I am not unaware that those who praise buffoonish styles will find fault with it, as less restrained than they say it should be, and as lofty in its words and thoughts. But when I consider the man, it does not seem to me that the wise man would sensibly act out his own character by cultivating balanced clauses and antitheses and clattering with his tongue like a rattle. These things suit rhetoricians, and not even for them are they needed. For in the courts a cleverness that shows itself may even bring a man under suspicion of plotting against those who will cast the votes, while a hidden cleverness may even come away victorious; for to escape the notice of the judges that one is clever is a truer cleverness. But a wise man making a defense—for the wise man will not make accusations, though he is strong to censure—needs a character different from that of men of the law courts, and a speech that is constructed but does not seem so; let it be somewhat dignified, and not far short of disdainful, and let pity be absent from the speaker; for the man who will not permit himself to beg, what could he say to win pity? Such will the speech seem, at least to those who will not give a soft hearing to me and to the man; for he composed it as follows:
7| "The contest is over great stakes, emperor, for you and for me. For you are in danger over matters in which an emperor never should be, if you are to seem to have been set against philosophy without any justice; and I am in danger over matters in which not even Socrates once was at Athens, whom those who brought the indictment charged with introducing new divinities, though they neither called him a daemon nor thought him one. Since so hard a danger comes upon each of us, I shall not hesitate to advise you too in what I have persuaded myself. For since the accuser has set us in this contest, a false opinion about me and about you has entered the minds of the many: they thought that you, taking anger as the counselor of your hearing, would use it to put me to death, whatever putting me to death amounts to, and that I would take myself out of the court by whatever means of escape there are—and there were, emperor, ten thousand. Hearing this, I did not come to prejudge, nor did I vote against your hearing as not being straight; but having agreed to the laws, I stand under the proceeding. Of this I become an adviser to you as well." "For it is just not to prejudge, nor to sit convinced that I have done you some harm; nor, while you hear with a laugh about the Armenian and the Babylonian and all who rule there—who have vast cavalry, and all the archery, and golden land, and a multitude of men, as I know—that you will suffer something at their hands that will take this rule away from you, to believe against a wise and naked man that he has a weapon against the Roman emperor, and to accept such things from an Egyptian informer, things you never heard even from Athena, who you say keeps watch over you—unless, by Zeus, flattery and informing have now advanced so far among these accursed wretches that they say the gods are suitable advisers to you about small matters, ophthalmias and not running a fever or having some swelling of the viscera, laying hold of you like doctors and treating whichever part of you is in bad condition, but that when you are in danger over your empire and your body, the gods neither advise you whom you must guard against nor teach you what weapon you will have against them, and that instead the informers are your aegis of Athena and your hand of Zeus, claiming to know on your behalf what not even the gods know, keeping watch and sleeping on your behalf, if indeed these men ever sleep, pouring, as the saying goes, evils upon evils and ever composing these Iliads." "As for their keeping horses and wheeling into the marketplace behind teams of white ones, their feasting on delicacies served in silver and gold, weddings, boy favorites bought for two and three myriads, their committing adultery for as long as they escape notice and marrying the women they have seduced when they are caught with them, and those who applaud them for their fine victories—when a philosopher or a consul who has done no wrong is convicted by them and destroyed by you—let all that be granted to the luxury of the accursed and to the fact that they no longer have any fear of laws or of eyes. But to think so far above human beings as to wish to know things in advance of the gods, this I neither praise nor can I hear it without fear; and if you accept it, they will perhaps indict you too, as slandering the belief about the divine; for it is to be expected that such indictments will be drawn up against you also, once no one is left for the informers. I understand that I am censuring rather than defending; but let this be said by me on behalf of the laws, which, if you do not regard them as rulers, you will not rule. Who, then, will be my advocate in my defense? For if I call on Zeus, under whom I know I have lived, they will say that I am working sorcery and bringing heaven down to earth. Let us therefore converse about this with a man whom the many say has died, but I say has not. He is your father, to whom I am worth as much as he is to you; for he made you, but through me he himself came to be what he is." "This man, emperor, will be a helper in my defense, knowing my affairs much better than you do. He came to Egypt, not yet emperor, to sacrifice to the gods in Egypt and to converse with me about the empire. When he met me wearing my hair long and clad as you see me, he asked not a single thing about my appearance, believing that all there was in me was sound. Having admitted that he had come on my account, he went away, after praising me, having said what he said to no one else and heard what he heard from no one else. The purpose he used toward ruling was strengthened in him chiefly by me, having already been shifted by others, not unsuitable men, but not so in your opinion; for those who were persuading him not to rule were surely also taking from you the possibility of having this after him. But with me advising him both not to think himself unworthy of an empire that was coming to his doors, and to make you its heirs, he said that my judgment was sound, and he himself was lifted up, and lifted you up with him. But if he had thought me a sorcerer, he would not have joined with me in a partnership of concerns; for he came and spoke nothing like this: 'Compel the Fates or Zeus to declare me tyrant, or work portents from Zeus on my behalf, showing the sun coming up out of the west and going down where it begins.' For he would not have seemed to me fit to rule if he had either thought me capable of such things or gone hunting by trickery for an empire that ought to be won by virtues." "Moreover, I conversed with him publicly, in a temple; but the gatherings of sorcerers flee the temples of the gods, since these are hateful to those of the art, and putting forward night and everything lightless as their own cover, they do not permit the foolish to have eyes or ears. He conversed with me privately too, but Euphrates and Dion were present all the same, the one most hostile to me, the other most close—for I shall never stop writing Dion among my friends. Who, then, in the company of wise men, or at least men who lay claim to wisdom, would come to talk of sorcerers? And who would not guard likewise against appearing bad both among friends and among enemies? And besides, the discussions were directed against the sorcerers. For you perhaps think that your father, in love with imperial power, trusted sorcerers rather than himself, and sought from me a compulsion upon the gods so that he might obtain it; but he thought he had that even before he came to Egypt, and afterward he conversed with me about greater matters: about laws, and about just wealth, and how the gods are to be served, and what goods come from them to those who rule according to the laws. He longed to learn these things, and to all of them sorcerers are opposed; for if these things prevailed, the art would not exist. And it befits you, emperor, to consider these further points as well." "All the arts that exist among human beings do one thing here and another there, but all of them aim at money—some at small sums, some at great, some at what will feed them—and not only the manual trades, but also those of the other arts that are wise and those that are semi-wise alike, with the exception of true philosophy. I call wise poetry, music, astronomy, the sophists, and those orators who do not belong to the marketplace; semi-wise, painting, modeling, the makers of statues, helmsmen, farmers, if they follow the seasons, for these arts too fall not far short of wisdom. There is a certain thing, emperor, belonging to false sages and to mendicants, which you must not take for divination—for that is worth much, if it speaks truly, though whether it is an art I do not yet know—but I call sorcerers false sages. For that things that are not should be, and things that are should be disbelieved, all this I ascribe to the opinion of the deceived; for the cleverness of the art lies in the folly of those who are deceived and who sacrifice, and the art—for they are all lovers of money; whatever they cleverly devise, they have invented for pay, and they hunt for excesses of money by leading on those in love with this or that, as being capable of everything. What wealth, then, emperor, do you see about me that makes you think I practice false wisdom—and that with your father judging me superior to money? To show that I speak the truth, where is the letter from that noble and divine man, who in it sings of me, among other things, for being poor? 'The emperor Vespasian to Apollonius the philosopher, greetings.' "'If everyone, Apollonius, were willing to philosophize as you do, philosophy and poverty would fare very happily: philosophy being incorruptible, and poverty self-chosen. Farewell.' Let your father make this defense on my behalf, setting out for me the incorruptibility of philosophy and the self-chosenness of poverty; for he was mindful, I think, of what happened in Egypt, when Euphrates and many of those who pretended to philosophize came to him and asked for money not even secretly, while I not only did not approach him for money but even pushed those men away as unsound. I was set against money while still a youth. At any rate my paternal estate—and it was a splendid property—after looking at it for a single day only, I left to my own brothers and friends, and to the needy among my relatives, practicing, I suppose, from the very hearth, to need nothing. Let Babylon be, and the lands of the Indians beyond the Caucasus and the river Hyphasis, across which I journeyed being just as I am; but for what concerns this place, and for my not looking to silver, I make this Egyptian my witness. For when he said that terrible things had been done and planned by me, he did not say for how much money I was working these mischiefs, nor what profit I had in mind; instead, I seem to him so senseless as to practice sorcery—which others do for much money—and to do wrong myself not even for money, proclaiming, I suppose, a market of this kind: 'Come, you fools, for I practice sorcery, and not even for money but for nothing; and you will profit by each going away with the object of his desire, while I shall have dangers and indictments.' "But so that we do not go into foolish talk, let us ask the accuser what must be spoken of first. And yet what need is there to ask? For he went through the opening of his speech on the garment and, by Zeus, on the things I eat and do not eat. Defend yourself on these, divine Pythagoras, for we are being judged over things you discovered and I praise. The earth, emperor, grows everything for human beings, and those who wish to make a truce with the animals need nothing more; for they pluck some of her produce, and plow for the rest as she nurtures it, as befits the seasons, while others, as though deaf to the earth, have whetted a knife against animals for the sake of clothing and food. Now the Brahmans of India did not themselves approve of these things, and they taught the Naked Sages of the Egyptians not to approve of them; Pythagoras took this from there—the first of the Greeks to mingle with the Egyptians—and left living things to the earth, and ate what she grows herself, saying that it was unpolluted, since it was suitable to nourish body and mind. As for clothing, which the many wear taken from dead creatures, he said it was not pure, and put on linen, and by the same reasoning plaited his shoe of papyrus; and he enjoyed many benefits from being pure, the first being to perceive his own soul." "For he lived in the times when Troy fought over Helen, and was the fairest of the sons of Panthous and the most beautifully dressed; he died so young that he gave Homer matter for a lament. Having passed into several bodies according to the law of Adrasteia, by which the soul makes its exchanges, he came again into the shape of a man and was born to Mnesarchides the Samian—a wise man from a barbarian, an Ionian from a Trojan, and so immortal that he had not even forgotten that he was Euphorbus. I have named, then, the forebear of my own wisdom, and shown that I did not discover it myself but hold it by inheritance from another. For my part, I do not bring to judgment those who luxuriate over the red-plumed bird, or over the one from the Phasis or from the Paeonians, which those who gratify the belly in everything fatten for their feasts; nor have I ever indicted anyone over the fish that the splendid buy at a higher price than they once paid for koppa-branded horses; nor did I begrudge anyone a purple robe, or a Pamphylian or soft garment. Yet over asphodel, O gods, and sweetmeats and a pure diet I am on trial, and even my clothing is not safe, but the accuser strips me of that too, as being worth much to sorcerers. And yet, if one sets aside the argument about the animate and the inanimate, by which a thing seems pure or not, how is linen better than wool? Wool is shorn from the gentlest of animals, one that gods have taken seriously, who do not disdain shepherding, and which, by Zeus, they once deemed worthy even of a golden shape—either the gods did, or the stories." "Flax is sown anywhere at random, and nobody speaks of gold in connection with it; but nevertheless, since it was not plucked from something living, it seems pure to the Indians and pure to the Egyptians, and for that reason it has become the dress of Pythagoras and me when we converse, pray and sacrifice. It is pure also to spend the night in it, for dreams bring more truthful voices to those who live as I do. Let us defend ourselves also over the hair I once had, since an indictment has been found even for squalor. Let the Egyptian not be the judge, but the blond and carefully combed youths, with their lovers hanging on them and the courtesans to whose doors they go revelling; let them consider themselves happy and enviable for their hair and the perfume that drips from it, and me as sheer abstinence from love and a lover of not loving. For this will be said to them: Wretches, do not slander the discovery of the Dorians. The wearing of long hair comes from the Lacedaemonians, practiced by them in the times when they were most warlike; and Leonidas, king of Sparta, grew his hair long for the sake of courage, and to appear august to friends and fearful to enemies. And so Sparta wears its hair long in his honor no less than in honor of Lycurgus and Iphitus. Let the iron spare the hair of a wise man, for it is not lawful to bring it against that place where are all the springs of the sense organs, and all the voices, from which prayers appear, and speech, the interpreter of wisdom." "Empedocles, indeed, fitted a band of the most purple dye around his hair and strutted through the streets of the Greeks composing hymns, to become a god from a man; but I, who wear my hair neglected and have never yet needed hymns of that sort for it, am led to indictments and courts. And what am I to say of Empedocles? Was he singing of himself, or of the happiness of the men of his own time, among whom these things were not slandered? Let us not talk more about the hair; it was cut, and envy forestalled the accusation, because of which I must defend myself on the other charge, which is grave, and of such a kind, emperor, as to give fear not to you alone but to Zeus. For he says that people consider me a god and openly proclaim it, thunderstruck by me. And yet before bringing the charge he ought to have shown the following: what discourse did I give, what thing so marvelous did I say or do, that I led people to pray to me? For I neither spoke among the Greeks about what my soul changed into, or from what, or will change into, though I know it; nor did I send out such opinions about myself; nor did I go out into oracles and songs of prophecy, such as the output of those who speak on behalf of gods; nor do I know of any city in which it was decided to gather and sacrifice to Apollonius. And yet I became of great worth to each, in whatever they needed of me, and they needed such things as these: that the sick not be sick, that men be holier in initiating, holier in sacrificing, that outrage be cut away, that the laws be strong. My pay for these was that they appeared better than themselves, and these things I granted to you as a favor." "For just as the overseers of cattle oblige their owners by keeping the cows from straying out of order, and the keepers of flocks fatten them for the profit of those who possess them, and beekeepers remove the diseases of bees so that the swarm not perish for its master, so I too, by putting an end to the faults of the cities, set them right for you; so that even if they thought me a god, the deception was a gain for you, since they listened to me eagerly, I suppose, afraid to do what is not pleasing to a god. But this was not what they thought. They thought that there is a kinship between man and god, through which man alone of living creatures knows the gods, and philosophizes also about his own nature and the way in which he shares in the divine. Man says, then, that even his outward form resembles a god's, as the making of statues and the use of colors interpret; and he is persuaded that the virtues reach him from god, and that those who partake of them are near to god and divine. Let us not name the Athenians as the teachers of this thought, on the ground that they were the first to give the titles 'the Just' and 'the Olympian' and the like, titles too divine, it would seem, to be given to a man; let us name Apollo at Pytho." "For Lycurgus of Sparta came to his sanctuary, having just written the laws by which Lacedaemon is ordered, and Apollo, addressing him, tests the opinion about him, saying at the beginning of the oracle that he is at a loss whether he should call him god or man, and going on he declares and votes for this title, as for a good man. And no contest came upon Lycurgus among the Lacedaemonians, nor any danger from this, as one who was making himself immortal, since he did not rebuke the Pythian for addressing him in these terms; rather, they agreed with the oracle, being persuaded of this, I suppose, even before the oracle. As for the Indians and the Egyptians, the matter stands thus. The Egyptians slander the Indians in other matters and denounce their opinions about affairs, but the account that has been given about the craftsman of the universe they praise so highly that they have taught it to others, though it belongs to the Indians. That account knows a god as the craftsman of the generation and being of the universe, and the cause of his devising these things is that he is good. Since, then, these ideas are akin, I hold to the account and say that the good among human beings have something of god. Let the order that rests on god the craftsman be taken to be the things in heaven and in the sea and all those on earth, in which human beings have an equal share, except for fortune. But there is also an order that belongs to a good man, which does not exceed the measures of wisdom, and which you yourself, emperor, will say needs a man made like a god." "And what is the shape of this order? Souls running disorderly, more madly, lay hold of every shape; for them laws are stale, moderation is nowhere, the honors of the gods go unhonored, and they are in love with idle talk and luxury, from which idleness grows, an evil adviser of every deed. Drunken souls leap toward many things, but this skipping accomplishes nothing, not even if they drank everything that is reckoned drowsy, like mandrake. What is needed is a man who will take care of the order about them, a god come through wisdom. For such a man is enough to lead them away from loves, toward which they are carried more savagely than in ordinary intercourse, and from love of money, because of which they say they do not yet have everything, since they are not holding their mouth beneath the flowing wealth. For to restrain them from touching murders is perhaps not impossible for such a man, but to wash them clean of them is possible neither for me nor for the god who is craftsman of all. Let there be, emperor, an accusation concerning Ephesus too, since it was saved, and let the Egyptian judge me as is fitting to the indictment. For the accusation is, I suppose, of this kind: among the Scythians or Celts, who live by the river Ister or the Rhine, a city is settled no smaller than Ephesus in Ionia; this city, being a base for barbarians who do not listen to you, a plague was about to destroy, and Apollonius healed it." "For there is a defense against these charges too for a wise man, if the emperor wishes to subdue his adversary with arms and not with plagues. May no city be wiped out, either for you, emperor, or for me; and may I never see at temples a disease because of which the sick will lie in them. But let the affairs of the barbarians not be a matter of concern, and let us not set them among the healthy, since they are our bitterest enemies and under no truce with our race. As for Ephesus, who will take away its being saved? Its beginnings as a people were laid from the purest Attica; it has grown beyond all that are Ionian and Lydian, and has advanced toward the sea by rising above the land on which it was founded; it is full of the thoughts of philosophers and of rhetoricians, through whom the city is strong not by horse but by tens of thousands of men, praising wisdom. What wise man, do you think, would give up the struggle for such a city, when he recalled Democritus, who once freed the Abderites from a plague, and thought of Sophocles the Athenian, who is said even to have charmed winds that blew beyond their season, and had heard of the deeds of Empedocles, who held back the onrush of a cloud that burst upon the Acragantines? The accuser interrupts me—you hear this too, emperor—and says that it is not because I was the cause of the Ephesians' rescue that I am indicted, but because I foretold that the plague would strike them; for this, he says, is beyond wisdom and portentous, and I could not have attained so much truth unless I were a sorcerer and a dealer in secret arts." "What then will Socrates say here, about the things he said he learned from the divine sign? And what of Thales and Anaxagoras, the two Ionians, the one foretelling the abundance of the olive harvest, the other many events of the heavens? Did they foretell these things by sorcery? Indeed, these men were brought before courts on other charges, and nowhere in the charges is it said that they were sorcerers because they foreknew. For that seemed laughable, and not credible even in Thessaly, where the women were ill spoken of for the drawing down of the moon, to be said against wise men. How then did I perceive the calamity at Ephesus? You have heard the accuser say that I do not live as others do, and I too said at the start, about my own food, that it is light and sweeter than other people's Sybaritic fare. This, emperor, keeps my senses in a kind of secret clear sky and does not allow anything turbid to be about them, and lets me see through, as in the gleam of a mirror, all things that are happening and will happen. For the wise man will not wait for the earth to send up vapors or for the air to be corrupted, if the terror flows from above; he will perceive these things while they are at the doors, later than the gods, but sooner than the many. For gods perceive things that are about to happen, human beings things that are happening, and the wise things that are approaching. As for the causes of plagues, emperor, ask in private, for they are too wise to be told to the many." "Does living in this way, then, produce only a fineness of the senses, or also strength for the greatest and most marvelous things? One can see what I say from other cases, and not least from what was done at Ephesus about that plague. For the form of the plague—it was likened to an old beggar—I saw, and having seen it I seized it, not by stopping the disease but by removing it. To whom I prayed, the shrine shows, which I founded at Ephesus for this purpose: it is of Heracles the Averter, and I chose him as my helper because, being wise and brave, he once cleansed Elis of a plague, washing away the vapors that the earth gave off under the tyranny of Augeas. Who, then, in your judgment, emperor, being ambitious to seem a sorcerer, would dedicate to a god what he had himself accomplished? Whom would he win as admirers of his art, by handing the admiration over to a god? Who would pray to Heracles, if he were a sorcerer? For such things the wretches assign to pits and to the gods below, from whom Heracles must be excluded, for he is pure and kindly to human beings. I prayed to him once in the Peloponnese too, for a phantom of a lamia was roaming there, around Corinth, feeding on the beautiful among the young; and he helped me in the contest, requiring no marvelous gifts but a honey-cake and frankincense and the working of something for the salvation of human beings, for this, as in the case of Eurystheus, he counted the wage of his labors. Do not be vexed, emperor, to hear of Heracles; for Athena cared for him, since he was good and a savior to human beings." "But since you order me to defend myself about the sacrifice—for this you also indicate with your hand—hear a true defense. I, though I do everything for the salvation of human beings, have never sacrificed on their behalf, nor would I sacrifice anything, nor touch offerings in which there is blood, nor would I pray while looking at a knife or at the sacrifice he describes. You have not caught a Scythian in me, emperor, nor a man from some unsociable land; nor have I ever mingled with Massagetae or Taurians, for then I would have turned even them from their custom of sacrifice. Into what madness would I be driven, that I, who have discoursed most on divination and on how and where it is strong or not, and who have perceived better than any man that the gods show their counsels to pious and wise men even when they practice no divination, should lay hands on bloodshed and on entrails that for me are unholy and ill-omened? Over such things even the voice of the divine sign would have abandoned me, as I would not be pure. And indeed, if one sets aside the pollution of the sacrifice and compares the accuser with what he said a little before, he himself clears me of the charge: for he says that I foretold the plague to the Ephesians without needing any sacrifice; what need would I have had of victims for things that I could know even without sacrificing? And what need of divination for matters of which I was persuaded myself, and another besides? For if I am being judged over Nerva and those around him, I shall say again what I said the other day when you made this charge." "For I consider Nerva worthy of every rule and of every word that tends to praise, but not a good contender in the face of cares, for his body has been worn down by disease, and because of it his mind too is full of weariness and not even adequate for household matters. At any rate he praises you for body and for mind—doing something natural, I think, for human nature is more eager to praise what it lacks the strength for itself. Nerva has also felt something good toward me, and I never knew him to laugh in my presence or to indulge in any of the ordinary silliness among friends; rather, as youths do toward their own fathers and teachers, he says everything cautiously in my presence, and he still blushes; and knowing that I praise moderation, he practices it so much that he seems to me more humble even than is measured. How, then, would one think it credible that Nerva, who is content if he rules his own house, desired rule; or that a man who has not dared to speak to me about small matters talked about great ones; or that he joined with me in a design about things on which he would not have joined counsel even with another, if he had taken my views to heart? Or how am I still wise to interpret a man's design, if I trust divination but distrust wisdom? As for Orfitus and Rufus, just and self-controlled men but sluggish, as I know well: if the charge against them is that they aspired to tyranny, I do not know whether the accusers miss the mark more about these men or about Nerva; and if it is that they acted as his advisers, is Nerva more likely to have made an attempt on the throne, or these men to have advised it?" "But surely the man who judges these matters should also have considered this: what did I want, in helping those who were bent on revolution? For he says that no money came to me from them, nor that I was lifted up by gifts to do this. But let us consider whether, being in need of great things, I postponed their benefactions to the time when they thought they would rule, in which it would be possible to ask for great things and to be deemed worthy of greater. How, then, will this be made clear? Consider, emperor, yourself and those who ruled even before you—your brother, to be sure, and your father, and Nero—and the times in which they ruled; for it is chiefly under these emperors that I have lived in the public eye, spending the rest of the time visiting the Indians. Of this span of thirty-eight years—for such is the length of time down to you—I did not go to the emperor's doors, except to your father in Egypt, at a time when he was not yet emperor and acknowledged that he came on my account; nor did I say anything servile to emperors, or to peoples on behalf of emperors; nor did I make a splendid show with letters, either of emperors writing to me or by displaying myself as writing; nor was I carried away from myself, flattering emperors for gifts. If, then, you were to ask me, thinking of the rich and the poor, to which of these two classes I enroll myself, I shall say the richest; for to need nothing is, for me, Lydia and the whole of Pactolus." "How, then, would I have postponed the gifts from men who were not yet emperors until the time when I thought they would rule—I who did not even choose those from you, whose rule I considered secure? Or how would I have contemplated changes of dynasty, when I did not even make use of the established ones for honor? And indeed what happens to a philosopher who flatters the powerful, the case of Euphrates shows. Money, do I say? From this source he has whole springs of wealth: he already holds forth at the money-tables, becoming a retailer, a sub-retailer, a tax-collector, an obol-weigher, everything that is sold and everything that sells; he is ever stamped upon the doors of the powerful and stands at them longer than the doorkeepers, and has often been shut out by doorkeepers, like greedy dogs; and though he has never parted with a drachma even to a philosopher, he builds his wealth up as a fortress against others, feeding this Egyptian with money and whetting against me a tongue that deserves to be cut out. Euphrates I leave to you; for you, if you do not praise flatterers, will find the man worse than I describe. Now hear the rest of my defense. What is it, and about what? A lament, emperor, was sung in the accusation about an Arcadian boy: that he was cut open by me at night—whether he says it was in a dream, I do not yet know—and that this boy is of good fathers and in appearance like those of the Arcadians who are beautiful even in their squalor. They say that he was slaughtered, begging and lamenting, and that I, dipping my hands in the boy's blood, prayed to the gods for the truth." "Thus far they judge me; the next charge touches the gods, for they say that the gods heard me praying in this way, and gave favorable omens in the sacrifices, and did not kill me for my impiety. About the hearing itself, as being unclean, what could I say, emperor? But on the points that I must answer: who is this Arcadian? For if he is not nameless in his ancestry, nor slavish in look, then the hour has come for you to ask what name his parents bear, whose house he belongs to, what city in Arcadia nurtured him, and from what altars he was led away to be sacrificed here. He does not say these things, though he is skilled at not telling the truth. So he is judging me over a slave. For a man who has neither a name of his own nor of those from whom he was born, who has no city and no allotment—must he not, by the gods, be ranked among slaves? For all about him is nameless. Who, then, was the slave's dealer? Who bought him from the Arcadians? For if the stock of these people is suited to divination by slaughter, the boy was likely bought for a great deal of money, and someone sailed to the Peloponnese so that the Arcadian might be brought up here for us. Slaves from Pontus or Lydia or Phrygia one might buy here as well, and one may even meet herds of them coming here together; for these peoples, and all the barbarians, having always obeyed others, do not yet think it shameful to be slaves." "Among the Phrygians, at any rate, it is native to sell their own people and to give no thought to them once they are enslaved; but the Greeks are still lovers of freedom, and no Greek man will sell even a slave beyond the borders. For that reason neither slave-snatchers nor slave-dealers may enter among them, and into Arcadia even less; for besides being more free-minded than all the Greeks, the Arcadians also need a crowd of slaves. Arcadia is rich in cornfields, grassy and wooded, not only the heights but everything underfoot. They need many farmers, many goatherds and swineherds and shepherds and cowherds, some set over cattle, some over horses, and the land needs many woodcutters, and in this they are trained from childhood. And if the affairs of the Arcadians were not such, but they were able, like others, to sell off their own slaves besides, what would the fact that the man slaughtered was from Arcadia contribute to the much-talked-of wisdom? For the Arcadians are not the wisest of the Greeks, such as to show more than any other man in the reading of entrails; they are the most rustic of people, swinish in other respects and in filling their bellies with acorns. I have perhaps defended myself more rhetorically than is my manner, interpreting the ways of the Arcadians and passing in my argument into the Peloponnese. For what is the defense that suits me?" "I did not sacrifice, I do not sacrifice, I do not touch blood, not even from an altar. For so Pythagoras judged, and those who came from him likewise; and so, in Egypt, did the Naked Sages, and among the Indians the wise, from whom the beginnings of wisdom came also to Pythagoras and his followers. Sacrificing in accordance with these rules they do not seem to wrong the gods; rather the gods allow them to grow old with bodies sound and free from disease, and to seem ever wiser, ruled by no tyranny and needing nothing. And it is not unlikely, I think, that they should ask for good things in return for pure offerings. For I think that the gods, having the same mind as I about sacrifices, plant the frankincense-bearing parts of the earth in a pure part of the inhabited world, so that we may sacrifice from these without carrying iron into temples or sprinkling blood on altars. But I, it seems, forgetting myself and the gods, sacrificed in a manner in which neither I am accustomed to sacrifice nor any other man. Let the time also acquit me of the charge, the time the accuser named. For on that day on which he says I did these things, if I was in the countryside, I sacrificed, and if I sacrificed, I also ate. Then why, emperor, do you ask me repeatedly whether I was not resident in Rome at that time? You too, best of emperors, were resident there, yet you would not say that you sacrificed such victims; and the informer was too, yet he will not admit that he does the deeds of murderers, if he lived in Rome; and so did tens of thousands of men, whom it is better to banish than to bring under indictments, in which the proof of wrongdoing will be that one is here." "And yet coming to Rome even excuses one from the charge of seeming to plot revolution. For to live in a city where every eye is watching and every ear listens for what is and is not, does not permit those who are not overly eager to die to lay hands on revolution, and leads the more cautious and self-controlled slowly, and toward what is permitted. What then was I doing, informer, on that night? If you ask as of yourself, since you too have come to ask: I was preparing contests and accusations against good men, destroying the innocent and persuading the emperor with lies, so that I might be well thought of and the emperor stained. If you inquire as of a philosopher: I was praising the laughter of Democritus, which he directs at all the affairs of human beings. If you inquire as of me: Philiscus the Malian, who had philosophized with me for four years, was ill at that time, and I slept at his side, he being in so bad a condition that he died of the disease. And yet I would have prayed to have many spells for his soul, and, by Zeus, if there are any songs of Orpheus for the dead, not to be ignorant of those either; for I think I would even have gone beneath the earth for his sake, if that had been attainable: so completely had he bound me to himself by everything he did as a philosopher and in keeping with my own mind. This, emperor, you can hear even from the consul Telesinus, for he too was present with the Malian, tending him by night, as much as I." "And if you distrust Telesinus, since he is one of those who philosophize, I call the physicians as witnesses, and these are Seleucus of Cyzicus and Stratocles of Sidon. Put the question to them whether I speak the truth. More than thirty students followed them, witnesses of the same things; for summoning here those connected with Philiscus you will perhaps regard as postponements of the trial, since they departed from Rome at once for the homeland of the Malians, in piety toward the dead. Come forward, witnesses, for you have been summoned for this." WITNESSES. "So how far from the truth the indictment was framed, the testimony of these men shows plainly: not out in the suburbs but within the city, not beyond the wall but in a house, not at Nerva's but at Philiscus', not slaughtering but praying for a soul, not for the throne but for philosophy, not appointing a revolutionary in your place but saving a man like myself. What then is the Arcadian doing here? And what are the tales of the victims? And why try to make such things believed? Of course, even what never happened will one day be real, if it is judged to have happened. But the implausibility of the sacrifice, emperor, where will you place it?" "For there were, even before this, good diviners of victims in the art, such as can be named: Megistias from Acarnania, Aristander from Lycia, and Ambracia produced Silanus. The Acarnanian sacrificed for Leonidas, king of Sparta, the Lycian for Alexander the Macedonian, and Silanus for Cyrus, who longed for kingship. And if anything in a human being's entrails lay hidden that was clearer, or wiser, or truer, such a sacrifice was not beyond their means, since kings presided over it, who had many cupbearers, many captives, lawlessness without danger, and no fear of accusation if they slaughtered something. But I think it occurred to those men, as it does now to me, in danger over such matters, that in animals without reason, since they are slaughtered in ignorance of death, it is likely that nothing in the entrails is clouded by any lack of understanding of what they are about to suffer; but a human being, who always has in his soul some dread of death even when it is not yet at hand, how is it likely, when death is already present and before his eyes, that he should show anything prophetic, or anything at all auspicious, on the entrails? That I conjecture about these matters rightly and according to nature, consider, emperor, as follows. The liver, in which those skilled in these matters say the tripod of their divination lies, is composed of blood that is not pure; for whatever is unmixed the heart holds, channeling it through the bloody veins into the whole body. The bile that lies upon the liver is raised by anger, and fears draw it down into the hollows of the liver." "Seething, then, from the things that provoke it and unable to be borne even in its own vessel, it is poured over the liver as it lies on its back, in which position all the bile covers the smooth and prophetic parts of the organ; but when it is made to settle by things that frighten, it draws with it also the light in the smooth parts, for then the pure part of the blood withdraws too, and because of this the liver becomes spleen-like, the blood running naturally beneath the membrane around it and floating on the muddy part. What then, emperor, is the point of murder, if the offerings will be unclear? Human nature makes them unclear, since it understands death, and the dying themselves do so: the high-spirited die with anger, the fainter-hearted with fear. Hence the art, among the barbarians who are not unlearned, approves the slaughter of kids and lambs, since these animals are simple and not far from insensible, but fowls and swine and bulls, since these are spirited, it does not deem worthy of its secrets. I understand, emperor, that I am goading the accuser, since I have made you a wiser hearer, and you seem to me to give heed to the speech; and if I state anything unclearly, I permit you to question me. What concerns the Egyptian's indictment has been said by me; but since, I think, the slanders of Euphrates must not be overlooked either, you, emperor, may judge which of us philosophizes more." "Well then: he strives to say what is untrue about me, while I think it beneath me to do the same to him; he regards you as master, I as ruler; he gives you a sword against me, I give you a word. But as to what he has slandered, there are the speeches that I gave in Ionia, and he says that they were not spoken by me to your advantage. And yet what was said was about the Fates and necessity, and the example of my argument was the affairs of emperors, since yours seem the greatest of human affairs. I was philosophizing about the strength of the Fates and about how unalterable is what they spin: so that even if they were to decree the throne to someone, though it already belonged to another, and that other were to kill him so that he might never be deprived of rule by him, even the dead man would come back to life, on account of what the Fates had decided. For we introduce the exaggerations of speeches because of those who disbelieve what is plausible, just as if I were saying something like this." "Whoever is destined to become a carpenter will be a carpenter even if both his hands are cut off; whoever is destined to carry off the victory in the footrace at Olympia will not miss the victory even if his leg is crippled; and whoever the Fates have granted by their nod the mastery in archery will not fall short of the mark even if he loses his sight. I was speaking of the affairs of kings, looking, of course, to the Acrisii and the Laiuses and Astyages the Mede, along with many others who at the start believed that they were securing their own position well; some of them thought to kill their children, others their grandchildren, and were deprived of the kingship by them, who sprang up from obscurity together with what was fated. And if I were fond of flattery, I would have said that your affairs too were in my mind—when you were shut up here by Vitellius, and the temple of Zeus was being set on fire on the brow of the city, and he said that his own position would stand well if you did not escape him. And yet you were a mere youth then and not yet what you are; but nevertheless, since it seemed otherwise to the Fates, he perished by their very counsels, and you now hold what was his. But since I am vexed by a flattering harmony—for it seems to me to be of the out-of-rhythm and ill-sounding kind—let this string be cut for me, and do not think that I had any of your affairs in mind, but that I spoke only about the Fates and necessity; for these are the things he says I said against you." "And yet most of the gods put up with this account, and Zeus is not vexed to hear it, even from the poets: in the Lycian passages, 'Woe is me, that for me Sarpedon…', when they sing of Sarpedon and such things about him, in which he says he yields his son to the Fates; and they say again, in the weighing of souls, that Minos, the brother of Sarpedon, when he died, Zeus honored with a golden scepter and appointed to judge in the assembly of Aidoneus, but he did not beg him free from the Fates. Why, then, emperor, are you vexed at this account, when the gods endure it, for whom affairs are always fixed, and do not put the poets to death over it? For it is fitting to follow the Fates and not to be harsh at the changes of affairs, and not to disbelieve Sophocles, who speaks best of all men: 'Only to the gods does old age never come, nor death at any time; but all else all-powerful time confounds.' For the good fortunes among human beings go round in a circle, emperor, and the span of prosperity lasts a day: this man holds what is mine and another what is his, and so-and-so, holding what belonged to so-and-so, does not hold it. Keeping this in mind, emperor, put an end to exiles, put an end to blood; and use philosophy as you wish, for the true philosophy is free from passion; but take away the tears of human beings, since at present innumerable echoes come from the sea, and many more from the mainlands, of people lamenting whatever each has that is worthy of lament." "And the consequences that grow out of this are more than can be counted; they hang upon the tongues of the informers, who slander everyone to you and you, emperor, to everyone."
8| Such, then, was the speech the man had prepared; but at the end of the speech I came upon the closing words of the earlier part: "You will not kill me, since I am not one fated to die," and what came before this, from which it follows. When he departed from the court in a supernatural manner that is not easy to describe, the tyrant did not react as the many thought he would. For some thought that he would cry out in anger over it and would pursue the man and proclaim throughout his whole realm that Apollonius must be admitted nowhere; but he did nothing of this, but acted like one contending against the opinion of the many, or one who understood at last that nothing at his disposal was sufficient against the man. If he overlooked it, let us judge from what follows, for he will appear to have been thrown into confusion rather than to have shown contempt.
9| For he was listening to another trial after that one, in which a city was contending against a man over a will, I think; but both the names of the litigants and the sense of the case escaped him, for the questions were senseless, and the answers were not about the matter on which the judgment turned. This strongly exposed the tyrant, showing how stunned and at a loss he was, precisely because he had been persuaded by the flatterers that nothing could escape him.
10| Having thus handled the tyrant, and having shown the man who was feared by all Greeks and barbarians to be a plaything of his philosophy, he left the court before midday, and toward evening he appeared at Dicaearchia to Demetrius and Damis. And this was in fact the meaning of his urging Damis not to wait for the defense but to go on foot to Dicaearchia: he did not announce in advance what he had planned, but ordered the person most suited to him to do what followed from the plan.
11| Damis happened to have arrived the day before, and had met Demetrius to talk about the events before the trial; and what he heard had left Demetrius more anxious than one would expect of a man hearing about Apollonius, and on the next day he asked again about the same matters, pacing restlessly with him by the sea, where the tales about Calypso are set. They despaired, believing that Apollonius would not come, since the harshness of the tyranny lay on everyone, but they honored what he had ordered because of the man's nature. Having given up, then, they sat down in the nymphaeum, where the jar is; this is of white stone and holds a spring of water that neither rises above the mouth nor, if one draws some off, gives way. They discussed the nature of the water, though without much earnestness because of their dejection over the man, and brought the talk back to the events before the trial.
12| Damis lamented and said something like this: "O gods, shall we ever see our noble and good companion?" Apollonius heard him—for he was in fact already standing at the nymphaeum—and said: "You will see him—or rather you already have." "Living?" Demetrius asked. "Since if dead, we have not yet stopped weeping over you." Apollonius, stretching out his hand, said: "Take hold of me. If I slip away from you, I am a phantom come to you from Persephone, such as the gods below show to those who are more dejected in their mourning; but if I remain under your touch, persuade Damis too that I am alive and have not cast off my body." They could disbelieve no longer, but rose and hung upon the man and embraced him, and asked about the defense. Demetrius thought that he had not even made a defense, for he would have been destroyed even though he had done no wrong; Damis thought that he had made it, but perhaps sooner, since he had not expected it to be on that day. Apollonius said: "I have made my defense, men, and we are winning. My defense took place today, and not early in the day, for it was already getting on toward midday." "How then," Demetrius said, "did you cover so great a road in so small a part of the day?" And Apollonius said: "Except for a ram and wings composed of wax, suppose anything you like, ascribing this passage to a god." "Everywhere," said Demetrius, "I believe that some god is always looking ahead in your deeds and words, from whom your affairs come to be as they are. But the defense—what it was, and what the accusation contained, and the character of the judge, and what he asked, and what he agreed to or did not—tell it all together, so that I can report each part to Telesinus, for he will not stop asking about you. Perhaps fifteen days ago, while drinking with me at Antium, he fell asleep at the table, and in the middle of his cup he dreamed that a fire spread over the land like a sea and overtook some of the people, while others got away ahead of it, for it flowed like water; and that you did not suffer what the many did, but swam through it as it parted. After this dream he poured a libation to the gods of good omen and urged me to take courage on your behalf." And Apollonius said: "I am not surprised that Telesinus sleeps on my behalf, for he has long been keeping watch on my behalf as well. You will hear about the trial, but not here; for it is already quite late and time to walk to the city, and conversation on the road is sweeter for seeing walkers on their way. Let us go, then, talking over what you ask, and I shall tell what was done today in the court." "For the events before the judgment you both know: you as one who was present, and you as one who heard of them, I think, from this man—by Zeus, not once but again, unless I have forgotten Demetrius. But what you do not yet know I shall go through, starting from the order given beforehand and from my entering naked." He went through also his own words, and above all "You will not kill me," and his departure from the judgment, how he departed.
13| Then Demetrius cried out: "I thought you had arrived saved, but for you this is the beginning of dangers, for he will seize you when you are denounced and shut off from every refuge." Apollonius, bidding farewell to Demetrius' fear, said: "If only you two were as easy for him to catch! But how his affairs stand now, I know. Having always been a hearer of flattering speeches, he has now heard rebukes, and tyrannical natures burst under such things and are filled with bile over them. But I need rest, since I have not yet bent a knee after the contest." And Damis said: "I, Demetrius, was so disposed toward this man's affairs that I would have led him away from this road on which he has come; you too, I think, advised the same, that he not go into dangers both voluntary and hard. But when he happened to be bound, as it seemed to me, and I thought his situation had no way out, he said that being released was in his own power, and he freed his leg from the bond and showed it. Then for the first time I understood about the man that he is inspired and greater than the wisdom of our own country. So even if I should meet with worse than this, I would fear nothing, though in danger under his care. But since evening is near, let us walk to the lodging, to take care of the man." And Apollonius said: "Sleep is all I need; the rest I count the same, whether any of it is present or absent." After this, having prayed to Apollo and also to Helios, he went into the house where Demetrius was living, and, when he had washed his feet and urged Damis and the others to dine, since they appeared to him to be without food, he threw himself on the couch, and, chanting over sleep a verse of Homer, he slept, as one who would not trouble himself about present matters that were not worth it.
14| Toward dawn Demetrius asked him where on earth he would turn, and seemed to hear in his mind the clatter of horsemen whom he thought were already upon Apollonius because of the tyrant's anger. Apollonius said: "He will not pursue me, neither he himself nor anyone else; for me the voyage will be to Greece." "A risky one," Demetrius said, "for the place is most conspicuous; and a man whom you could not escape even in obscurity, how could you elude in the open?" "I have no need to elude him," Apollonius said, "for if, as you suppose, all the earth is the tyrant's, those who die in the open are better than those who live in obscurity." And he said to Damis: "Do you perceive a ship leaving for Sicily?" "I perceive it," he said, "for we are lodging by the sea and the herald is near the doors, and the ship is already being put out; I infer it from the shouting of those who are sailing and from what they are doing about the raising of the anchors." "Let us board this ship, Damis," he said, "to sail now to Sicily, and from there to the Peloponnese." "It seems good to me," Damis said,
15| "and let us sail." And after they had said farewell to Demetrius, who was dejected over them, and had urged him to take courage for them, as a man should for his friends, they sailed for Sicily with a favorable wind, and sailing past Messene they reached Tauromenium on the third day. Next they were carried on to Syracuse, and put out for the Peloponnese around the beginning of autumn; crossing the open sea they reached, on the sixth day, the outlets of the Alpheus, from which this river pours its drinkable water into the Adriatic and Sicilian sea. Landing from the ship, and thinking it worth a great deal to have come to Olympia, they lodged in the sanctuary of Zeus, going nowhere beyond Scillus. A rumor, sudden and intense, took hold of the Greek world that the man was alive and had come to Olympia. At first the report seemed unsound, for besides there being no human hope about him, since they had heard that he was bound, they had heard these other things as well: that he had died burned, some said; others that he was dragged alive with hooks fastened into his collarbones; others that he was thrown into a pit, others into the deep. But when it was believed that he had come, Greece never gathered so excited for any Olympiad as for him then: Elis and Sparta from the spot, Corinth from the borders of the Isthmus, and the Athenians, though outside the Peloponnese, were not outdone by the cities on Pisa's doorstep, the most distinguished of the Athenians themselves marching to the sanctuary, and the youth who came to Athens from all the earth. Indeed from Megara too some were resident at Olympia then, and many from Boeotia, and from Argos, Phocis and Thessaly whatever was distinguished. Some had already met Apollonius and came to recover wisdom, thinking they would hear more and more marvelous things; others, who had no experience of him, thought it dreadful to appear ignorant of such a man. To those who asked by what means he had escaped the tyrant, he thought it unnecessary to say anything vulgar, but said that he had made his defense and been saved. Many who had come from Italy proclaimed what had happened in the court, and Greece was not far from doing obeisance to him, regarding him as a divine man chiefly because he had not set himself to any boasting about these things.
16| When a youth among those who had come from Athens said that Athena was very well-disposed to the emperor, Apollonius said: "Stop clapping at Olympia over these things and slandering the goddess to her father." As the youth grew more vexed and said that the goddess was acting justly, since the emperor had also held the eponymous office among the Athenians, Apollonius said: "If only he had held it at the Panathenaea too!" With the first of his replies he silenced the youth as one ignorant about the gods, if he thought them well-disposed to tyrants; with the second, on the ground that the Athenians were acting inconsistently with their decrees for Harmodius and Aristogeiton if, while they think it right to honor those men in the agora for what they did at the Panathenaea, they now grant tyrants the favor of being elected by show of hands
17| to rule over them. And when Damis advised him about money, since very little was left of their travel supplies, he said: "Tomorrow I shall see to this." And going into the sanctuary the next day, he said: "Give me, priest, a thousand drachmas from the funds of Zeus, if you do not think he will be very angry." And the priest said: "He will not be angry over this, but rather if you do not take more."
18| A Thessalian man named Isagoras was with him at Olympia, and Apollonius said: "Tell me, Isagoras, is a festival anything?" "By Zeus," said Isagoras, "the sweetest and the most dear to the gods of human things." "And what is its material?—as if I had asked about the material of this statue, and you had replied that it was made of gold and ivory." "And what material, Apollonius," he said, "can a thing without body have?" "The greatest and most varied," Apollonius said, "for in it are precincts and shrines and race-courses and a stage, and peoples of men, some from the neighboring land, some from beyond the borders and overseas. And indeed it is composed of very many arts and sophistries and true wisdom, and poets and councils and discourses, and naked contests and music, as is ancestral at Pytho." "It seems, Apollonius," Isagoras said, "that the festival is not only corporeal, but of more marvelous material than cities, for it calls together and settles together the most serious of the serious and the most renowned of the renowned." "Then shall we, Isagoras," he said, "regard the festival as the men, just as some regard the men as the walls and the ships, or does it need some other view?" "This view, Man of Tyana, is complete," he said, "and it is just to follow it." "And yet incomplete," Apollonius said, "to one who thinks about it in the way I do." "For ships seem to me to need men, and men ships, and men would never even have thought of the sea if there were no ship; walls save men, and men walls. A festival, by the same reasoning, is both the assembly of men and the very place to which they must come together, and all the more so inasmuch as walls and ships would not have come to be but through human hands, whereas these places are marred by human hands, when they are deprived of being natural, and when they come well from nature they are judged worthy of people's gathering to them. For gymnasia and stoas and fountains and houses were made by human art, like walls and ships; but this Alpheus, together with the hippodrome, the stadium and the groves, came to be before human beings: the river sufficient to be drink and bath, the hippodrome a wide plain for horses to compete in, the stadium a place for athletes to be dusty and to run, since it offers a boundary, a hollow the length of a stade, and the groves to crown the victors and to train the runners among the athletes. These things, I think, when Heracles considered them and admired the natural character of Olympia, made the place appear worthy of the things still pursued here now."
19| After he had conversed for forty days at Olympia and been very earnest, he said: "In the cities I shall converse with you, men of Greece, at festivals, in processions, in mysteries, in sacrifices, in libations—for these call for a refined man—but now I must go down to Lebadea, since I have not yet been with Trophonius, though I once visited the sanctuary." And saying this he set out for Boeotia, with none of those who admired him left behind. The mouth at Lebadea is dedicated to Trophonius, son of Apollo, and may be entered only by those who come for oracles; it is not seen in the sanctuary but a little above the sanctuary on a mound, and iron spits close it, set in a circle around it, and the descent is of a kind that draws in one who has sat down. Those who go down are sent dressed in white, carrying in both hands honey-cakes to appease the serpents that dart at those who descend. The earth sends some up not far away and some very far, for they are sent up beyond the Locrians and beyond the Phocians, though most of them near the borders of the Boeotians. Having come into the sanctuary, then, he said: "I wish to go down on behalf of philosophy." The priests objected, and said to the many that they would never let a sorcerer put the sanctuary to the test, while pretending to the man himself that the days were inauspicious and unclean for giving oracles. That day, therefore, he conversed at the springs of the Hercyna about the cause and manner of the oracle—for that oracle alone gives its response through the consulter himself—and when evening came he went to the mouth with the young men who followed him, drew up four of the spits that hold the bolts of the passage, and went down underground in his threadbare cloak, as though he had dressed himself for a lecture, doing things so dear to the god that Trophonius appeared to the priests and rebuked them on the man's account, and told them all to follow to Aulis, since there he would come up in a way more marvelous than any man. For he came up after seven days, longer than any of those who had gone under into the oracle, bringing a book most fitting to his question. He had gone down saying: "What, Trophonius, do you hold to be the most perfect and purest philosophy?" And the book contained the opinions of Pythagoras, as the oracle too agreed with this wisdom.
20| This book is dedicated at Antium and is prized for this reason; Antium is among the Italian cities on the sea. This much I allow to be heard also from those who live at Lebadea; but about this book let my own judgment be declared: that it was carried later to the emperor Hadrian, at which time also some of Apollonius' letters were carried, though certainly not all; and that it stayed on in the palace at Antium, the one he most delighted in of the palaces around Italy.
21| All his associates from Ionia came to him too, whom Greece called the Apollonians, and mingling with those who were there they became a youth worthy of admiration for their numbers and their eagerness to philosophize. Rhetoric lay neglected, and little attention was paid to those who drilled others in that art, as one that teaches only the tongue, while all pressed toward his philosophy. And just as they say that the Gyges and the Croesuses keep the doors of their treasuries unlocked so that those in need may draw from them, so he offered his wisdom to those who loved it, permitting questions on every subject.
22| Some slandered him, saying that he avoided the visits of the governors and led his hearers away to quiet places instead; and when someone jested that he drove the sheep away whenever he learned that the men of the marketplace were approaching, he said: "Yes, by Zeus, so that the wolves may not fall upon the flock." What did he mean by this? He saw that the men of the marketplace were looked up to by the many, and that they advanced from poverty to wealth, and were so ready to embrace hatreds that they even sold the very act of making enemies; so he kept the young from associating with them, and admonished rather bitterly those who had associated with them, as if washing out an odd dye. He had been set against them at other times too, but by the prisons in Rome and those who were bound and destroyed he was so disposed toward the art that he regarded all this as the work of informers and of those puffed up by cleverness, rather than of the tyrant.
23| About the time when he was busy in Greece, a portent of this kind held the sky: a crown like a rainbow went around the circle of the sun and dimmed its ray. That the portent brought revolution was clear to all; and the governor of Greece, summoning him from Athens to Boeotia, said: "I hear, Apollonius, that you are wise in divine matters." "Yes, if you also hear," he said, "that I am wise in human matters." "I hear it," the governor said, "and I agree." "Since you agree, then," Apollonius said, "do not meddle in the counsels of the gods, for this is what the wisdom of human beings approves." When the governor kept begging Apollonius to say what he thought, since he feared that everything would turn into night, Apollonius said: "Take courage, for there will be a light out of this night."
24| After this, when he had spent two years on the affairs of Greece and had done enough, he sailed to Ionia with his company following him, and for the most part philosophized around Smyrna and Ephesus, visiting the other cities too; and in none of the cities did he seem unpleasant, but rather worth longing for, and a great gain to the quick-witted.
25| The gods were by now pushing Domitian from his presidency over human beings. He happened to have killed Clemens, a consul, to whom he had given his own sister, and he had issued an order that about the third or fourth day following the murder she too should go to a husband. Stephanus, then, a freedman of the woman—the man whom the shape of the portent had signified—whether thinking of the dead man or of all, set out against the tyrant like the freest of the Athenians. He had slipped a sword under the forearm of his left arm, and had wrapped the hand in bandages as though it were broken, and he approached Domitian as he was leaving the court and said: "I need you alone, emperor, for what you will hear is of great moment." The tyrant did not disdain to hear him, and took him aside into the men's hall, where the palace is. "Clemens, your bitterest enemy, has not died, as you think," Stephanus said, "but is in a place that I know, and is arranging himself against you." As the emperor cried out loudly at what he heard, Stephanus fell upon him in his confusion, drew the sword out of the prepared arm, and drove it through his thigh, a blow not mortal for immediate death, but not untimely for the death that followed. Domitian, strong in body in other respects, being about forty-five years old, grappled with him though wounded, and throwing Stephanus down, pressed on top of him, digging out his eyes and crushing his cheeks with the base of a golden cup that was lying near the sacred things, and he called on Athena also as his helper. The guards, understanding that he was in trouble, came in a mass and killed the tyrant, who was by then fainting.
26| These things were being done at Rome, but they were seen by Apollonius at Ephesus. For he was conversing around the groves of the covered walks at midday, at the very time the events in the palace were taking place, and first he let his voice sink, as though afraid; then he expressed himself less fully than his own power warranted, like those who in the midst of speaking catch sight of something else; then he fell silent, like those who have dropped out of their speech; and fixing a fearful gaze on the ground, and moving forward three or four paces, he cried: "Strike the tyrant! Strike him!"—not as one drawing an image of the truth from some mirror, but seeing the things themselves and seeming to take part in what was being done. Ephesus was stunned, for the whole city was present at his talk. He paused for as long as those who look on pause until some outcome of the doubtful events occurs, and then said: "Take courage, men, for the tyrant has been slain today. Why do I say today? Just now, by Athena, just now, at about the time of the words over which I fell silent." The people of Ephesus thought this madness, and wished him to be speaking the truth, but feared the danger of listening; and he said: "I do not wonder at those who have not yet accepted the account which not even all Rome yet knows. But look, it does know, for the news is spreading, and already ten thousand believe it, and twice that number leap for joy, and double these, and quadruple, and all the peoples there." "This word will come here also; and let your sacrificing over it be put off until the time when this is reported; but I am going to offer prayers to the gods for the things I saw."
27| While these things were still disbelieved, runners came bearing good news, witnesses to the man’s wisdom. For the killing of the tyrant, the day that brought it, the noon hour, and the slayers to whom the exhortation had been addressed, all were exactly as the gods had revealed each detail to Apollonius while he was speaking. Thirty days after this, Nerva wrote to him that he now held the rule of the Romans by the will of the gods and of Apollonius, and that he would keep it more easily if Apollonius would come to be his counselor. At the time Apollonius wrote him back this riddle: “We shall be together, Emperor, for a very long time, in which neither shall we rule another nor another rule us.” He understood, perhaps, both that he himself would shortly depart from among men, and that Nerva would rule only a short time; for his reign lasted a year and four months, and he was thought a most prudent ruler.
28| But so that he would not seem to neglect a good friend and ruler, he afterward composed a letter to him advising him on matters of government; and calling Damis he said, “This requires you, for the confidential parts of the letter are written for the emperor, but they are such as must be spoken either by me or through you.” Damis says that only later did he grasp the artifice: the letter had been composed by Apollonius excellently and about great matters, but it could just as well have been sent by someone else. What, then, was the man’s artifice? Throughout his whole life he is said often to have repeated, “Live unnoticed; and if you cannot, depart from life unnoticed.” So, in order to send Damis away from him, so that he would not end his life in front of witnesses, he made the letter and Damis’ journey back to Rome his pretext. Damis himself says that he felt something as he went away from him, though he did not know what was coming; but Apollonius, who knew it well, said nothing to him of the kind people say who will never see each other again, so firm was his conviction that he would always exist. He gave him only this charge: “Damis, even when you practice philosophy on your own, keep your eyes on me.”
29| The record of Apollonius of Tyana written by Damis the Assyrian ends at this point. As for how he died, if indeed he died, there are several accounts, but Damis gives none. I, however, must not leave even this out, for an account ought, I suppose, to have its proper end. Nor does Damis say anything about the man’s age. Some say he was eighty, others over ninety, and others that he went beyond a hundred, whole and sound in his entire body, and more pleasant than youth. For wrinkles too have a certain beauty, and in him it flowered most of all, as the images of him in the temple at Tyana show, and the accounts that celebrate the old age of Apollonius more than they once celebrated the youth of Alcibiades.
30| Some say that he died at Ephesus, tended by two maidservants, for the freedmen I spoke of at the beginning had already died. He had freed one of the two and was reproached by the other for not having been granted the same, and Apollonius said, “It is fitting that you should be her slave as well, for that will be the beginning of good fortune for you.” So after his death the one was slave to the other, and the other, on some small pretext, sold her to a dealer, from whom a man bought her although she was not even good-looking; but he was in love with her, and being a man of substantial means he declared her his wife and had children by her registered as his own. Others say that he died at Lindos, having gone into the temple of Athena and vanished inside it. Others say it happened in Crete, more marvelously than the people of Lindos tell it. Apollonius, they say, was staying in Crete, more admired than ever before, and came to the temple of Dictynna at an unseasonable hour. Dogs are posted to guard the temple as protectors of the wealth inside it, and the Cretans hold that they fall short neither of bears nor of other wild beasts of that sort. Yet they did not bark when he came, but came up to him and fawned on him, as they do not do even with those who are most familiar to them. The temple officials, they say, seized him as a sorcerer and a robber and put him in chains, claiming that he had thrown the dogs some sop. But about midnight he freed himself, and having called those who had bound him, so that it should not happen unseen, he ran up to the temple doors, and they flew open; and when he had gone inside, the doors closed again as they had been shut, and from within burst a sound of maidens singing. The song was: “Go from earth, go to heaven, go,” that is, “Go up from the earth.”
31| Even then he went on teaching philosophy about the soul, that it is immortal, instructing men that the doctrine about it is true, but not allowing them to pry too curiously into matters so great. For a young man came to Tyana, bold in disputation and unwilling to assent to the true doctrine. Apollonius had by then already passed from among men, and people marveled at his transformation, and no one dared to dispute that he was immortal. Most of the discussions there were about the soul, for there was a band of young men in the place who were in love with wisdom. But this young man would in no way assent to the immortality of the soul, and said, “Gentlemen, this is now the tenth month that I have continually prayed to Apollonius to disclose to me the argument about the soul; but he is so thoroughly dead that he does not appear to me when I beg him, nor persuade me that he is immortal.” So the young man spoke then. But on the fifth day after that, having been earnestly debating the same subject, he fell asleep where the discussion was going on. Among the young men who were joining him in study, some were busy with books, and others were intent on tracing geometrical figures on the ground, when he, like a man possessed, leapt up still half asleep, streaming with sweat, and shouted, “I believe you!” When those present asked him what had happened to him, he said, “Do you not see Apollonius the wise, how he is here among us, listening to our discussion and chanting wonderful verses about the soul?” “Where is he?” they said. “For to us he appears nowhere, though we would rather have that than all the goods of all mankind.” And the young man said, “It seems he has come to converse with me alone about the things I would not believe. Hear, then, what divine words he utters on the doctrine:
The soul is immortal, and no possession of yours, but of Providence;
when the body has wasted away, like a swift horse loosed from its bonds,
it leaps lightly forth and mingles with the weightless air,
having spurned its harsh and long-enduring servitude.
But what profit is there in these things for you? You will believe them one day, when you are no more.
Why, while you are among the living, do you go searching into them?”
And this stands as a clear oracle of Apollonius, a tripod set up concerning the secrets of the soul, so that we may go in good heart, knowing our own nature, to the place the Fates appoint. As for a tomb of the man, or a cenotaph, I know of none that I have come across anywhere, although I have traveled over most of the earth, great as it is; but everywhere I have met with accounts of him that are more than human. And at Tyana there is a shrine built at imperial expense; for emperors did not consider him unworthy of the honors they themselves received.