Philostratus · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
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."
Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/apollonius/001-life-of-apollonius-book-i#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.