Philostratus · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
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.
Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/apollonius/003-life-of-apollonius-book-iii#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.