Philostratus · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
1| When the people of Ionia saw the man come to Ephesus, not even the artisans stayed at their trades any longer, but followed him, one admiring his wisdom, one his looks, another his manner of living, another his carriage, and some all of these together. Reports about him went the rounds. Some came from the oracle at Colophon, which proclaimed the man a sharer in its own wisdom, wise without qualification, and the like; others came from Didyma, and others from the sanctuary near Pergamum, for the god there bade many of those in need of healing to go to Apollonius, saying that this was his own wish and the decree of the Fates. Embassies too came to him from the cities, who looked on him as their guest-friend and sought his counsel about how to live and about the setting up of altars and statues; and he put each of these matters right, partly by letter and partly by promising to come in person. When Smyrna also sent an embassy, which did not say what it wanted of him but begged him earnestly to come, he asked the envoy what they wanted him for. “To see you,” he said, “and to be seen by you.”
2| “I will come,” said Apollonius. “And grant, you Muses, that we may also fall in love with one another.” His first discourse he delivered to the Ephesians from the steps of the temple, not in the manner of the Socratics. Instead he drew them away from all other pursuits and talked them out of them, and counseled them to hold to philosophy alone, and to make Ephesus full of earnest effort rather than of the idleness and insolence he found there in such abundance. For they were enthralled by dancers and wholly given over to pyrrhic dances, and everything was full of pipes, full of effeminate men, full of din. And although the Ephesians had come over to his side, he would not overlook these things, but rooted them out and made them odious to the people.
3| His other discourses he gave in the groves beside the covered running-tracks. Once, when he was speaking about sharing and teaching that people ought to feed one another and be fed by one another, some sparrows were sitting silent in the trees, when one of them flew up to them crying out loudly, as though urging the others to something; and the others, when they heard it, set up a cry themselves, rose, and flew off after that one. Apollonius kept on with his discourse, knowing why the sparrows had flown off but not explaining it to the crowd. But when everyone looked up at the birds and some foolishly took the thing for a portent, Apollonius turned aside from his discourse. “A boy,” he said, “who was carrying wheat in a basin slipped, gathered the grain up carelessly, and went off, leaving a great deal of it scattered in such-and-such an alley; and this sparrow, who happened upon it, has come to show the others the windfall and to make them his table companions.” Most of his hearers ran off at once to see, while Apollonius went on with the discourse on sharing that he had set before those who remained. And when they came back shouting and full of wonder, he said, “See how the sparrows look after each other and rejoice in sharing; but we disdain it. Indeed, if we see a man sharing with others, we call it prodigality and luxury and the like, and those who are fed by him we call parasites and flatterers. “And what is left for us, then, but to shut ourselves up like birds being fattened for the table and stuff our bellies in the dark until we grow so fat that we burst?”
4| When a plague was creeping into Ephesus, before the disease had broken out in full, Apollonius sensed its onset, and sensing it he foretold it. Again and again in his discourses he would cry, “O earth, stay as you are!” and he would utter, with a threat in his voice, such words as “Save these people!” and “You shall not pass this way!” But they paid no heed and took such sayings for mere wonder-mongering, all the more because he was seen going to all the temples, as though trying to turn the thing aside and praying it away. Since they were so foolish about their danger, he thought he need not help them any further, and went round the rest of Ionia, setting things right in each city and always discoursing on something that would save his hearers.
5| When he was arriving at Smyrna the Ionians came out to meet him, for they happened to be celebrating the Panionian festival. He read an Ionian decree in which they asked him to join them in their assembly, and coming upon a name that was anything but Ionian, for a certain Lucullus had signed the motion, he sent a letter to their league rebuking them for this barbarism; he had also found a Fabricius and others of that sort among the signatories of their decrees. How vigorously he rebuked them is shown by his letter on the subject.
6| On another day he came forward to the Ionians and said: “What is this mixing bowl?” They said it was the Panionian. Drawing from it and pouring a libation, he said: “O gods, leaders of the Ionians, grant that this fair colony may use a safe sea, that nothing evil from the sea may come reveling upon the land, and that Aegaeon the earth-shaker may never shake its cities.” He uttered such a prayer as a seer, foreseeing, I think, what happened in later times at Smyrna, at Miletus, at Chios and Samos, and in many of the cities of Ionia.
7| Seeing the Smyrnaeans eagerly taking up every kind of discourse, he encouraged them and made them more earnest, and told them to take pride in themselves rather than in the appearance of their city; for even if it is the fairest of the cities under the sun, and makes the sea its own, and has the sources of the west wind, yet it is a pleasanter crown for it to be wreathed with men than with porticoes and paintings and more gold than it has. For buildings stay where they are and are seen nowhere except in that part of the earth where they stand, whereas good men are seen everywhere and everywhere heard, and they show the city that bore them to be as large as the extent of land they can reach. He said that cities so beautiful resemble the statue of Zeus made by Phidias at Olympia, for it sits, as the maker saw fit; but that men who go everywhere resemble nothing so much as the Homeric Zeus, whom Homer has composed in many forms, more wonderful than the ivory one; for the one appears on earth, while the other is understood to be present in all things in the heavens.
8| He also philosophized with the Smyrnaeans about how cities might be safely governed, seeing that they were quarreling with one another and not agreed in their opinions. For he said that a city to be rightly governed needs a concord that is factious. When this seemed to be said unpersuasively and inconsistently, Apollonius, understanding that the many did not follow the argument, said: “White and black could never become the same, nor can the bitter be soundly mixed with the sweet; but concord will be factious for the sake of the cities’ safety. What I mean, let us understand thus: let the faction that leads to swords and to stoning one another stay away from a city, which needs the rearing of children, laws, and men, with whom there are words and deeds; but the rivalry with one another on behalf of the common good, how one man might propose a better opinion, another take the lead in office better than another, one go on an embassy, another build more splendidly than another did in his term of office, this, I think, is a good strife and a faction against one another on behalf of the common good. That each should pursue a different thing and contribute to the city’s benefit seemed foolish to the Lacedaemonians long ago, for they trained at warfare and were all strong in that and laid hold of that alone; I, however, think it best for each person to do what he knows and is able to do. For if one man will be admired for his leadership of the people, another for wisdom, another for spending his wealth on the public, another for being kind, another for being grave and not forgiving to those who err, another for having clean hands, the city will be well settled, or rather will stand upright.”
9| As he was going through these matters, he saw a ship of the three-rigged kind sailing out, and the sailors each doing something different to get it under way. Turning the attention of those present to it, he said: “Do you see the people of the ship, how some have boarded the tow-boats as oarsmen, others heave up the anchors and hang them, others hold out the sails to the wind, and others keep watch from stern and prow? If one of these should fall short in any part of his work, or lay hold of seamanship ignorantly, they will have a bad voyage and will themselves seem the storm. But if they compete with one another and strive, each not to seem worse than the other, then good harbors await this ship, and everything will be full of calm and good sailing, and their good counsel among themselves will seem Poseidon the Securer.”
10| With discourses of this kind he held Smyrna together. But when the plague fell upon the Ephesians and nothing could hold out against it, they sent an embassy to Apollonius, making him the physician of their affliction. He thought he ought not to put off the journey, but simply said, “Let us go,” and was in Ephesus, doing, I suppose, what Pythagoras did when he was in Thurii and Metapontum at once. He gathered the Ephesians together and said, “Take heart, for today I will put a stop to the plague.” With these words he led people of every age to the theater, where the statue of the Averter stands. There an old man seemed to be begging, artfully keeping his eyes shut as though blind; he carried a wallet with a crust of bread in it, was dressed in rags, and had a squalid look about his face. Apollonius made the Ephesians stand in a ring around him and said, “Pelt this enemy of the gods, gathering as many stones as you can.” The Ephesians wondered what he meant, and thought it a terrible thing to kill a stranger who was in such a wretched plight, for the man was begging them for mercy and saying much to move their pity; but Apollonius pressed on, urging the Ephesians to bear down on him and not let him go. When some of them began to throw stones at him from a distance, the man who had seemed to keep his eyes shut suddenly looked up and showed eyes full of fire. Then the Ephesians recognized the daemon, and stoned him so thoroughly that they heaped a cairn of stones over him. After a short pause Apollonius told them to remove the stones and see what beast they had killed. When the one they thought they had stoned was uncovered, he had vanished, and in his place they saw a dog, like a Molossian hound in form but the size of the largest lion, crushed by the stones and spewing foam as mad dogs do. The statue of the Averter, who is Heracles, stands near the spot where the apparition was struck down.
11| Having purged the Ephesians of the plague, and having had enough of affairs in Ionia, he set out for Greece. He went first to Pergamum, where he took pleasure in the temple of Asclepius; he advised those who were supplicating the god what they should do to obtain dreams of good omen, and he healed many of them as well. Next he arrived in the land of Ilium, and after filling himself with all the ancient lore of the place he paid a visit to the tombs of the Achaeans. He spoke at length over them and offered many bloodless and pure sacrifices; then he told his companions to go on to the ship, saying that he himself would spend the night on the mound of Achilles. His companions tried to frighten him out of it, for by now men like Dioscorides and Phaedimus and all that sort of company had joined Apollonius, and they said that Achilles still appeared in terrifying form, for that was what the people of Ilium believed about him. “And yet,” he said, “I know very well that Achilles delights in company. He was very fond of Nestor of Pylos, because Nestor always had something worthwhile to tell him; he made it his custom to honor Phoenix, calling him foster father and attendant and the like, because Phoenix entertained him with stories; he looked most gently even on Priam, his bitterest enemy, once he had heard him speak; and when he met Odysseus in a time of quarreling, he showed such restraint that Odysseus found him handsome rather than terrifying. “His shield, and the helmet whose crest, as they say, nods so terribly, are aimed, I believe, at the Trojans, since he remembers what he suffered from them when they broke faith with him over the marriage. But I have no part in Ilium, and I shall converse with him more agreeably than his companions did in those days; and if he kills me, as you say he will, I shall lie, no doubt, beside Memnon and Cycnus, and perhaps Troy will lay me in a hollow trench, as it buried Hector.” After speaking to his companions in this mixture of jest and earnest, he went up to the mound alone, and they walked off to the ship, for it was already evening.
12| Apollonius, coming about dawn, said: “Where is Antisthenes of Paros?” This man had already been attending him for seven days at Ilium. When Antisthenes answered, Apollonius said: “Are you related to Troy in some way, young man?” “Very much,” said Antisthenes, “for I am a Trojan from of old.” “Is it of the house of Priam?” “By Zeus, yes,” he said, “and from this, I think, I am good and come from good men.” “Reasonably, then,” said Apollonius, “Achilles prohibits my consorting with you. For when he told me to go as ambassador to the Thessalians about the things he charges against them, and I asked what else I might do for his pleasure besides this, he said: ‘Do not make the youth from Paros a partner in your wisdom; for he is Priamid enough, and does not cease singing the praises of Hector.’”
13| Antisthenes went away unwillingly. When day came and the wind from the land freshened and the ship was ready to put out, more people kept streaming toward it, small as it was, wishing to sail with Apollonius, since autumn had already come and the sea was less to be trusted. They all considered the man stronger than storm and fire and the most dreadful things, and wanted to embark with him, and begged to be given a share in the voyage. Since the crowd was many times what the ship could hold, he looked about for another, larger ship (there were many around the Aianteion) and said: “Let us embark here, for it is good to be saved along with more people.” Having rounded the Trojan headland, he told the helmsman to put in at the country of the Aeolians, which lies opposite Lesbos, and to make the anchorage rather toward Methymna. For it was somewhere there, Achilles said, that Palamedes lies, and there is a statue of him a cubit high, older in appearance than Palamedes should be. And as he was stepping out of the ship he said: “Men of Greece, let us take care of a good man, through whom all wisdom came to be; for we shall be better even than the Achaeans if we honor for his virtue the man whom they killed with no justice at all.” They leaped out of the ship, and he reached the tomb, and found the statue buried next to it. On the base of the statue was inscribed: “TO THE DIVINE PALAMEDES.” So he set it up, as I too have seen, and built a shrine around it, about as large as those who honor Enodia make (about ten drinking companions can feast in it), and offered this prayer: “Palamedes, forget the wrath with which you once raged among the Achaeans, and grant that many wise men be born. Yes, Palamedes, through whom come words, through whom the Muses, through whom I.”
14| He also went into the sanctuary of Orpheus, anchoring off Lesbos. They say that Orpheus once took delight here in prophecy, until Apollo took notice of him. For when men no longer went to Gryneion for oracles, nor to Clarus, nor to where the Apollonian tripod stands, and Orpheus, a head newly come from Thrace, alone gave oracles, the god stood over him as he was prophesying and said: “Leave off meddling with my affairs; I have put up with you enough even while you sang.”
15| As they afterward sailed the sea off Euboea, which Homer too considers among the hard and difficult to measure, the sea appeared smooth and better than the season, and talk arose about the islands, since they came upon many famous ones, and about shipbuilding and navigation, suitable for sailors. But Damis kept discrediting some of the topics, cutting off others, and not letting others be asked about, and Apollonius understood that he wished a different subject to be pursued, and said: “What is the matter, Damis, that you cut short what is asked? You are not seasick, or ill from the voyage, that you turn the conversation away; for the sea, you see, has laid itself beneath the ship and sends it on. Why then are you vexed?” “Because,” said Damis, “a great subject lies before us, which it would be fitting to ask about rather, and we are asking about stale and ancient matters.” “And what,” said Apollonius, “would this subject be, on account of which you think the others superfluous?” “You have been with Achilles, Apollonius,” said Damis, “and have perhaps heard many things not yet known to us; yet you do not recount these things, nor do you sketch for us the form of Achilles, but sail around the islands and build ships in talk.” “Provided I shall not seem to be boasting,” said Apollonius, “everything shall be told.”
16| When the others too asked for this account and were eager to hear it, he said: “Well, I did not dig a pit like Odysseus’, nor lure the soul with the blood of lambs, to come into conversation with Achilles; but I prayed as the Indians say one should pray to heroes, and said: ‘Achilles, most men say that you are dead, but I do not agree with the saying, nor does Pythagoras, the forefather of my wisdom. If we are speaking the truth, show us your form; for you would greatly profit from my eyes if you use them as witnesses of your being.’ At this there was a slight earthquake about the mound, and a youth five cubits tall rose up, in the Thessalian cloak. His look was not that of a braggart, as Achilles seems to some, and though terrible to see he did not depart from a radiant look; and his beauty seems to me not yet to have been given the praise it deserves, though Homer has said much about him, but to be beyond words, and to be diminished by the one who sings him rather than sung in a way equal to itself. Though he appeared at the size I have said, as I looked he grew larger, to double that and beyond; at least he appeared to me twelve cubits tall when he reached his fullest, and his beauty kept growing along with his height. His hair, he said, he had never cut, but kept inviolate for the Spercheius, for of rivers he used the Spercheius first; and his beard had its first shoots. Greeting me gladly, he said: ‘I have met you, having long needed such a man. For the Thessalians have for a long time now neglected the offerings to me; and I do not yet think fit to rage, for if I raged they would be destroyed more than the Greeks once were here, but I use fair counsel, that they not transgress the customary rites, nor be shown worse than these Trojans, who, though deprived by me of so many men, sacrifice to me publicly, offer me the first fruits of the seasons, and, laying down suppliant branches, ask for a truce, which I will not give. For the oaths they broke against me will never allow ancient Ilium to take back its former form, nor to reach the prime that came to many cities that were destroyed, but they will dwell in it no better than if it had been taken yesterday. So that I may not make the fortunes of the Thessalians like theirs, go as ambassador to their common assembly about what I have said.’ ‘I will go as ambassador,’ I said, for the purpose of the embassy was that they not perish. ‘But I, Achilles, have something I ask of you.’ ‘I understand,’ he said, ‘for it is clear you will ask about the Trojan matters; ask five questions, such as you yourself wish and the Fates allow.’ I asked first whether he had received a tomb as the poets say. ‘I lie there,’ he said, ‘as was sweetest to me and to Patroclus, for we came together as very young men, and a golden amphora holds us both lying as one. As for the laments of the Muses and the Nereids, which they say were made for me, the Muses never came here at all, but the Nereids still visit.’ After this I asked whether Polyxena had been slaughtered over him, and he said this was true, though she was killed not by the Achaeans; she came to the mound of her own will, and, to do great honor to the love between herself and him, fell upon an upright sword. As my third question I asked: ‘Achilles, did Helen come to Troy, or did Homer see fit to invent this?’ ‘For a long time,’ he said, ‘we were deceived, sending envoys to the Trojans and waging battles on her behalf, as though she were in Ilium; but she was living in Egypt, in the house of Proteus, having been carried off by Paris. When this was believed, we fought for Troy itself thereafter, so that we should not depart in disgrace.’ I took up a fourth question, and said that I wondered whether Greece had borne so many men together, and of such quality, as Homer musters against Troy. Achilles said: ‘The barbarians too were not much behind us, so far had the whole earth flowered with virtue.’ As the fifth I asked: ‘What possessed Homer that he does not know Palamedes, or knows him but leaves him out of the story of you?’ ‘If Palamedes,’ he said, ‘had not come to Troy, there would have been no Troy; but since he, a man most wise and most warlike, died, as Odysseus saw fit, Homer does not bring him into his poems, so as not to sing the shames of Odysseus.’ And Achilles, lamenting over him as the greatest and fairest, the youngest and most warlike, one who surpassed all in self-restraint and contributed much to the Muses, said: ‘But you, Apollonius, since such things are fitting between wise men, take care of the tomb and take up the statue of Palamedes, which has been carelessly thrown aside; it lies in Aeolis over against Methymna in Lesbos.’ Having said this, and last of all what concerned the young man from Paros, he departed with a moderate flash of lightning, for the cocks were already beginning to crow.”
17| Such were the events on the ship. He sailed into the Piraeus around the time of the mysteries, when the Athenians hold the most crowded festival in Greece, and went up from the ship to the city in haste. As he went on he met many of the philosophers going down to Phalerum, some of whom were basking naked (for autumn is sunny at Athens), some studying from books, some practicing by heart, and some disputing. None passed him by, but all, judging that he was Apollonius, turned about with him and greeted him gladly. Ten young men, coming upon him together, said, stretching out their hands to the Acropolis: “By that Athena, we were just now walking to the Piraeus to sail to Ionia to you.” He welcomed them and said he rejoiced with them for philosophizing.
18| It was the day of the Epidauria. At the Epidauria, after the proclamation and after the victims have been brought here, it is an ancestral custom of the Athenians to initiate at a second sacrifice; they established this for the sake of Asclepius, because they initiated him when he arrived from Epidaurus late for the mysteries. Most of the people, neglecting to be initiated, gathered around Apollonius and were more eager for this than to go away initiated; but he said that he would be with them again, and told them to attend to the rites for the present, for he himself was going to be initiated. The hierophant, however, was unwilling to give him the rites, saying that he would never initiate a sorcerer, nor open Eleusis to a man not pure in matters divine. Apollonius, not at all lessened by this, said: “You have not yet named the greatest charge that could be brought against me: that, though I know more about the rite than you, I have come to be initiated as though by a man wiser than myself.” When those present applauded that he had answered so boldly and in his usual manner, the hierophant, since in shutting him out he seemed to be acting against the wishes of the many, changed his tone and said: “Be initiated, for you seem to have come as a wise man.” But Apollonius said: “I shall be initiated later; and a certain man will initiate me, using foreknowledge, the hierophant after this one, who will take charge of the sanctuary in four years.”
19| Damis says that Apollonius held very many discussions at Athens, but that he did not set down every one of them, only those that were necessary and were pursued about great matters. In his first discourse, since he saw that the Athenians were fond of sacrifice, he spoke about sacrifices, and how one should offer, pour libations, or pray in the manner proper to each of the gods, and at what hour of the day and night; and one may come upon a book of Apollonius in which he teaches these things in his own voice. He went through these things at Athens, first in the interest of wisdom, his own and theirs, and then refuting the hierophant for what he had said impiously and ignorantly; for who would still have supposed that the man who philosophizes about how the gods are to be served is not pure in matters divine?
20| While he was speaking about pouring libations, a young man of the dainty sort happened to be present at the talk. He had such a reputation for wantonness that he had once even become the subject of a song sung from the wagons. His native city was Corcyra, and he traced his descent to Alcinous the Phaeacian, the host of Odysseus. Apollonius was explaining the pouring of libations, and told them not to drink from the cup that was used for it, but to keep it for the gods, untouched by lips and undrunk. He also told them to fit the cup with handles, and to pour the libation by the handle, the part from which people drink least. At this the young man burst out into a loud and wanton laugh at his words. Apollonius raised his eyes to him and said, "It is not you who commit this insolence, but the daemon who drives you when you do not know it." And in fact the young man was possessed without being aware of it: he laughed at what made no one else laugh, he would change to weeping for no reason, and he talked to himself and sang. Most people thought that it was the exuberance of youth that carried him into these ways, but he was really acting under the daemon's influence, and seemed to be misbehaving drunkenly in what he was in fact doing in his possession. When Apollonius fixed his eyes on him, the phantom let out cries, fearful and angry, of the kind made by those who are being burned and tortured, and swore that it would leave the young man alone and would never enter into any human being. Apollonius spoke to it with anger, as a master speaks to a cunning, knavish and shameless slave, and ordered it to give a sign as it departed. "I will knock down that statue," it said, pointing to one of the statues around the Royal Stoa, beside which this was taking place. The statue first shook slightly and then fell. Why should one write of the uproar that this caused, and how they clapped in amazement? The young man, as if waking from sleep, rubbed his eyes and looked toward the rays of the sun. He drew modesty upon himself, since everyone had turned to look at him, and he no longer appeared wanton or disorderly in his gaze, but returned to his own nature no less than if he had taken a drug. Casting off his fine mantles, his soft wraps and all the rest of his luxury, he fell in love with squalor and the rough cloak, and stripped himself into the ways of Apollonius.
21| He is also said to have rebuked the Athenians about the Dionysia, which they celebrate at the season of Anthesterion. He had supposed that they gathered in the theater to hear solo songs, lyric compositions, parabases and the rhythms that belong to comedy and tragedy; but when he heard that at the signal of a flute they dance twirling dances, and that in the midst of the epic poetry and theology of Orpheus some of them act as Hours, some as Nymphs, and some as Bacchants, he set himself to rebuke this. "Stop," he said, "dancing out the men of Salamis and many other good men who lie dead. If this is a Laconian dance, well done, soldiers, for you are training for war, and I will dance with you. But if it is soft and hurries toward the womanish, what shall I say of the trophies? For they will not stand against Medes or Persians, but against you, the people who set them up, if you forsake them. Where do you get such saffron robes, such purple, such scarlet dye? Not even Acharnae was dressed like this, nor did Colonus ride out like this. And why do I mention these things? A woman, a ship's commander from Caria, sailed against you with Xerxes, and there was nothing womanish about her, but a man's dress and weapons. You, softer than the wives of Xerxes, dress yourselves up against yourselves, old men and young men and the ephebes alike, who once, when they went to the shrine of Agraulus, swore to die for their country and to take up arms, but now will perhaps swear to play the Bacchant for their country and to take up the thyrsus, the ephebe now wearing no helmet but, in the words of Euripides, shamefully conspicuous in a womanish shape. I hear that you even become winds and are said to shake out light cloaks, billowing these trappings up into the air. Yet you ought at least to have respect for these winds, who were your allies and blew mightily on your behalf, and not to make Boreas, your kinsman by marriage, who among all the winds is male, into a female. For Boreas would never have fallen in love with Oreithyia if he had seen her too dancing like this."
22| He also set right the following matter at Athens. The Athenians used to gather in the theater under the Acropolis and attend human slaughters, and this was pursued there more eagerly than it is now at Corinth. Adulterers, prostitutes, housebreakers, cutpurses, kidnappers and similar classes of people were bought at great prices and led in, and the organizers armed them and ordered them to fight one another. Apollonius took up this matter too, and when the Athenians called him to their assembly, he said that he would not enter a place that was unclean and full of gore. He said this in a letter. He said that he wondered how the goddess had not already abandoned the Acropolis, when you shed such blood before her. "For it seems to me that when you go in procession at the Panathenaea, you will sacrifice to the goddess no longer oxen, but hecatombs of men. And you, Dionysus, do you come to the theater after such blood? And do the wise Athenians pour libations to you there? Depart from here too, Dionysus. Cithaeron is cleaner." Such were the most serious of the philosophical matters that I found him dealing with at Athens at that time.
23| He also went as an envoy to the Thessalians on behalf of Achilles, at the meetings at Pylaea, where the Thessalians conduct the business of the Amphictyony; and they, in fear, voted to take up what belonged to the tomb. He all but embraced the monument of Leonidas the Spartan, admiring the man. As he walked to the mound on which the Lacedaemonians are said to have been buried under the arrows, he heard his companions disputing with one another about what was the highest point in Greece; the dispute arose because Mount Oeta was before their eyes. He went up onto the hill and said, "I think this the highest, for the men who died here for freedom matched it against Oeta and raised it above many Olympuses. I admire these men, but I admire even before them Megistias the Acarnanian, for he knew what they were going to suffer and longed to share it with the men, not because he feared to die, but because he feared not to die with such men as these."
24| He also visited all the Greek sanctuaries, the one at Dodona, the one at Delphi, and the one at Abae; he went to those of Amphiaraus and Trophonius, and climbed to the Museum on Helicon. As he went to the sanctuaries and set them in order, the priests accompanied him, his disciples followed, and mixing bowls of discourse were set up, from which the thirsty drew. When the Olympic games were coming and the Eleans invited him to take part in the contest, he said, "You seem to me to be discrediting the reputation of the Olympic games, if you need embassies to those who will come from the place itself." When he was at the Isthmus, the sea near Lechaeum bellowed, and he said, "This neck of land will be cut through," and then, "or rather, it will not." This was his foretelling of the cutting through of the Isthmus a little later, which Nero planned seven years afterward. For he left his palace and came to Greece to enter himself in the heralded contests of the Olympic and Pythian games, and he won also at the Isthmus; his victories were in lyre-singing and in heralding, and at Olympia he won also against tragic actors. At that time he is said to have taken in hand the novel scheme concerning the Isthmus, making a circuit by water and joining the Aegean to the Adriatic, so that not every ship would sail round beyond Malea, and most would be carried through the cleft, cutting short the long way round. But how did the saying of Apollonius turn out? The excavation began at Lechaeum and advanced perhaps four stadia, with men digging continuously. Nero is said to have stopped the cutting, according to some because the Egyptians, who had studied the seas for him, told him that the open water beyond Lechaeum would flood over and wipe out Aegina; according to others, because he feared for his rule that there might be a revolution. Such, then, was the saying of Apollonius, that the Isthmus would be cut and would not be cut.
25| At that time Demetrius happened to be teaching philosophy in Corinth, a man who had taken hold of the whole strength of the Cynic way, and whom Favorinus later mentioned, and not ungenerously, in many of his own discourses. Demetrius was affected toward Apollonius as Antisthenes is said to have been affected toward the wisdom of Socrates: he followed him, eager to be his pupil, devoted himself to his teaching, and steered the more distinguished of his own followers toward Apollonius. Among these was Menippus the Lycian, twenty-five years old, of sound enough judgment and well made in body; in fact he looked like a handsome athlete of gentlemanly bearing. Most people thought Menippus was loved by a foreign woman. The woman appeared beautiful and quite refined, and she claimed to be rich; but none of this, it turned out, was real at all — it was all appearance. For as he was walking alone along the road to Cenchreae, a phantom met him, became a woman, and took his hand, saying that she had long been in love with him, that she was Phoenician and lived in a suburb of Corinth, and she named some suburb or other. “Come there in the evening,” she said, “and you will have song, for I will sing for you, and wine such as you have never yet drunk, and no rival will trouble you; and I will live, beautiful, with a beautiful man.” The young man was taken in by this — for though he was strong in the rest of philosophy, he was beaten where love was concerned — and he went to her toward evening, and from then on visited her constantly, as one visits a beloved, not yet aware that she was a phantom. Apollonius looked at Menippus the way a sculptor does, sketching the young man in his mind and studying him, and once he had judged him he said, “You, the handsome one, hunted by handsome women — you are keeping a snake warm, and a snake is keeping you warm.” Menippus was astonished, and Apollonius said, “You have a woman who is not your wife. Well? Do you think she loves you?” “By Zeus,” he said, “since she behaves toward me like a woman in love.” “And would you marry her?” he asked. “Yes, since marrying a woman who loves me would be a pleasure.” So he asked, “When is the wedding?” “Any moment now,” he said, “perhaps tomorrow.” Apollonius, then, waited for the hour of the banquet, and coming upon the guests just as they had arrived, he said, “Where is the refined lady on whose account you have come?” “Here,” said Menippus, half rising and blushing. “And the silver and the gold and the rest of the things with which the hall is adorned — which of you do they belong to?” “To the woman,” he said, “for this is all that is mine” — and he pointed to his own threadbare cloak. Then Apollonius said, “Have you seen the gardens of Tantalus, how they are and are not?” “In Homer, yes,” they said, “for we have not gone down to Hades.” “Consider this finery the same way,” he said, “for it is not matter but the semblance of matter. And so that you may understand what I am saying: this fine bride is one of the empusas, whom most people take for lamias and bogeys. They fall in love, and with sexual pleasure too, but above all they love human flesh, and they use sexual pleasure to lure those they mean to feast on.” “Hold your tongue!” she said, and “Away with you!”, and she seemed disgusted at what she was hearing, and every so often she even jeered at philosophers as people forever talking nonsense. But when the golden cups and the supposed silver were shown to be made of wind and all of it flew out of their sight, and the wine-pourers and cooks and the whole retinue of that kind vanished as Apollonius exposed them, the phantom seemed to be weeping, and it begged him not to torture it or force it to confess what it was. But as he pressed it and would not let go, it said that it was an empusa and that it was fattening Menippus with pleasures in order to devour his body, for it was its habit to feed on bodies that were beautiful and young, since their blood is pure. I have had to tell this story at length, since it happens to be the best known of Apollonius’ deeds; for a good many people know it, because it took place in the middle of Greece, but they have received it only in summary — that he once caught a lamia in Corinth. What she was doing, though, and that it concerned Menippus, they do not yet know; but it has been told by Damis, and by me from his account.
26| At that time he also clashed with Bassus of Corinth. This man was both thought and believed to be a parricide; he laid false claim to wisdom, and there was no bridle on his tongue. When Bassus abused him, Apollonius put a stop to it by the letters he sent and the discourses he delivered against him. For everything he said about him as a parricide was taken to be true, since such a man would never have stooped to abuse, or said what was not so.
27| What the man did at Olympia was as follows. As Apollonius went up to Olympia, envoys of the Lacedaemonians met him, seeking his company. Nothing Laconian showed in them; they were softer than they should have been and full of luxury. Seeing men with smooth legs, glossy hair, no use for beards, and soft even in their dress, he wrote to the ephors in such terms that they made a public proclamation: they removed the pitch from the baths, drove out the depilators, and restored everything to the old way. From this the wrestling grounds bloomed again, so did the serious pursuits, the common meals returned, and Lacedaemon became like itself. When he learned that they were setting their affairs at home in order, he sent from Olympia a letter shorter than a Laconian dispatch-staff. It is this: "Apollonius to the ephors, greetings. To err not at all belongs to men; to perceive it when they do err belongs to the noble."
28| Looking at the statue at Olympia, he said, "Hail, good Zeus, for you are so good that you share even yourself with human beings." He also explained the bronze Milo and the account of his posture. Milo seems to stand on a discus with both feet together, holds a pomegranate in his left hand, and his right hand has its fingers upright, as though threaded through one another. Now the traditions of Olympia and Arcadia report that this athlete was immovable and could never be forced out of the place where he stood; the grip of the fingers around the pomegranate is said to show his tenacity, and the fingers, held upright, with the joints well fitted together, show that they could never be pulled apart even if someone struggled against a single one of them. The fillet that he wears they take as a symbol of self-control. Apollonius said that these ideas were cleverly invented, but that the truer ones were wiser. "So that you may understand Milo's meaning: the people of Croton made this athlete priest of Hera. What the headband is to be understood as, why should I still explain, having recalled a man who was a priest? The pomegranate is the only plant that grows for Hera. The discus under his feet is a little shield, on which the priest stands to pray to Hera, and the right hand indicates this too. As for the work of the fingers and their not yet being parted, let that be put down to the old style of sculpture."
29| Attending the proceedings, he approved of the Eleans, because they took care over them and acted with good order, and considered that they themselves were being judged no less than the athletes who were to compete, and took thought not to err either willingly or unwillingly. His companions asked what opinion he held of the Eleans in their arrangement of the Olympic games, and he said, "Whether wise, I do not know; sophists, though, certainly."
30| How hostile he was to those who thought themselves writers, and how he regarded as ignorant those who took up a larger theme, may be learned from the following. A young man who fancied himself wise met him near the sanctuary and said, "Support me eagerly tomorrow, for I am going to read something aloud." When Apollonius asked what he would read, he said, "I have composed a speech on Zeus." At the same time he showed it under his cloak, proud of the thickness of the book. "What then will you praise in Zeus?" Apollonius said. "The Zeus here, and that nothing on earth is like him?" "That," he said, "and many other things before that and after it; for the seasons, and what is on the earth and above the earth, and the winds and the stars, all belong to Zeus." Apollonius said, "You seem to me a very great maker of encomia." "For that reason," said the other, "I have also composed an encomium of gout, and of being blind or deaf." "Then do not disown dropsy or catarrh from your wisdom either," said Apollonius, "if you want to praise such things. You will be better still if you follow the dying and go through praises of the diseases that killed them, for then fathers and children and those close to the dead will grieve less over them." Seeing the young man bridled by the argument, Apollonius said, "Writer, will the encomiast praise better what he knows or what he does not know?" "What he knows," he said, "for how could anyone praise what he does not know?" "Have you ever praised your own father, then?" "I wanted to," he said, "but since he seems to me great and noble, the handsomest of the men I know, able to manage a household and to use wisdom in everything, I passed over the praise of him, so that I should not shame my father with an inferior speech." Apollonius was disgusted, as he always was with vulgar people. "Then, you scum," he said, "you think you could never praise adequately your own father, whom you know every bit as well as you know yourself, yet you so easily pronounce a eulogy upon the father of men and gods, the maker of the whole, of all that is around us and above us. You neither fear the one you are praising, nor understand that you are setting about a theme greater than a human being!"
31| Apollonius' discussions at Olympia dealt with the most useful matters: wisdom, courage, self-control, and in short all the virtues. He spoke on these from the base of the temple, astonishing everyone not only by his thoughts but by the forms of his speech. The Lacedaemonians stood around him and made him a guest of theirs beside Zeus, and called him father of their young men at home, lawgiver of their way of life, and the honor of their old men. A Corinthian, out of ill temper, asked whether they would hold a festival of the god's appearing in his honor, and one of them said, "Yes, by the Twin Gods, we are ready." Apollonius turned them away from such things, so that he would not be envied. After crossing Taygetus and seeing Lacedaemon active and the ancestral laws of Lycurgus flourishing, he thought it not unpleasant to meet also the magistrates of the Lacedaemonians on the matters they wished to ask about. When he arrived they asked how the gods should be served; he said, "As masters." Again they asked how the heroes should be served: "As fathers." When they asked a third time, how human beings should be served, he said, "That question is not a Laconian one." They asked also what he thought of the laws among them, and he said, "The best teachers; and the teachers will win good repute if the pupils do not grow careless." When they asked what advice he gave about courage, he said, "What will you use courage for?"
32| At about this time there happened to be a young Lacedaemonian who was accused among them of wrongdoing in his habits. He was a descendant of Callicratidas, who had commanded the fleet at Arginusae, but he was in love with shipowning and paid no attention to public affairs; he had built ships and sailed out to Carthage and Sicily. Hearing that he was being tried for this, Apollonius thought it dreadful to stand by while the young man was brought into court, and said, "My good man, why do you go about so anxious and full of thought?" "A public suit has been announced against me," he said, "because I am occupied with shipowning and neglect public affairs." "Was your father a shipowner, or your grandfather?" "Far from it," said the young man, "they were gymnasiarchs and ephors and patronomoi, every one of them; and Callicratidas my ancestor was among those who commanded fleets." "Surely you do not mean the one at Arginusae?" "That is the man," he said, "the one who died in his command." "Did your ancestor's death not make the sea hateful to you?" "By Zeus, no," he said, "for I do not sail to fight a sea battle." "But can you name a more wretched race than merchants and shipowners? First they wander about, seeking a market that is doing badly; then they mingle with brokers and hucksters, sell and are sold, and, pledging their own heads at unholy interest, hurry to recover the original sum. If they prosper, the ship has a good voyage, and they make a great point of never having wrecked it, whether willingly or not. But if the trading does not bring in enough for the debts, they turn to the tenders, run the ships aground, and call it the necessity of a god; and so, sailors as they are, they rob other people of their livelihood in the most godless way, and not even unwillingly. Even if the seafaring and sea-working race were not like that, still, for a Spartan, the descendant of fathers who once lived in the middle of Sparta, to lie in a hollow ship, forgetting Lycurgus and Iphitus, and mindful of cargo and the exact points of seamanship, what shame is he free of? If nothing else, he ought at least to reflect on Sparta herself: while she held to the land, she was thought to reach heaven, but when she conceived a desire for the sea, she was sunk and made to vanish, not in the sea alone, but on the land as well." With these words he so overcame the young man that he bowed his head toward the ground and wept, because he heard how far he had fallen short of his fathers; and he sold the ships in which he made his living. When Apollonius saw him steadied and embracing the land, he led him down to the ephors and obtained his release from the suit.
33| Here is another episode from Lacedaemon. A letter came to the Lacedaemonians from the emperor, bringing a rebuke to their community on the ground that they were behaving insolently beyond what freedom allows; it had been written to them as a result of slanders by the governor of Greece. The Lacedaemonians were at a loss, and Sparta quarreled with herself over whether to write back in a tone of deprecating the emperor's anger or one of disdain. On this they made Apollonius their adviser on the tone of the letter. When he saw them divided, he came before their assembly and spoke briefly as follows: "Palamedes invented letters not only for the sake of writing, but also for the sake of knowing what one must not write." In this way he kept the Lacedaemonians from appearing either rash or cowardly.
34| After spending some time in Sparta following the Olympic games, when winter ended he came to Malea at the beginning of spring, intending to set out for Rome. While he was considering this, he had a dream of this kind: he thought that a woman, very large and very old, embraced him and begged him to meet with her before he sailed to Italy. She declared herself the nurse of Zeus, and on her head was a crown containing everything from land and sea. Giving thought to the vision, he understood that he must sail first to Crete, which we believe to be the nurse of Zeus, since he was brought to birth there; and the crown might perhaps signify another island as well. There were several ships at Malea about to set out for Crete, and he boarded one large enough for the whole company; by "company" he meant both his companions and the slaves of his companions, for he did not overlook even them. Sailing to Cydonia and on past it to Cnossus, when his companions wished to see the Labyrinth that is shown there, which once, I suppose, held the Minotaur, he allowed them to do so, but said that he himself would not be a spectator of the injustice of Minos. He went on to Gortyn out of longing for Ida. Having gone up and met with what is told of the gods there, he proceeded also to the sanctuary at Lebena. It is a sanctuary of Asclepius, and as Asia gathers to Pergamum, so Crete gathers to this sanctuary, and many from Libya cross over to it as well. For it faces the Libyan sea, at least opposite Phaestus, where a little rock holds back the great expanse of water. They say the sanctuary is called Lebenaean because a headland stretches down from it that is shaped like a lion, as the chance formations of rocks often produce; and they tell a story about the headland, that this lion was once one of the draft animals of Rhea. Once, around midday, as Apollonius was discoursing here, and he was talking to many men by whom the sanctuary was served, an earthquake suddenly struck Crete, thunder rang out from the earth, not from clouds, and the sea drew back about seven stadia. The greater part were afraid that the sea, as it withdrew, would drag the sanctuary after it and that they would be carried off, but Apollonius said, "Take courage, for the sea has given birth to land." They thought he meant the harmony of the elements, and that the sea would do the land no harm; but a few days later some people arrived from the district of Cydonia and reported that on the very day and at midday, when the sign from Zeus occurred, an island had been thrown up out of the sea in the strait that runs between Thera and Crete. Leaving aside a long account, then, let us go on to his activities at Rome, which came after his stay in Crete.
35| Nero would not allow people to practice philosophy, but those who philosophized appeared to him meddlesome, and to be covering divination with a screen; and the philosopher's rough cloak was once even brought into a court as the garb of divination. I leave the others aside, but Musonius the Babylonian, a man second only to Apollonius, was put in chains for his wisdom, and was in danger while he remained there; he would have died, as far as the one who bound him was concerned, if he had not been very strong.
36| With philosophy in such a condition, he happened to be approaching Rome, and when he was a hundred and twenty stadia away he fell in with Philolaus of Citium near the grove at Aricia. Philolaus was a man of composed speech, but rather soft when it came to endurance. He was leaving Rome, looked himself like a man in flight, and urged every philosopher he met to do the same. Greeting Apollonius, he told him to give way to the moment and not to visit Rome while philosophy was in disrepute, and he related what was going on there, turning round again and again lest someone behind him overhear. "You," he said, "are marching along with a whole chorus of philosophers, an object of hostility, without knowing the men Nero has stationed at the gates, who will seize you and these others before you are inside." "What, Philolaus," said Apollonius, "is the emperor said to be busy with?" "He drives a chariot in public," he said, "and goes on stage to sing in the theaters of the Romans, and lives with the gladiators; he fights as a gladiator himself and cuts men's throats." Apollonius took this up. "Then, my good friend, do you think there could be any greater spectacle for educated men than to see an emperor behaving disgracefully? According to Plato's view, man is a plaything of god; but an emperor who becomes the plaything of men and gives his own shame to the crowds as a favor, what arguments will he not supply to those who study philosophy?" "Yes, by Zeus," said Philolaus, "provided it can happen without danger. But if you are carried off and destroyed, and Nero eats you raw before you have seen anything of what he does, meeting him will cost you dear, dearer than it cost Odysseus when he went to the Cyclops. For he lost many of his companions by longing to see him and by being overcome by a strange and savage sight." Apollonius said, "Do you suppose that this man is any less blind than the Cyclops, if he does such things?" And Philolaus: "Let him do what he likes," he said,
37| "but save these men yourself." He said this in a rather loud voice and looked as if he were weeping. At this Damis, fearing for the young men, lest they become worse than they were through Philolaus' fright, took Apollonius aside and said, "This hare will ruin the young men, filling everything with trembling and despondency." Apollonius said, "Of the many good things that have often come to me from the gods without my even praying for them, I should say that I have had the greatest benefit from this very thing now. For a test of the young men has fallen in our way, and it will thoroughly expose those among them who are philosophers and those who are pursuing something other than that." And at once the weak among them were exposed. Led away by the words of Philolaus, some said they were ill, some that they had no provisions, some that they were homesick, some that they had been frightened by dreams; and from thirty-four disciples who had been accompanying him, Apollonius was left with eight to go on with him to Rome. The others fled from Nero and from philosophy together, and went away.
38| He gathered together those who were left, among whom were Menippus, who had had his encounter with the empusa, Dioscorides the Egyptian, and Damis, and said, "I will not abuse those who have deserted us, but will rather praise you, because you are men like me. Nor, if someone went away from fear of Nero, shall I consider him a coward; but if someone proves stronger than this fear, he will be called a philosopher by me, and I will teach him everything I know. It seems best to me first to pray to the gods, through whom these thoughts have come into your mind and into theirs, and then to make them our leaders, for apart from the gods we are in nothing else. We must enter a city that rules so many parts of the inhabited world. How could anyone enter it unless those gods led him, especially when a tyranny is established in it so harsh that it is not permitted to be wise? Let no one think it foolish to take courage on a road that many philosophers flee. For first, I do not think that anything among human affairs can become so fearful that the wise man should ever be struck with terror by it; and next, I should not set courage forth as a practice unless it is gained among dangers. Besides, having traveled over more land than any other man ever has, I have seen very many wild beasts of Arabia and India, but as for this beast that most people call a tyrant, I do not know how many heads it has, nor whether it has crooked claws and jagged teeth. And yet this beast is said to be a civic creature and to live in the midst of cities; yet it is more savage than the beasts of mountain and forest by this much: lions and leopards, when flattered, are sometimes tamed and change their disposition, but this creature, puffed up by those who stroke it, becomes wilder than itself and gulps down everything. Of wild beasts you could not say that they ever feasted on their own mothers, but Nero has gorged himself on this food. And if the same did happen with Orestes and Alcmaeon, they at least had fathers as a pretext for the deed, the one killed by his own wife, the other sold for a necklace; but this man, who through his mother was adopted by an aged emperor and inherited the rule, killed his mother by a shipwreck, constructing a vessel for her by which she perished near the land. If anyone, because of this, thinks Nero fearsome and for that reason leaps away from philosophy, believing it unsafe to do anything to provoke his anger, let him know that the fearsome part belongs to those who lay hold of self-control and wisdom; for to these the favor of the gods is secure. Let him regard the acts of the insolent as idle babble, just like those of the drunk; for we too regard such people as foolish, but not as fearsome. Let us go, then, to Rome, if we are strong, for against Nero's proclamations, by which he shuts philosophy out, we can say what Sophocles has said: 'It was not Zeus at all who proclaimed this to me, nor the Muses, nor Apollo, speaker of oracles.' It is likely that Nero himself knows these iambic lines, since he delights in tragedy, as they say." At this point someone who recalled Homer's lines, how, when a speech has fitted warlike men together, they become one helmet and one shield, would, I think, find that very thing happening to these men. For, welded together by the words of Apollonius, they were strong to die for philosophy and to appear better than those who had run away.
39| They approached the gates, and the guards asked nothing, but looked them over, studied their appearance and marveled; for their manner seemed sacred and nothing like that of beggars. They put up at an inn near the gates and were having supper, since it was already evening, when a drunk man came along as if to a revel, with a voice not lacking in sweetness. He went round and round Rome singing the songs of Nero, and was hired to do so; he had been given permission to haul off, as impious, anyone who listened carelessly or did not pay the fee for the hearing. He had a lyre and all the equipment that belongs to lyre-playing, and he even kept in a case a string, already fitted and stretched, which he said he had bought for two minas from Nero's lyre, and that he would sell it to nobody unless that man were one of the best lyre-singers and about to compete at Delphi. After a prelude, in his usual way, and after running through a short hymn to Nero, he went on to songs, some from the Oresteia, some from the Antigone, some from whatever tragedies he sang, and turned the melodies, as many as Nero twirled and ruined in the turning. When they listened rather sluggishly, he said that Nero was being treated impiously by them and that they were enemies of the divine voice, but they paid no attention. Menippus asked Apollonius how he heard the man saying this. "How," he said, "but as when he was singing?" "Still, Menippus, let us not be provoked by this, but pay him the fee for his performance and let him go sacrifice to the Muses of Nero."
40| So far, then, went that drunken outrage. At daybreak Telesinus, one of the two consuls, summoned Apollonius and asked, "What is this garb?" "Pure," he said, "and from no mortal creature." "And what is your wisdom?" "Inspired knowledge of the divine," he said, "and how one should pray to the gods and sacrifice." "Is there anyone, philosopher, who does not know these things?" "Many," he said. "And even if someone does know them rightly, he would become much better for hearing from a wiser man that what he knows, he knows well." Telesinus listened to this; he happened in fact to be a quiet devotee of the divine, and it dawned on him who the man was, from what he had long heard about him. He did not think he should ask his name in public, lest the man wish to remain unnoticed, but he brought him back to the discourse on the divine, for he himself had a taste for discussion, and said, "As a wise man, what do you pray for when you go to the altars?" "I pray," he said, "that justice may exist, that the laws not be overthrown, that the wise be poor, and that the others be rich, but without fraud." "Do you expect to obtain so much by asking?" "Yes, by Zeus," he said, "for I string everything together into one prayer, and when I go to the altars I pray thus: 'Gods, give me what is due.' If I am among the good, I shall receive more than I have said; but if the gods set me among the worthless, the opposite will come to me from them, and I shall not blame the gods if I am thought worthy of evils when I am not good." Telesinus was struck by these words, and wishing to do him a favor, said, "Visit all the sanctuaries, and I shall write to the priests, instructing them to receive you and to yield to you when you set things in order." "And if you do not write," he said, "will they not receive me?" "By Zeus, they will not," he said, "for this is my office." "I am glad," said Apollonius, "that being a noble man you hold a great office. But I would like you also to know this about me: I like to live in those sanctuaries that are not securely locked, and none of the gods refuses me, but they make me a sharer of their roof. Let this too be granted to me, since even the barbarians allowed it." And Telesinus said, "The barbarians have beaten us to a great tribute that should have been Rome's, for I should have wished this to be said of us." So he lived in the sanctuaries, changing and moving from one sanctuary to the next; and when he incurred blame for this, he said, "The gods themselves do not dwell in heaven the whole time, but travel to Ethiopia, and travel to Olympus and Athos, and I think it strange that the gods should visit all the nations of men, while men should not visit all the gods. Yet masters who neglect their slaves will not at once be blamed, for perhaps they despise them as worthless; but slaves who do not wait on their masters in every way would be destroyed by them as accursed and as slaves hateful to the gods."
41| As he held his discussions at the sanctuaries, the gods were served more devoutly, and people gathered in the sanctuaries, expecting to receive more good things from the gods. His gatherings were not yet slandered, because they were conducted in public and addressed to everyone, for he did not haunt doors, nor spend his time among the powerful; he welcomed those who came to him, and spoke to them just as he did to the people.
42| Demetrius, who had been won over to Apollonius, as I said in my account of the affairs at Corinth, later came to Rome and attended Apollonius, while letting himself loose against Nero. This was suspected to be the man's contrivance, and Apollonius himself was thought to have put Demetrius up to it, much more so when a gymnasium was completed for Nero, the most marvelous of those there, and Nero himself, the great senate and the equestrian order of Rome sacrificed in it on a white day. Demetrius stepped forward into the gymnasium itself and delivered a speech against those who bathed, saying that they were dissolute and defiled themselves, and he showed that such expenditure was superfluous. For this, what helped him not to be put to death on the spot was that Nero that day was singing in a finer voice than ever, and he sang in a tavern built into the gymnasium, wearing a loincloth and naked, like the most licentious of tavern-keepers. Nevertheless Demetrius did not escape being endangered for what he said. Tigellinus, in whose hands Nero's sword lay, drove him out of Rome as having demolished the bath by what he said, and he secretly tracked Apollonius, in case he too should say something open to attack or provocative.
43| Apollonius was neither visibly mocking nor yet anxious, like those who guard against some danger, but spoke fully about the matters before him, with Telesinus joining him in his philosophy and other men who, although philosophy was in a dangerous way, did not think they would be in danger while pursuing it with him. He was suspected, as I said, much more for what he said about a sign from Zeus. For once, when thunder pealed during a solar eclipse, a thing that seems least likely to happen in an eclipse, he looked up at the sky and said, "There will be something great, and there will not be." Those present at the saying could not yet interpret it, though on the third day following the eclipse they all understood what he meant. For as Nero was at dinner, a thunderbolt fell on the table and went through the cup that was in his hands and not far from his mouth; it was this, Nero's coming so close to being struck, that Apollonius had meant when he said that something would happen and would not happen. When Tigellinus heard this saying, he was afraid of the man, as one wise in matters of the daemonic. He did not think he should bring open charges against him, lest he suffer some unseen harm from him, but he watched him with every eye that the government has, as he conversed, as he was silent, sitting or walking, what he ate and with whom, and whether he sacrificed or did not sacrifice.
44| When a disease broke out in Rome that the doctors call catarrh, from which coughs arise and the voice goes bad for those who talk, the sanctuaries were full of people beseeching the gods, since Nero's throat was swollen and he had a hoarse voice. Apollonius was bursting with indignation at the folly of the many, but rebuked no one; and he even checked and calmed Menippus, who was angered by such things, telling him to forgive the gods if they enjoy comic mimes. When this remark was reported to Tigellinus, he sent men to bring him into the court to defend himself against the charge of impiety toward Nero. An accuser was also prepared against him, who had already destroyed many and who had a full tally of such Olympic victories, and he held in his hands a tablet with the charge written on it, and brandishing it like a sword against the man, said that it was sharpened and would destroy him. But when Tigellinus unrolled the tablet and found in it no trace of writing, but came upon a book without a mark, he was brought to the thought of a daemon. This, too, Domitian is said later to have experienced in his dealings with him. Tigellinus, then, took Apollonius aside and brought him into the secret court, where this office tries the gravest cases out of public view, and having sent everyone out he pressed him with questions about who he was. Apollonius named his father and his country and the purpose for which he used his wisdom, and said that he used it for knowing the gods and for understanding men, since knowing another is harder than knowing oneself. “And the daemons, Apollonius,” he said, “and the apparitions of phantoms — how do you expose them?” “As I do murderous and impious men,” he said. He said this as a jibe at Tigellinus, since he was Nero’s instructor in every cruelty and debauchery. “Would you prophesy, if I asked you to?” he said. “How could I,” he said, “when I am no prophet?” “And yet they say,” he said, “that you are the one who said that something great would happen and would not happen.” “What you heard is true,” he said, “but do not credit it to prophecy; put it down rather to wisdom, which a god discloses to wise men.” “And why are you not afraid of Nero?” he said. “Because,” he said, “the god who grants him to seem fearsome has granted me to be without fear.” “And what do you think of Nero?” he said. Apollonius said, “Better than you do. For you think him fit to sing, and I think him fit to keep silent.” Tigellinus was astounded and said, “Go, but put up sureties for your person.” And Apollonius said, “And who will stand surety for a body that no one will bind?” To Tigellinus these words seemed more than human and beyond the reach of a man, and as though he were on his guard against fighting a god, he said, “Go wherever you wish, for you are too strong to be ruled by me.”
45| This too is a wonder of Apollonius. A girl of marriageable age seemed to have died, and her bridegroom was following the bier, crying out all the laments that belong to a marriage left unfulfilled, and Rome was mourning with him, for the girl happened to belong to a family of consular rank. Apollonius, then, came upon the mourning and said, “Set down the bier, for I will put an end to your tears for the girl.” At the same time he asked what her name was. Most people thought he was going to deliver a speech, the sort given at funerals, which rouses lament; but he did nothing except touch her and say something over her that no one could hear, and he woke the girl from her seeming death. The girl spoke aloud and went back to her father’s house, like Alcestis brought back to life by Heracles. When the girl’s relatives offered him a hundred and fifty thousand, he said he would give it to the girl as an addition to her dowry. Now whether he found a spark of soul in her that had escaped the notice of those tending her — for it is said that Zeus was sending a fine drizzle and that a vapor was rising from her face — or whether he rekindled and recovered a soul that had gone out, the grasp of this has proved beyond words, not for me alone but also for those who were present.
46| At about this time Musonius too happened to be held in Nero’s prisons, the man who is said to have practiced philosophy more perfectly than anyone. They did not converse openly with each other, because Musonius declined to, so that they should not both be put in danger; instead they kept up their exchanges by letter, with Menippus and Damis going back and forth to the prison. Leaving aside the letters about matters of no great importance, we shall set out the essential ones, from which one can see something great. “Apollonius to Musonius the philosopher, greetings. I want to come to you and share your conversation and your roof, so that I may be of some use to you — provided you do not doubt that Heracles once freed Theseus from Hades. Write what you wish. Farewell.” “Musonius to Apollonius the philosopher, greetings. For what you have intended, praise will be laid up for you; but the real man is the one who stands his trial and shows that he has done no wrong. Farewell.” “Apollonius to Musonius the philosopher, greetings. Socrates the Athenian, unwilling to be freed by his own friends, went into court and died. Farewell.” “Musonius to Apollonius the philosopher, greetings.
47| Socrates died because he did not prepare himself for his defense; but I shall make my defense. Farewell.” When Nero was setting out for Greece, having proclaimed publicly that no one was to teach philosophy in Rome, Apollonius turned to the western regions of the earth, said to be bounded by the Pillars, to see the ebb tides of Ocean and Gadeira. For he had also heard something about the philosophy of the people there — that they had advanced far in matters divine. All his followers went with him, praising both the journey and the man.
Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/apollonius/004-life-of-apollonius-book-iv#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.