Life of Apollonius — Book VI

Philostratus · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

1| Ethiopia holds the western horn of all the land beneath the sun, as India holds the one toward the dawn. At Meroe it borders on Egypt, and after passing through a part of unexplored Libya it ends at the sea that the poets call Ocean, giving that name to all the water that surrounds the earth. It gives Egypt the river Nile, which begins at the Cataracts and brings down from the Ethiopians the whole of Egypt that it floods. In size this country does not deserve to be compared with India — nor does any other of the continents with a name among men; and even if we joined all of Egypt to Ethiopia — and let us suppose that the river does exactly this — the two together are still not a match for India, combined on such a scale as they are. But the rivers of the two are alike, if one reckons up the features of the Indus and the Nile: they water their lands at the season of the year when the earth longs for it; they alone among rivers yield the crocodile as well as the river horse; and the stories of the rites connected with them are the same, for much of what is Indian is held sacred at the Nile too. The likeness of the two lands may be confirmed by the spices that grow in them, and confirmed too by the lions and by the elephant, which in each is captured and put to service. They also nurture beasts found nowhere else, and black men, which no other continents do, and in them are races of Pygmies and of people who bark, in one place and another, and wonders of that kind. India's griffins and Ethiopia's ants, though unlike in form, have, so they say, the same purpose: in each land they are sung of as guardians of gold, devoted to the gold-bearing soil of these lands. But no more on this; let my account return to its own business, and let us keep to the man.

2| Arriving at the boundary between the Ethiopians and the Egyptians — they call the place Sycaminus — he came upon unminted gold, linen, ivory, roots, perfume and spices, all lying unguarded at a fork in the road. I will explain what this means, for the custom is still observed in our own day. The Ethiopians bring a market of what Ethiopia produces; the Egyptians gather it all up and carry to the same place a market of Egyptian goods of equal value, buying with what they have what they lack. Those who live on the border of the two lands are not yet black but of a color shared with both, for they are less black than the Ethiopians and more so than the Egyptians. Apollonius, grasping the character of the market, said, “But our fine Greeks say they cannot live unless an obol breeds an obol and they can push up the prices of their goods by peddling or hoarding them — one pleading a daughter of marriageable age, another a son already coming of age as a man, another a club subscription to be paid up, another that he is building a house, another that he would be ashamed to be thought a worse moneymaker than his father. How well things went, then, back when wealth had no honor and equality flourished, and the black iron lay put away, with men at one with each other, and the whole earth seemed one.”

3| Holding discourses of this kind, and letting the occasion, as was his custom, shape his discourse, he went on toward Memnon. Their guide was an Egyptian youth, about whom Damis records the following. Timasion was the name of this youth; he had just passed out of his adolescence and was still in the full bloom of youth. He was chaste, and a stepmother who was in love with him beset him and turned his father against him — not by contriving anything like what Phaedra did, but by slandering him as effeminate and as taking more pleasure in male lovers than in women. He had left Naucratis, for that was where this happened, and was living near Memphis; he had acquired a boat of his own and worked as its skipper on the Nile. Sailing downstream himself, he saw Apollonius sailing up, and he realized that the company was made up of wise men, judging by their threadbare cloaks and the books they were poring over; and he begged them to grant him a share in their voyage, since he was a lover of wisdom. Apollonius said, “This young man is chaste, friends; let him be granted what he asks,” and he told the story about the stepmother to those of his companions who were near him, in a low voice, while the youth was still sailing toward them. When the boats came alongside, Timasion crossed over, said something to his own helmsman about the cargo, and greeted the men. Apollonius told him to sit down where he could see him and said, “Egyptian youth — for you seem to be one of the people of this country — tell me what bad thing or what good thing you have done, so that for the one you may receive absolution from me on account of your age, and for the other you may be praised and join in philosophy with me and with these men.” Seeing Timasion blush and shift the movement of his mouth between speaking and not speaking, Apollonius pressed his question repeatedly, as though he had no foreknowledge of him. Timasion took courage and said, “O gods, what shall I call myself? I am not bad; but whether I should be thought good, I do not know, for not doing wrong is not yet praise.” And Apollonius said, “Bravo, young man, how you talk to me as if from among the Indians! For these are the opinions of the divine Iarchas too. But tell me how you came to hold them, and from what; for you seem to be on your guard against doing some wrong.” When Timasion began to speak, saying that his stepmother had made advances toward him and that he had withdrawn from her in her passion, a cry arose, because Apollonius had foretold it so divinely; but Timasion broke in and said, “My good friends, what has happened to you? What I have said is as distant from a marvel as, I think, from a joke.” And Damis said, “We marvelled at something else, which you do not yet know. And we praise you too, young man, because you think you have done nothing brilliant.” “Do you sacrifice to Aphrodite, young man?” Apollonius asked, and Timasion said, “By Zeus, every day; for I consider the goddess to be great in both human and divine affairs.” Apollonius, greatly pleased, said, “Let us vote, gentlemen, that he is crowned for self-control even before Hippolytus the son of Theseus. For Hippolytus offended against Aphrodite, and perhaps for this reason was not overcome by the pleasures of love, nor did any desire revel toward him, but he belonged to the ruder and harder portion; whereas this young man, who says he is overcome by the goddess, suffered nothing toward the woman who loved him, but went away, fearing the goddess herself, lest he fail to guard against being badly loved. And to be set against any one of the gods whatever, as Hippolytus was against Aphrodite, I do not count as self-control; for it is more self-controlled to speak well of every one of the gods, and this at Athens, where altars even of unknown daemons are set up.” So much serious attention he gave to Timasion. He did, however, call him Hippolytus, on account of his eyes, with which he had looked at his stepmother. He also seemed to take care of his body and to engage in gymnastics with charm.

4| Under this guide, they say, they entered the sacred precinct of Memnon. About Memnon Damis writes the following. He was a son of Dawn, and he did not die at Troy, since he never even came to Troy, but ended his life in Ethiopia after reigning over the Ethiopians for five generations. And they, since they are the longest-lived of men, lament Memnon as an exceedingly young man, and weep for him as for one dead before his time. The place where he is set up, they say, resembles an ancient marketplace, such as the marketplaces left in cities once inhabited, offering the wreckage of stelae and traces of walls and seats and doorposts and statues of Hermes, some destroyed by hands and some by time. The statue is turned toward the sun’s ray, still beardless, and is of black stone; both feet are joined together in the manner of statue-making that goes back to Daedalus, and the hands are pressed straight against the seat, for it is seated as if on the point of rising. This posture, and the intent of the eyes, and all that of the mouth which suggests it is about to speak, they say they marvelled at less at other times, for these did not yet appear active; but when the ray struck the statue, and this happens at sunrise, they could not contain their wonder; for it spoke immediately when the ray reached its mouth, and it seemed to hold its eyes bright toward the light, like those of men who love the sun. At that point, they say, they understood that it seems to rise slightly for the Sun, just like those who worship what is higher while standing. So they sacrificed to the Ethiopian Sun and to Memnon the Dawn-born—for this is what the priests said, naming the one from burning and warming, and the other from his mother—and then travelled on camels to the abodes of the Naked Sages.

5| They met a man dressed in the manner of the Memphites, wandering aimlessly rather than travelling with purpose, and Damis and his companions asked who he was and why he roamed. Timasion said, “Ask me, not him; for he would not tell you his own misfortune, out of shame at the calamity he is in; but I, since I know the man and pity him, will tell you everything about him. He killed a certain Memphite unintentionally. The laws of Memphis command one who flees for an involuntary killing—and he must flee—to put himself in the hands of the Naked Sages, and if he is cleansed of the blood, to return home, now pure, after first going to the slain man's tomb and sacrificing something small there. For the time during which he has not yet met the Naked Sages, he must wander about these borders until they have regard for him as a suppliant.” Apollonius asked Timasion what the Naked Sages thought about the man in exile. He said, “I do not know; for this is the seventh month he has been begging here, and there is still no release.” Apollonius said, “You are not speaking of wise men, if they do not cleanse him and do not recognize that Philiscus, whom this man killed, was descended from Thamus the Egyptian, who once ravaged the land of the Naked Sages.” Timasion, astonished, said, “What do you mean?” “Just as I said, young man,” he replied, “and so it was done.” “For once Thamus was plotting revolution against the Memphites, and the Naked Sages exposed him and caught him; and he, having failed in his attempt, ravaged all the land they inhabit, for he was strong as a bandit around Memphis. I see that Philiscus, whom this man killed, is the descendant of this Thamus in the thirteenth generation, and accursed, evidently, to those whose land Thamus was then plundering. And where is the wisdom in not cleansing this man, who ought to have been crowned even if he had killed with forethought, when his killing was involuntary and was done on their behalf?” The young man, astonished, said, “Stranger, who are you?” And Apollonius said, “Whom you would find among the Naked Sages. Since it is not yet right for me to address one who is in blood, tell him, young man, to take courage, for he will be pure at once, if he comes to where I am lodging.” When the man came, Apollonius performed over him all that Empedocles and Pythagoras prescribe for purifications, and told him to go to his own dwelling, as one now clean of the charge.

6| From there they set out at sunrise, and arrived before noon at the school of the Naked Sages. These Naked Sages, they say, live on a hill of moderate size, a short distance from the bank of the Nile, and they fall short of the wisdom of the Indians more than they surpass the Egyptians; they go about naked in the same way as those who bask in the sun at Athens. In the district there are few trees and one small grove, in which they gather about common matters; their shrines are not all in one place, as among the Indians, but each is set up at a different part of the hill and held in honor, as the accounts of the Egyptians have it. They serve the Nile most of all, for they consider this river to be earth and water. They themselves need no hut or house, living in the open and under the sky itself; but for strangers they built a lodging sufficient for them, a stoa not large, equal in length to those of the Eleans, under which the athlete waits for the noon proclamation.

7| Here Damis records a deed of Euphrates, which we should consider not boyish but less honorable than befits philosophy. For when he heard Apollonius often saying that he wished to weigh Indian wisdom against Egyptian, he sent Thrasybulus of Naucratis to the Naked Sages to slander the man. Thrasybulus said that he had come for the sake of association with them, and that the man from Tyana would come too, and that this was no small contest for them; for he was prouder than the wise men of the Indians, whom he exalts in every speech, and had prepared countless refutations against them, and yielded nothing to the sun, or to heaven and earth, for he himself moves and carries these and rearranges them as he wishes.

8| Having composed such a tale, the man of Naucratis went away; and the Naked Sages, believing it true, did not refuse Apollonius’ company when he came, but pretended to be busy with great matters and absorbed in them, saying they would come to talk with him if they had leisure and had learned what he wanted and what he was eager for in coming. The messenger from them also told Apollonius and his party to lodge in the stoa; but Apollonius said, “Do not talk about a roof, for the sky here allows everyone to live naked”—slandering them as naked not by endurance but by necessity—“and what I want and why I have come, I do not wonder that they do not yet know; but the Indians did not ask me this.”

9| Apollonius then reclined under one of the trees and conversed with his companions about whatever they asked; and Damis, taking Timasion aside, asked him privately, “These Naked Sages, my good man—for you have been with them, as is likely—in what way are they wise?” “In many and great ways,” he said. “But surely, noble friend,” said Damis, “their conduct toward us is not wise. For not to have met such a man on the subject of wisdom, but to treat him with haughtiness—what to call it I do not know, unless it is conceit, friend.” “Conceit? I never saw it in them before, though I have already come twice; for they were always moderate and kind to those who visited them. Just recently, perhaps fifty days ago, Thrasybulus was in the country here, doing nothing brilliant in philosophy, and they received him gladly, because he had enrolled himself with Euphrates.” And Damis said, “What are you saying, young man? You have seen Thrasybulus of Naucratis in this school?” “And more,” he said, “I carried him on my own boat when he went down from here.” “I have it all, by Athena,” said Damis, crying out and exclaiming in indignation, “for some villainy seems to have been worked.” Timasion replied, “As I asked him yesterday who he was, the man did not think me worthy of the secret yet; but you, if this is not a mystery, say who he is, for perhaps I too could contribute something to the hunt for what is sought.” When he heard Damis say that it was the man of Tyana, he said, “You have grasped the matter. “For Thrasybulus, as he sailed down the Nile with me, when I asked him why he was going up there, told me of a wisdom of his own that was not good, saying that he had filled these Naked Sages with suspicion against Apollonius, so that he would be slighted when he came; and what he has against him I do not know, but to fall into slanders I think womanish and uneducated. I could find out how they are disposed by addressing the men, for they are my friends.” Timasion came back toward evening, saying nothing to Apollonius except that he had greeted them, but reporting privately to Damis that they would come the next day, full of what they had heard from Thrasybulus.

10| That evening they spent in moderate matters not worth writing down, and went to sleep where they had dined. At daybreak Apollonius, as was his custom, served the Sun and stood intent on some thought, and Nilus, youngest of the Naked Sages, ran up to him and said, “We have come to you.” “Naturally,” said Apollonius, “for I too have come the road from the sea to you.” With these words he followed Nilus. When they had greeted and been greeted—they met each other near the stoa—Apollonius said, “Where shall we meet?” “Here,” said Thespesion, pointing to the grove. Thespesion was the eldest of the Naked Sages and led them all, and the others followed the eldest as the Hellanodikai follow theirs, with a walk at once orderly and leisurely. When they sat down, just as they happened to, for this they no longer did in order, all looked to Thespesion as the host of the discourse, and he began thus: “They say that you, Apollonius, have visited Pytho and Olympia, for Stratocles of Pharos reported this here, saying he met you there. Pytho sends those who come to it on their way with the flute, songs and the harp, and treats them to comedies and tragedies, and then provides the naked contest, late, after these; but Olympia has removed such things as unsuitable and not useful there, and provides those who go to it with naked athletes, Heracles having established this. Think of our ways here, set beside the wisdom of the Indians, as being just this. “For they, as though inviting people to Pytho, sway them with various charms, but we, as at Olympia, are naked. The earth here spreads nothing under us, nor gives milk or wine as to Bacchants, nor does the air carry us aloft; but with the earth itself spread beneath us we live, sharing in what it gives according to nature, so that it may give these things gladly and not be tormented unwilling. And to show that we are not incapable of clever feats: you there, tree,” he said—it was an elm, the third from the one under which they were conversing—“greet the wise Apollonius.” The tree greeted him, as it was bidden, with a voice that was articulate and feminine. He pointed this out against the Indians, thinking to move Apollonius from his opinion of them, since Apollonius went through all the sayings and deeds of the Indians. He added also that it is enough for the wise man to be pure of food, so far as it has breath, and of desire, which comes through the eyes, and of envy, which comes as a teacher of the unjust to hand and mind; and that the truth does not need wonder-working and forceful art. “Consider,” he said, “the Delphic Apollo, who holds the middle of Greece for the foretelling of oracles. There, as you yourself know, the one who needs the utterance asks a brief question, and Apollo, working no marvels, says what he knows. “And yet it would have been easy for him to shake all Parnassus, to pour wine from Castalia by changing its springs, and to forbid the Cephisus to be a river; but he boasts of none of these things and shows the truth itself. Let us suppose that neither gold nor the apparently splendid dedications come to him willingly, nor does Apollo rejoice in his temple even if it were shown twice as large as it is now; for this god once lived also in a plain dwelling, and a small hut was moulded for him, for which bees are said to have contributed wax and birds feathers. For plainness is a teacher of wisdom and a teacher of truth, and in praising it you will seem altogether wise, forgetting the tales among the Indians. For ‘do this’ or ‘do not do this,’ ‘I know’ or ‘I do not know,’ ‘this, but not that’—what need is there of din? What need of thundering, or rather of being thunderstruck? “You have seen, among the stories of painting, the Heracles of Prodicus: Heracles is a youth, not yet at the choosing of his life, and Vice and Virtue, taking him between them, lead him to their own sides; the one is dressed in gold and necklaces and a sea-purple garment, with the bloom of her cheeks and braided locks and painted eyes, and she has a golden sandal too, for she is painted strutting in this as well; the other resembles one who has toiled, with a rough look, making squalor her adornment; Virtue is barefoot and plain in dress, and she would appear naked if she did not know what is seemly among women. Think of yourself, Apollonius, as standing midway between Indian wisdom and ours, hearing the one say that she will spread flowers under you as you sleep, and by Zeus will give you milk to drink and nourish you with honeycombs, that you will have nectar from her and wings whenever you wish, that tripods will be wheeled to you as you drink, and golden thrones, and that you will toil at nothing, but everything will go to you of itself; and the other say that it befits you to sleep on the ground in squalor, to appear naked, toiling as we do, to count neither dear nor sweet what came to you without toil, to be no boaster or hunter of vanity, and to keep away even from the sights of dreams, such as lift one from the earth. “If you choose as Heracles did, and hold to an adamantine resolve, not dishonoring truth nor refusing the plainness that accords with nature, you will say that you have taken many lions, that many hydras, Geryons and Nessuses and all that man’s labors have been cut down for you; but if you embrace the way of the beggars, you will flatter eyes and ears, you will not seem wiser than another, and you will become the prize of an Egyptian, a Naked Sage.”

11| When he had said this, all turned to Apollonius, his own companions knowing that he would reply, and Thespesion’s people wondering what he would say in answer. He praised Thespesion for his fluency and vigor and said, “You are not adding anything?” “By Zeus, no,” said Thespesion, “for I have said it.” And when Apollonius asked, “None of the other Egyptians?” he said, “You have heard everyone through me.” Pausing a little, and fixing his eyes on what had been said, Apollonius spoke thus: “The choice of Heracles, which Prodicus says he made as a youth, has been soundly told by you, and in keeping with the spirit of philosophy, O wise men of the Egyptians; but it does not apply to me. For I have not come to make you advisers on my life, having long since chosen the one that seemed right to me; and since I have come as the eldest of you except Thespesion, I would more fittingly be advising you on the choice of wisdom, if I had found you not yet having chosen. Still, being of this age and having reached this degree of wisdom, I will not hesitate to use you as auditors of my own deliberation, teaching you that I chose rightly the things than which nothing better has yet come into my mind. “For having seen something great in Pythagoras—that through an unspeakable wisdom he knew not only who he was but who he had once been; that he approached altars pure, and kept a stomach unstained by animate food, and a body pure of all garments made of dead things; that he was the first of men to hold his tongue, having found in the doctrine of silence an ox to set upon it; and that he established the rest of philosophy as oracular and true—I ran to his doctrines, not choosing one wisdom out of two, as you counsel, excellent Thespesion. For philosophy set before me all her opinions, however many they are, and having clothed them each with the adornment proper to it, told me to look at them and choose soundly. “The bloom of all of them was august and divine, and one might have shut his eyes before some of them in awe; but my eye stayed fixed on all, for they themselves also emboldened me, drawing me on and proclaiming beforehand all that they would give. One of them said that she would pour on me, without toil, a great swarm of pleasures; another, that she would give rest after toil; another, that she would mix delights into the toil; and everywhere pleasures shone through, with loosened reins for the belly, a ready hand for wealth, no bridle for the eyes, but loves and desires and such passions allowed. One of them boasted that she held back from such things, yet she was brazen and fond of abuse, and elbowed everything aside. Then I saw the unspeakable form of wisdom, by which even Pythagoras was once overcome; and she was not standing among the many, but had been set apart from them and was silent. Perceiving that I did not agree with the others, but did not yet know her ways, she said, ‘Young man, I am unpleasant and full of toils. “‘For if anyone comes to my dwelling places, he must be ready to have every table of living things removed; to forget wine, and not to cloud the mixing-bowl of wisdom, which stands in souls without wine; nor will a cloak warm him, nor wool, which was shorn from a living creature; I give them shoes of papyrus and sleep wherever it happens; and if I perceive them overcome by the pleasures of love, I have pits, down which Justice, the attendant of wisdom, carries and pushes them. And I am so severe toward those who choose my ways that I keep bonds of the tongue upon them. But what you will have if you endure these things, learn from me: self-control and justice at once; to regard no one as enviable, and to be rather a terror to tyrants than to lie beneath them; to appear more pleasing to the gods when you sacrifice small things than those who pour out to them the blood of bulls; and to you, being pure, I will give foreknowledge, and fill your eyes so with light that you will distinguish a god, recognize a hero, and expose shadowy phantoms whenever they counterfeit the shapes of men.’ This is the choice of life I made, O wise men of the Egyptians, and having chosen it soundly and in accord with Pythagoras, I neither lied nor was lied to; for I became what one who philosophizes should become, and all that she said she would give to one who philosophizes, I have. For I philosophized about the birth of the art and where its beginnings are, and it seemed to me to belong to extraordinary men who have examined divine things and the soul best, of which the immortal and unbegotten are the springs of generation. “Now this doctrine did not seem to me to belong properly to the Athenians, for they themselves slandered Plato’s account, which he uttered there so divinely and wisely about the soul, and took up opinions about the soul that are opposed to this and not true; and one ought to look at what city, or what nation of men, there is, among whom not one man says it and another does not, but every age utters the same about the soul. As for me, with youth leading me so, and not yet understanding, I looked to you, since you were said to know a great deal beyond ordinary; and I went through these matters with my own teacher. He stopped me and said, ‘Suppose you happened to be one of those who are in love, or of an age to be in love, and then met a beautiful boy and admired him for his bloom, and you asked whose child he was; and suppose he was the son of a father who bred horses and was a general, and his grandfathers had been choregoi, and you called him the son of some trierarch or phylarch—do you think you would win the beloved over by such things, or that you would not seem disagreeable, naming the boy not from his father but from a foreign and bastard seed? So you, in loving wisdom, which the Indians discovered, do not name her from her natural fathers but from adoptive ones; and do you give the Egyptians something greater than if the Nile were again to rise for them, as they themselves sing, mixed with honey?’ “This is what turned me toward the Indians before you, as I reflected about them that such men, consorting with purer rays, are subtler in understanding, and truer in their opinions about nature and the gods, being close to the gods and dwelling near the sources of the life-engendering and hot substance. And on meeting them I felt something toward the promise of those men, of the kind that the Athenians are said to have felt toward the wisdom of Aeschylus. This man was a poet of tragedy, and seeing the art unequipped and not yet adorned, he drew in the choruses that had been sprawling, or invented the interchange of speeches among the actors, refusing the length of the solos, or devised having people die behind the scene so as not to slaughter in the open. Let it not be said that even these things lack wisdom, and let it be granted that they could give an idea to another, less skilful, in his poetry. But he, thinking of himself, how he should speak in a way worthy of making tragedy, and thinking of the art, how it was akin to grandeur rather than to the lowly and what lies under foot, took in hand stage-equipment made in the likeness of the forms of the heroes, set the actors up on the high boot so that they would walk as equals to those, and was the first to adorn them with garments fitting for heroes and heroines. For this the Athenians considered him the father of tragedy, and even called for him when dead to the Dionysia; for by their decree Aeschylus’ plays were staged again and won afresh. “Yet the charm of a well-adorned tragedy is small, for it delights in a small part of the day, like the hour of the Dionysia; but the charm of a philosophy that is composed, as Pythagoras saw fit, and inspired by the divine, as the Indians were before Pythagoras, is not for a short time, but without limit and beyond number. So I do not think I have suffered anything unreasonable in being overcome by a well-adorned philosophy, which the Indians, sending it forth in its fitting dress, wheel out upon a lofty and divine machine. And that I rightly admired them, and rightly consider them wise and blessed, it is time to learn: I saw men living on the earth and not on it, fortified without walls, and possessing nothing but the possessions of all. If I touch on riddles, the wisdom of Pythagoras allows these things, for he handed down also the art of speaking in riddles, having found a doctrine of silence as teacher. Of this wisdom you too were advisers to Pythagoras, in the time when you were praising the ways of the Indians, being Indians of old long ago; but when out of shame at the account, because of which you came here from the wrath of the earth, you wished to seem anything rather than Ethiopians come from the Indians, everything was done by you to that end.” “Hence you stripped yourselves of such equipment as came from there, as though undressing from being Ethiopians together with it; you voted to serve the gods in the Egyptian manner rather than your own; and you took to speaking of the Indians in unfriendly terms, as though you did not slander yourselves in slandering the very people from whom you came; and you have not yet changed this habit, you who even today have made an exhibition of it, abusive and iambic, saying that the Indians practice nothing good but only marvels and enchantments, some for the eyes and some for the ears. Not yet knowing my wisdom, you show yourselves insensible to the repute that attends it. About myself I will say nothing, for may I be what the Indians take me to be; but of the Indians I do not allow you to lay hold. But if the wisdom of the man of Himera holds good for you also—he who, singing of Helen, called his song a recantation against his former account, saying, ‘This account is not true’—it is time for you too to speak, taking on a better opinion about them than the one you now hold. And if you are unmusical for a recantation, you should at least spare men whom the gods deem worthy of what is theirs, while the gods for their part do not disdain what those men possess. You went through some account, Thespesion, about Pytho too, as giving its oracles simply and without artifice, and as an example for your argument you gave the temple built of wax and feathers. “To me not even this seems unadorned; for ‘Bring your feathers, birds, and your wax, bees’ was the speech of one who was furnishing a house and the shape of a house; and he, I think, considering these things small and beneath his own wisdom, needed another temple, and another, and great ones now, of a hundred feet; and in one of these he is said to have hung even golden charms, which held the persuasion of some of the Sirens. He gathered the most famous of the dedications to Pytho for the sake of adornment, and he did not drive away the sculptor's art that brought him colossi into the sanctuary, some of gods, some of men, some of horses and bulls and other animals; nor Glaucus coming with his stand for the bowl; nor the capture of the citadel of Ilium, which Polygnotus paints there. For he did not consider the Lydian gold an ornament of Pytho, but he brought that in on behalf of the Greeks, showing them, I think, the wealth of the barbarians, so that they might long for that rather than for plundering one another; and the Greek manner, fitting to his own wisdom, he furnished and made Pytho splendid with it. I think that for the sake of adornment he even puts the oracles into meters. For if he were not displaying this, he would make his answers like these: ‘Do this or do not do this, go or do not go, make allies or do not make them’—short things, doubtless, or, as you say, naked. But so that he might sound grand and be more pleasing to those who ask, he fitted poetry to them, and does not think there is anything he does not know, but says he knows even the sand, how much it is, having counted it, and has embraced all the measures of the sea. Or do you set this down to marvel-mongering, because Apollo says it with solemnity and with a proper pride? And if you will not be vexed at the remark, Thespesion, there are old women who go to shepherds, carrying sieves, and sometimes to cowherds, healing the sick among the animals by divination, as they say, and they claim to be called wise, and wiser than genuine seers. This is how you appear to me, set beside the wisdom of the Indians: they are divine and adorned like the Pythia, but you—but nothing more shall be said, for fair speech is dear to me, and dear to the Indians, and I welcome it as attendant and guide of the tongue, hunting what I can attain with praise and love for it, and leaving what I cannot reach untouched by blame. “You, when you hear Homer in the Cyclops episode, that the earth, unsown and unploughed, feeds the wildest and most lawless, delight in the story; and if some Edonians or Lydians revel as Bacchants, you do not disbelieve that the earth will give them springs of milk and wine and give them drink; but from the Bacchants of all wisdom you will take away the gifts that come of themselves from the earth? Tripods go of their own accord even to the banquets of the gods, and Ares, ignorant though he is and hostile, has never yet indicted Hephaestus over them, nor have the gods ever heard such an indictment as this: ‘You do wrong, Hephaestus, adorning the banquet of the gods and setting wonders around it.’ Nor did he ever incur blame over the golden handmaidens, as one corrupting his materials, when he made gold breathe; for every art will take care for adornment, because the very existence of the arts was invented for the sake of adornment. Going barefoot and in a rough cloak, with a wallet hung on, is an invention of adornment; for going naked, as you do, looks like an unadorned and plain fashion, but it is cultivated for adornment, and the charge, as they say, of conceit of another kind is not absent from it either. As for the ancestral rites of the Sun and the Indians, and the manner in which the Sun delights to be served, let them keep their own law; for chthonic gods will welcome pits and rites performed in the hollow earth, but the air is the Sun’s vehicle, and those who are to sing to him fittingly must be lifted from the earth and wander the heights with the god. All wish this, but only the Indians can do it.”

12| Damis says he drew breath when he heard this; for the Egyptians were so affected by Apollonius’ words that Thespesion, though black, was visibly blushing, and some astonishment showed in the rest too at what they had heard from the man speaking so vigorously and fluently. The youngest of the Egyptians, whose name was Nilus, leapt up, he says, in wonder, moved over to Apollonius, clasped his hand, and begged him to tell of the meetings he had had with the Indians. Apollonius, he says, replied, “To you I would not begrudge any account, for you, as I see, are a lover of listening and welcome all wisdom; but to Thespesion, and anyone else who thinks the ways of the Indians nonsense, I would not pour out the accounts from there.” At this Thespesion said, “If you were a merchant or shipowner and brought some cargo to us from there, would you think it right, because it came from the Indians, to dispose of it untested, and offer neither a taste of it nor a sample?” Apollonius answered, “I would offer it to those who wanted it. But if someone came to the sea when the ship had just put in, and abused the cargo and slandered it as coming from a land that brings nothing sound, and reproached me for sailing for no worthy freight, and persuaded the others to think so—do you think anyone arriving in such a harbor would drop an anchor or a cable, and not rather shake out the sails and raise the ship out to the open sea, entrusting his goods to the winds more gladly than to unjudging and inhospitable ways?” “But I,” said Nilus, “take hold of the cables, and I beg you, shipowner, to share with me the merchandise you bring; and I would embark on your ship, as a passenger and as the one who keeps the record of your cargo.”

13| Thespesion, seeking to put an end to such talk, said, “It gladdens me, Apollonius, that you are vexed at what you heard; for you would then forgive us too for being vexed at what you said in slander of the wisdom here, before you had even come to any trial of it.” Apollonius was startled for a moment by the remark, since he had not yet heard anything about Thrasybulus and Euphrates; but conjecturing what had happened, as he was accustomed to do, he said, “The Indians, Thespesion, would not have suffered this, nor would they have paid attention to Euphrates putting out such stories, for they are wise at foreknowing. As for me, I had no private quarrel with Euphrates; but in turning him away from money and from approving gain by any means, I seemed to give him counsel neither suitable nor possible for him, and he regards this as a charge against him and never ceases composing something against me. And since he seemed to you plausible in slandering my character, consider that he slandered you before me. For I see no small dangers for the one who is slandered—he will be hated, though he has done no wrong—but those who listen to slanders are not free of danger either, if first they are caught honoring falsehood and thinking it worthy of the same regard as truth, and then lightness and gullibility—and to be overcome by these is shameful even in a boy—and they will seem envious, making their envy the teacher of an unjust hearing, and they themselves more liable to the slanders which they believe true of others; for the natures of men are readier to do what they do not disbelieve. “May a man who is ready for such things not become a tyrant, nor stand at the head of a people, for even the democracy will become a tyranny under him; nor sit as a judge, for he will decide nothing rightly; nor captain a ship, for the ship will fall into factions; nor command an army, for the enemy will prosper; nor philosophize, being so disposed, for he will form no opinion in line with the truth. And Euphrates has taken from you even your being wise; for how could men whom he has led astray by a lie think themselves worthy of wisdom, which they abandoned for one who persuaded them of what is not credible?” Thespesion, calming him, said, “Enough of Euphrates and of small-minded talk; for we might even become reconcilers between you and him, thinking that to arbitrate among the wise is itself wise.” “But who,” said Apollonius, “will reconcile me to you? For one who has been lied about must surely be at war on account of the falsehood. Let it stand so,” Apollonius went on, “and let us take up serious matters, for this will reconcile us more.”

14| Nilus, desiring to hear the man, said, “You should begin the serious discussion by recounting for us your journey to the nation of the Indians and the serious pursuits you carried on there, which were surely brilliant.” And Thespesion said, “I too long to hear of the wisdom of Phraotes, since you are said to bring from the Indians images of his words.” Apollonius, taking the events at Babylon as the starting point of his account, went through them all, and they listened gladly, devoted to his story. When it was noon they broke off their serious business, for at that hour the Naked Sages too attend to the sacred rites.

15| As Apollonius and his company were dining, Nilus stood by them with vegetables, loaves and dried fruits, some carried by himself and some by others, and said, “The wise men send you these gifts of hospitality, very handsomely, for you and for me; for I shall dine with you, not uninvited, as the saying goes, but inviting myself.” Apollonius said, “It is a pleasant gift of hospitality that you bring, young man, yourself and your own character, for you seem to philosophize without guile, and to welcome the ways of the Indians and of Pythagoras. Recline here and dine with us.” “I am reclining,” he said, “but you will not have food enough to fill me.” “You seem,” said Apollonius, “to be a good eater and a mighty one at table.” “Mighty indeed,” he said; “for when a banquet so great and so splendid has been set before me by you, and I am not yet filled, but after a short pause come back to eat again, what will you say but that I am insatiable and a dreadful glutton?” “Fill yourself,” said Apollonius; “and as for the resources of discourse, as many as there are, you supply some yourself, and I shall supply the others.”

16| When they had dined, Nilus said, “For the rest of the time I served in the ranks with the Naked Sages, ranking myself with them as though with some light troops or slingers; but now I shall serve as a hoplite, and your shield will adorn me.” “But I think,” said Apollonius, “Egyptian, that you will be blamed by Thespesion and the others, because, without even putting us to any closer test, you will throw yourself into our ways more readily than a choice of life allows.” “I think so,” he said; “but if there will be blame for one who chooses, perhaps there is blame also for one who does not, and they will be found guilty rather, if they choose the same things I do; for the fact that, being both older and wiser, they did not choose long ago what I choose now would give just ground of complaint against them, since, with such advantages, they did not choose the better course for their use.” “That is not an ignoble speech, young man,” said Apollonius; “but see that they do not appear, by this very thing, in respect of wisdom and of age, to have chosen those ways rightly and to be declining these on reasonable grounds, and that you do not seem to take up a bolder argument, establishing yourself rather than following them.” The Egyptian replied, against Apollonius’ expectation, “What it is fitting for a young man to follow in his elders is not neglected by me. For when I thought there was wisdom among those men, such as does not belong to any other people, I attached myself to them; and my reason for the impulse was this. “My father once sailed willingly to the Red Sea, and he was in command of the ship that the Egyptians send to the nation of the Indians; mingling with the Indians on the coast, he brought back reports about the wise men there, close to the accounts you have given us. And hearing from him also such an account as this—that the Indians are the wisest of men, that the Ethiopians are colonists of the Indians, and that these keep their ancestral wisdom and look to what is at home—when I became a youth I let go my father’s estate to those who wanted it, and naked I frequented these Naked Sages, to learn the ways of the Indians, or ways at least akin to theirs. They appeared to me wise, but not in that way; and when I asked them why they did not philosophize in the Indian manner, they fell into slanders of the Indians much like those spoken to you today, and they enrolled me, young as you see me still, into their own company, fearing, I think, that I would leap away from them and sail to the Red Sea as my father once did. By the gods, I would not have let that pass; for I would have gone forward even as far as the hill of the wise men, if some god had not sent you here as my helper, so that without sailing the Red Sea or putting in among the Colpitae I might taste Indian wisdom. I am not making my choice of life today, but chose long ago, and did not have what I thought I would have. For what is strange if a man who has missed something goes back to what he was hunting? “And if I should also bring those men over to this, and become adviser to them of what I have persuaded myself of, what bold thing, tell me, would I be doing? For youth is not to be driven off from thinking of something better than old age does; and whoever becomes adviser to another in a wisdom he has himself chosen escapes, surely, the charge of urging on others what he is not himself persuaded of; and whoever takes the good things that come to him from fortune and uses them alone wrongs the goods, for he deprives them of appearing pleasant to more people.”

17| When Nilus had strung together such words, and so youthfully, Apollonius answered, “About payment, will you not first talk with me, since you are in love with my wisdom?” “Let us talk,” said Nilus, “and ask whatever you wish.” “I ask you,” he said, “to keep to the choice you yourself have made, and not to trouble the Naked Sages by counseling what you will not persuade.” “I shall obey,” he said, “and let the payment be agreed.” They spent their time in such serious matters; and when Nilus afterward asked for how long a time he would spend among the Naked Sages, he said, “As long as the wisdom of these men deserves from one who keeps their company. Then we shall make our way to Catadupa for the sake of the springs; for it is a delight to see the Nile's beginnings, and moreover to hear it roaring.”

18| After conversing thus and recalling some Indian matters, they slept on the grass; and at daybreak, having offered the customary prayers, they followed Nilus, who led them to Thespesion. Having greeted one another and sat down together in the grove, they began a discussion, and Apollonius opened it. “How much it is worth not to hide wisdom,” he said, “yesterday’s speeches make clear. For the Indians taught me all of their wisdom that I thought pertained to me, and I remember my teachers and go about teaching what I heard from them; and I would be a gain to you as well, if you sent me away knowing your wisdom too; for I would not cease recounting your teachings to the Greeks and writing of them to the Indians.”

19| “Ask,” they said, “for speech follows a question.” And Apollonius said, “I shall ask you first about the gods: what did you learn that made you hand down to the people here, with few exceptions, strange and ridiculous forms of the gods? Few, did I say? Very few indeed are the figures set up wisely and in a godlike form; the rest of your sanctuaries appear to be honors paid to irrational and obscure animals rather than to gods.” Thespesion, annoyed, said, “And how will you say the images among you are set up?” “In the most beautiful and god-pleasing way,” he said, “that gods can be fashioned.” “You mean the Zeus at Olympia, I suppose,” said Thespesion, “and the seat of Athena, and the Cnidian and the Argive, and all that are so beautiful and full of youth.” “Not only these,” said Apollonius, “but I say that once and for all the image-making of others touches what is fitting, while you laugh at the divine rather than believe in it.” “Did the Pheidiases,” said Thespesion, “and the Praxiteleses perhaps go up to heaven, take impressions of the forms of the gods, and make them by their art? Or was it something else that set them to modelling?” “Something else,” he said, “and a thing full of wisdom.” “What?” said Thespesion; “for you could not name anything but imitation.” “Imagination,” said Apollonius, “wrought these works—an artist wiser than imitation. Imitation will make what it has seen; imagination will make even what it has never seen, for it will conceive it by reference to what is real. Imitation is often thrown off by shock, imagination by nothing, for it advances undismayed toward what it has itself conceived. “One who has in mind the form of Zeus must see him together with heaven and the seasons and the stars, as Pheidias then set out to do; and one who is about to fashion Athena must think of armies and counsel and the arts, and how she leapt up out of Zeus himself. But if you fashion a hawk, an owl, a wolf, or a dog and bring it into the sanctuaries in place of Hermes and Athena and Apollo, the beasts and birds will seem enviable among images, while the gods will stand far short of their own glory.” “You seem,” said Thespesion, “to examine our things without testing them. For it is wise, if anything of the Egyptians is, not to be bold with the forms of the gods, but to make them symbolic and hinted at; for so they appear more august.” Apollonius laughed and said, “O men, you have gained much from the wisdom of the Egyptians and Ethiopians, if a dog and an ibis and a goat will appear more august and godlike than you! For this I hear from the wise Thespesion. What is august or awe-inspiring in these? The perjurers and temple-robbers and buffoonish peoples more likely despise such sanctuaries than fear them; and if these things are more august when merely hinted at, the gods in Egypt would fare far more august if no image of them were set up at all, and if you used some other way of speaking of the gods, wiser and more secret. “For it was possible to build temples for them and mark out altars, and to prescribe what should be sacrificed and what should not, and when, and how much, and with what words or acts, but not to bring in an image, and to leave the forms of the gods to those who enter the sanctuaries; for the mind draws and moulds something better than craftsmanship. But you have taken from the gods both their being well seen and their being hinted at.” To this Thespesion said, “There was a certain Socrates of Athens, senseless, like us, an old man, who counted the dog, the goose, and the plane tree as gods, and swore by them.” “Not senseless,” said Apollonius, “but divine and truly wise; for he swore by these not as gods, but so as not to swear by gods.”

20| After this Thespesion, as though changing the subject, asked Apollonius about the Laconian whip, and whether the Lacedaemonians are beaten publicly. “Blows from men, Thespesion,” he said, “are received by the freeborn and reputable themselves most of all.” “And what do they do to servants who commit wrongs?” “They no longer kill them,” he said, “as Lycurgus once allowed, but the same whip falls on them.” “And how does Greece judge them?” “They gather,” he said, “as for the Hyacinthia and the Gymnopaidiai, to watch with pleasure and every eagerness.” “Then are the good Greeks not ashamed,” said Thespesion, “either at seeing those who once ruled them whipped in public, or at having been ruled by men who are publicly whipped? And how did you not set this right? For they say you took care of the Lacedaemonians too.” “What could be set right,” said Apollonius, “I advised, and they zealously did it; for they are the most free of the Greeks, and alone obedient to one who counsels well. But the custom of the whips is performed for the Artemis from the Scythians, since oracles, they say, direct it; and to oppose the gods by law is madness, I think.” “You have not called the gods of the Greeks wise, Apollonius,” said Thespesion, “if they became counselors of whips to those who practice freedom.” “Not of whips,” said Apollonius, “but of sprinkling the altar with the blood of men, since among the Scythians this was demanded; and the Lacedaemonians, devising a way out of the inescapable sacrifice, came to the contest of endurance, by which it is possible not to die and yet make an offering to the goddess from their own blood.” “Why then,” said Thespesion, “do they not sacrifice strangers to Artemis, as the Scythians once held right?” “Because,” he said, “it is in keeping with no Greek to practice barbarian customs.” “And yet they would seem more humane if they sacrificed one or two strangers somewhere than by using expulsion of foreigners against all.” “Let us not attack Lycurgus, Thespesion,” said Apollonius; “for one must understand the man, and that his refusal to let strangers linger did not mean a lack of intercourse, but the health of their practices, with outsiders not mingling in Sparta.” “For my part,” said Thespesion, “I would have considered the Spartans men such as they claim to seem, if living together with strangers they did not depart from their ways at home; for it was necessary, I think, to acquire the virtues not by being like when others are absent, but by being seen alike when they are present. But they, though they used expulsions of foreigners, had their practices corrupted, and appeared to act like those whom they most hated of the Greeks. At any rate their affairs at sea, and the levying of tribute afterward, were planned in a more Attic fashion, and what they thought they had to make war on the Athenians for, they came to do themselves, winning in the fighting against the Athenians but being defeated in what the Athenians chose to practice. “And the bringing in of the deity from the Taurians and Scythians was itself the act of men who held foreign things as customary. If this was from oracles, what need was there of a whip? Why make a slavish endurance? It would have been more Laconian, in respect of strength against death, I think, for a Spartan youth to be willingly sacrificed on the altar; for this would have shown Sparta braver, and kept Greece from setting itself against them as equals. And if it was reasonable to spare the young for war, still the law among the Scythians for men of sixty was more fitting for the Lacedaemonians to practise than for the Scythians, if they praise death genuinely and not for boasting’s sake. I do not say this against the Lacedaemonians, but to you, Apollonius; for if we bitterly examine ancient customs, too hoary for their reasons to be known, setting up an examination of the divine as to why it delights in them, many strange arguments of this sort of philosophy will spring up. We might lay hold even of the rite at Eleusis, asking why this and not that, and of what the Samothracians perform, since not this but that is done by them, and of the Dionysia and the phallus and the form at Cyllene, and we should quickly be slandering everything. Let us go, then, to whatever other subject you like, honoring also the saying of Pythagoras, which is ours; for it is good, if not about everything, then at least about such matters, to keep silent.” Apollonius replied, “If you had wanted, Thespesion, to make the discussion serious, Lacedaemon would have seemed to you to say many noble things on behalf of what it practices soundly and above all the Greeks; but since you so wave the subject off that you do not even consider it holy to speak about such matters, let us go to another subject, one of great worth, as I persuade myself. I shall ask something about justice.”

21| “Let us take up the subject,” said Thespesion, “for it concerns the wise and the not wise alike. But so that we do not confuse it by weaving in the opinions of the Indians and go away without result in the discussion, first tell what the Indians held about justice; for it is likely that you tested this matter there, and if the opinion is right, we shall agree, and if we should say something wiser ourselves, you will agree, for this too is part of justice.” “Excellent, Thespesion,” said Apollonius, “and you have spoken most pleasingly for me. Listen, then, to what was studied there. I told them how I had once become the captain of a great ship, when my soul was caring for another body, and how I thought myself most just, because pirates hired me to betray the ship by putting in where they were going to ambush it for what it carried, and I promised this, so that they would not attack us, but sailed past them and went beyond the place.” “Did the Indians accept this as justice?” said Thespesion. “They laughed,” said Apollonius, “and said that not doing wrong is not justice.” “Rightly,” said Thespesion, “did the Indians reject it; for neither is not thinking something foolish prudence, nor is not leaving one’s post courage, nor is not falling in with adulterers self-control, nor is it worthy of praise not to appear bad; for everything that stands equally apart from honor and from punishment is not yet virtue.” “How, then, Thespesion,” Apollonius asked, “shall we award the just man a crown, and for what conduct?” “Would you not,” he said, “have studied justice more fully and fittingly than when a king ruling so great and so prosperous a land came upon you philosophizing on kingship, the most just possession?” “If it had been Phraotes who came,” said Apollonius, “you would rightly blame our not having studied justice in his presence; but since you saw the man, in what I told yesterday about him, drunk and vexed at all philosophy, why was it necessary to cause a disturbance? Why should we put ourselves to the effort of display before a man who regarded everything as Sybaritic luxury? But since justice is to be tracked down by wise men like us rather than by kings and generals, let us go to the truly just man. For what I considered myself to be when the ship was in question, and others who do not lay hold of wrongs, you say are not yet just, nor worthy to be honored.” “And reasonably,” said Thespesion; “for neither at Athens nor at Lacedaemon would a motion ever be written to crown so-and-so because he is not one of those who have prostituted themselves, or to make so-and-so a citizen because he does not rob the temples. Who then is the just man, and doing what? For I know of no one crowned for justice, nor a motion written for a just man that so-and-so should be crowned since by doing such-and-such he appears just; for to anyone who thinks of the story of Palamedes at Troy and of Socrates at Athens, justice will not seem even to be fortunate among men, for these men, being most just, suffered the most unjust things. “Yet these men perished on a reputation of wrongdoing, a vote having been cast against what was straight; but Aristides son of Lysimachus justice itself once destroyed, and such a man, for such a virtue, went off into exile. I know that justice will seem ridiculous; for being ordained by Zeus and the Fates so that men may not be wronged, it nowhere ordains for itself that it not be wronged. But for me the case of Aristides is enough to show who is the man not unjust and who is the just man. Tell me: is this not that Aristides of whom you who come from the Greeks say that he sailed to the islands about the tribute, set it at a moderate level for them, and returned in the same cloak?” “This is he,” said Apollonius, “through whom the love of poverty once flourished.” “If then,” said Thespesion, “two popular leaders at Athens were to praise Aristides just back from the allied territory, and one proposed to crown him because he has not come back rich, nor having gathered any living for himself, but is the poorest of the Athenians and poorer than he had been before; and the other in turn were to write a decree of this sort: ‘Since Aristides, not setting the tribute beyond what the allies could bear, but according to what land each had, took care of their concord with the Athenians and of their appearing to bear it without resentment, let it be decreed that he be crowned for justice’—do you not think that he himself might speak against the first motion, as unworthy of the life he had lived, if he were to be honored for things in which he does no wrong, while the second perhaps he himself would approve, as aiming at what he had in mind? For looking to the advantage of both the Athenians and their subjects he took care of the proportion of the tribute, and this was shown more clearly after Aristides; for when the Athenians transgressed what had been decided by him and assessed the islands more heavily, their naval power, by which they were most formidable, was torn apart, that of the Lacedaemonians advanced to the sea, nothing of their power held together, and the whole subject empire rushed toward revolt and set about breaking away. The just man, then, Apollonius, by straight reckoning, is not the man who is not unjust, but the man who does just things himself and also sets others on the way to not doing wrong; and from such justice other virtues will grow, but above all the judicial and the legislative. For such a man will judge far more justly than those who swear over the cut victims, and will legislate, as the Solons and the Lycurguses did; for with them too justice began the writing of laws.”

22| So much, says Damis, did they discuss about the just man, and Apollonius agreed with the argument, for he assents to what is soundly said. After philosophizing also about the soul, that it is immortal, and about nature, in terms much like the opinions of Plato in the Timaeus, and after discussing at greater length the laws among the Greeks, Apollonius said, “For me the road here came about for your sake and for the sake of the sources of the Nile; having come as far as Egypt, I might be forgiven for not knowing them, but having advanced to Ethiopia, as I have, it would bring reproach to pass them by and not draw some accounts from them.” “Go, and good fortune to you,” said Thespesion, “and pray to the springs whatever is dear to you, for they are divine. I think you will make as guide the man once of Naucratis, now of Memphis, Timasion; for he is familiar with the springs and so pure that he has no need of sprinkling. But to you, Nilus, we wish to say something among ourselves.” The sense of these words was not hidden from Apollonius, for he understood that they were ill-disposed, since Nilus was devoted to him; and leaving the conversation to them, he went off to make preparations, to set out at dawn. Not long after Nilus came, and reported nothing of what he had heard, but laughed often to himself; and no one asked about the laughter, but they spared the secret.

23| That evening, after dining and talking there of nothing of great importance, they went to sleep; and at daybreak, after bidding the Naked Sages farewell, they set out on the road that leads into the mountains, keeping to the left of the Nile, and saw the following things worth mentioning. The Catadupa are earthy mountains, similar to the Tmolus of the Lydians, and from them the Nile rushes down, drawing along the earth with which it makes Egypt. The echo of the stream as it breaks down from the mountains and with a crash falls into the Nile seems harsh and unbearable to hear, and many who had advanced beyond a moderate distance turned back, having lost their hearing.

24| As Apollonius and his company went forward, breast-like hills appeared, bearing trees whose leaves, bark and gum the Ethiopians count as fruit; and they saw lions near the road and leopards and other such beasts, and none attacked them, but they leapt away from them as though struck with awe at the men. Deer and gazelles and ostriches and wild asses were seen in great numbers too, but most of all the boagri and the butragi; these animals are composed, the one of deer and bull, the other of those from which it has taken its name. They also came upon bones of these and half-eaten bodies; for lions, once they have glutted themselves on warm prey, scorn what is left over, trusting, I think, that they will hunt again.

25| Here live the nomad Ethiopians, who have their cities on wagons, and near them the people who hunt elephants and, after cutting the animals up, make a market of them, which is how they got their name, from the selling of elephants. The Nasamones, the Man-eaters, the Pygmies and the Shadow-feet are likewise Ethiopian nations, and they reach down to the Ethiopian Ocean, which no one sails into except those carried there against their will.

26| As the men were talking about the wild beasts and philosophizing about nature, which feeds one creature one way and another another, an echo struck them like thunder, though not yet hard thunder, but hollow and still within the cloud. Timasion said, “The cataract is near, gentlemen, the last for those going down and the first for those going up.” They went forward perhaps ten stadia, and they say they saw a river issuing from the mountain, no smaller than the Marsyas and Maeander are at their first meetings of waters. After praying to the Nile they went on, and they no longer saw any wild beasts, since these are timid by nature and live beside calm waters rather than torrential and roaring ones; but after about fifteen stadia they heard a second cataract, which was by now harsh and unbearable to perceive, for it was twice the size of the former one and fell from higher mountains. Damis says that his own ears, together with those of a certain companion, were so battered that he himself turned back and begged Apollonius not to go further; but Apollonius, vigorously, together with Timasion and Nilus, pressed on to the third cataract, and on coming back reported the following. Peaks hang over the Nile there to a height of about eight stadia, and the bank facing the mountains is a brow of quarried rock beyond description; the springs hang down from the mountains and spill over onto the rocky bank, and from there they pour into the Nile, surging and white. The violent action that happens around these falls is many times greater than at the earlier ones, and the echo leaping from them against the mountains makes the investigation of the stream hard to hear. As for the road ahead, leading to the first springs, they say it is impassable to travel and impassable even to imagine, for there are many tales about daemons, such as Pindar has sung wisely about the daemon whom he sets over these springs to keep the Nile in due measure.

27| After the cataracts they lodged in a small village of Ethiopia, and toward evening they were at dinner, mixing seriousness with play, when they heard a great shout from the women of the village urging one another to catch something and drive it off. They called their own husbands too to share in the work, and the men, snatching up sticks and stones and whatever came to each man’s hand, called their neighbors together as if their marriages had been wronged. For a phantom of a satyr, it seems, had been haunting the village for ten months now, raging after the women, and it was said to have slain two of them, the ones it seemed to love most. When his companions were shaken, Apollonius said, “Do not be afraid; some satyr is behaving outrageously here.” “Yes, by Zeus,” said Nilus, “one that we Naked Sages, though he has been outrageous for a long time, have not yet stopped from leaping about.” “But there is a remedy,” he said, “against these outrageous creatures, which Midas is said once to have used. This Midas belonged to the race of the satyrs, as his ears showed, and a satyr, because of the kinship, came in revel against him, slandering Midas’s ears, and not only singing but also playing the pipe at him. Midas, I think, had heard from his mother that a satyr hunted with wine, when he falls asleep, becomes sober and is reconciled; so he mixed the spring that was by his palace with wine and let the satyr loose upon it, and the satyr drank and was caught. And to show that the story is not false, let us go to the village headman, and if the villagers have wine, let us mix it for the satyr, and he will undergo the same as Midas’s satyr.” This was agreed, and when he had poured four Egyptian jars of wine into a trough from which the village sheep drank, he called the satyr, rebuking him in some unseen way. The satyr was not yet visible, but the wine kept sinking, as though being drunk; and when it had been drunk up, Apollonius said, “Let us pour a libation to the satyr, for he is asleep.” So saying, he led the villagers to a cave of the Nymphs, not yet a plethron from the village, and showing the satyr asleep in it, told them to refrain from striking or reviling him, for he had ceased from his folly. This act was of that kind, and it was, by Zeus, no side-work of Apollonius’s journey but a work done in passing; and if anyone comes upon the man’s letter, in which, writing to a youth who was behaving outrageously, he says that he brought a satyr daemon to his senses in Ethiopia, he should remember this account. Let us not disbelieve that satyrs exist and lay hands on matters of love; for I know that on Lemnos, in the case of one of my own contemporaries, whose mother, it was reported, had been visited by a satyr, he looked just as this story would lead one to expect, since he seemed to have a fawn skin grown to him and worn across his back, the front hooves of which clasped the neck and were attached to his chest. But let me say no more about this, for neither is experience to be disbelieved nor am I.

28| When he came down from Ethiopia, the quarrel with Euphrates grew greatest at that time, through the daily discussions; he left these to Menippus and Nilus, himself rebuking Euphrates only slightly, while he took great care of Nilus.

29| When Titus had taken Jerusalem and everything was full of corpses, and the neighboring nations were crowning him, he did not think himself worthy of this, saying that he had not done these things himself, but had lent his hands to a god who had shown his anger. Apollonius praised this, for there appeared in the man good judgment and an understanding of things human and divine, and not to be crowned for blood was full of temperance. He therefore composed a letter to him, making Damis its bearer, and wrote as follows: “Apollonius to Titus, general of the Romans, greetings. Since you did not wish to be proclaimed for the spear, nor for enemy blood, I give you the crown of temperance, since you know for what deeds one should be crowned. Farewell.” Titus, greatly delighted with the letter, said, “I am grateful to you for myself and for my father, and I will remember these things. For I have taken Jerusalem, but you have taken me.”

30| Proclaimed emperor in Rome and judged worthy of these prizes of valor, he was leaving to share the rule equally with his father; and thinking of Apollonius, how greatly valuable he would be to him even if he spent only a short time with him, he begged him to come to Tarsus. And embracing him when he came, he said, “My father wrote to me about everything on which he made you his adviser, and see, here is the letter, in which you are written down as his benefactor and as everything that we are. I am just thirty years old, yet I am thought worthy of what my father received at sixty, and I am called to rule before I know, perhaps, how to be ruled; I am afraid that I am laying hold of greater things than I should.” Apollonius felt his neck, for it was strong, like the body of athletes, and said, “Who will force a bull to put so strong a neck under a yoke?” “The one who from my youth,” said Titus, “raised me like a calf.” He meant his own father, and that he would be ruled by him alone, since his father had accustomed him from boyhood to heed him. “I am glad,” said Apollonius, “first to see you prepared to follow your father, by whom even those who are not his children by nature are glad to be ruled, and ready to attend his doors, where you will be attended together with him. And when youth goes along with old age toward rule, what lyre, what pipe will sing so sweet and blended a harmony? For the older will be matched with the young, so that old age will have strength and youth will not run into disorder.”

31| “And for me, Tyanean,” he said, “what will you advise about rule and kingship?” “What you have persuaded yourself of,” he said, “for since you are subordinate to your father, it is clear that you will become like him. And I would now tell the saying of Archytas, for it is noble and worth learning. Archytas was a man of Tarentum, wise in the doctrines of Pythagoras. Writing about the upbringing of children, he says: Let a father be a pattern of virtue for his sons, since fathers too will walk more earnestly toward virtue if their sons become like them. And I will introduce to you Demetrius, my own companion, who will be with you for as long as you wish, teaching what the good ruler ought to do.” “And what is this man’s wisdom, Apollonius?” “Frankness,” he said, “and speaking the truth, and being struck with awe by no one; for he belongs to the Cynic power.” When Titus heard the word “dog” with displeasure, he said, “Yet in Homer the young Telemachus seemed to need two dogs, and they were sent with the youth as attendants to the assembly of the Ithacans, though they were without reason; but with you will be a dog who will bark wisely and not without reason, on your behalf at others and at you yourself, if you do any wrong.” “Give me the attendant dog,” he said, “and I permit him even to bite me if he perceives me doing any injustice.” “A letter will be written to him,” he said, “for he is philosophizing at Rome.” “Let it be written,” he said. “And I should like to write one to you on my behalf, so that you might become our companion on the road to Rome.” “I will come,” said Apollonius, “when it is better for both of us.”

32| Titus sent away those present, and when they were by themselves, said, “Tyanean, we are alone; for you allow me, I suppose, to ask about what matters most to me?” “Ask,” said Apollonius, “and I will answer all the more eagerly, the greater the matters.” “My question will be about my own soul, and whom I should most guard against, unless I seem a coward for fearing these things already.” “That is a cautious and watchful question,” said Apollonius, “for this is what one must foresee above all.” And looking up to the sun, he swore by it that he himself was going to speak to him about these matters even without being asked, for the gods had shown him that he should warn Titus, while his father lived, to fear those most hostile to his father, and after his father’s death those closest to himself. “And in what manner shall I die?” he said. “The manner,” said Apollonius, “that Odysseus is said to have died, for they say that his death too came from the sea.” Damis interprets this as follows: that he should guard against the barb of the stingray, with which they say Odysseus was struck, and that after holding the empire for two years after his father he would die by the sea-hare; and this fish provides juices unspeakable, deadlier to men than anything in the sea and on land. Nero, he says, introduced this hare into his own dishes against his bitterest enemies, and Domitian did so against his brother Titus, not thinking it terrible to rule with a brother, but with one who was gentle and good. When they had talked in this way in private, they embraced each other in public, and as Titus left, Apollonius addressed him, saying, “Conquer, emperor, your enemies with arms and your father with virtues.”

33| This was the letter to Demetrius: “Apollonius the philosopher to Demetrius the Dog, greetings. I give you to the emperor Titus as a teacher of the character of kingship; do me the favor of speaking the truth to him, and be everything to him except angry. Farewell.”

34| The people who live in Tarsus had at other times been vexed with Apollonius, both because of his rebukes, since he made them intense, and because, being slack and luxurious, they could not endure even the force of his speech; but now they were so overcome by the man that they thought of him as their founder and the pillar of the city. For the emperor was sacrificing publicly, and the city assembled and made supplication for matters of the greatest weight, and he said he would remember these things before his father and would himself serve as ambassador for what they asked. Apollonius came forward and said, “And if I should convict some of these men of being enemies of you and of your father, men who sent embassies for the sake of revolution to Jerusalem, hidden allies of your most manifest enemies, what will they suffer?” “What else,” said Titus, “than to perish?” “Then is it not shameful,” said Apollonius, “to exact penalties at once but to grant benefactions late, and to make the one on your own judgment but to put off the other to a sharing of opinion?” The emperor, delighted, said, “I grant the gifts, for my father will not resent my being worsted by the truth, and by you.”

35| Such were the nations, they say, that Apollonius visited, both in his own earnestness and in being the object of others’ earnestness. The journeys that followed were many for the man, though no longer so many, nor to any nations other than those he knew; for after he came down from Ethiopia he spent a long time in Egypt by the sea, and among the Phoenicians, the Cilicians, the Ionians, the Achaeans and the Italians he again nowhere failed to show himself the same. For while knowing oneself is thought difficult, I for my part consider it harder for the wise man to remain like himself; for he will not change those who are wicked by nature for the better unless he has first practiced not changing himself. On this I have spoken sufficiently in other writings, teaching those who read them with some diligence that the true man will neither change in any respect nor be enslaved. But so that we do not go on at great length by teaching precisely what he philosophized among each people, nor again appear to skip over an account that we are taking pains to hand on to those who do not know the man, it seems to me best to go through the more serious of these matters and as many as will be thought worthy of memory. Let us regard them as like the visits of the Asclepiads.

36| A youth who kept himself uneducated was educating birds and making them his housemates for the sake of their wisdom; he taught them to talk the way men do and to trill the way pipes do. Meeting him, Apollonius said, “What are you practicing?” And when the youth went through for him his nightingales and blackbirds and all the fine speech he was teaching his plovers, though his own speech was plainly uncultivated, Apollonius said, “You seem to me to be ruining the birds, first by not allowing them their own utterance, which is so sweet that not even the musical instruments could be brought to imitate it, and then by making them pupils of voicelessness, since you yourself speak Greek worse than anyone. And you are wearing down, young man, your own house too; for looking at your attendants and how you are furnished, you appear to me to be one of the delicate and not of the poor, and men of that sort are milked by the informers, who lift up their tongues against them as stings. And what will you do with your love of birds then? For even all the songs of all the nightingales together will not chase them away as they press and push upon you, but you must keep bailing out from what you have and throw them the gold, as one throws sops to dogs, and if they bark, give again and again, and then yourself go hungry later and be at a loss. You need a clean break now and some change in your ways, so that you do not shed your wealth like feathers before you notice it and are living in a way more deserving to be lamented by birds than sung by them. “The remedy for the change is not great. For there is in every city a kind of men whom you do not yet know, and they call them teachers. Give these a little from your property and you will safely keep the greater part, for they will teach you rhetoric, the kind of the marketplace, and the art is easy. If I saw you still a boy, I would advise you to go to the doors of philosophers and sophists and fence your house with all wisdom; but since you happen to be past the age for this, at least learn to speak on your own behalf, considering that if you had learned the more complete things, you could look like a man who fights as a hoplite and is fearsome, but having learned these you will have the equipment of light-armed troops and slingers; for you would pelt the informers as you would dogs.” The youth understood this, and leaving his occupation with birds he went to teachers, by whom both his judgment and his tongue were strengthened.

37| Of two stories told at Sardis, one that the Pactolus once carried gold dust to Croesus, the other that trees are older than the earth, he said that the former was believed with good reason, for there was once gold in the sandy soil of Tmolus and the rains swept it down into the Pactolus, and in time, as such things tend to do, it was washed away and ran out. But laughing at the other story, he said, “You say that trees are older than the earth, but I, who have philosophized for so long a time, have not yet come to know that the stars are older than the heaven,” teaching that nothing could come to be before that in which it grows exists.

38| When the governor of Syria was stirring up Antioch to faction, casting suspicions among the people by which the city, meeting in assembly, was divided, a mighty earthquake struck, and they cowered and, as is the custom in portents from Zeus, prayed on one another’s behalf. Apollonius came forward and said, “The god has plainly become your reconciler, and you would not fall into faction again, fearing the same things.” And he brought them to consider what they would suffer, and that they would fear the same things as the others.

39| It is worth recalling this too. A man was sacrificing to Earth for a treasure and did not shrink from praying to Apollonius for it as well. Apollonius, considering what things he longed for, said, “I see a formidable money-maker.” “An unlucky one, rather,” said the man, “who has nothing except a few things, which do not suffice to feed his house.” “You seem,” said Apollonius, “to support many idle servants, for you yourself do not appear to be one of the unwise.” The man wept quietly and said, “I have four little daughters and need four dowries, and I now have perhaps twenty thousand drachmas; and when this is divided among the daughters, they will seem to have received little, and I shall perish having nothing.” Apollonius, moved toward him, said, “I will take care of you, and so will Earth, for they say you sacrifice to her.” And saying this he went out into the suburbs like one who is buying crops, and seeing a plot full of olive trees, pleased with the trees, how fine they were and large, and with a little garden in it in which beehives and flowers were to be seen, he went into the garden as if to examine something further, and after praying to Pandora he walked back into the city. He went to the owner of the field, a man whose wealth had been acquired by the most lawless means, by denouncing the property of Phoenicians, and said, “The plot at such and such a place, how much did you pay for it, and what have you spent on it?” The man said that he had bought the field last year, for fifteen thousand, and had not yet worked anything on it; and Apollonius persuaded him to sell it to the man for twenty thousand, making a windfall of the five thousand for him. The man who longed for the treasure did not yet understand the gift, and did not even think he had an equal amount, but so much less, in that the twenty thousand in his hands would be at his own disposal, while the field in exchange for it would lie exposed to frosts and hail and the other things that destroy crops. But when he promptly found a jar of three thousand darics right by the beehive in the garden, and got a rich harvest of olives while the rest of the land was not then bearing richly, hymns were sung by him to the man, and everything was full of suitors courting him.

40| I found these things too about the man worth remembering. A certain man seemed to be in love with the statue of Aphrodite that stands naked at Cnidus; he set up some offerings and said he would set up others for the sake of marriage. To Apollonius this seemed absurd in any case, and since Cnidus did not object, but said the goddess would appear the more manifest if she were loved, Apollonius decided to purify the temple of this folly. When the Cnidians asked him whether he wished to correct anything in the sacrifices or the prayers, he said, “I shall correct eyes, and let the ancestral customs of the temple stay as they are.” So he called the man who was being so soft and asked him whether he believed in gods; and when the man said that he believed in gods so much that he even loved them, and mentioned the marriage that he thought he would sacrifice for, Apollonius said, “The poets puff you up by saying that Anchises and Peleus were wedded to goddesses, but I know this about loving and being loved: gods love gods, men love men, beasts love beasts, and in short like loves like, for the begetting of true and kindred offspring; and what is of another kind, coming together with what is unlike, is neither union nor love. And if you reflected on the story of Ixion, you would not come to the thought of loving what is unlike. He, made like a wheel, is racked through the heavens, but you, if you do not leave the temple, will be destroyed throughout all the earth, unable even to say that the gods did not judge justly in your case.” Thus the drunken folly was quenched, and the man who claimed to be in love went away after sacrificing for pardon.

41| Once, when earthquakes had gripped the cities on the Hellespont’s left side, Egyptians and Chaldeans went around them collecting money, claiming they would offer sacrifices of ten talents to Earth and Poseidon. The cities contributed, some from public funds and some from private households, in the grip of fear; and these men said they would not sacrifice on the cities’ behalf unless the money was first deposited on the bankers’ tables. The man resolved not to abandon the people of the Hellespont. He went into the cities and drove these men out as people who had made a treasure-house of other people’s misfortunes; then, discovering the causes of the divine anger and sacrificing as befitted each city, he warded off the visitation at small cost, and the earth stood still.

42| At about the same time the emperor Domitian made laws forbidding the making of eunuchs and the planting of any more vines, and ordering that those already planted be cut down. Apollonius came before the Ionians and said, “These decrees are not aimed at me, for I am perhaps the only man who needs neither genitals nor wine; but our most admirable ruler fails to notice that he is sparing men and gelding the earth.” This gave Ionia the courage to send an embassy to the emperor on behalf of the vines and to ask for the repeal of a law that ordered the land to be laid waste and left unplanted.

43| This too they tell in song about the man at Tarsus. A mad dog had fallen upon a young man, and the bite had reduced the youth to everything a dog does: he barked and howled and ran on all fours, putting his hands down beneath him as he ran. He had been ill for thirty days when Apollonius, who had just arrived in Tarsus, came to see him and ordered the dog that had done this to be tracked down for him. They said that they had not come across the dog, since the youth had been attacked outside the walls while practicing with javelins, nor were they able to find out from the sick man what the dog looked like, since he did not even know himself anymore. Apollonius paused, then said, “Damis, the dog is white, shaggy, a sheepdog, like an Amphilochian hound, and it is standing at such-and-such a spring, trembling, for it both craves the water and dreads it. Bring it to me at the bank of the river where the wrestling grounds are, and just tell it that I am calling it.” Dragged there by Damis, the dog crouched at Apollonius’ feet, whimpering like suppliants at an altar. He tamed it still further and soothed it with his hand, and he set the youth close beside him, holding him himself; and so that a great secret should not escape the crowd, he said, “The soul of Telephus the Mysian has passed into this boy, and the Fates intend the same things for him.” With these words he ordered the dog to lick the bite all over, so that the one who had wounded him might in turn become his healer. From then on the boy turned back to his father and recognized his mother, greeted the companions of his own age, and drank from the Cydnus. Nor was the dog overlooked: Apollonius prayed to the river for it too and sent it across. And when it had crossed the Cydnus, it stood on the bank and barked, which is the last thing that happens with mad dogs, and laying back its ears it wagged its tail, knowing that it was well; for water is the remedy to drink for madness, if the mad creature can bring itself to face it. Such, then, were the man’s deeds on behalf of temples and cities, his dealings with peoples and on behalf of peoples, on behalf of the dead or the sick, with the wise and the unwise, and with the emperors who made him their counselor in virtue.

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