Philostratus · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
1| I know that tyrannies are the best touchstone of men who practice philosophy, and I am willing to examine in what respect each of them proved more or less of a man than another. But my account is driving toward this point. In the years when Domitian was tyrant, accusations and indictments closed in around Apollonius. How they began, from what quarter, and what name each of them bore, I shall make clear shortly. But since I must relate what he said and what kind of man he showed himself to be when he left the trial, having convicted the tyrant rather than been convicted himself, it seems best to me first to go through all the deeds of wise men against tyrants that I found worth recounting, and to set them beside those of Apollonius. That, surely, is how the truth ought to be sought.
2| Zeno of Elea, then, who is thought to have founded dialectic, was caught trying to bring down the tyranny of Nearchus the Mysian. Under torture he kept silent about his own fellow conspirators, but he slandered those who were loyal to the tyrant as disloyal, and they were put to death as though the charges were true, while he brought the Mysians to freedom by making the tyranny trip over itself. Plato says that he took up the struggle for the freedom of the Sicilian Greeks, having joined Dion in that purpose. Phyton, banished from Rhegium, took refuge with Dionysius the tyrant of Sicily; but being honored beyond what an exile could expect, he understood the tyrant's mind and that he coveted Rhegium. He was caught writing to the people of Rhegium about it, and the tyrant tied him alive to one of his siege engines and brought it up against the walls, so that the Rhegians would not shoot at the engine out of regard for Phyton. But Phyton shouted to them to shoot, for he was the target to shoot at for the sake of their freedom. Heraclides and Python, who killed Cotys the Thracian, were both young men, but by admiring the teaching of the Academy they became wise and, in that way, free. And who has not heard what became of Callisthenes of Olynthus? On one and the same day he praised the Macedonians and reviled them, when they were at the height of their power, and he died thought odious. Then there are Diogenes of Sinope and Crates of Thebes. Diogenes went straight to Chaeronea and rebuked Philip on behalf of the Athenians, because, while claiming to be a Heraclid, he was destroying by force of arms the people who had once taken up arms for the Heraclids. Crates, when Alexander said that for his sake he would rebuild Thebes, replied that he would have no need of a fatherland which anyone strong in arms could raze to the ground. Many more such stories could be told, but my account does not permit length, since I am obliged also to argue against these, not on the ground that they are not fine or not famous among all men, but that they fall short of those of
3| Apollonius, however much they may appear superior to those of others. The deed of the Eleatic, then, and that of the men who killed Cotys, are not yet of much account. Thracians and Getae are easy to enslave, and it is foolish to set them free, for they take no pleasure in freedom, since, I suppose, they do not consider slavery shameful. As for Plato, whether he suffered something unwise by trying to set Sicily right rather than Athens, or whether he was deservedly sold into slavery after being deceived and deceiving in turn, I do not say, because of those who would listen with displeasure. The man from Rhegium dared what he did against Dionysius at a time when Dionysius' tyranny over Sicily was not secure; and since he would certainly have died at Dionysius' hands even if the Rhegians had not shot at him, he did nothing remarkable, I think, in choosing death for the freedom of others rather than death for his own servitude. Callisthenes would not escape the reputation of a base man even now. For by praising and reviling the same people, he either reviled those he thought worthy of praise, or praised those he should have been seen reviling. And in any case, the man who takes up abusing good men cannot avoid seeming malicious, while the man who flatters the wicked with praise will himself carry off the blame for their misdeeds, for bad men become worse when they are praised. Diogenes, had he said these things to Philip before Chaeronea, might have kept him clean of the war against the Athenians; but coming upon him after the deed was done, he reproached him, yet did not correct him. Crates, moreover, might even be blamed by a lover of his city for not supporting Alexander in the plan he followed to rebuild Thebes. Apollonius, however, neither feared for a native land in danger, nor gave up on his own life, nor was led into foolish arguments, nor acted on behalf of Mysians or Getae, nor against a man who ruled a single island or a small country, but against one under whom lay the sea and all the land; against him, since he ruled as a harsh tyrant, he drew himself up for the benefit of the ruled, employing this same purpose against Nero too. So let anyone regard as mere skirmishes
4| those actions, since he did not come to close quarters, but by strengthening Vindex and terrifying Tigellinus he made the tyranny more rotten. And a boastful remark arises here, that there was nothing noble in attacking Nero, who lived the life of some harpist or flute-girl; but what will they say about Domitian? He was strong in body, and of pleasures he rejected those from instruments and clatterings which wither the spirited part, but he drew into the realm of delight the griefs of others and whatever anyone lamented. Distrust he called a safeguard of peoples against tyrants, and of tyrants against everyone. Night, he held, should bring an emperor rest from all other business but be the time to begin his murders; so the senate was maimed of its most esteemed men, and philosophy cowered so much that some of its people threw off the cloak and fled to the Celtic west, others into the empty lands of Libya and Scythia, and some were swept into making speeches that abetted his crimes. But Apollonius, as Tiresias is made by Sophocles to say of himself to Oedipus, “I do not live as your slave, but Loxias’s,” so, having made wisdom his mistress, was free of Domitian’s onslaught, having prophesied to himself the words of Tiresias and Sophocles, fearing nothing for himself, but pitying the things that were destroying others. Hence he banded together against him the youth, as much as the senate had, and the intelligence that was seen in some of them, going about to the provinces and philosophizing with the governors to show that the power of tyrants is not immortal and that by seeming fearsome they are the more readily taken. He went through for them also the Panathenaea of Attica, on which Harmodius and Aristogeiton are sung, and the deed from Phyle, which took the thirty tyrants together, and he went through also their own Roman ancestral history, how they too, being anciently a people, drove out tyrannies with arms.
5| A tragic actor came to Ephesus with the play Ino, and the governor of Asia was listening, who, though young and evidently marked out among the consuls, was thinking rather timidly about these matters. The actor was already finishing the iambic lines in which Euripides says that tyrants, grown great through long years, are taken by small things, when Apollonius leapt up and said, “But this coward understands neither Euripides nor me.”
6| And again, when a report came that Domitian had made a splendid purification of the Roman Hestia, because he had put to death three of the Vestals on a charge about the girdle and for not being pure from marriage, women who were supposed to serve the Trojan Athena and the fire there in holiness, Apollonius said, “If only you too, Helios, might be purified of the unjust murders of which the whole inhabited world is now full.” And he proclaimed and prayed this not in private, like cowards, but in the crowd and to everyone.
7| When Domitian, having killed Sabinus, one of his own kinsmen, was marrying Julia, who had been the wife of the slain man and Domitian’s niece, a daughter of Titus, Ephesus was offering sacrifice for the wedding, and Apollonius, coming upon the sacrifices, said, “O night of the Danaids of old, how you were one.” And indeed what was done by him in Rome went as follows:
8| Nerva seemed fitted for rule, which he took up with moderation after Domitian, and the same opinion held of Orfitus and Rufus. Domitian said these men were plotting against him, and the two were confined on islands, while Nerva he ordered to live at Tarentum. Apollonius, who was a friend to them, during the time when Titus ruled together with his father and after his father, was always writing something to the men about temperance, recommending them to the emperors as good men; but from Domitian, since he was harsh, he detached the men and strengthened them for the freedom of all. He thought advice by letter unsafe for them, for many men in power were betrayed even by slaves and friends and wives, and no house at that time held a secret. So he would take aside the most temperate of his own companions, now one, now another, and say, “I am making you the bearer of a brilliant secret. You must go to Rome to such and such a man, and talk with him, and become, for the persuasion of the man, everything that I am.” When he heard that they were in exile, having shown some impulse against the tyrant but having fallen away from their purposes through hesitation, he discussed Fates and necessity in the grove of Smyrna,
9| in which there is the Meles; and knowing that Nerva would shortly rule, he went through the argument, saying that not even tyrants can compel what comes from the Fates; and there was a bronze statue of Domitian set up near the Meles, and turning the bystanders toward it, he said, “Fool, how far you miss the Fates and necessity; for whoever is destined to be tyrant after you, even if you kill him, will live again.” This reached Domitian through the slanders of Euphrates, and about which of the men he was giving this oracle, no one understood; but the tyrant, thinking to set his own fear to rest, set out to kill the men. So that he should not appear to be acting without a pretext, he summoned Apollonius to defend himself about the secret dealings with them. For if Apollonius came and he condemned him, he would not seem to have killed the men without trial, but as convicted in Apollonius; or if by some wisdom he slipped out of sight, they would be the more certainly destroyed, as having been condemned even by their partner in the charge.
10| While he was thinking this and already writing to the governor of Asia that Apollonius should be seized and brought up, the Tyanean foresaw it all, divinely and as he was accustomed to do, and told his companions that he needed a secret journey abroad. Some of them were struck by the reputation of the ancient Abaris, and that he had set out for something of the same kind; but he, without even disclosing his purpose to Damis, sailed with him to Achaea, and landing at Corinth, and doing for the Sun about noon all that he was accustomed to do, he put out toward the nation of the Sicilians and Italians at evening. With a fair wind and a certain good current running beneath the sea, he arrived at Dicaearchia on the fifth day. He met Demetrius, who was thought the boldest of the philosophers, since he lived not far from Rome, and understood that he had withdrawn out of the tyrant’s way. “I have caught you,” he said, “living in luxury for leisure’s sake and dwelling in the most blessed part of fortunate Italy, if indeed it is fortunate, where Odysseus too, living with Calypso, is said to have forgotten the smoke of Ithaca and his home.” Demetrius embraced him and, calling out some words of good omen, said, “O gods, what will become of philosophy, in danger over such a man?” “And what is its danger?” said Apollonius. “What you have come foreseeing,” said Demetrius; “for if I do not know your mind, I do not know my own. But let us not speak here; rather let us go where our company will be of us alone, and let Damis be present too, whom I, by Heracles, count as the Iolaus of your labors.”
11| With these words he led them to the estate of Cicero of old, which lies near the city. When they had sat down under a plane tree, the cicadas, with the breeze playing an accompaniment to them, were at their songs, and Demetrius looked up at them and said, “O blessed ones, truly wise, how the Muses taught you a song that has never been led into lawsuits or slanders, and made you stronger than the belly, and settled you beyond human envy in these trees, where in your bliss you sing of the happiness that is yours and the Muses’.” Apollonius understood where this was tending, and dismissed it as falling short of what it professed; then he said, “If you wished to go through a praise of cicadas, why did you not deliver it openly, instead of cowering here, as if a public law had been laid down that no one should praise cicadas?” “I did not say this for the sake of praise,” said Demetrius, “but to show that to these their own haunts of the Muses are left free, while for us not even a grunt is forgiven, and wisdom has been found a crime; and the writ of Anytus and Meletus says, ‘Socrates does wrong by corrupting the young and introducing new divine beings,’ while against us they write thus: ‘So-and-so does wrong, being wise and just, and understanding the gods, and understanding men, and knowing much about laws.’ And you, as you are the wisest of us, so a wiser accusation has been found against you; for Domitian wishes you to share in the charges for which Nerva and those with him are in exile.” “And for what are they in exile?” said Apollonius. “For the greatest of the present charges,” said Demetrius, “as the prosecutor thinks; for he says that they have been caught leaping at his rule, and that you urged the men on to this, having cut a boy, I suppose.” “Surely not so that the empire might be overthrown by a eunuch?” said Apollonius. “That is not what we are slandered with,” said Demetrius, “but they say that you sacrificed a boy for the sake of divination, which the fresh entrails reveal; and added to the writ are charges about your clothing and your diet, and that there are some by whom you are worshiped. For I heard this from Telesinus, a man friendly to me and to you.” “It would be a lucky find if we could meet Telesinus,” said Apollonius; “you mean the philosopher, who held office among the consuls under Nero?” “Him I mean,” said Demetrius, “but in what way could you meet him? For tyrannies are more suspicious toward everyone of standing if they enter into common talk with people under such a charge as you now have; and Telesinus slipped away under the proclamation that has now been made against all philosophy, welcoming exile as a philosopher rather than staying as a consul.” “Let the man not run risks on my account,” said Apollonius, “for he runs enough for philosophy. But tell me this, Demetrius: by saying or doing what do I seem to you likely to settle my fear well?” “Not by jesting,” said Demetrius, “nor by saying that you are afraid of what you dread; for if you thought these things fearful, you would have gone away, running from having to defend yourself over them.” “And would you have run,” said Apollonius, “if you were in danger as I am?”
12| “No, by Athena,” said Demetrius, “not if someone were to judge me; but when it is without trial, and from one who would not even listen if I defended myself, or would listen but kill even one who did no wrong, I would. You would not, at least, ever have allowed me to choose so cold and slavish a death in place of the one that befits philosophy. And what befits philosophy, I think, is to die either freeing a city, or defending one’s parents and children and brothers and the rest of one’s kin, or contending for friends, who for wise men are more to be chosen than kin or those acquired by bargain out of love; but to die not on true charges but on contrived ones, and to give the tyrant a reputation for wisdom, is much heavier than if someone, as they say of Ixion, were racked hanging on a wheel. And for you, I think, the very coming here will begin the contest; for you attribute it to the soundness of your mind and to your not having dared the journey here if you were guilty of any wrong, but Domitian will not think so, but will think that you hold some secret power and are boldly strong. For the fact that he summoned you, as they say, not yet ten days ago, and that you have come to the trial not even having heard yet that you will be tried, will lend sense to the accusation; for you will appear to have known beforehand, and the account concerning the boy will gain force. And look out lest what concerns Fates and necessity, about which they say you have lectured in Ionia, come upon you, and when fate wishes something absurd you go compelled toward it, not knowing that to guard oneself is always the wiser course. “And if you have not forgotten the days of Nero, you know my own case, and that I am not servile before death. But those days had something easier about them. For the lyre seemed to knock Nero out of the bearing that suits an emperor, yet in other respects it suited him not unpleasantly, since it often brought him certain truces, and he held back from murders. At any rate he did not kill me, though I was drawing the sword against myself because of your words and mine, which I went through concerning the bath; and the cause of his not killing me was that his voice had just then improved and that he had, as he thought, mastered a brilliant melody. But now to what fine voice, to what lyre, shall we sacrifice? For all is without music and full of gall, and this man could be charmed neither by himself nor by others. And yet Pindar, praising the lyre, says that it charms even the spirit of Ares and holds it back from war; but this man, although he has established a musical contest here and publicly crowns the winners, has killed some of them, who, they say, played the pipe and sang for the last time in a musical contest. You must take counsel also for the sake of the men, for you will destroy them too, whether by seeming bold or by saying what you will not persuade. Your safety is at your feet. Of these ships, and they are many, as you see, some will leave for Libya, some for Egypt, some for Phoenicia and Cyprus, some straight for Sardinia, and some beyond Sardinia. Boarding one of them you will best be carried to whichever of these nations you please; for tyrannies are less harsh toward conspicuous men if they perceive them approving of not living in public.”
13| Damis, won over by Demetrius’s words, said, “But you, as a friend present with him, could do this man some great good, for my word is small, if I advise him not to tumble onto upright swords, nor to hurl himself against a tyranny than which none has been reckoned harsher. As for the journey here, if I had not met you, I did not even know his purpose; for I follow him more readily than one follows oneself, but if you asked me where I am sailing or for what, I would be a laughingstock for the voyage, measuring Sicilian seas and Tyrrhenian gulfs and not knowing for what. And if I were running the risk on the strength of a prediction, I could say to those who ask that Apollonius is in love with death and I sail with him as a rival lover; but since I know nothing, it is now mine to speak about what I know, and I shall say it on behalf of the man. For if I should die, philosophy will not yet suffer anything terrible, for I am like the baggage-carrier of a brave soldier, thought worthy of mention only because I follow such a man; but if there should be someone who will kill him, and tyrannies are well supplied at fabricating some things and inflating others, a trophy, I think, will stand over philosophy defeated in the person of the man who philosophized best of mankind, and there will be many Anytuses and Meletuses against us, and writs, some from here and some from there, against those who have been with Apollonius: that one man laughed when he attacked the tyranny, another encouraged him as he spoke, another allowed him to say something, another went away with praise of what he heard. “I say that one ought to die for philosophy as for temples and walls and tombs, for to save such things many famous men were glad to die; but may neither I die so that philosophy is lost, nor anyone who loves her and Apollonius.”
14| To this Apollonius replied, “Damis, who has spoken cautiously about the present situation, deserves forgiveness; for being an Assyrian and having lived beside the Medes, where they bow before tyrannies, he thinks nothing great about freedom. But you, I do not know what defense you will make to philosophy, putting forward fears; even if some truth had appeared in them, you ought rather to have led away from them a man who does not dread even what he is likely to suffer, instead of bringing him within reach of fear. Let a wise man die for what you have named; but someone not wise might die for these things too, for dying for freedom is laid down by law, while dying for kin or friends or beloved ones is fixed by nature; nature and law enslave all men, nature even the willing, law the unwilling. But for the wise it is more fitting to end their lives for what they have practiced; for what they themselves have cultivated out of strength and boldness, without the command of law or the birth-pang of nature, on behalf of these, if someone tried to abolish them, let fire come upon the wise man, let the axe come, for none of these will defeat him, nor will he be driven into any falsehood at all, but he will hold on to all he knows, no less than what he was initiated into. I know most things of any man, as one who knows all; and of what I know, some things I know for the serious, some for the wise, some for myself, some for the gods, and for tyrants nothing. That I do not come for the sake of foolish things, you can see: “I run no risk for my own body, nor could I be killed by a tyranny, not even if I myself wished it; but I understand that I am running a risk for the men; whether the tyrant makes me their leader or an appendage to them, I am whatever he wants. But if I betrayed them, whether by delaying or by slackness toward the accusation, what would I seem to the serious? And who would not justly kill me, as one trifling with men to whom what I asked of the gods was entrusted? That I could not escape seeming a betrayer, I wish to make plain. There are two kinds of tyrannies: some kill without trial, others kill after bringing the accused before courts; the former are like the hot and ready of the wild beasts, the latter like the softer and sluggish. That both are harsh is plain to everyone who takes as examples Nero for the one that rushes forward and tries no one, and Tiberius for the one that lies in wait; for the one destroyed people who had not even supposed anything, and the other people who had long been afraid. But I consider harsher the tyrannies that pretend to judge and to vote in accordance with the laws; for they do nothing according to the laws, and vote the same as those who have judged nothing, putting the name of law on the delay of their anger; and dying as condemned deprives the wretched even of the pity of the many, which ought to be brought like a funeral gift to those who depart unjustly. “The form of this tyranny I see to be judicial, but it seems to me to end in no judgment; for those whom he condemned before judging, he brings to trial as though never yet judged; and the one convicted by vote in that trial says plainly that he has been destroyed by one who did not judge according to the laws, while the one who abandons standing trial, how could he escape having voted against himself? And with men of this sort now resting on me, to run away from my own contest and theirs, where on earth will it let me seem clean? Suppose that you have said these things, and that I obey them as rightly said, and that those men have been slaughtered: what prayer for fair sailing is there for such a man? Where will he anchor? To whom will he go? For I think he must leave all the land that the Romans rule and come to men who are friendly and do not live in the open, and such would be Phraotes, and the Babylonian, and Iarchas the divine, and Thespesion the noble. If I were to set off to the Ethiopians, what, my good sir, should I tell Thespesion? For if I were to hide these things, I should seem a lover of falsehood, or rather a slave; and if I went to report them, I should need words of this sort: ‘Euphrates, Thespesion, has slandered me to you, for things I am not conscious of in myself: For he said that I am a boaster and a wonder-monger and an insulter of all the wisdom the Indians have; but I am none of these, I am a betrayer of my own friends and a butcher and nothing to be trusted and the like, and I have come to be crowned with a crown of virtue, if there is one, for this, since I destroyed the greatest houses of Rome so that they will not even be inhabited any more.’ You blush, Demetrius, as you hear this, for I see it. What then, if you thought of Phraotes, and of me fleeing to that man among the Indians, how could I look at him? What could I say about what I am fleeing? Surely not that I came to him earlier as a good and noble man, not fainthearted before death for the sake of friends, but that after I became his companion I threw away at your feet, dishonored, this most divine thing among men? Iarchas will not even ask me anything when I come, but as Aeolus once ordered Odysseus, who had made bad use of the gift of fair sailing, to leave the island without honor, so he will surely drive me from the hill, saying that I have proved false to the cup of Tantalus, for they want whoever has bent down to it to share the dangers of his friends too. I know how clever you are, Demetrius, at cutting short all arguments, and so you seem to me likely to say something like this to me: ‘Then do not go to these, but to men with whom you have not yet mingled, and your running away will be well placed, for you will more easily escape notice among those who do not know.’ But let this argument also be put to the test, to see how it stands as to plausibility. “For about it I think as follows. I hold that the wise man does nothing privately or on his own account, and would not conceive anything so unwitnessed that he himself were not at least present to himself; and whether the inscription at Pytho is Apollo’s own, or that of a man who truly knew himself and for that reason made it a maxim for all, it seems to me that the wise man, knowing himself and having his own mind as a companion at his side, would neither cower at any of the things the many fear, nor dare any of the things that others take in hand shamelessly. For being slaves of tyrannies they have even set out to betray their dearest to them, fearing what is not fearful and not fearing what one must fear. Wisdom does not allow this; for besides the Pythian inscription it commends also the line of Euripides, who considers that the disease that destroys men is conscience, whenever they reflect that they have done evil. For this, surely, is what showed Orestes the shapes of the Eumenides when he was mad over his mother; for mind is master of what is to be done, and conscience of what has seemed good to it. “If, then, the mind chooses what is good, conscience sends the man to every temple, every street, every sanctuary, every haunt of men, applauding and singing, and will sing over him even as he sleeps, setting beside him a well-omened chorus from the people of dreams; but if the mind’s standing slips into worthless things, conscience does not allow that man to cast a straight glance at any person, nor to utter a sound from a free tongue, and it drives him away from temples and from praying; it does not even permit him to raise a hand to the statues, but cuts down those who raise them, as the laws do those who threaten; it banishes them from every gathering and terrifies them as they sleep, and what they see by day, and whatever they think they hear or say, it makes dreamlike and windy to them, and the dim and fanciful fears it makes true and persuasive through terror. That conscience will convict me, if I should become a betrayer of the men, whether I come among those who know or those who do not, I think I have clearly shown, as the truth makes plain; and I shall not betray even myself, but I shall contend against the tyrant, adding the word of noble Homer: ‘Enyalius is common to all.’”
15| Damis says that these words left him so disposed that he regained his impulse and his courage; and that Demetrius did not despair of the man, but praised him and agreed with what he had said, invoked the gods’ favor for him, for the cause for which he was in danger and for philosophy itself, for which he endured these things, and offered to lead them to where he happened to be lodging. Apollonius declined this and said, “It is already evening, and at the lighting of the lamps we must put out for the harbor of the Romans, for this is the rule for these ships. We shall dine together when my affairs go well; for now a charge could be constructed against you as having dined with the emperor’s enemy; and do not even come with us to the harbor, lest even having shared conversation with me expose you to the charge of secret plotting.” Demetrius agreed, embraced them and went away, turning back and wiping away his tears. Apollonius turned his eyes to Damis and said, “If you are strong and confident as I am, let us both go to the ship; but if you are disheartened, it is time for you to stay here, for you will spend this time with Demetrius, a man friendly to you and to me.” Damis answered, “What shall I take myself to be, if, after you have today spoken such words about friends and the sharing of the dangers that come upon them, I, deaf to the argument, flee from you and leave you to the hazard, I who have never before been thought a coward on your behalf?” “Rightly said,” said Apollonius, “and let us go, I as I am, but you must remake yourself into something more ordinary, and not let your hair grow, as it is now, and exchange this linen cloak for a rough one, and give up these shoes; why I want this, I must explain. For it is better to endure even more before the trial; and I do not want you to share these troubles with me by being arrested, for you would be arrested, since the dress is under suspicion, but as one who is not a philosopher, but otherwise a friend to me, to follow and be present at what I do.” That is how it came about that Damis changed the Pythagorean dress; for he says he gave it up not as worse, nor in repentance, but praising the skill he adopted for the advantage of the moment.
16| Sailing from Dicaearchia, on the third day they came ashore at the mouths of the Tiber, from which the voyage up to Rome is of moderate length. The emperor’s sword was at that time in the hands of Aelian, and this man had long loved Apollonius, having once been with him in Egypt; and he said nothing openly about him to Domitian, for the rule did not allow it, since how could he commend to the emperor a man who seemed to be hated by him, or how plead for him as a friend of his own? But all the arts that defend unseen he used on his behalf, even in the time before Apollonius came, when he was being slandered; he said, “Emperor, sophists are a light-talking thing and their art is a boasting one, and since they get no good out of being alive, they long for death, and do not wait for its coming of itself, but draw death upon themselves by provoking those who hold swords. This, I think, is what Nero too had in mind when he was not led on by Demetrius into killing him; for when he perceived that Demetrius was hungry for death, he let him off from death not out of mercy but out of disdain for killing him. And Musonius the Tyrrhenian too, who opposed the government in many ways, he confined on the island called Gyara, and so much do the Greeks yield to these sophists that then they all sailed there for the sake of his company, and now to see the spring; for on the island, which was waterless before, a spring became the discovery of Musonius, which the Greeks sing as much as they do the spring of the horse on Helicon.”
17| With such talk Aelian entertained the emperor before Apollonius came; and when he arrived, he turned to wiser measures. He ordered that Apollonius be seized and brought to him; and when the man who had composed the accusation abused Apollonius as a sorcerer and one skilled in the art, Aelian said, “Keep yourself and your case against this man for the emperor’s court.” Apollonius said, “If I am a sorcerer, how am I being tried? And if I am being tried, how am I a sorcerer? Unless he means that false accusation is so strong that not even sorcerers can defeat it.” When the accuser wished to say something rather ignorant, Aelian cut him off and said, “Leave to me the time before the trial, for I shall make a test of the sophist’s mind in private and not in front of you; and if he admits to wrongdoing, the speeches in court will be cut short and you will go away in peace; but if he denies it, the emperor will judge.” Then, going into the secret court, in which great matters are both exposed and kept silent, he said, “Leave this place, and let no one listen, for this is the emperor’s pleasure.”
18| When they were alone, he said, “I was a youth, Apollonius, at the time when the emperor’s father went to Egypt to offer sacrifice to the gods and to ask your counsel about his affairs; the emperor was bringing me with him as a tribune, one who already knew military matters; and you were so kind to me that, while the emperor was giving audience to the cities, you drew me aside and told me what country I came from, what my name was, and how I stood with my father, and you foretold this office to me, which seems to most men the greatest, and greater than all human things together, but to me appears a burden and an ill fortune; for I am the guardian of a harsh tyranny, and if I trip it up, I fear what will come from the gods. How well disposed I am to you, I have shown; for the man who has said what I have said would never cease to love you, so long as there is any remembering of those things. And my willingness to ask you privately about what the accuser has composed was no poor device for the sake of meeting you, so that you might be confident about what lies with me, and know beforehand what lies with the emperor. For what he will vote about you I do not know, but he is disposed like those who desire to condemn, but are ashamed that it is not on true grounds, and he makes you a pretext for the destruction of men of consular rank; for he wishes what he should not, and does it by fitting it into the appearance of justice. “I too need, then, a pretense and an attack on you; for if he suspects me of letting you off, I cannot tell which of us will perish the sooner.”
19| To this Apollonius said, “Since we are speaking soundly, and you have said whatever the heart holds and it is right for me to say it too, and you philosophize about your own affairs like those who have spent much time with me, and, by Zeus, you are so kindly disposed toward us as to think you share my danger, I shall tell you my mind. It was possible for me to escape you all to many parts of the earth that do not heed you, and to come to men wise, and wiser than I, and to serve the gods with right reason, having gone to the haunts of men more beloved of the gods than those here, among whom there is neither denunciation nor any writ, for by the very fact that they neither do wrong nor suffer it they have no need of courts. But fearing to take the charge of being a traitor, if I myself fled the defense and those who were in danger through me were to perish, I have come to defend myself. Now tell me what I must defend myself against.”
20| “The forms of the writ,” said Aelian, “are varied and several; for they slander your clothing and your other way of life, and that you are worshiped by some, and that at Ephesus you once gave an oracle about a plague, and that you have spoken against the emperor, some things secretly, some openly, some as one who heard them from the gods. And there is one thing, most implausible to me, for I know that you do not even bear the blood of sacrifices, but most plausible to the emperor, which is alleged against you: they say that you went to the country to Nerva, and cut open an Arcadian boy for him as he sacrificed against the emperor, and that you encouraged him with these rites, and that this was done by night as the month was already waning. Since this charge is much greater, let us not consider the others as anything apart from it; for the man who lays hold of your dress and your way of life and your foreknowing is surely driving at this, and says that these things gave you the lawlessness against him and the boldness for the sacrifice. So you must have your defense on these matters prepared, and let your speech not show disdain for the emperor.” And Apollonius said, “Let it be proof to you that I do not disdain him that I have come to make a defense; and even if my affairs were so bold as to rise above tyrannies, yet to you I have submitted myself, being the man you are and loving me.” “For to seem wicked to an enemy is not yet terrible, since enemies hate not for what a man is publicly slandered with but for what he has privately offended in; but to receive from a friend the charge that one appears bad is heavier than all the things of enemies together, for he could not escape being hated even by the others for the very things for which he was bad.”
21| It seemed to Aelian that he spoke well, and after urging him to be of good courage he collected himself, seeing that the man would not be dismayed even if a Gorgon’s head were raised against him. Then he called those assigned to such tasks and said, “I order you to hold this man until the emperor learns that he has come and that he has said all that he has said,” and he looked like men who are very angry. Going into the palace, he did the business that belonged to his office. Here Damis recalls a deed at once like and unlike what happened once at Athens in the time of Aristides: the Athenians drove Aristides out by the shell for his virtue, and when he was already outside the wall one of the country people came up and asked him to write something for him on a shell against Aristides; he knew neither the man nor even writing, but only the envy against the just. Here a tribune, one of those who knew Apollonius very well, addressed him and asked him insolently what he was in danger for; and when Apollonius said that he did not know, he said, “But I know. Your being worshiped by men has slandered you, as being thought worthy of equality with the gods.” “And who,” said Apollonius, “is the one who worshiped me?” “I,” he said, “in Ephesus, when I was still a boy, when you healed us of the plague.” “You do well,” said Apollonius, “you yourself and the saved city of the Ephesians.” “For this reason,” he said, “I have prepared a defense for you on your behalf, which will free you from the charge. “Let us go outside the wall, and if I cut off your neck with the sword, the charge is discredited and you are let off; but if you terrify me and I let go of the sword, you must be considered divine and be tried as on true grounds.” By so much was this man more boorish than the one who drove out Aristides; and he said these things chewing his words and with laughter. Apollonius, as though he had not heard, talked with Damis about the Delta, around which they say the Nile divides.
22| When Aelian called him and ordered him to stay in the free prison, “until the emperor has leisure,” he said, “for he wishes to meet you privately first,” Apollonius left the court, and, going into the prison, said, “Let us talk with those here, Damis; for what else would one do during the time in which the tyrant will be discussing with me what he needs?” Damis said, “They will think us babblers if we divert them from what they will defend, and besides it is odd to walk among men who are in low spirits.” “And yet these,” said Apollonius, “most need someone to talk with them and tend them. For if you recall the verses of Homer, in which Homer says that Helen poured into the mixing bowl the drugs from Egypt so that the sorrows of the soul would be washed away, it seems to me that Helen, having learned Egyptian words, was chanting over the despondent in the bowl, healing them with speech mixed together with wine.” “That is likely,” said Damis, “if she really went to Egypt and conversed with Proteus, or, as Homer thinks, met Polydamna the wife of Thon. But for now let these men wait, for I wish to ask you something.” “I know what you will ask,” said Apollonius; “you want to hear the words that passed between me and the man, and what he said, and if he was fearsome or gentle.” And he went through them all. Damis bowed and said, “I do not disbelieve that Leucothea once gave Odysseus her veil after the ship, from which he had fallen and was measuring the sea with his own hands; for with us too, who have stepped into helpless and fearful things, one of the gods holds a hand over us, I think, so that we do not fall out of all safety.” Apollonius, rebuking the speech, said, “Where are you stretching this, fearing these things and not yet knowing that wisdom strikes with awe everything that understands it, and is itself struck by nothing?” “But we,” said Damis, “have come before a man without understanding, who is not only not awed by us, but does not even think there is anything that will awe him.” “Do you understand, Damis,” he said, “that he is puffed up and senseless?” “I understand; how could I not?” said Damis. “Then you ought to despise the tyrant all the more, the more you know him.”
23| While they were talking thus, someone came up to them and said, “I am a Cilician, gentlemen, and I am in danger over wealth.” And Apollonius said, “If you are wealthy from sources that are not lawful, such as piracy or poisons that kill men, or from disturbing tombs, such as those of the kings of old that are rich in gold and treasure, you must not only be tried but destroyed, for this is wealth, but accursed and savage; but if you inherited it, or it came from a trade that is honorable and not huckstering, who is so heavy as to take from you, under a show of law, what you acquired by the laws?” The man said, “What I have comes from several kinsmen, and arrives in one house, mine; and I use it neither as another’s, for it is mine, nor as mine alone, for it is held in common for me with the good. The informers slander me, saying that I have acquired my wealth not for the good of the tyranny, for it would be a supply for me if I tried to make revolution, and for another, to whom I might attach myself, my means would be no small weight. Charges have already been divined against me: that all wealth beyond measure breeds insolence, and that the wealth that exceeds that of the many sets the neck high and raises the pride, and does not allow a man to obey the laws, and as for the governors who visit the provinces, it all but slaps them on the jaw, enslaving them with money or despising them because of the strength of wealth.” “When I was a youth, before I had acquired an estate of a hundred talents, I thought everything laughable and feared little for what I had; but when five hundred talents came to me in a single day, on the death of my father’s brother, who left them to me, my mind changed as much as horses are changed by those who train them out of an untaught and unruly character. As my wealth grew, bringing some from the land and some from the sea, I was so enslaved by the fear around it that I pumped out of my property a part to the informers, who had to be soothed with this scrap, a part to the officials, so that I should have strength against those who plotted against me, a part to my kinsmen, so that they should not envy the wealth, and a part to the slaves, so that they should not become worse by claiming to be neglected; and a splendid herd of friends was pastured for me, for these, foreseeing my needs, did some things themselves and told me others beforehand. Yet though we thus palisaded the wealth and walled it so securely, we are now in danger over it, and it is not yet clear that we shall even remain unharmed in body.” And Apollonius said, “Take courage, for you have your wealth as a guarantor of your body. You are bound because of it, but it will let you go, and you will be freed not only from this prison but from serving the informers and the slaves to whom you were subject because of it.”
24| Another again said that he was facing a charge because, sacrificing at Tarentum, where he was governor, he had not added to the public prayers that Domitian was a child of Athena. “You thought,” said Apollonius, “that Athena, being a virgin for all time, would not give birth; but you did not know, I think, that this goddess once bore a dragon to the Athenians.”
25| Another had been shut up on a charge of this kind. He owned an estate in Acarnania near the mouths of the Achelous, and sailed around the Echinades in a small boat; having looked over them, he chose one that was already joined to the mainland, planted it with fruit trees in season and with vines that gave sweet wine, and fitted out in it a dwelling sufficient for the body, and some water too was brought in from the mainland, enough for the island. From this a writ arose, that this Acarnanian was not pure, and, conscious of deeds not to be borne, was withdrawing from the rest of the earth and keeping away from it as defiled for him, and had chosen the release of Alcmaeon son of Amphiaraus, by which he lived at the mouths of the Achelous after his mother’s death, if not for like deeds, then perhaps for dreadful ones not far from those. But he said it was not this, but that, loving a life without business, he had lived there, and that lawsuits had come around to him, on account of which he had been shut up.
26| Many came up to Apollonius inside and lamented such things; there were about fifty in this prison, and some of them were sick, some were letting themselves go in despondency, some were holding out for death, and others were crying out for their children and parents and wives. “Damis,” he said, “these men seem to me to need the drug I mentioned at the beginning. Whether it is Egyptian, or grows in all the earth, wisdom digging it up from her own gardens, let us give some of it to these wretched men, lest their own minds destroy them first.” “Let us give it,” said Damis, “for they seem to be in need.” So Apollonius called them together and said, “Men who share this roof with me, I pity you, that you are being destroyed by yourselves, not yet knowing whether the accusation will destroy you. For you seem to me to be killing yourselves ahead of the death that you think might be voted against you, and to be confident of what you fear and to fear what you are confident of. It is not fitting, but rather, remembering the saying of Archilochus of Paros, who calls steadfastness in grief endurance and says it is a discovery of the gods, to lift yourselves above these grievous things, as men who rise above the surge by skill when the wave stands higher than the ship, and not to think these things hard, to which you come unwilling and I willing. “For if you agree with the charges, the day should be lamented rather, on which your reasoning rushed you into unjust and savage acts and made you stumble; but if you will not say that you lived on the island in the Achelous for the reasons the accuser gives, nor you that you ever set up your wealth as a challenger lying in wait against the throne, nor you, willingly, that you deprived the ruler of seeming to come from Athena, nor does any one of you, who have come here in danger for these things, say that they are true, what, he says, does this lament over things that are not mean? For the more you call upon your nearest and dearest, the more you must be strong, for those are surely the prizes of this endurance. Or do you say that being shut up here is terrible, and living in a prison? Or do you suppose it the beginning of what you will suffer? Or a punishment in itself, even if you should suffer nothing in addition? But I, knowing human nature, will teach you a word that is not at all like the food of doctors, for it puts strength into you and will not let you die: we human beings are in a prison for this time, which is named life; for this soul, bound in a perishable body, endures many things, and is a slave to all that visits a human being; and those by whom houses were first devised seem to me not to have realized that they were throwing another prison around themselves; and indeed those who live in palaces, securely fitted out in them, let us suppose to be more bound than those whom they themselves will bind. “When I think of cities and walls, these seem to me to be common prisons, so that men are bound when they buy and sell, bound when they hold assemblies and watch spectacles and send processions. And the Scythians who live in wagons are no less bound than we are; for the Ister bounds them, and the Thermodon and the Tanais, rivers not easy to cross unless they stand frozen with the cold, and houses are set up on their wagons and carried about, but they cower in them. And if the argument is not childish, they say that even Ocean has been thrown around the earth for the sake of binding. Go, poets, for these are your matters, and chant to these despondent men how Cronus was once bound by the counsels of Zeus, and Ares, the most warlike, in heaven earlier by Hephaestus, and on earth by the sons of Aloeus. Reflecting on these, and on the many wise and blessed men whom insolent peoples bound and tyrannies maltreated, let us accept these things too, so that we do not fall short of those who accepted them.” So much did what was said change the men in the prison that most of them took food and stopped weeping and went on in hope that they would suffer nothing, being with him.
27| On the next day he talked again, directing his words to the same purpose, and a man was sent in by Domitian, planted as a listener to his talks. His demeanor was downcast, and he seemed to be in some great danger, as he claimed, and his tongue was not unpracticed, like that of those informers who have collected eight words or ten. But Apollonius, understanding the trick, talked of things that did not advance the man’s purpose: he mentioned rivers and mountains to them, and went through beasts and trees, by which the others were entertained, while the man accomplished nothing. When he tried also to lead him into abusing the tyrant, Apollonius said, “My good man, say what you like, for you will not be slandered by me; and whatever blame I have for the emperor, I shall say it to him.”
28| Other episodes occurred in this prison, some contrived and some as they happened to fall out, not really important, nor worth my taking trouble over; Damis, I think, mentioned them so as not to leave out any of them, but I give those that are worth telling. It was evening, and Apollonius had been shut up for the fifth day already, when someone came into the prison, Greek in speech, and said, “Where is the Tyanean?” And taking him aside he said, “Tomorrow the emperor will talk with you; take it that you have heard this from Aelian.” “I understand the secret,” said Apollonius, “for only he could know it.” “And what is more, the officer in charge of the prison has been told,” the man said, “to be at your service in everything you want.” “You do well,” said Apollonius, “but I live the life here and the life outside the same; for I converse about whatever comes up, and I need nothing.” “Not even someone to advise you, Apollonius, how you will talk with the emperor?” “Yes, by Zeus,” said Apollonius, “if he could persuade me not to flatter.” “And what if he persuaded you not to look down on him, nor to be arrogant toward him?” “That would be the best advice,” said Apollonius, “and I have so persuaded myself.” “It is on these matters that I have come,” the man said, “and I am glad to see you moderately prepared; but you must also be prepared for the emperor’s voice and the ill-tempered look of his face, for he speaks in a heavy voice even when he speaks gently, and the brow rests upon the expression of the eye, and the cheek is full of gall, for this above all it shows. These things, Tyanean, let us not be dismayed by, for they belong rather to nature and are always alike.” And Apollonius said, “Odysseus, however, going into the cave of Polyphemus without having heard beforehand how big he was, or what he ate, or how his voice thundered, took courage against him, although he was afraid at the start, and left the cave with a reputation as a man; but for me it is enough to get out, having saved myself and the companions for whom I am in danger.” After speaking thus with the visitor and reporting it to Damis, he went to sleep.
29| About dawn a clerk of the imperial court came and said, “The emperor orders you, Apollonius, to come to the palace when the agora is full, not yet to make your defense, but he wishes to see who you happen to be and to meet you alone.” “Why then,” said Apollonius, “do you tell me this?” “Why, are you not Apollonius?” said the clerk. “Yes, by Zeus,” said the Tyanean. “To whom then should I say this?” said the clerk. “To those who will lead me,” said Apollonius, “for I must surely go as from a prison.” “That has been ordered to those others first,” said the clerk, “and I shall come at the proper time, but now I came to give notice, for these orders were given late in the evening.”
30| The clerk went away, and Apollonius, lying back on his couch, said, “I need sleep, Damis, for the night has been hard for me, as I wished to recall what I once heard from Phraotes.” “And yet,” said Damis, “you ought rather to stay awake and prepare yourself for what has been announced, great as it is.” “And how could I prepare,” said Apollonius, “since I do not even know what he will ask?” “Then will you improvise about your life?” said Damis. “Yes, by Zeus, Damis,” said Apollonius, “for I use it improvised. But what I recalled of Phraotes I want to relate to you, for it will seem useful to you too for the present: the lions that men tame, Phraotes says, one should neither strike, for they bear a grudge if they are struck, nor pamper, for they become haughty from that, but stroking them with a threat one should lead them into tractable ways. He did not say this about lions, for we were not concerned with the training of beasts, but he was giving a rein for use on tyrants, by using which he thought they would not fall out of moderation.” “This saying,” said Damis, “has been said very well for the characters of tyrants, but there is also in Aesop a lion in a cave; Aesop says that he was not sick but pretended to be, and seized the beasts that came to him, and the fox said, ‘What shall we make of this one, from whom no one comes back, and no footprint of any who go out is shown?’” And Apollonius said, “But I should have thought the fox wiser if, having gone in, she had not been caught, but had come out of the cave showing her own footprints.”
31| Having said this, he drew in only a very little sleep, as much as came to his eyes; and when day came, he prayed to the Sun, as is possible in a prison, and talked with those who came to him, answering whatever they asked. And so, when the agora was full, a clerk arrived, ordering him to be at the door already, “lest we be summoned even sooner.” He said, “Let us go,” and went forward with vigor. As he walked, four spear-bearers followed him, keeping at a greater distance than those who accompany a man to guard him, and Damis followed too, afraid, but looking like one who is deep in thought. All looked toward Apollonius, for his very bearing drew their gaze and the awe about his appearance seemed divine, and the very fact of his coming to run risks for others made even those who had envied him earlier friendly toward him then. Standing at the palace and watching those who were being waited upon and those who waited, and hearing the din of those entering and leaving, he said, “It seems to me, Damis, that this is like a bath-house, for I see those outside hurrying in, and those inside hurrying out, and some are like those who have bathed, others like the unwashed.” This saying I bid my readers keep inviolate, and not attribute it to this man or that, since it is so much Apollonius’s own that he even wrote it down in a letter. Seeing a very old man who desired to rule and for that very reason was being ruled and attending this emperor, he said, “Damis, not even Sophocles has yet persuaded him to escape the raging and savage master.” “The very one,” said Damis, “Apollonius, that we ourselves have also chosen; that is why we are standing at such doors.” “You seem to me, Damis,” said Apollonius, “to think that Aeacus, who is said to be in Hades, is the keeper of these gates, for you look like a dead man.” “Not a dead man,” said Damis, “but one about to die.” And Apollonius said, “You are unfit for death, Damis, as you seem to me, although you have been with me a long time, philosophizing from youth. I thought that you were prepared for it and knew all the tactics in me. For just as for men who fight in line there is need not of good courage alone but also of an order that interprets the moments of the battle, so philosophers too must take care of the moments in which they will die, so that they are not disorderly, nor hungry for death, but carry themselves into it with the best choice. That I chose to die in the best way and at the moment fitting for philosophy, if anyone should wish to kill me, I have defended to others with you present, and I am worn out with teaching it to you yourself.”
32| So much for this. When the emperor had leisure, having pushed aside everything at hand, to come to words with the man, the officials in charge of such matters led him into the palace, not allowing Damis to follow him. The emperor, wearing a wreath of green shoots, had just happened to sacrifice to Athena in the court of Adonis, and the court was blooming with flowers in gardens, which the Assyrians make for Adonis for his rites, planting them under the same roof as himself. While at the sacrifices he turned around, and, struck by the appearance of the man, said, “Aelian, you have brought a daemon in to me.” But Apollonius, not at all dismayed, and seizing on what he had heard, said, “I thought, Emperor, that Athena was taking care of you in the way she once took care of Diomedes at Troy; for she took away the mist, by which men see worse, from the eyes of Diomedes and gave him to distinguish gods and men; but the goddess has not yet cleansed you, Emperor, with this cleansing. She surely ought to, so that you might see Athena herself better, and not rank men among the forms of daemons.” “And you, philosopher,” said Domitian, “when did you cleanse this mist?” “Long ago,” said Apollonius, “and from the time I began to philosophize.” “How then,” said Domitian, “have you thought the men most hostile to me gods?” “And what war do you have,” said Apollonius, “with Iarchas or Phraotes the Indians, whom alone of men I consider both gods and worthy of this name?” “Do not lead off to the Indians,” said Domitian, “but speak about your dearest Nerva and those who share the charge with him.” “Am I to defend him in something, or—” said Apollonius. “Do not defend,” said Domitian, “for he has been taken doing wrong; but show me this: how you yourself are not doing wrong, being privy with him to such things.” “If you want to hear what I am conscious of,” said Apollonius, “hear it, for why should I hide the truth?” The emperor thought that he would hear brilliant secrets and that everything would bear on the destruction of the men, while he, with the emperor lifted up on high by this opinion
33| "I know Nerva," he said, "to be the most self-controlled of men and the gentlest, the one most devoted to you, a good ruler and so wary of the weight of affairs that he even fears honors. And those around him—you mean Rufus, I think, and Orfitus—are also self-controlled men, as far as I know, and hostile to wealth, slow to act even on what is permitted; they would never contemplate a revolution themselves, nor join with another who did." The emperor, swollen with rage at what he heard, said: "So you have caught me out as a false accuser in their case, since those whom I found the vilest of men and assailing what is mine—you say they are good, and sluggish? For I think that if those men were questioned about you, they would say that you are no sorcerer, no reckless adventurer, no boaster, no lover of money, no one who thinks himself above the laws. That is how badly you have conspired together, you accursed heads! But the accusation will convict you of everything; for all that has been sworn among you, and about what, and when, and what you sacrificed, I know no less than if I had been present and taken part." Apollonius, not even shaken by this, said: "It is shameful, emperor, and contrary to the laws, either to sit in judgment on matters you are already convinced of, or to be convinced of matters you have not judged. If that is how things stand, allow me to begin my defense from this very point: you think badly of me, emperor, and you wrong me more than the informer does; for what he said he would teach you, you have been convinced of before hearing it." "Begin your defense wherever you like," the emperor said. "I know both where I shall stop and where it is already fitting to begin."
34| From this point begins the outrage against the man: Domitian had his beard and his hair cut off and had him bound among the worst criminals. And Apollonius said: "I did not know, emperor, that I was in danger over my hair. But as for the bonds, if you think me a sorcerer, how will you bind me? And should you bind me, how will you say I am a sorcerer?" "And I will not release you," said the emperor, "until you become water, or some beast, or a tree." "That," he said, "I would not become even if I could, lest I ever betray those who are in danger without any justice. But being what I am, I will submit myself to everything you do to this body, until I have made my defense on behalf of the men." "And who," said the emperor, "will make the defense on behalf of you?" "Time," he said, "and the breath of the gods, and the love of wisdom with which I live."
35| Such is the prelude to the defense, the one that took place for him privately with Domitian, as Damis describes it. But those who have composed these matters out of spite say that he made his defense first and was bound afterward, and that it was then that his hair was cut. They also forged a letter, composed in the Ionic dialect and tiresome in its length, in which they want Apollonius to become a suppliant of Domitian, begging to be released from his bonds. Now Apollonius does set out his own testaments in the Ionic manner, but I have never yet come upon a letter of Apollonius composed in Ionic, though I have collected very many of his; nor have I ever found long-windedness in the man's letters, for they are all brief and, as it were, "from the scytale." Moreover, he left the court having won the charge, so how could he ever have been bound after the vote of acquittal? But let us not yet speak of what happened in the court. First let us tell the matter of the haircut and the things that were said, for they deserve attention.
36| When the man had been bound for two days, someone came to the prison, claiming that he had bought the right to approach him and that he had come as an adviser toward his rescue. He was a Syracusan, Domitian's mind and tongue, planted as the earlier man had been, but with more persuasive matter: for the first began from far off, while this one took his start from the circumstances at hand. "O gods," he said, "who would ever have thought that Apollonius would be bound?" "The man who bound me," Apollonius said, "for he would not have bound me if he had not thought so." "And who would ever have thought that those ambrosial locks would be cut off?" "I," he said, "who wore them." "And how do you bear these things?" "As is likely," he said, "for a man who came to them neither willingly nor unwillingly." "And how does your leg endure?" "I do not know," he said, "for my mind is on other things." "But surely the mind is on the part that hurts," the man said. "Not at all," said Apollonius, "for the mind in such a man will either not feel pain or will make the pain stop." "And what is it, then, that the mind is thinking of?" "The very not thinking of these things," he said. When the man again called up the locks and turned the conversation back to them, Apollonius said: "You are fortunate, young man, not to have been one of the Achaeans at Troy; for I think you would have lamented bitterly the locks of Achilles cut off for Patroclus, if they were indeed cut, and would have fainted over them. You say you pity mine, which had gray hairs in them and squalor; what would you not have suffered over those, so carefully tended and golden?" These things were said with a scheme behind them, so that the man might learn what Apollonius was pained about and, by Zeus, whether he reviled the emperor for what he had suffered. Checked by what he heard, he said to Apollonius: "You have been slandered to the emperor on more counts, and especially on those for which Nerva's circle are being prosecuted as wrongdoers. For some slanders have reached him even about the speeches in Ionia, which you spoke in opposition to him and with hatred; but he disregards these, they say, since he has been roused to anger over greater matters; and yet the man who slanders those too stands high in repute." "What an Olympic victor you have named," Apollonius said, "if he claims to lay hold of repute while strong in slanders! I understand that it is Euphrates, whom I know to be doing everything against me. And I have been wronged by him in other, greater ways: for once, when he perceived that I was on the point of going to the Naked Sages in Ethiopia, he set about slandering me to them, and had I not understood the plot, perhaps I would have gone away without even seeing those men." The Syracusan, astonished at this account, then said: "Do you think being slandered to the emperor a greater thing than seeming not to be a good man to the Naked Sages because of what Euphrates let loose?" "Yes, by Zeus," said Apollonius, "for there I was going to learn, but here I have come for the sake of teaching." "Teaching what?" "That I am an honorable man," he said, "and this the emperor does not yet know." "But you can put your own affairs in good order," he said, "by teaching him the things which, had you said them before coming here, would have kept you from being bound at all." Understanding, then, that the Syracusan was forcing him into the same argument as the emperor, and thinking that, worn down by the bonds, he would lie against the men, Apollonius said: "My good man, if I was bound for telling Domitian the truth, what shall I suffer for not telling the truth? For to him the truth seems deserving of bonds, to me the lie."
37| The Syracusan, admiring him as one who was philosophizing beyond measure—for that is what he said as he went away—left the prison, and Apollonius, looking at Damis, said: "Do you grasp this Python?" "I grasp," Damis said, "that he was lying in wait for you and trying to lead you on; but what Python has to do with you and what the meaning of the name is, I do not know." "There was," Apollonius said, "Python of Byzantium, a good orator, they say, at persuading men of bad things. He went as envoy from Philip son of Amyntas to the Greeks to speak about their enslavement; the others he let be, but among the Athenians themselves, when they were strongest in rhetoric, he claimed that Philip was being wronged by them and that the Athenians were doing terrible things in setting the Greek world free. Python was pouring this out in abundance, they say, but Demosthenes of Paeania, speaking alone against him in his boldness, counts his standing up to him among his own labors. But I would never call it a labor of mine not to be led into what this man had in mind; I said that he is doing the same as Python, since he came as the hireling of a tyrant and an adviser of absurd things."
38| Apollonius conversed at greater length in this vein, but Damis says that he himself was at a loss about the present situation and saw no release from it, except such as had come from the gods to some who had prayed, even out of much harder circumstances. A little before midday, he says, he said: "Man of Tyana"—for Apollonius was very pleased with the address—"what will we suffer?" "What we have suffered," Apollonius said, "and nothing beyond it; and no one will kill us." "And who is so invulnerable?" Damis said. "And when will you be released?" "As far as the judge is concerned, today," he said, "as far as I am concerned, right now." And with these words he drew his leg out of the shackle and said to Damis: "I have given you a demonstration of my own freedom; take courage." Then for the first time, Damis says, he understood exactly Apollonius' nature, that it was divine and greater than human: for without sacrificing—and how could he, in a prison?—or praying for anything, or saying anything, he had laughed at the bond, and then fitted his leg back in and did what a bound man does.
39| The more simple-minded among people refer such things to sorcerers, and they are subject to this in many human matters. For athletes need their art, and all contestants need it because of their eagerness to win; yet nothing contributes to their victory, and whatever they win by luck, the wretches take away from themselves and credit to this art. Nor do even those of them who are beaten disbelieve it; for they say and think such things as: "If I had sacrificed this and burned incense for that, victory would not have escaped me." It haunts the doors of merchants in the same way, for we would find that they too credit the good fortune of their trade to the sorcerer, and the misfortunes to their own thrift and to not having sacrificed as much as they should. But the art clings most of all to lovers: for since they suffer from a disease so easily led astray that they discuss it even with old women, they do nothing surprising, I think, in going to these sophists and listening to such talk from them. These men give them an embroidered girdle to carry, and stones, some from the secrets of the earth, some from the moon and stars, and spices of every kind that India cultivates; and they exact splendid sums for these, but contribute nothing. For if the beloved are moved somewhat toward their lovers, or are won over by gifts, and the love affair advances, the art is hymned as capable of everything; but if the attempt fails, the blame is carried to what was left out: that he did not burn this or that, or sacrifice, or melt it down, and that this is a great and difficult matter. Now the methods by which they also work portents and signs from Zeus and many other marvels have been written down by some who laughed broadly at the art; but let it be my declaration that young men should not keep company even with those, lest they grow accustomed to playing at such things. The digression is enough. Why should I attack the matter further, when it is condemned both by nature and by law?
40| When Apollonius had shown himself to Damis and had talked at greater length, about midday someone arrived and announced by word of mouth the following: "The emperor releases you, Apollonius, from these bonds, on the advice of Aelian, and permits you to stay in the free prison until the defense takes place, and perhaps you will make your defense on the fifth day." "Who, then," he said, "is to move me from here?" "I," the man said. "Follow." And when those in the free prison saw him, they all embraced him, as men who had not even expected him to return. For the longing that children have for a father who sets them right with admonitions both pleasant and measured, or who recounts to them the doings of his own youth, was the same longing they had for Apollonius, and they admitted it; and he never ceased giving them some counsel.
41| On the following day he summoned Damis and said, “My defense will take place on the appointed day. But you take the road to Dicaearchia, for it is better to go on foot; and when you have greeted Demetrius, turn your steps toward the sea where the island of Calypso lies, for you will see me appear to you there.” “Alive,” said Damis, “or how?” Apollonius laughed and said, “Alive, as I believe; risen from the dead, as you believe.” Damis says that he went away unwillingly, neither despairing of him as a man about to perish nor confident that he would not perish. On the third day he reached Dicaearchia, and there he heard about the storm that had broken out in those days: a rain-laden wind had burst upon the sea, sunk some of the ships that were sailing that way, and driven others off toward Sicily and the strait. Then he understood why Apollonius had told him to make the journey on foot.
42| What comes next Damis records from what he says he heard Apollonius tell Demetrius and himself. A youth from Messene in Arcadia, conspicuous for his beauty, had come to Rome. Many fell in love with him, but Domitian more than all, and the others were so in love that they did not even fear being Domitian's rivals. But the youth kept himself chaste and guarded his own bloom. Now if he had disdained gold, or money, or horses, or the other baits by which some lure their favorites, let us not praise him, for a man ought to be equipped for that; but this youth, who might have been granted more than all those together whom the eyes of emperors have drawn to them, would not consider himself worthy of what he was being offered. So he was put in chains, for that was what his lover decided. He came up to Apollonius and seemed to want to say something, but with shame as his counselor to silence he did not yet dare. Apollonius understood, and said, “You are not even of an age to do wrong, and yet you are imprisoned, just like us dangerous men.” “Yes,” he said, “and I shall die too, for the laws of our day punish chastity with death.” “So did the laws in Theseus’ day,” said Apollonius, “for Hippolytus was destroyed for his chastity by his own father.” “My father too has destroyed me,” he said. “I am an Arcadian from Messene, and he did not educate me in Greek learning, but sent me here to learn the ways of the law; and when I came here for that purpose, the emperor looked on me with an evil eye.” Apollonius, as though he did not understand what he meant, said, “Tell me, young man, surely the emperor does not think you grey-eyed, when your eyes, as I see, are dark? Or crooked of nose, when it is squarely set, like the noses on finely wrought Herms? Or that your hair is other than it is? It is, I think, sunny and gleaming. And indeed your mouth is so well proportioned that it suits silence and speech alike, and your neck is so free and proud. What else, then, will the emperor take you for, since you say he looked on you ill?” “That is the very thing that has destroyed me,” he said. “Once he was drawn into loving me, he does not spare what he praises, but intends to dishonor me, as men do who are in love with women.” Apollonius admired him, and he let pass the questions about what he thought of lying together and whether it was shameful or not, and all such questions, since he saw that the Arcadian was blushing and spoke with decorum; instead he asked him this: “Do you own slaves in Arcadia?” “By Zeus, yes,” he said, “many.” “Then what do you consider yourself in relation to them?” “What the laws make me,” he said, “for I am their master.” “And ought slaves to obey their masters,” said Apollonius, “or may they refuse what seems good to the owners of their bodies?” The youth, perceiving the kind of answer toward which he was being led round, said, “The power of tyrants is irresistible and harsh, I know; that, I suppose, is just why they want to be masters of free men too. But of my own body I am master, and I shall keep it inviolate.” “How?” said Apollonius, “for your contest is with a lover who comes reveling against your beauty with a sword.” “By offering my neck instead,” he said, “for that is what the sword needs.” Apollonius praised him and said, “I see that you are an Arcadian.” And he mentions this youth in a letter as well, and describes the affair far more charmingly than I do here; praising him for his chastity to the person he is writing to, he says that this youth was not even put to death by the tyrant, but, having been admired for his firmness, sailed off to Malea, more envied by the people of Arcadia than those who win the contests of endurance under the lash among the Lacedaemonians.
Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/apollonius/007-life-of-apollonius-book-vii#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.