Life of Apollonius — Book VIII

Philostratus · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

1| Let us go to the courtroom, then, to hear the man defend himself against the charge. The sun is already rising, and the way in has been opened to the people of note. Those who live with the emperor say that he has not even touched food, being occupied, I suppose, with studying the business of the trial; and indeed they say he has a document in his hands, which he handles sometimes with anger and sometimes with less. We must picture him as a man vexed with the laws for having invented law courts.

2| We shall also find Apollonius thinking that he was going to hold a discussion rather than run a race for his life, as we may judge at least from what happened before he entered the court. On the way he asked the clerk who was escorting him where they were headed, and when the clerk said he was taking him to the courtroom, he said, “Against whom am I to plead?” “Against your own accuser,” he said, “and the emperor will be the judge.” “And who will judge between me and the emperor?” said Apollonius. “For I shall show that he wrongs philosophy.” “And what does the emperor care for philosophy,” said the clerk, “even if he does happen to wrong it?” “But philosophy cares a great deal for the emperor,” said Apollonius, “that he may rule as he ought.” The clerk praised this, for he was in fact fairly well disposed toward Apollonius, as he had shown from the beginning, and said, “By how much water will you measure your speech? I need to know this before the trial.” “If the trial allows me to say as much as it demands,” said Apollonius, “not even the Tiber would suffice to measure it out; but if only as much as I shall be asked, then the questioner is the measure of the one who answers.” “You have practiced opposite virtues,” said the clerk, “if you claim to be both brief and expansive on the same matters.” “Not opposite,” said Apollonius, “but alike; for the man who is capable of the one would not fall short in the other. And the balance struck between the two I would not call a third virtue of speech, but rather the first; and I know of silence in a courtroom as a fourth.” “Useless, surely,” said the clerk, “to yourself and to anyone about to stand in danger.” “And yet,” said Apollonius, “it did great good to Socrates the Athenian when he was defending himself against the indictment.” “And how was it of use to him,” said the clerk, “when he died because he kept silent?” “He did not die,” replied Apollonius, “but the Athenians believed he had.”

3| In this way he was prepared against everything that might come from the tyrant. As he stood waiting in front of the courtroom, another clerk came up to him and said, “Man of Tyana, go in naked.” “Are we going to bathe, then,” said Apollonius, “or to stand trial?” “This order is not about clothing,” he said, “but the emperor forbids you to bring in here any amulet, or book, or any other writing whatever.” “Not even a cane,” said Apollonius, “against those who have so foolishly persuaded him of these things?” At this the accuser cried out, “Emperor, the sorcerer is threatening me with a beating, for it was I who persuaded you of this.” “Then you are more of a sorcerer than I am,” said Apollonius, “for you claim to have persuaded the emperor that I am what I have never yet persuaded him I am not.” While the accuser was hurling these insults, there stood beside him one of Euphrates’ freedmen, whom Euphrates was said to have sent to report on Apollonius’ discourses in Ionia, together with money, which was handed over to the accuser.

4| Such were the skirmishes before the trial. What happened at the trial itself was this. The courtroom had been arranged as though for an audience at a festival oration, and all the notable people were present, since the emperor was making a point of convicting Apollonius before as many witnesses as possible on the charge concerning the men. But Apollonius so disregarded the emperor that he did not even look at him. When the accuser attacked this disdain and ordered him to look at the god of all mankind, Apollonius lifted his eyes to the ceiling, showing that he was looking to Zeus, and that he considered the one who was impiously flattered to be worse than his flatterer. The accuser also shouted things like this: “Measure out the water now, Emperor, for if you allow him lengthy speeches, he will choke us. I also have this document here, in which the charges he must answer are written out; let him make his defense against them one at a time.”

5| The emperor praised this as excellent advice and ordered Apollonius to make his defense in the way the informer advised. But he passed over the other charges, as not worth bringing anyone to account for, and confined himself to four, which he thought baffling and hard to answer. He put his questions thus: “What possessed you, Apollonius,” he said, “that you do not wear the same dress as everyone else, but a peculiar and singular one?” “Because the earth that feeds me also clothes me,” said Apollonius, “and I do not trouble wretched animals.” Next he asked, “For what reason do men call you a god?” “Because every man who is thought good,” he said, “is honored with the title of god.” Where Apollonius drew this doctrine from in his philosophy I have shown in my account of the Indians. Third, he asked about the plague at Ephesus. “Prompted by what,” he said, “or drawing on what conjecture, did you foretell to Ephesus that they would fall sick?” “Because I live on a lighter diet, Emperor,” he said, “I was the first to sense the danger. If you wish, I will also tell you the causes of plagues.” But the emperor, afraid, I suppose, that Apollonius would ascribe such diseases to his injustice, his impure marriages and the other unreasonable things he was doing, said, “I have no need of an answer like that.” When he came to put the fourth question, about the men, he did not rush at it directly, but after a long pause and much deliberation, like a man seized by dizziness, he asked it in a way no one expected. For they had supposed that he would throw off the pretense, would not refrain from naming the men, and would cry out in outrage about the sacrifice. He did not do so, but, creeping up on the question, said, “Tell me: when you left your house on such and such a day and went into the country, to whom did you sacrifice the boy?” Apollonius, as though rebuking a youngster, said, “Hush! For if I left my house, I was in the country; if I was in the country, then I sacrificed; and if I sacrificed, then I ate. But let men worthy of belief say so.” When Apollonius had said this, and applause had gone up greater than an imperial court allows, the emperor, thinking that those present were bearing witness in his favor, and being somewhat struck by the answers, since they were strong and sensible, said, “I release you from the charges, but you will remain here until we have spoken in private.” Apollonius, gathering his strength, said, “I thank you, Emperor. But because of these accursed men the cities are ruined, the islands are full of exiles, the mainland of lamentation, the armed forces of cowardice and the Senate of suspicion. Grant me a hearing too, if you will; if not, send someone to seize my body, for my soul cannot be seized. Or rather, you could not seize even my body, for ‘you shall not kill me, since I am not one whom fate decrees to die.’” With these words he vanished from the courtroom. In this he was making good use of the present moment, since the tyrant was plainly going to question him not simply but at gratuitous length, priding himself, no doubt, on not having put him to death; and he was taking care in advance not to be drawn into such questioning. He thought the best way to secure this was for his nature not to remain unknown, but to be recognized as such that he could never be caught against his will. And his fear for the men was by now well settled: since the tyrant had not even ventured to ask him anything about them, how could he put them to death with any plausibility on charges that had not been established in court? Such is what I found about the trial.

6| Since a speech was also written for him, as for one who would let loose his defense against the water-clock, and since the tyrant confined him to the questions I have mentioned, let the speech be recorded as well. For I am not unaware that those who praise buffoonish styles will find fault with it, as less restrained than they say it should be, and as lofty in its words and thoughts. But when I consider the man, it does not seem to me that the wise man would sensibly act out his own character by cultivating balanced clauses and antitheses and clattering with his tongue like a rattle. These things suit rhetoricians, and not even for them are they needed. For in the courts a cleverness that shows itself may even bring a man under suspicion of plotting against those who will cast the votes, while a hidden cleverness may even come away victorious; for to escape the notice of the judges that one is clever is a truer cleverness. But a wise man making a defense—for the wise man will not make accusations, though he is strong to censure—needs a character different from that of men of the law courts, and a speech that is constructed but does not seem so; let it be somewhat dignified, and not far short of disdainful, and let pity be absent from the speaker; for the man who will not permit himself to beg, what could he say to win pity? Such will the speech seem, at least to those who will not give a soft hearing to me and to the man; for he composed it as follows:

7| "The contest is over great stakes, emperor, for you and for me. For you are in danger over matters in which an emperor never should be, if you are to seem to have been set against philosophy without any justice; and I am in danger over matters in which not even Socrates once was at Athens, whom those who brought the indictment charged with introducing new divinities, though they neither called him a daemon nor thought him one. Since so hard a danger comes upon each of us, I shall not hesitate to advise you too in what I have persuaded myself. For since the accuser has set us in this contest, a false opinion about me and about you has entered the minds of the many: they thought that you, taking anger as the counselor of your hearing, would use it to put me to death, whatever putting me to death amounts to, and that I would take myself out of the court by whatever means of escape there are—and there were, emperor, ten thousand. Hearing this, I did not come to prejudge, nor did I vote against your hearing as not being straight; but having agreed to the laws, I stand under the proceeding. Of this I become an adviser to you as well." "For it is just not to prejudge, nor to sit convinced that I have done you some harm; nor, while you hear with a laugh about the Armenian and the Babylonian and all who rule there—who have vast cavalry, and all the archery, and golden land, and a multitude of men, as I know—that you will suffer something at their hands that will take this rule away from you, to believe against a wise and naked man that he has a weapon against the Roman emperor, and to accept such things from an Egyptian informer, things you never heard even from Athena, who you say keeps watch over you—unless, by Zeus, flattery and informing have now advanced so far among these accursed wretches that they say the gods are suitable advisers to you about small matters, ophthalmias and not running a fever or having some swelling of the viscera, laying hold of you like doctors and treating whichever part of you is in bad condition, but that when you are in danger over your empire and your body, the gods neither advise you whom you must guard against nor teach you what weapon you will have against them, and that instead the informers are your aegis of Athena and your hand of Zeus, claiming to know on your behalf what not even the gods know, keeping watch and sleeping on your behalf, if indeed these men ever sleep, pouring, as the saying goes, evils upon evils and ever composing these Iliads." "As for their keeping horses and wheeling into the marketplace behind teams of white ones, their feasting on delicacies served in silver and gold, weddings, boy favorites bought for two and three myriads, their committing adultery for as long as they escape notice and marrying the women they have seduced when they are caught with them, and those who applaud them for their fine victories—when a philosopher or a consul who has done no wrong is convicted by them and destroyed by you—let all that be granted to the luxury of the accursed and to the fact that they no longer have any fear of laws or of eyes. But to think so far above human beings as to wish to know things in advance of the gods, this I neither praise nor can I hear it without fear; and if you accept it, they will perhaps indict you too, as slandering the belief about the divine; for it is to be expected that such indictments will be drawn up against you also, once no one is left for the informers. I understand that I am censuring rather than defending; but let this be said by me on behalf of the laws, which, if you do not regard them as rulers, you will not rule. Who, then, will be my advocate in my defense? For if I call on Zeus, under whom I know I have lived, they will say that I am working sorcery and bringing heaven down to earth. Let us therefore converse about this with a man whom the many say has died, but I say has not. He is your father, to whom I am worth as much as he is to you; for he made you, but through me he himself came to be what he is." "This man, emperor, will be a helper in my defense, knowing my affairs much better than you do. He came to Egypt, not yet emperor, to sacrifice to the gods in Egypt and to converse with me about the empire. When he met me wearing my hair long and clad as you see me, he asked not a single thing about my appearance, believing that all there was in me was sound. Having admitted that he had come on my account, he went away, after praising me, having said what he said to no one else and heard what he heard from no one else. The purpose he used toward ruling was strengthened in him chiefly by me, having already been shifted by others, not unsuitable men, but not so in your opinion; for those who were persuading him not to rule were surely also taking from you the possibility of having this after him. But with me advising him both not to think himself unworthy of an empire that was coming to his doors, and to make you its heirs, he said that my judgment was sound, and he himself was lifted up, and lifted you up with him. But if he had thought me a sorcerer, he would not have joined with me in a partnership of concerns; for he came and spoke nothing like this: 'Compel the Fates or Zeus to declare me tyrant, or work portents from Zeus on my behalf, showing the sun coming up out of the west and going down where it begins.' For he would not have seemed to me fit to rule if he had either thought me capable of such things or gone hunting by trickery for an empire that ought to be won by virtues." "Moreover, I conversed with him publicly, in a temple; but the gatherings of sorcerers flee the temples of the gods, since these are hateful to those of the art, and putting forward night and everything lightless as their own cover, they do not permit the foolish to have eyes or ears. He conversed with me privately too, but Euphrates and Dion were present all the same, the one most hostile to me, the other most close—for I shall never stop writing Dion among my friends. Who, then, in the company of wise men, or at least men who lay claim to wisdom, would come to talk of sorcerers? And who would not guard likewise against appearing bad both among friends and among enemies? And besides, the discussions were directed against the sorcerers. For you perhaps think that your father, in love with imperial power, trusted sorcerers rather than himself, and sought from me a compulsion upon the gods so that he might obtain it; but he thought he had that even before he came to Egypt, and afterward he conversed with me about greater matters: about laws, and about just wealth, and how the gods are to be served, and what goods come from them to those who rule according to the laws. He longed to learn these things, and to all of them sorcerers are opposed; for if these things prevailed, the art would not exist. And it befits you, emperor, to consider these further points as well." "All the arts that exist among human beings do one thing here and another there, but all of them aim at money—some at small sums, some at great, some at what will feed them—and not only the manual trades, but also those of the other arts that are wise and those that are semi-wise alike, with the exception of true philosophy. I call wise poetry, music, astronomy, the sophists, and those orators who do not belong to the marketplace; semi-wise, painting, modeling, the makers of statues, helmsmen, farmers, if they follow the seasons, for these arts too fall not far short of wisdom. There is a certain thing, emperor, belonging to false sages and to mendicants, which you must not take for divination—for that is worth much, if it speaks truly, though whether it is an art I do not yet know—but I call sorcerers false sages. For that things that are not should be, and things that are should be disbelieved, all this I ascribe to the opinion of the deceived; for the cleverness of the art lies in the folly of those who are deceived and who sacrifice, and the art—for they are all lovers of money; whatever they cleverly devise, they have invented for pay, and they hunt for excesses of money by leading on those in love with this or that, as being capable of everything. What wealth, then, emperor, do you see about me that makes you think I practice false wisdom—and that with your father judging me superior to money? To show that I speak the truth, where is the letter from that noble and divine man, who in it sings of me, among other things, for being poor? 'The emperor Vespasian to Apollonius the philosopher, greetings.' "'If everyone, Apollonius, were willing to philosophize as you do, philosophy and poverty would fare very happily: philosophy being incorruptible, and poverty self-chosen. Farewell.' Let your father make this defense on my behalf, setting out for me the incorruptibility of philosophy and the self-chosenness of poverty; for he was mindful, I think, of what happened in Egypt, when Euphrates and many of those who pretended to philosophize came to him and asked for money not even secretly, while I not only did not approach him for money but even pushed those men away as unsound. I was set against money while still a youth. At any rate my paternal estate—and it was a splendid property—after looking at it for a single day only, I left to my own brothers and friends, and to the needy among my relatives, practicing, I suppose, from the very hearth, to need nothing. Let Babylon be, and the lands of the Indians beyond the Caucasus and the river Hyphasis, across which I journeyed being just as I am; but for what concerns this place, and for my not looking to silver, I make this Egyptian my witness. For when he said that terrible things had been done and planned by me, he did not say for how much money I was working these mischiefs, nor what profit I had in mind; instead, I seem to him so senseless as to practice sorcery—which others do for much money—and to do wrong myself not even for money, proclaiming, I suppose, a market of this kind: 'Come, you fools, for I practice sorcery, and not even for money but for nothing; and you will profit by each going away with the object of his desire, while I shall have dangers and indictments.' "But so that we do not go into foolish talk, let us ask the accuser what must be spoken of first. And yet what need is there to ask? For he went through the opening of his speech on the garment and, by Zeus, on the things I eat and do not eat. Defend yourself on these, divine Pythagoras, for we are being judged over things you discovered and I praise. The earth, emperor, grows everything for human beings, and those who wish to make a truce with the animals need nothing more; for they pluck some of her produce, and plow for the rest as she nurtures it, as befits the seasons, while others, as though deaf to the earth, have whetted a knife against animals for the sake of clothing and food. Now the Brahmans of India did not themselves approve of these things, and they taught the Naked Sages of the Egyptians not to approve of them; Pythagoras took this from there—the first of the Greeks to mingle with the Egyptians—and left living things to the earth, and ate what she grows herself, saying that it was unpolluted, since it was suitable to nourish body and mind. As for clothing, which the many wear taken from dead creatures, he said it was not pure, and put on linen, and by the same reasoning plaited his shoe of papyrus; and he enjoyed many benefits from being pure, the first being to perceive his own soul." "For he lived in the times when Troy fought over Helen, and was the fairest of the sons of Panthous and the most beautifully dressed; he died so young that he gave Homer matter for a lament. Having passed into several bodies according to the law of Adrasteia, by which the soul makes its exchanges, he came again into the shape of a man and was born to Mnesarchides the Samian—a wise man from a barbarian, an Ionian from a Trojan, and so immortal that he had not even forgotten that he was Euphorbus. I have named, then, the forebear of my own wisdom, and shown that I did not discover it myself but hold it by inheritance from another. For my part, I do not bring to judgment those who luxuriate over the red-plumed bird, or over the one from the Phasis or from the Paeonians, which those who gratify the belly in everything fatten for their feasts; nor have I ever indicted anyone over the fish that the splendid buy at a higher price than they once paid for koppa-branded horses; nor did I begrudge anyone a purple robe, or a Pamphylian or soft garment. Yet over asphodel, O gods, and sweetmeats and a pure diet I am on trial, and even my clothing is not safe, but the accuser strips me of that too, as being worth much to sorcerers. And yet, if one sets aside the argument about the animate and the inanimate, by which a thing seems pure or not, how is linen better than wool? Wool is shorn from the gentlest of animals, one that gods have taken seriously, who do not disdain shepherding, and which, by Zeus, they once deemed worthy even of a golden shape—either the gods did, or the stories." "Flax is sown anywhere at random, and nobody speaks of gold in connection with it; but nevertheless, since it was not plucked from something living, it seems pure to the Indians and pure to the Egyptians, and for that reason it has become the dress of Pythagoras and me when we converse, pray and sacrifice. It is pure also to spend the night in it, for dreams bring more truthful voices to those who live as I do. Let us defend ourselves also over the hair I once had, since an indictment has been found even for squalor. Let the Egyptian not be the judge, but the blond and carefully combed youths, with their lovers hanging on them and the courtesans to whose doors they go revelling; let them consider themselves happy and enviable for their hair and the perfume that drips from it, and me as sheer abstinence from love and a lover of not loving. For this will be said to them: Wretches, do not slander the discovery of the Dorians. The wearing of long hair comes from the Lacedaemonians, practiced by them in the times when they were most warlike; and Leonidas, king of Sparta, grew his hair long for the sake of courage, and to appear august to friends and fearful to enemies. And so Sparta wears its hair long in his honor no less than in honor of Lycurgus and Iphitus. Let the iron spare the hair of a wise man, for it is not lawful to bring it against that place where are all the springs of the sense organs, and all the voices, from which prayers appear, and speech, the interpreter of wisdom." "Empedocles, indeed, fitted a band of the most purple dye around his hair and strutted through the streets of the Greeks composing hymns, to become a god from a man; but I, who wear my hair neglected and have never yet needed hymns of that sort for it, am led to indictments and courts. And what am I to say of Empedocles? Was he singing of himself, or of the happiness of the men of his own time, among whom these things were not slandered? Let us not talk more about the hair; it was cut, and envy forestalled the accusation, because of which I must defend myself on the other charge, which is grave, and of such a kind, emperor, as to give fear not to you alone but to Zeus. For he says that people consider me a god and openly proclaim it, thunderstruck by me. And yet before bringing the charge he ought to have shown the following: what discourse did I give, what thing so marvelous did I say or do, that I led people to pray to me? For I neither spoke among the Greeks about what my soul changed into, or from what, or will change into, though I know it; nor did I send out such opinions about myself; nor did I go out into oracles and songs of prophecy, such as the output of those who speak on behalf of gods; nor do I know of any city in which it was decided to gather and sacrifice to Apollonius. And yet I became of great worth to each, in whatever they needed of me, and they needed such things as these: that the sick not be sick, that men be holier in initiating, holier in sacrificing, that outrage be cut away, that the laws be strong. My pay for these was that they appeared better than themselves, and these things I granted to you as a favor." "For just as the overseers of cattle oblige their owners by keeping the cows from straying out of order, and the keepers of flocks fatten them for the profit of those who possess them, and beekeepers remove the diseases of bees so that the swarm not perish for its master, so I too, by putting an end to the faults of the cities, set them right for you; so that even if they thought me a god, the deception was a gain for you, since they listened to me eagerly, I suppose, afraid to do what is not pleasing to a god. But this was not what they thought. They thought that there is a kinship between man and god, through which man alone of living creatures knows the gods, and philosophizes also about his own nature and the way in which he shares in the divine. Man says, then, that even his outward form resembles a god's, as the making of statues and the use of colors interpret; and he is persuaded that the virtues reach him from god, and that those who partake of them are near to god and divine. Let us not name the Athenians as the teachers of this thought, on the ground that they were the first to give the titles 'the Just' and 'the Olympian' and the like, titles too divine, it would seem, to be given to a man; let us name Apollo at Pytho." "For Lycurgus of Sparta came to his sanctuary, having just written the laws by which Lacedaemon is ordered, and Apollo, addressing him, tests the opinion about him, saying at the beginning of the oracle that he is at a loss whether he should call him god or man, and going on he declares and votes for this title, as for a good man. And no contest came upon Lycurgus among the Lacedaemonians, nor any danger from this, as one who was making himself immortal, since he did not rebuke the Pythian for addressing him in these terms; rather, they agreed with the oracle, being persuaded of this, I suppose, even before the oracle. As for the Indians and the Egyptians, the matter stands thus. The Egyptians slander the Indians in other matters and denounce their opinions about affairs, but the account that has been given about the craftsman of the universe they praise so highly that they have taught it to others, though it belongs to the Indians. That account knows a god as the craftsman of the generation and being of the universe, and the cause of his devising these things is that he is good. Since, then, these ideas are akin, I hold to the account and say that the good among human beings have something of god. Let the order that rests on god the craftsman be taken to be the things in heaven and in the sea and all those on earth, in which human beings have an equal share, except for fortune. But there is also an order that belongs to a good man, which does not exceed the measures of wisdom, and which you yourself, emperor, will say needs a man made like a god." "And what is the shape of this order? Souls running disorderly, more madly, lay hold of every shape; for them laws are stale, moderation is nowhere, the honors of the gods go unhonored, and they are in love with idle talk and luxury, from which idleness grows, an evil adviser of every deed. Drunken souls leap toward many things, but this skipping accomplishes nothing, not even if they drank everything that is reckoned drowsy, like mandrake. What is needed is a man who will take care of the order about them, a god come through wisdom. For such a man is enough to lead them away from loves, toward which they are carried more savagely than in ordinary intercourse, and from love of money, because of which they say they do not yet have everything, since they are not holding their mouth beneath the flowing wealth. For to restrain them from touching murders is perhaps not impossible for such a man, but to wash them clean of them is possible neither for me nor for the god who is craftsman of all. Let there be, emperor, an accusation concerning Ephesus too, since it was saved, and let the Egyptian judge me as is fitting to the indictment. For the accusation is, I suppose, of this kind: among the Scythians or Celts, who live by the river Ister or the Rhine, a city is settled no smaller than Ephesus in Ionia; this city, being a base for barbarians who do not listen to you, a plague was about to destroy, and Apollonius healed it." "For there is a defense against these charges too for a wise man, if the emperor wishes to subdue his adversary with arms and not with plagues. May no city be wiped out, either for you, emperor, or for me; and may I never see at temples a disease because of which the sick will lie in them. But let the affairs of the barbarians not be a matter of concern, and let us not set them among the healthy, since they are our bitterest enemies and under no truce with our race. As for Ephesus, who will take away its being saved? Its beginnings as a people were laid from the purest Attica; it has grown beyond all that are Ionian and Lydian, and has advanced toward the sea by rising above the land on which it was founded; it is full of the thoughts of philosophers and of rhetoricians, through whom the city is strong not by horse but by tens of thousands of men, praising wisdom. What wise man, do you think, would give up the struggle for such a city, when he recalled Democritus, who once freed the Abderites from a plague, and thought of Sophocles the Athenian, who is said even to have charmed winds that blew beyond their season, and had heard of the deeds of Empedocles, who held back the onrush of a cloud that burst upon the Acragantines? The accuser interrupts me—you hear this too, emperor—and says that it is not because I was the cause of the Ephesians' rescue that I am indicted, but because I foretold that the plague would strike them; for this, he says, is beyond wisdom and portentous, and I could not have attained so much truth unless I were a sorcerer and a dealer in secret arts." "What then will Socrates say here, about the things he said he learned from the divine sign? And what of Thales and Anaxagoras, the two Ionians, the one foretelling the abundance of the olive harvest, the other many events of the heavens? Did they foretell these things by sorcery? Indeed, these men were brought before courts on other charges, and nowhere in the charges is it said that they were sorcerers because they foreknew. For that seemed laughable, and not credible even in Thessaly, where the women were ill spoken of for the drawing down of the moon, to be said against wise men. How then did I perceive the calamity at Ephesus? You have heard the accuser say that I do not live as others do, and I too said at the start, about my own food, that it is light and sweeter than other people's Sybaritic fare. This, emperor, keeps my senses in a kind of secret clear sky and does not allow anything turbid to be about them, and lets me see through, as in the gleam of a mirror, all things that are happening and will happen. For the wise man will not wait for the earth to send up vapors or for the air to be corrupted, if the terror flows from above; he will perceive these things while they are at the doors, later than the gods, but sooner than the many. For gods perceive things that are about to happen, human beings things that are happening, and the wise things that are approaching. As for the causes of plagues, emperor, ask in private, for they are too wise to be told to the many." "Does living in this way, then, produce only a fineness of the senses, or also strength for the greatest and most marvelous things? One can see what I say from other cases, and not least from what was done at Ephesus about that plague. For the form of the plague—it was likened to an old beggar—I saw, and having seen it I seized it, not by stopping the disease but by removing it. To whom I prayed, the shrine shows, which I founded at Ephesus for this purpose: it is of Heracles the Averter, and I chose him as my helper because, being wise and brave, he once cleansed Elis of a plague, washing away the vapors that the earth gave off under the tyranny of Augeas. Who, then, in your judgment, emperor, being ambitious to seem a sorcerer, would dedicate to a god what he had himself accomplished? Whom would he win as admirers of his art, by handing the admiration over to a god? Who would pray to Heracles, if he were a sorcerer? For such things the wretches assign to pits and to the gods below, from whom Heracles must be excluded, for he is pure and kindly to human beings. I prayed to him once in the Peloponnese too, for a phantom of a lamia was roaming there, around Corinth, feeding on the beautiful among the young; and he helped me in the contest, requiring no marvelous gifts but a honey-cake and frankincense and the working of something for the salvation of human beings, for this, as in the case of Eurystheus, he counted the wage of his labors. Do not be vexed, emperor, to hear of Heracles; for Athena cared for him, since he was good and a savior to human beings." "But since you order me to defend myself about the sacrifice—for this you also indicate with your hand—hear a true defense. I, though I do everything for the salvation of human beings, have never sacrificed on their behalf, nor would I sacrifice anything, nor touch offerings in which there is blood, nor would I pray while looking at a knife or at the sacrifice he describes. You have not caught a Scythian in me, emperor, nor a man from some unsociable land; nor have I ever mingled with Massagetae or Taurians, for then I would have turned even them from their custom of sacrifice. Into what madness would I be driven, that I, who have discoursed most on divination and on how and where it is strong or not, and who have perceived better than any man that the gods show their counsels to pious and wise men even when they practice no divination, should lay hands on bloodshed and on entrails that for me are unholy and ill-omened? Over such things even the voice of the divine sign would have abandoned me, as I would not be pure. And indeed, if one sets aside the pollution of the sacrifice and compares the accuser with what he said a little before, he himself clears me of the charge: for he says that I foretold the plague to the Ephesians without needing any sacrifice; what need would I have had of victims for things that I could know even without sacrificing? And what need of divination for matters of which I was persuaded myself, and another besides? For if I am being judged over Nerva and those around him, I shall say again what I said the other day when you made this charge." "For I consider Nerva worthy of every rule and of every word that tends to praise, but not a good contender in the face of cares, for his body has been worn down by disease, and because of it his mind too is full of weariness and not even adequate for household matters. At any rate he praises you for body and for mind—doing something natural, I think, for human nature is more eager to praise what it lacks the strength for itself. Nerva has also felt something good toward me, and I never knew him to laugh in my presence or to indulge in any of the ordinary silliness among friends; rather, as youths do toward their own fathers and teachers, he says everything cautiously in my presence, and he still blushes; and knowing that I praise moderation, he practices it so much that he seems to me more humble even than is measured. How, then, would one think it credible that Nerva, who is content if he rules his own house, desired rule; or that a man who has not dared to speak to me about small matters talked about great ones; or that he joined with me in a design about things on which he would not have joined counsel even with another, if he had taken my views to heart? Or how am I still wise to interpret a man's design, if I trust divination but distrust wisdom? As for Orfitus and Rufus, just and self-controlled men but sluggish, as I know well: if the charge against them is that they aspired to tyranny, I do not know whether the accusers miss the mark more about these men or about Nerva; and if it is that they acted as his advisers, is Nerva more likely to have made an attempt on the throne, or these men to have advised it?" "But surely the man who judges these matters should also have considered this: what did I want, in helping those who were bent on revolution? For he says that no money came to me from them, nor that I was lifted up by gifts to do this. But let us consider whether, being in need of great things, I postponed their benefactions to the time when they thought they would rule, in which it would be possible to ask for great things and to be deemed worthy of greater. How, then, will this be made clear? Consider, emperor, yourself and those who ruled even before you—your brother, to be sure, and your father, and Nero—and the times in which they ruled; for it is chiefly under these emperors that I have lived in the public eye, spending the rest of the time visiting the Indians. Of this span of thirty-eight years—for such is the length of time down to you—I did not go to the emperor's doors, except to your father in Egypt, at a time when he was not yet emperor and acknowledged that he came on my account; nor did I say anything servile to emperors, or to peoples on behalf of emperors; nor did I make a splendid show with letters, either of emperors writing to me or by displaying myself as writing; nor was I carried away from myself, flattering emperors for gifts. If, then, you were to ask me, thinking of the rich and the poor, to which of these two classes I enroll myself, I shall say the richest; for to need nothing is, for me, Lydia and the whole of Pactolus." "How, then, would I have postponed the gifts from men who were not yet emperors until the time when I thought they would rule—I who did not even choose those from you, whose rule I considered secure? Or how would I have contemplated changes of dynasty, when I did not even make use of the established ones for honor? And indeed what happens to a philosopher who flatters the powerful, the case of Euphrates shows. Money, do I say? From this source he has whole springs of wealth: he already holds forth at the money-tables, becoming a retailer, a sub-retailer, a tax-collector, an obol-weigher, everything that is sold and everything that sells; he is ever stamped upon the doors of the powerful and stands at them longer than the doorkeepers, and has often been shut out by doorkeepers, like greedy dogs; and though he has never parted with a drachma even to a philosopher, he builds his wealth up as a fortress against others, feeding this Egyptian with money and whetting against me a tongue that deserves to be cut out. Euphrates I leave to you; for you, if you do not praise flatterers, will find the man worse than I describe. Now hear the rest of my defense. What is it, and about what? A lament, emperor, was sung in the accusation about an Arcadian boy: that he was cut open by me at night—whether he says it was in a dream, I do not yet know—and that this boy is of good fathers and in appearance like those of the Arcadians who are beautiful even in their squalor. They say that he was slaughtered, begging and lamenting, and that I, dipping my hands in the boy's blood, prayed to the gods for the truth." "Thus far they judge me; the next charge touches the gods, for they say that the gods heard me praying in this way, and gave favorable omens in the sacrifices, and did not kill me for my impiety. About the hearing itself, as being unclean, what could I say, emperor? But on the points that I must answer: who is this Arcadian? For if he is not nameless in his ancestry, nor slavish in look, then the hour has come for you to ask what name his parents bear, whose house he belongs to, what city in Arcadia nurtured him, and from what altars he was led away to be sacrificed here. He does not say these things, though he is skilled at not telling the truth. So he is judging me over a slave. For a man who has neither a name of his own nor of those from whom he was born, who has no city and no allotment—must he not, by the gods, be ranked among slaves? For all about him is nameless. Who, then, was the slave's dealer? Who bought him from the Arcadians? For if the stock of these people is suited to divination by slaughter, the boy was likely bought for a great deal of money, and someone sailed to the Peloponnese so that the Arcadian might be brought up here for us. Slaves from Pontus or Lydia or Phrygia one might buy here as well, and one may even meet herds of them coming here together; for these peoples, and all the barbarians, having always obeyed others, do not yet think it shameful to be slaves." "Among the Phrygians, at any rate, it is native to sell their own people and to give no thought to them once they are enslaved; but the Greeks are still lovers of freedom, and no Greek man will sell even a slave beyond the borders. For that reason neither slave-snatchers nor slave-dealers may enter among them, and into Arcadia even less; for besides being more free-minded than all the Greeks, the Arcadians also need a crowd of slaves. Arcadia is rich in cornfields, grassy and wooded, not only the heights but everything underfoot. They need many farmers, many goatherds and swineherds and shepherds and cowherds, some set over cattle, some over horses, and the land needs many woodcutters, and in this they are trained from childhood. And if the affairs of the Arcadians were not such, but they were able, like others, to sell off their own slaves besides, what would the fact that the man slaughtered was from Arcadia contribute to the much-talked-of wisdom? For the Arcadians are not the wisest of the Greeks, such as to show more than any other man in the reading of entrails; they are the most rustic of people, swinish in other respects and in filling their bellies with acorns. I have perhaps defended myself more rhetorically than is my manner, interpreting the ways of the Arcadians and passing in my argument into the Peloponnese. For what is the defense that suits me?" "I did not sacrifice, I do not sacrifice, I do not touch blood, not even from an altar. For so Pythagoras judged, and those who came from him likewise; and so, in Egypt, did the Naked Sages, and among the Indians the wise, from whom the beginnings of wisdom came also to Pythagoras and his followers. Sacrificing in accordance with these rules they do not seem to wrong the gods; rather the gods allow them to grow old with bodies sound and free from disease, and to seem ever wiser, ruled by no tyranny and needing nothing. And it is not unlikely, I think, that they should ask for good things in return for pure offerings. For I think that the gods, having the same mind as I about sacrifices, plant the frankincense-bearing parts of the earth in a pure part of the inhabited world, so that we may sacrifice from these without carrying iron into temples or sprinkling blood on altars. But I, it seems, forgetting myself and the gods, sacrificed in a manner in which neither I am accustomed to sacrifice nor any other man. Let the time also acquit me of the charge, the time the accuser named. For on that day on which he says I did these things, if I was in the countryside, I sacrificed, and if I sacrificed, I also ate. Then why, emperor, do you ask me repeatedly whether I was not resident in Rome at that time? You too, best of emperors, were resident there, yet you would not say that you sacrificed such victims; and the informer was too, yet he will not admit that he does the deeds of murderers, if he lived in Rome; and so did tens of thousands of men, whom it is better to banish than to bring under indictments, in which the proof of wrongdoing will be that one is here." "And yet coming to Rome even excuses one from the charge of seeming to plot revolution. For to live in a city where every eye is watching and every ear listens for what is and is not, does not permit those who are not overly eager to die to lay hands on revolution, and leads the more cautious and self-controlled slowly, and toward what is permitted. What then was I doing, informer, on that night? If you ask as of yourself, since you too have come to ask: I was preparing contests and accusations against good men, destroying the innocent and persuading the emperor with lies, so that I might be well thought of and the emperor stained. If you inquire as of a philosopher: I was praising the laughter of Democritus, which he directs at all the affairs of human beings. If you inquire as of me: Philiscus the Malian, who had philosophized with me for four years, was ill at that time, and I slept at his side, he being in so bad a condition that he died of the disease. And yet I would have prayed to have many spells for his soul, and, by Zeus, if there are any songs of Orpheus for the dead, not to be ignorant of those either; for I think I would even have gone beneath the earth for his sake, if that had been attainable: so completely had he bound me to himself by everything he did as a philosopher and in keeping with my own mind. This, emperor, you can hear even from the consul Telesinus, for he too was present with the Malian, tending him by night, as much as I." "And if you distrust Telesinus, since he is one of those who philosophize, I call the physicians as witnesses, and these are Seleucus of Cyzicus and Stratocles of Sidon. Put the question to them whether I speak the truth. More than thirty students followed them, witnesses of the same things; for summoning here those connected with Philiscus you will perhaps regard as postponements of the trial, since they departed from Rome at once for the homeland of the Malians, in piety toward the dead. Come forward, witnesses, for you have been summoned for this." WITNESSES. "So how far from the truth the indictment was framed, the testimony of these men shows plainly: not out in the suburbs but within the city, not beyond the wall but in a house, not at Nerva's but at Philiscus', not slaughtering but praying for a soul, not for the throne but for philosophy, not appointing a revolutionary in your place but saving a man like myself. What then is the Arcadian doing here? And what are the tales of the victims? And why try to make such things believed? Of course, even what never happened will one day be real, if it is judged to have happened. But the implausibility of the sacrifice, emperor, where will you place it?" "For there were, even before this, good diviners of victims in the art, such as can be named: Megistias from Acarnania, Aristander from Lycia, and Ambracia produced Silanus. The Acarnanian sacrificed for Leonidas, king of Sparta, the Lycian for Alexander the Macedonian, and Silanus for Cyrus, who longed for kingship. And if anything in a human being's entrails lay hidden that was clearer, or wiser, or truer, such a sacrifice was not beyond their means, since kings presided over it, who had many cupbearers, many captives, lawlessness without danger, and no fear of accusation if they slaughtered something. But I think it occurred to those men, as it does now to me, in danger over such matters, that in animals without reason, since they are slaughtered in ignorance of death, it is likely that nothing in the entrails is clouded by any lack of understanding of what they are about to suffer; but a human being, who always has in his soul some dread of death even when it is not yet at hand, how is it likely, when death is already present and before his eyes, that he should show anything prophetic, or anything at all auspicious, on the entrails? That I conjecture about these matters rightly and according to nature, consider, emperor, as follows. The liver, in which those skilled in these matters say the tripod of their divination lies, is composed of blood that is not pure; for whatever is unmixed the heart holds, channeling it through the bloody veins into the whole body. The bile that lies upon the liver is raised by anger, and fears draw it down into the hollows of the liver." "Seething, then, from the things that provoke it and unable to be borne even in its own vessel, it is poured over the liver as it lies on its back, in which position all the bile covers the smooth and prophetic parts of the organ; but when it is made to settle by things that frighten, it draws with it also the light in the smooth parts, for then the pure part of the blood withdraws too, and because of this the liver becomes spleen-like, the blood running naturally beneath the membrane around it and floating on the muddy part. What then, emperor, is the point of murder, if the offerings will be unclear? Human nature makes them unclear, since it understands death, and the dying themselves do so: the high-spirited die with anger, the fainter-hearted with fear. Hence the art, among the barbarians who are not unlearned, approves the slaughter of kids and lambs, since these animals are simple and not far from insensible, but fowls and swine and bulls, since these are spirited, it does not deem worthy of its secrets. I understand, emperor, that I am goading the accuser, since I have made you a wiser hearer, and you seem to me to give heed to the speech; and if I state anything unclearly, I permit you to question me. What concerns the Egyptian's indictment has been said by me; but since, I think, the slanders of Euphrates must not be overlooked either, you, emperor, may judge which of us philosophizes more." "Well then: he strives to say what is untrue about me, while I think it beneath me to do the same to him; he regards you as master, I as ruler; he gives you a sword against me, I give you a word. But as to what he has slandered, there are the speeches that I gave in Ionia, and he says that they were not spoken by me to your advantage. And yet what was said was about the Fates and necessity, and the example of my argument was the affairs of emperors, since yours seem the greatest of human affairs. I was philosophizing about the strength of the Fates and about how unalterable is what they spin: so that even if they were to decree the throne to someone, though it already belonged to another, and that other were to kill him so that he might never be deprived of rule by him, even the dead man would come back to life, on account of what the Fates had decided. For we introduce the exaggerations of speeches because of those who disbelieve what is plausible, just as if I were saying something like this." "Whoever is destined to become a carpenter will be a carpenter even if both his hands are cut off; whoever is destined to carry off the victory in the footrace at Olympia will not miss the victory even if his leg is crippled; and whoever the Fates have granted by their nod the mastery in archery will not fall short of the mark even if he loses his sight. I was speaking of the affairs of kings, looking, of course, to the Acrisii and the Laiuses and Astyages the Mede, along with many others who at the start believed that they were securing their own position well; some of them thought to kill their children, others their grandchildren, and were deprived of the kingship by them, who sprang up from obscurity together with what was fated. And if I were fond of flattery, I would have said that your affairs too were in my mind—when you were shut up here by Vitellius, and the temple of Zeus was being set on fire on the brow of the city, and he said that his own position would stand well if you did not escape him. And yet you were a mere youth then and not yet what you are; but nevertheless, since it seemed otherwise to the Fates, he perished by their very counsels, and you now hold what was his. But since I am vexed by a flattering harmony—for it seems to me to be of the out-of-rhythm and ill-sounding kind—let this string be cut for me, and do not think that I had any of your affairs in mind, but that I spoke only about the Fates and necessity; for these are the things he says I said against you." "And yet most of the gods put up with this account, and Zeus is not vexed to hear it, even from the poets: in the Lycian passages, 'Woe is me, that for me Sarpedon…', when they sing of Sarpedon and such things about him, in which he says he yields his son to the Fates; and they say again, in the weighing of souls, that Minos, the brother of Sarpedon, when he died, Zeus honored with a golden scepter and appointed to judge in the assembly of Aidoneus, but he did not beg him free from the Fates. Why, then, emperor, are you vexed at this account, when the gods endure it, for whom affairs are always fixed, and do not put the poets to death over it? For it is fitting to follow the Fates and not to be harsh at the changes of affairs, and not to disbelieve Sophocles, who speaks best of all men: 'Only to the gods does old age never come, nor death at any time; but all else all-powerful time confounds.' For the good fortunes among human beings go round in a circle, emperor, and the span of prosperity lasts a day: this man holds what is mine and another what is his, and so-and-so, holding what belonged to so-and-so, does not hold it. Keeping this in mind, emperor, put an end to exiles, put an end to blood; and use philosophy as you wish, for the true philosophy is free from passion; but take away the tears of human beings, since at present innumerable echoes come from the sea, and many more from the mainlands, of people lamenting whatever each has that is worthy of lament." "And the consequences that grow out of this are more than can be counted; they hang upon the tongues of the informers, who slander everyone to you and you, emperor, to everyone."

8| Such, then, was the speech the man had prepared; but at the end of the speech I came upon the closing words of the earlier part: "You will not kill me, since I am not one fated to die," and what came before this, from which it follows. When he departed from the court in a supernatural manner that is not easy to describe, the tyrant did not react as the many thought he would. For some thought that he would cry out in anger over it and would pursue the man and proclaim throughout his whole realm that Apollonius must be admitted nowhere; but he did nothing of this, but acted like one contending against the opinion of the many, or one who understood at last that nothing at his disposal was sufficient against the man. If he overlooked it, let us judge from what follows, for he will appear to have been thrown into confusion rather than to have shown contempt.

9| For he was listening to another trial after that one, in which a city was contending against a man over a will, I think; but both the names of the litigants and the sense of the case escaped him, for the questions were senseless, and the answers were not about the matter on which the judgment turned. This strongly exposed the tyrant, showing how stunned and at a loss he was, precisely because he had been persuaded by the flatterers that nothing could escape him.

10| Having thus handled the tyrant, and having shown the man who was feared by all Greeks and barbarians to be a plaything of his philosophy, he left the court before midday, and toward evening he appeared at Dicaearchia to Demetrius and Damis. And this was in fact the meaning of his urging Damis not to wait for the defense but to go on foot to Dicaearchia: he did not announce in advance what he had planned, but ordered the person most suited to him to do what followed from the plan.

11| Damis happened to have arrived the day before, and had met Demetrius to talk about the events before the trial; and what he heard had left Demetrius more anxious than one would expect of a man hearing about Apollonius, and on the next day he asked again about the same matters, pacing restlessly with him by the sea, where the tales about Calypso are set. They despaired, believing that Apollonius would not come, since the harshness of the tyranny lay on everyone, but they honored what he had ordered because of the man's nature. Having given up, then, they sat down in the nymphaeum, where the jar is; this is of white stone and holds a spring of water that neither rises above the mouth nor, if one draws some off, gives way. They discussed the nature of the water, though without much earnestness because of their dejection over the man, and brought the talk back to the events before the trial.

12| Damis lamented and said something like this: "O gods, shall we ever see our noble and good companion?" Apollonius heard him—for he was in fact already standing at the nymphaeum—and said: "You will see him—or rather you already have." "Living?" Demetrius asked. "Since if dead, we have not yet stopped weeping over you." Apollonius, stretching out his hand, said: "Take hold of me. If I slip away from you, I am a phantom come to you from Persephone, such as the gods below show to those who are more dejected in their mourning; but if I remain under your touch, persuade Damis too that I am alive and have not cast off my body." They could disbelieve no longer, but rose and hung upon the man and embraced him, and asked about the defense. Demetrius thought that he had not even made a defense, for he would have been destroyed even though he had done no wrong; Damis thought that he had made it, but perhaps sooner, since he had not expected it to be on that day. Apollonius said: "I have made my defense, men, and we are winning. My defense took place today, and not early in the day, for it was already getting on toward midday." "How then," Demetrius said, "did you cover so great a road in so small a part of the day?" And Apollonius said: "Except for a ram and wings composed of wax, suppose anything you like, ascribing this passage to a god." "Everywhere," said Demetrius, "I believe that some god is always looking ahead in your deeds and words, from whom your affairs come to be as they are. But the defense—what it was, and what the accusation contained, and the character of the judge, and what he asked, and what he agreed to or did not—tell it all together, so that I can report each part to Telesinus, for he will not stop asking about you. Perhaps fifteen days ago, while drinking with me at Antium, he fell asleep at the table, and in the middle of his cup he dreamed that a fire spread over the land like a sea and overtook some of the people, while others got away ahead of it, for it flowed like water; and that you did not suffer what the many did, but swam through it as it parted. After this dream he poured a libation to the gods of good omen and urged me to take courage on your behalf." And Apollonius said: "I am not surprised that Telesinus sleeps on my behalf, for he has long been keeping watch on my behalf as well. You will hear about the trial, but not here; for it is already quite late and time to walk to the city, and conversation on the road is sweeter for seeing walkers on their way. Let us go, then, talking over what you ask, and I shall tell what was done today in the court." "For the events before the judgment you both know: you as one who was present, and you as one who heard of them, I think, from this man—by Zeus, not once but again, unless I have forgotten Demetrius. But what you do not yet know I shall go through, starting from the order given beforehand and from my entering naked." He went through also his own words, and above all "You will not kill me," and his departure from the judgment, how he departed.

13| Then Demetrius cried out: "I thought you had arrived saved, but for you this is the beginning of dangers, for he will seize you when you are denounced and shut off from every refuge." Apollonius, bidding farewell to Demetrius' fear, said: "If only you two were as easy for him to catch! But how his affairs stand now, I know. Having always been a hearer of flattering speeches, he has now heard rebukes, and tyrannical natures burst under such things and are filled with bile over them. But I need rest, since I have not yet bent a knee after the contest." And Damis said: "I, Demetrius, was so disposed toward this man's affairs that I would have led him away from this road on which he has come; you too, I think, advised the same, that he not go into dangers both voluntary and hard. But when he happened to be bound, as it seemed to me, and I thought his situation had no way out, he said that being released was in his own power, and he freed his leg from the bond and showed it. Then for the first time I understood about the man that he is inspired and greater than the wisdom of our own country. So even if I should meet with worse than this, I would fear nothing, though in danger under his care. But since evening is near, let us walk to the lodging, to take care of the man." And Apollonius said: "Sleep is all I need; the rest I count the same, whether any of it is present or absent." After this, having prayed to Apollo and also to Helios, he went into the house where Demetrius was living, and, when he had washed his feet and urged Damis and the others to dine, since they appeared to him to be without food, he threw himself on the couch, and, chanting over sleep a verse of Homer, he slept, as one who would not trouble himself about present matters that were not worth it.

14| Toward dawn Demetrius asked him where on earth he would turn, and seemed to hear in his mind the clatter of horsemen whom he thought were already upon Apollonius because of the tyrant's anger. Apollonius said: "He will not pursue me, neither he himself nor anyone else; for me the voyage will be to Greece." "A risky one," Demetrius said, "for the place is most conspicuous; and a man whom you could not escape even in obscurity, how could you elude in the open?" "I have no need to elude him," Apollonius said, "for if, as you suppose, all the earth is the tyrant's, those who die in the open are better than those who live in obscurity." And he said to Damis: "Do you perceive a ship leaving for Sicily?" "I perceive it," he said, "for we are lodging by the sea and the herald is near the doors, and the ship is already being put out; I infer it from the shouting of those who are sailing and from what they are doing about the raising of the anchors." "Let us board this ship, Damis," he said, "to sail now to Sicily, and from there to the Peloponnese." "It seems good to me," Damis said,

15| "and let us sail." And after they had said farewell to Demetrius, who was dejected over them, and had urged him to take courage for them, as a man should for his friends, they sailed for Sicily with a favorable wind, and sailing past Messene they reached Tauromenium on the third day. Next they were carried on to Syracuse, and put out for the Peloponnese around the beginning of autumn; crossing the open sea they reached, on the sixth day, the outlets of the Alpheus, from which this river pours its drinkable water into the Adriatic and Sicilian sea. Landing from the ship, and thinking it worth a great deal to have come to Olympia, they lodged in the sanctuary of Zeus, going nowhere beyond Scillus. A rumor, sudden and intense, took hold of the Greek world that the man was alive and had come to Olympia. At first the report seemed unsound, for besides there being no human hope about him, since they had heard that he was bound, they had heard these other things as well: that he had died burned, some said; others that he was dragged alive with hooks fastened into his collarbones; others that he was thrown into a pit, others into the deep. But when it was believed that he had come, Greece never gathered so excited for any Olympiad as for him then: Elis and Sparta from the spot, Corinth from the borders of the Isthmus, and the Athenians, though outside the Peloponnese, were not outdone by the cities on Pisa's doorstep, the most distinguished of the Athenians themselves marching to the sanctuary, and the youth who came to Athens from all the earth. Indeed from Megara too some were resident at Olympia then, and many from Boeotia, and from Argos, Phocis and Thessaly whatever was distinguished. Some had already met Apollonius and came to recover wisdom, thinking they would hear more and more marvelous things; others, who had no experience of him, thought it dreadful to appear ignorant of such a man. To those who asked by what means he had escaped the tyrant, he thought it unnecessary to say anything vulgar, but said that he had made his defense and been saved. Many who had come from Italy proclaimed what had happened in the court, and Greece was not far from doing obeisance to him, regarding him as a divine man chiefly because he had not set himself to any boasting about these things.

16| When a youth among those who had come from Athens said that Athena was very well-disposed to the emperor, Apollonius said: "Stop clapping at Olympia over these things and slandering the goddess to her father." As the youth grew more vexed and said that the goddess was acting justly, since the emperor had also held the eponymous office among the Athenians, Apollonius said: "If only he had held it at the Panathenaea too!" With the first of his replies he silenced the youth as one ignorant about the gods, if he thought them well-disposed to tyrants; with the second, on the ground that the Athenians were acting inconsistently with their decrees for Harmodius and Aristogeiton if, while they think it right to honor those men in the agora for what they did at the Panathenaea, they now grant tyrants the favor of being elected by show of hands

17| to rule over them. And when Damis advised him about money, since very little was left of their travel supplies, he said: "Tomorrow I shall see to this." And going into the sanctuary the next day, he said: "Give me, priest, a thousand drachmas from the funds of Zeus, if you do not think he will be very angry." And the priest said: "He will not be angry over this, but rather if you do not take more."

18| A Thessalian man named Isagoras was with him at Olympia, and Apollonius said: "Tell me, Isagoras, is a festival anything?" "By Zeus," said Isagoras, "the sweetest and the most dear to the gods of human things." "And what is its material?—as if I had asked about the material of this statue, and you had replied that it was made of gold and ivory." "And what material, Apollonius," he said, "can a thing without body have?" "The greatest and most varied," Apollonius said, "for in it are precincts and shrines and race-courses and a stage, and peoples of men, some from the neighboring land, some from beyond the borders and overseas. And indeed it is composed of very many arts and sophistries and true wisdom, and poets and councils and discourses, and naked contests and music, as is ancestral at Pytho." "It seems, Apollonius," Isagoras said, "that the festival is not only corporeal, but of more marvelous material than cities, for it calls together and settles together the most serious of the serious and the most renowned of the renowned." "Then shall we, Isagoras," he said, "regard the festival as the men, just as some regard the men as the walls and the ships, or does it need some other view?" "This view, Man of Tyana, is complete," he said, "and it is just to follow it." "And yet incomplete," Apollonius said, "to one who thinks about it in the way I do." "For ships seem to me to need men, and men ships, and men would never even have thought of the sea if there were no ship; walls save men, and men walls. A festival, by the same reasoning, is both the assembly of men and the very place to which they must come together, and all the more so inasmuch as walls and ships would not have come to be but through human hands, whereas these places are marred by human hands, when they are deprived of being natural, and when they come well from nature they are judged worthy of people's gathering to them. For gymnasia and stoas and fountains and houses were made by human art, like walls and ships; but this Alpheus, together with the hippodrome, the stadium and the groves, came to be before human beings: the river sufficient to be drink and bath, the hippodrome a wide plain for horses to compete in, the stadium a place for athletes to be dusty and to run, since it offers a boundary, a hollow the length of a stade, and the groves to crown the victors and to train the runners among the athletes. These things, I think, when Heracles considered them and admired the natural character of Olympia, made the place appear worthy of the things still pursued here now."

19| After he had conversed for forty days at Olympia and been very earnest, he said: "In the cities I shall converse with you, men of Greece, at festivals, in processions, in mysteries, in sacrifices, in libations—for these call for a refined man—but now I must go down to Lebadea, since I have not yet been with Trophonius, though I once visited the sanctuary." And saying this he set out for Boeotia, with none of those who admired him left behind. The mouth at Lebadea is dedicated to Trophonius, son of Apollo, and may be entered only by those who come for oracles; it is not seen in the sanctuary but a little above the sanctuary on a mound, and iron spits close it, set in a circle around it, and the descent is of a kind that draws in one who has sat down. Those who go down are sent dressed in white, carrying in both hands honey-cakes to appease the serpents that dart at those who descend. The earth sends some up not far away and some very far, for they are sent up beyond the Locrians and beyond the Phocians, though most of them near the borders of the Boeotians. Having come into the sanctuary, then, he said: "I wish to go down on behalf of philosophy." The priests objected, and said to the many that they would never let a sorcerer put the sanctuary to the test, while pretending to the man himself that the days were inauspicious and unclean for giving oracles. That day, therefore, he conversed at the springs of the Hercyna about the cause and manner of the oracle—for that oracle alone gives its response through the consulter himself—and when evening came he went to the mouth with the young men who followed him, drew up four of the spits that hold the bolts of the passage, and went down underground in his threadbare cloak, as though he had dressed himself for a lecture, doing things so dear to the god that Trophonius appeared to the priests and rebuked them on the man's account, and told them all to follow to Aulis, since there he would come up in a way more marvelous than any man. For he came up after seven days, longer than any of those who had gone under into the oracle, bringing a book most fitting to his question. He had gone down saying: "What, Trophonius, do you hold to be the most perfect and purest philosophy?" And the book contained the opinions of Pythagoras, as the oracle too agreed with this wisdom.

20| This book is dedicated at Antium and is prized for this reason; Antium is among the Italian cities on the sea. This much I allow to be heard also from those who live at Lebadea; but about this book let my own judgment be declared: that it was carried later to the emperor Hadrian, at which time also some of Apollonius' letters were carried, though certainly not all; and that it stayed on in the palace at Antium, the one he most delighted in of the palaces around Italy.

21| All his associates from Ionia came to him too, whom Greece called the Apollonians, and mingling with those who were there they became a youth worthy of admiration for their numbers and their eagerness to philosophize. Rhetoric lay neglected, and little attention was paid to those who drilled others in that art, as one that teaches only the tongue, while all pressed toward his philosophy. And just as they say that the Gyges and the Croesuses keep the doors of their treasuries unlocked so that those in need may draw from them, so he offered his wisdom to those who loved it, permitting questions on every subject.

22| Some slandered him, saying that he avoided the visits of the governors and led his hearers away to quiet places instead; and when someone jested that he drove the sheep away whenever he learned that the men of the marketplace were approaching, he said: "Yes, by Zeus, so that the wolves may not fall upon the flock." What did he mean by this? He saw that the men of the marketplace were looked up to by the many, and that they advanced from poverty to wealth, and were so ready to embrace hatreds that they even sold the very act of making enemies; so he kept the young from associating with them, and admonished rather bitterly those who had associated with them, as if washing out an odd dye. He had been set against them at other times too, but by the prisons in Rome and those who were bound and destroyed he was so disposed toward the art that he regarded all this as the work of informers and of those puffed up by cleverness, rather than of the tyrant.

23| About the time when he was busy in Greece, a portent of this kind held the sky: a crown like a rainbow went around the circle of the sun and dimmed its ray. That the portent brought revolution was clear to all; and the governor of Greece, summoning him from Athens to Boeotia, said: "I hear, Apollonius, that you are wise in divine matters." "Yes, if you also hear," he said, "that I am wise in human matters." "I hear it," the governor said, "and I agree." "Since you agree, then," Apollonius said, "do not meddle in the counsels of the gods, for this is what the wisdom of human beings approves." When the governor kept begging Apollonius to say what he thought, since he feared that everything would turn into night, Apollonius said: "Take courage, for there will be a light out of this night."

24| After this, when he had spent two years on the affairs of Greece and had done enough, he sailed to Ionia with his company following him, and for the most part philosophized around Smyrna and Ephesus, visiting the other cities too; and in none of the cities did he seem unpleasant, but rather worth longing for, and a great gain to the quick-witted.

25| The gods were by now pushing Domitian from his presidency over human beings. He happened to have killed Clemens, a consul, to whom he had given his own sister, and he had issued an order that about the third or fourth day following the murder she too should go to a husband. Stephanus, then, a freedman of the woman—the man whom the shape of the portent had signified—whether thinking of the dead man or of all, set out against the tyrant like the freest of the Athenians. He had slipped a sword under the forearm of his left arm, and had wrapped the hand in bandages as though it were broken, and he approached Domitian as he was leaving the court and said: "I need you alone, emperor, for what you will hear is of great moment." The tyrant did not disdain to hear him, and took him aside into the men's hall, where the palace is. "Clemens, your bitterest enemy, has not died, as you think," Stephanus said, "but is in a place that I know, and is arranging himself against you." As the emperor cried out loudly at what he heard, Stephanus fell upon him in his confusion, drew the sword out of the prepared arm, and drove it through his thigh, a blow not mortal for immediate death, but not untimely for the death that followed. Domitian, strong in body in other respects, being about forty-five years old, grappled with him though wounded, and throwing Stephanus down, pressed on top of him, digging out his eyes and crushing his cheeks with the base of a golden cup that was lying near the sacred things, and he called on Athena also as his helper. The guards, understanding that he was in trouble, came in a mass and killed the tyrant, who was by then fainting.

26| These things were being done at Rome, but they were seen by Apollonius at Ephesus. For he was conversing around the groves of the covered walks at midday, at the very time the events in the palace were taking place, and first he let his voice sink, as though afraid; then he expressed himself less fully than his own power warranted, like those who in the midst of speaking catch sight of something else; then he fell silent, like those who have dropped out of their speech; and fixing a fearful gaze on the ground, and moving forward three or four paces, he cried: "Strike the tyrant! Strike him!"—not as one drawing an image of the truth from some mirror, but seeing the things themselves and seeming to take part in what was being done. Ephesus was stunned, for the whole city was present at his talk. He paused for as long as those who look on pause until some outcome of the doubtful events occurs, and then said: "Take courage, men, for the tyrant has been slain today. Why do I say today? Just now, by Athena, just now, at about the time of the words over which I fell silent." The people of Ephesus thought this madness, and wished him to be speaking the truth, but feared the danger of listening; and he said: "I do not wonder at those who have not yet accepted the account which not even all Rome yet knows. But look, it does know, for the news is spreading, and already ten thousand believe it, and twice that number leap for joy, and double these, and quadruple, and all the peoples there." "This word will come here also; and let your sacrificing over it be put off until the time when this is reported; but I am going to offer prayers to the gods for the things I saw."

27| While these things were still disbelieved, runners came bearing good news, witnesses to the man’s wisdom. For the killing of the tyrant, the day that brought it, the noon hour, and the slayers to whom the exhortation had been addressed, all were exactly as the gods had revealed each detail to Apollonius while he was speaking. Thirty days after this, Nerva wrote to him that he now held the rule of the Romans by the will of the gods and of Apollonius, and that he would keep it more easily if Apollonius would come to be his counselor. At the time Apollonius wrote him back this riddle: “We shall be together, Emperor, for a very long time, in which neither shall we rule another nor another rule us.” He understood, perhaps, both that he himself would shortly depart from among men, and that Nerva would rule only a short time; for his reign lasted a year and four months, and he was thought a most prudent ruler.

28| But so that he would not seem to neglect a good friend and ruler, he afterward composed a letter to him advising him on matters of government; and calling Damis he said, “This requires you, for the confidential parts of the letter are written for the emperor, but they are such as must be spoken either by me or through you.” Damis says that only later did he grasp the artifice: the letter had been composed by Apollonius excellently and about great matters, but it could just as well have been sent by someone else. What, then, was the man’s artifice? Throughout his whole life he is said often to have repeated, “Live unnoticed; and if you cannot, depart from life unnoticed.” So, in order to send Damis away from him, so that he would not end his life in front of witnesses, he made the letter and Damis’ journey back to Rome his pretext. Damis himself says that he felt something as he went away from him, though he did not know what was coming; but Apollonius, who knew it well, said nothing to him of the kind people say who will never see each other again, so firm was his conviction that he would always exist. He gave him only this charge: “Damis, even when you practice philosophy on your own, keep your eyes on me.”

29| The record of Apollonius of Tyana written by Damis the Assyrian ends at this point. As for how he died, if indeed he died, there are several accounts, but Damis gives none. I, however, must not leave even this out, for an account ought, I suppose, to have its proper end. Nor does Damis say anything about the man’s age. Some say he was eighty, others over ninety, and others that he went beyond a hundred, whole and sound in his entire body, and more pleasant than youth. For wrinkles too have a certain beauty, and in him it flowered most of all, as the images of him in the temple at Tyana show, and the accounts that celebrate the old age of Apollonius more than they once celebrated the youth of Alcibiades.

30| Some say that he died at Ephesus, tended by two maidservants, for the freedmen I spoke of at the beginning had already died. He had freed one of the two and was reproached by the other for not having been granted the same, and Apollonius said, “It is fitting that you should be her slave as well, for that will be the beginning of good fortune for you.” So after his death the one was slave to the other, and the other, on some small pretext, sold her to a dealer, from whom a man bought her although she was not even good-looking; but he was in love with her, and being a man of substantial means he declared her his wife and had children by her registered as his own. Others say that he died at Lindos, having gone into the temple of Athena and vanished inside it. Others say it happened in Crete, more marvelously than the people of Lindos tell it. Apollonius, they say, was staying in Crete, more admired than ever before, and came to the temple of Dictynna at an unseasonable hour. Dogs are posted to guard the temple as protectors of the wealth inside it, and the Cretans hold that they fall short neither of bears nor of other wild beasts of that sort. Yet they did not bark when he came, but came up to him and fawned on him, as they do not do even with those who are most familiar to them. The temple officials, they say, seized him as a sorcerer and a robber and put him in chains, claiming that he had thrown the dogs some sop. But about midnight he freed himself, and having called those who had bound him, so that it should not happen unseen, he ran up to the temple doors, and they flew open; and when he had gone inside, the doors closed again as they had been shut, and from within burst a sound of maidens singing. The song was: “Go from earth, go to heaven, go,” that is, “Go up from the earth.”

31| Even then he went on teaching philosophy about the soul, that it is immortal, instructing men that the doctrine about it is true, but not allowing them to pry too curiously into matters so great. For a young man came to Tyana, bold in disputation and unwilling to assent to the true doctrine. Apollonius had by then already passed from among men, and people marveled at his transformation, and no one dared to dispute that he was immortal. Most of the discussions there were about the soul, for there was a band of young men in the place who were in love with wisdom. But this young man would in no way assent to the immortality of the soul, and said, “Gentlemen, this is now the tenth month that I have continually prayed to Apollonius to disclose to me the argument about the soul; but he is so thoroughly dead that he does not appear to me when I beg him, nor persuade me that he is immortal.” So the young man spoke then. But on the fifth day after that, having been earnestly debating the same subject, he fell asleep where the discussion was going on. Among the young men who were joining him in study, some were busy with books, and others were intent on tracing geometrical figures on the ground, when he, like a man possessed, leapt up still half asleep, streaming with sweat, and shouted, “I believe you!” When those present asked him what had happened to him, he said, “Do you not see Apollonius the wise, how he is here among us, listening to our discussion and chanting wonderful verses about the soul?” “Where is he?” they said. “For to us he appears nowhere, though we would rather have that than all the goods of all mankind.” And the young man said, “It seems he has come to converse with me alone about the things I would not believe. Hear, then, what divine words he utters on the doctrine: The soul is immortal, and no possession of yours, but of Providence; when the body has wasted away, like a swift horse loosed from its bonds, it leaps lightly forth and mingles with the weightless air, having spurned its harsh and long-enduring servitude. But what profit is there in these things for you? You will believe them one day, when you are no more. Why, while you are among the living, do you go searching into them?” And this stands as a clear oracle of Apollonius, a tripod set up concerning the secrets of the soul, so that we may go in good heart, knowing our own nature, to the place the Fates appoint. As for a tomb of the man, or a cenotaph, I know of none that I have come across anywhere, although I have traveled over most of the earth, great as it is; but everywhere I have met with accounts of him that are more than human. And at Tyana there is a shrine built at imperial expense; for emperors did not consider him unworthy of the honors they themselves received.

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