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APOLLONIUS was born at Tyana, in Cappadocia. He studied grammar and rhetoric in Tarsus, where we may think of him as sometimes meeting the young Jew Saul, also a student in the same city. Apollonius found Tarsus too luxurious and distracting for study, and retired to Ægea, in Cilicia, where he studied medicine and philosophy in the temple of Æsculapius. There he met Euxenus, a Pythagorean, who filled him with enthusiasm for the great master, so that he adopted the Pythagorean discipline and mode of life. He abstained from animal food or clothing, slept on the ground, and observed the rule of five years' silence.
He then began a course of travel in the East, far more accessible since Alexander's conquest than to earlier philosophers. At Nineveh he met Damis, who became his faithful friend and fellow-traveller, and who left records of his adventures. They travelled together in Egypt, Africa, Italy, and Spain. But the western coast of Asia Minor, and more particularly the city of Ephesus, would seem to have been their headquarters. In this and in neighboring cities, he seems to have exercised great social and moral influence; representing luxury and excitement, and calming troubled minds by the fascinations of a dignified presence and exalted nature.
That he was credited with miraculous powers is true, but not to be charged against him. Those who read his biography by Philostratus will not carry away the impression of an impostor or charlatan, but of a man sincerely devoted to his fellow-men. He was keenly interested in the maintenance of Roman government under wise rulers. When in Egypt he became acquainted with Vespasian, and afterwards with his son Titus. He was urged to join in conspiracies against the Empire, but firmly refused. It was not, he said, self-government, but it was far better than aristocracy or oligarchy (Philost. v. 34-42). "As one man excelling in virtue may change democracy so as to make it seem dictatorship, so the government of one, doing and providing all for the common good, is, in the true sense, a republic."
When Domitian succeeded Titus, and began to listen to spies and informers, Apollonius expressed his disapproval in very strong language, which was not long in reaching the ear of the tyrant. He anticipated prosecution by voluntarily going to Rome, just as Domitian had driven all philosophers away from Rome. He was thrown into prison, from which he was soon summoned to a private interview with the Emperor, followed by a public trial. The dignified and respectful firmness with which he maintained the claims of philosophy, and refuted the malignant calumnies of his accuser, disarmed Domitian's suspicious temper, and he was acquitted. He left Italy for Greece. There he was received at Olympia with much enthusiasm, and soon after returned to Ephesus, where he appears to have been in friendly relations with Nerva, shortly destined to succeed Domitian. The place and time of his death are uncertain, but a shrine was erected to his honour in his native city, which long remained an object of reverence.
In his biography by Philostratus there is no sign of any rivalry with the life of Christ, or of any Christian saint. For centures he was reviled as an impostor. Justice has at least been done to him as an honourable type of the men who, since Pythagoras, and yet more since the establishment of the Empire, aimed at the renovation of the Western world through agencies less intense and fervid, but also less subversive and more human, than those employed by the early Christian Church.
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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