Apollonius of Perga

“ Let us now return to Apollonius. After a lapse of fourteen years, he again made his appearance at the house of Stranguilio and Dionysias, in the city of Tharsus: no sooner had the former beheld him, than he strode about like a madman. “Woman,” said he, addressing his wife, “what wilt thou do now? Thou hast said that Apollonius was shipwrecked and dead. Behold, he seeks his daughter; what answer shall we make?” “Foolish man,” returned she, “let us resume our mourning, and have recourse to tears. He will believe that his child died a natural death.” As she said this, Apollonius entered. ”

“ I have found what I had lost; my child, my only daughter." Hearing his exclamations, the attendants ran in, and with them the prince Athanagoras. They discovered the enraptured king weeping upon his daughter's neck. "See, see," said he, "this is she whom I lamented. Half of my soul! now will I live." Participating in their master's happiness they all wept.
Apollonius now divested himself of his mourning dress, and attired himself in regal habiliments. "Oh, my lord," said his followers, "how much your daughter resembles you. ”

“ I am thy wife, the daughter of King Altistrates; and thou art of Tyre; thou art Apollonius, my husband and Iord. Thou wert the beloved one who instructed me. Thou wert the ship-wrecked man whom I loved with pure and fond regard.” Apollonius awakening at the mention of these well-known circumstances, recollected his long-lost lady. He fell upon her neck, and wept for joy. “Blessed be the Most High, who hath restored me my wife and daughter.” “But where,” said she, “is our daughter?” Presenting Tharsia, he replied, “Behold her.” ”

“ Now if you are a king, as you aver, you should be wiser than I am. Resolve the riddle."
"To prove to you that I am no impostor," said Apollonius, "I will reply. The house which bounds and rebounds, and echoes, is the wave: the mute inhabitant is a fish, which glides along with its residence." Tharsia continued: "I am borne rapidly along by the tall daughter of the grove, which equally incloses an innumerable company. I glide over various paths, and leave no footstep." "When I have answered your questions," said Apollonius, "I will show you much that you know not. ”

“ In Asia Minor he was especially pleased with the temple of Æsculapius at Pergamus; he healed many of the patients there, and gave instruction in the proper methods to adopt in order to procure reliable results by means of the prescriptive dreams.
At Troy, we are told, Apollonius spent a night alone at the tomb of Achilles, in former days one of the spots of greatest popular sanctity in Greece (iv. 11) . Why he did so does not transpire, for the fantastic conversation with the shade of the hero reported by Philostratus (iv. 16) seems to be devoid of any element of likelihood. ”

“ Apollonius understood nothing of what he heard and saw; but the abuse of a man's strength on a helpless woman filled him with indignation. Involuntarily this feeling carried him away. It doubled his strength, which was far superior to his brother's at all times, when he gripped him by the arm that held his wife so that it let go its prey and dropped as if paralyzed. Christiane tried to leave the room, but she collapsed helplessly. Apollonius caught her and laid her on the sofa, supported against its back. Then he stood before his brother like a wrathful angel. ”

“ Apollonius, on the contrary, a Greek by birth, had stored his vast intellect with the religious doctrines of the whole world, from India to Spain; his life extended over a century. Like a luminous meteor he traversed the universe, in constant intercourse with kings and the powerful ones of the earth, who venerate and fear him; and if he ever meets with hostility and opposition, he triumphs over it majestically, always stronger than his tyrants, never subject to humiliations, never brought into contact with public executioners. ”

“ Apollonius' good-natured willingness outwardly to subordinate himself to him appeared to his brother like derision in which the workmen, won over by the deceitful one, knowingly took part. In his sensitiveness, he himself resorted to the means that he assumed his brother employed. He was prevented from opposing him openly by the fact that Apollonius impressed him himself, even though he would not have acknowledged this to be the reason. He laid the blue coat of thunder aside and descended to the very lowest rung of his joviality. ”

“ After these words, Hellanicus turned from him, and Apollonius bode him again be called to him, and said to him: "The worst thing thou hast done, that thou warnedst me: take now from me a hundred pounds of gold, and go to Antiochus the king, and say to him that my head is cut from my neck, and bring that word to the delight of the king: then thou wilt have reward and also hands clean of the blood of the innocent." Then said Hellanicus: "That may not be, lord, that I take reward from thee on this account; because with good men, neither gold nor silver is compared with a good man's friendship." ”

“ Apollonius was not only a philosopher, in the sense of being a theoretical speculator or of being the follower of an ordered mode of life schooled in the discipline of resignation; he was also a philosopher in the original Pythagorean meaning of the term—a knower of Nature’s secrets, who thus could speak as one having authority.
He knew the hidden things of Nature by sight and not by hearing; for him the path of philosophy was a life whereby the man himself became an instrument of knowing. Religion, for Apollonius, was not a faith only, it was a science. ”

“ Apollonius was frightened. He thought of his father, of his sister-in-law and of her children. He thought of himself too, but it was just his own strong sense of honor that made him first imagine what the proud, upright, blind old man would have to suffer under the disgrace of a possible bankruptcy. He would be able to earn his bread; but his brother's wife and children? And they were not accustomed to hardship. He had heard that Christiane's inheritance from her parents had been considerable. ”

“ The familiars eagerly demanded whether he believed Apollonius to be a true and worthy philosopher. The unaffected piety of the alchymist protected him even in the midst of his simplicity; for he condemned Apollonius as a sorcerer and an impostor. No art could draw from him an admission that he had ever employed or invoked spiritual agencies in the prosecution of his pursuits, though he believed himself to have been frequently impeded by their invisible interference. ”

“ To this charge Apollonius replied with veiled irony: “You have omitted the most serious charge that might have been urged against me: to wit, that though I really know more about the mystic rite than its hierophant, I have come here pretending to desire initiation from men knowing more than myself.” ”

“ Apollonius was the only man living whom Sagaris, out of reverence and awe, would have hesitated to rob, and the only man to whom he did not lie. For beside being learned in the stars, an interpreter of dreams, a prophet of human fate, Apollonius spoke to those he could trust of a religion, of sacred mysteries, much older, he said, and vastly more efficacious for the soul's weal than the faith in Christ. ”

“ Then, entering into a more detailed account of her adventures, she related what she had endured from the wretched pimp, and how the Almighty had protected her.
Athanagoras, fearing lest another might demand her in marriage, threw himself at the king's feet, and modestly intimating how instrumental he had been in promoting their happy reunion, besought him to bestow his child upon him. “I cannot deny you,” returned Apollonius, “for you have alleviated her sorrows, and been the means of my present and future happiness. Take her. ”

“ You ought to live and be glad.” Apollonius, irritated at the girl’s pertinacity, arose and pushed her from him with his foot. She fell and cut her cheek, from which the blood flowed copiously. Terrified at the wound she had received, she burst into tears, and exclaimed, “0 thou eternal Architect of the heavens! look upon my afflictions. Born amid the waves and storms of the ocean, my mother perished in giving life to her daughter. Denied rest even in the grave, she was deposited in a chest, with twenty gold sestertia, and thrown into the sea. ”

“ In any case Apollonius restored the rites to Achilles, and erected a chapel in which he set up the neglected statue of Palamedes.104 The heroes of the Trojan period, then, it would seem, had still some connection with Greece, according to the science of the invisible world into which Apollonius was initiated. And if the Protestant sceptic can make nothing of it, at least the Roman Catholic reader may be induced to suspend his judgment by changing “hero” into “saint.” ”

“ Your father is called Apollonius, and your mother's name is Arcestrate, the daughter of king Arcestrates. She died the moment you were born; and Apollonius, adorning her with regal vesture, cast the chest which contained her into the sea. Twenty sestertia of gold were placed beneath her head; and whosoever discovered it, were entreated to give her burial. The ship in which your unhappy father sailed, tossed to and fro by the winds which formed your cradle, at last put into this port, where we were hospitably received by Stranguilio and Dionysias, to whom your sire also recommended me. ”

“ It is strange that, just as the biography of Apollonius is in a great measure an imitation of the Gospel narrative, so the life of Pythagoras, as it is found written in the work of Porphyry and Iamblichus, is nothing more than a reproduction of the characteristic traits in the life of the hero of Philostratus. Like Apollonius, Pythagoras had made long voyages in order that he might become the receptacle of all earthly wisdom. He had his Domitian in the tyrant Phalaris. He is the son of Apollo just as Apollonius is the son of Proteus. He works countless miracles. ”

“ It is quite true that Apollonius is chaste and temperate—that he is actuated by the noble desire to know, and the still nobler desire to communicate his knowledge to mankind. He is ingenious, learned, and, generally speaking, there is a something at once lively and original in his language when he does not indulge in too long an oration—something which is admirably suited to the character of a popular reformer ”

“ The chief representative of Neo-Pythagorism was Apollonius, of Tyana, in Cappodocia, probably one of the most fantastic personages of all Greek and Roman antiquity. Venerated as a god by some of his contemporaries, such as Damis and Philostratus, his biographers, on account of his wisdom and of his extraordinary works, he is considered by others, on the other hand, as a magician engaged, like a common charlatan, in conjuring tricks. The opinions which posterity, down to modern times, has passed on Apollonius are of a similar nature. ”

“ Damis presses it into service to “explain” the last phrase in Apollonius’ saying about the sages, namely, that they were “possessed of nothing but what all possess”—which, however, appears elsewhere in a changed form, as “possessing nothing, they have the possessions of all men” (iii. 15) .101
On returning to Greece, one of the first shrines Apollonius visited was that of Aphrodite at Paphos in Cyprus (iii. 58) . The greatest external peculiarity of the Paphian worship of Venus was the representation of the goddess by a mysterious stone symbol. ”

“ Can I conceal myself in your country?” “My lord,” answered Stranguilio, “our city is extremely poor, and cannot sustain your attendants, in consequence of a grievous famine which has wasted the land. Our citizens are hopeless and helpless; and death, with all its accompanying horrors, is before our eyes.” “Give thanks to God,” replied Apollonius, “who hath driven me a fugitive to your shores. ”

“ Thence Apollonius crosses over to Lesbos (iv. 13) , and subsequently sails for Athens, where he spends some years in Greece (iv. 17-33) visiting the temples of Hellas, reforming their rites and instructing the priests (iv. 24) . We next find him in Crete (iv. 34) , and subsequently at Rome in the time of Nero (iv. 36-46) .
In a.d. 66 Nero issued a decree forbidding any philosopher to remain in Rome, and Apollonius set out for Spain, and landed at Gades, the modern Cadiz; he seems to have stayed in Spain only a short time (iv. 47) ”

“ Didn’t Apollonius, according to the legendary life of him, come back from India by the Red Sea to Egypt? Didn’t he meet Vespasian in Alexandria; and wasn’t he sent by Vespasian on an errand to Tarsus, North of Palestine? ”

“ In the second place, although we are not to suppose that we are reading the actual words of Apollonius, we are nevertheless conscious of being in immediate contact with the inner atmosphere of the best religious thought of the Greek mind, and have before our eyes the picture of a mystic and spiritual fermentation which leavened all strata of society in the first century of our era. ”

“ It is in sooth very needful to thee that thou [8] be on thy guard, because thou art condemned." Then said Apollonius: "Who could condemn me, the Prince of my own nation?" Hellanicus said, "Antiochus the king." Apollonius said, "For what reasons hath he condemned me?" Hellanicus said, "Because thou desiredst to be what the father is." Apollonius said, "I am sorely condemned." Hellanicus said, "Whatever man bringeth thee to him alive, he will receive fifty pounds of gold; he who bringeth thy head will receive a hundred pounds of gold. Therefore I counsel thee to flee, and save thy life." ”