Apollonius

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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' 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. ”

“ Apollonius heals many sick people, and does much good, but he does it coldly, correctly, and more like an artist who is trying to eliminate all sounds of discord from the great harmonies of Nature, than like one who is touched by the infirmities and sufferings of that sacred being, so great and yet so miserable, whom we call man. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thence sailing to Pentapolis, the old King Altistrates received them with delight. He lived with his son, and daughter, and grandchild, a whole year in happiness. After that, he died, full of years, bequeathing the kingdom to his son and daughter.
As Apollonius walked one day upon the sea-shore, he recollected the kind-hearted fisherman who succoured him after his shipwreck, and he ordered him to be seized and brought to the palace. The poor fisherman, perceiving himself under the escort of a guard of soldiers, expected nothing less than death. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Apollonius was inexorable, gentle though he was in putting his reasons before his brother. Any unprejudiced person would have to admit that he could not do otherwise, that the fellow must go. And with a savage laugh Fritz Nettenmair, too, thought, when he was alone, "Of course he must go!" Whatever Apollonius showed him, strictness and gentleness merely strengthened him in the belief that relaxed its hold upon him the less the longer he nourished it and that grew the thirstier for his heart's blood the longer he fed it from that fount. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then began all the men to praise her for her music; and Apollonius alone was silent. Then said the king, "Apollonius, now thou dost evilly; because all men praise my daughter for her music, and thou alone findest fault by being silent." Apollonius said, "O thou good king! if thou allowest me, I will say what I feel, that truly your daughter hath failed in her music, for she hath not well learned it; but bid the harp be now given to me, then thou soon shalt know what thou yet knowest not." Arcestrates the king said, "Apollonius, I know in sooth that thou art well instructed in all things." ”

“ Thus it came about that Master Tafi's supplication was overheard every night by Apollonius the Greek and the two young Florentines who lay in the next chamber. Now it so happened Apollonius was likewise of a merry humour, every whit as ready for a jest as Bruno or Buffalmacco. All three itched sore to play off some trick on the old painter, who was a just man and a god-fearing, but hard-fisted withal and a cruel taskmaster. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Apollonius became ever paler and gloomier. At last the good man declared that here was a malady against which all art was useless. So deep-seated was the trouble that no remedy of his could reach it.
Apollonius knew that no physician could cure his illness. The councilman had only partly divined the cause. Overwork had merely watered the soil for the parasite growth which was gnawing at Apollonius' inmost being. The first symptoms seemed of a physical nature. As his brother had plunged to death before him, the clock below had struck the hour of two. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then said Stranguilio: "Lord Apollonius, our city is in want and may not suit your nobility, because we are suffering the severest and fiercest famine, and for my citizens is no hope of salvation; but the most cruel [death] [3] stands before our eyes."
Then said Apollonius: "My dearest friend Stranguilio, thank God that he hath led me to flee hither to your frontiers. I will give your citizens a hundred thousand measures of wheat, if ye will conceal my flight." ”

“ 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. ”

“ And to be sure Apollonius was greatly pleased with the laws of the Persians, and was an admirer of them, because the Greeks enjoyed the advantage of their courage, and had the very same opinion about the gods which they had. This last was exemplified in the temples which they burnt, and their courage in coming, and almost entirely enslaving the Grecians. However, Apollonius has imitated all the Persian institutions, and that by his offering violence to other men's wives, and gelding his own sons. Now, with us, it is a capital crime, if any one does thus abuse even a brute beast ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the king heard that Apollonius read the riddle so rightly, then he dreaded that it were too widely known; looked then with angry countenance at him, and said: "Thou young man, thou art far from right, thou errest, and what thou sayest is naught, but thou hast earned decapitation. I will now dismiss thee for a space of thirty days, that thou mayest consider the riddle aright, and thou then shalt receive my daughter to wife: and if thou doest that not, thou shalt suffer [2] the appointed doom." ”

“ Then addressing the servants bestowed upon him, he commanded them to bear away the presents he had received to an hostelry; but the girl, who became apprehensive of losing her lover, looked sorrowfully at her parent, and said, “Best king and father, does it please you that Apollonius, whom we have so lately enriched, should leave us? The goods we have given him will be purloined by wicked men.” The king admitted this, and assigned him apartments in the palace, where he lived in great honour. ”

“ 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. ”