THE BIOGRAPHER OF APOLLONIUS.
Flavius Philostratus, the writer of the only Life of Apollonius which
has come down to us,[54] was a distinguished man of letters who lived in
the last quarter of the second and the first half of the third century
(_cir._ 175-245 A.D.). He formed one of the circle of famous writers and
thinkers gathered round the philosopher-empress,[55] Julia Domna, who
was the guiding spirit of the Empire during the reigns of her husband
Septimius Severus and her son Caracalla. All three members of the
imperial family were students of occult science, and the age was
preeminently one in which the occult arts, good and bad, were a passion.
Thus the sceptical Gibbon, in his sketch of Severus and his famous
consort, writes:
"Like most of the Africans, Severus was passionately addicted to the
vain studies of magic and divination, deeply versed in the
interpretation of dreams and omens, and perfectly acquainted with the
science of judicial astrology, which in almost every age except the
present, has maintained its dominion over the mind of man. He had lost
his first wife whilst he was governor of the Lionnese Gaul. In the
choice of a second, he sought only to connect himself with some
favourite of fortune; and as soon as he had discovered that a young lady
of Emesa in Syria had _a royal nativity_[56] he solicited and obtained
her hand. Julia Domna[57] (for that was her name) deserved all that the
stars could promise her. She possessed, even in an advanced age,[58] the
attractions of beauty, and united to a lively imagination a firmness of
mind, and strength of judgment, seldom bestowed on her sex. Her amiable
qualities never made any deep impression on the dark and jealous temper
of her husband,[59] but in her son's reign, she administered the
principal affairs of the Empire with a prudence that supported his
authority, and with a moderation that sometimes corrected his wild
extravagances. Julia applied herself to letters and philosophy with some
success, and with the most splendid reputation. She was the patroness of
every art, and the friend of every man of genius."[60]
We thus see, even from Gibbon's somewhat grudging estimate, that Domna
Julia was a woman of remarkable character, whose outer acts give
evidence of an inner purpose, and whose private life has not been
written. It was at her request that Philostratus wrote the Life of
Apollonius, and it was she who supplied him with certain MSS. that were
in her possession, as a basis; for the beautiful daughter of Bassianus,
priest of the sun at Emesa, was an ardent collector of books from every
part of the world, especially of the MSS. of philosophers and of
memoranda and biographical notes relating to the famous students of the
inner nature of things.
That Philostratus was the best man to whom to entrust so important a
task, is doubtful. It is true that he was a skilled stylist and a
practised man of letters, an art critic and an ardent antiquarian, as we
may see from his other works; but he was a sophist rather than a
philosopher, and though an enthusiastic admirer of Pythagoras and his
school, was so from a distance, regarding it rather through a
wonder-loving atmosphere of curiosity and the embellishments of a lively
imagination than from a personal acquaintance with its discipline, or a
practical knowledge of those hidden forces of the soul with which its
adepts dealt. We have, therefore, to expect a sketch of the appearance
of a thing by one outside, rather than an exposition of the thing itself
from one within.
The following is Philostratus' account of the sources from which he
derived his information concerning Apollonius:[61]
"I have collected my materials partly from the cities which loved him,
partly from the temples whose rites and regulations he restored from
their former state of neglect, partly from what others have said about
him, and partly from his own letters.[62] More detailed information I
procured as follows. Damis was a man of some education who formerly used
to live in the ancient city of Ninus.[63] He became a disciple of
Apollonius and recorded his travels, in which he says he himself took
part, and also the views, sayings, and predictions of his master. A
member of Damis' family brought the Empress Julia the note-books[64]
containing these memoirs, which up to that time had not been known of.
As I was one of the circle of this princess, who was a lover and
patroness of all literary productions, she ordered me to rewrite these
sketches and improve their form of expression, for though the Ninevite
expressed himself clearly, his style was far from correct. I also have
had access to a book by Maximus[65] of Ægæ which contained all
Apollonius' doings at Ægæ.[66] There is also a will written by
Apollonius, from which we can learn how he almost deified
philosophy.[67] As to the four books of Moeragenes[68] on Apollonius they
do not deserve attention, for he knows nothing of most of the facts of
his life" (i. 2, 3).
These are the sources to which Philostratus was indebted for his
information, sources which are unfortunately no longer accessible to us,
except perhaps a few letters. Nor did Philostratus spare any pains to
gather information on the subject, for in his concluding words (viii.
31), he tells us that he has himself travelled into most parts of the
"world" and everywhere met with the "inspired sayings"[69] of
Apollonius, and that he was especially well acquainted with the temple
dedicated to the memory of our philosopher at Tyana and founded at the
imperial expense ("for the emperors had judged him not unworthy of like
honours with themselves"), whose priests, it is to be presumed, had got
together as much information as they could concerning Apollonius.
A thoroughly critical analysis of the literary effort of Philostratus,
therefore, would have to take into account all of these factors, and
endeavour to assign each statement to its original source. But even then
the task of the historian would be incomplete, for it is transparently
evident that Philostratus has considerably "embellished" the narrative
with numerous notes and additions of his own and with the composition of
set speeches.
Now as the ancient writers did not separate their notes from the text,
or indicate them in any distinct fashion, we have to be constantly on
our guard to detect the original sources from the glosses of the
writer.[70] In fact Philostratus is ever taking advantage of the mention
of a name or a subject to display his own knowledge, which is often of a
most legendary and fantastic nature. This is especially the case in his
description of Apollonius' Indian travels. India at that time and long
afterwards was considered the "end of the world," and an infinity of the
strangest "travellers' tales" and mythological fables were in
circulation concerning it. One has only to read the accounts of the
writers on India[71] from the time of Alexander onwards to discover the
source of most of the strange incidents that Philostratus records as
experiences of Apollonius. To take but one instance out of a hundred,
Apollonius had to cross the Caucasus, an indefinite name for the great
system of mountain ranges that bound the northern limits of
[=A]ry[=a]varta. Prometheus was chained to the Caucasus, so every child
had been told for centuries. Therefore, if Apollonius crossed the
Caucasus, he must have seen those chains. And so it was, Philostratus
assures us (ii. 3). Not only so, but he volunteers the additional
information that you could not tell of what they were made! A perusal of
Megasthenes, however, will speedily reduce the long Philostratian
account of the Indian travels of Apollonius (i. 41-iii. 58) to a very
narrow compass, for page after page is simply padding, picked up from
any one of the numerous Indica to which our widely read author had
access.[72] To judge from such writers, Porus[73] (the R[=a]j[=a]h
conquered by Alexander) was the immemorial king of India. In fact, in
speaking of India or any other little-known country, a writer in these
days had to drag in all that popular legend associated with it or he
stood little chance of being listened to. He had to give his narrative
a "local colour," and this was especially the case in a technical
rhetorical effort like that of Philostratus.
Again, it was the fashion to insert set speeches and put them in the
mouths of well-known characters on historical occasions, good instances
of which may be seen in Thucydides and the Acts of the Apostles.
Philostratus repeatedly does this.
But it would be too long to enter into a detailed investigation of the
subject, although the writer has prepared notes on all these points, for
that would be to write a volume and not a sketch. Only a few points are
therefore set down, to warn the student to be ever on his guard to sift
out Philostratus from his sources.[74]
But though we must be keenly alive to the importance of a thoroughly
critical attitude where definite facts of history are concerned, we
should be as keenly on our guard against judging everything from the
standpoint of modern preconceptions. There is but one religious
literature of antiquity that has ever been treated with real sympathy in
the West, and that is the Judæo-Christian; in that alone have men been
trained to feel at home, and all in antiquity that treats of religion
in a different mode to the Jewish or Christian way, is felt to be
strange, and, if obscure or extraordinary, to be even repulsive. The
sayings and doings of the Jewish prophets, of Jesus, and of the
Apostles, are related with reverence, embellished with the greatest
beauties of diction, and illumined with the best thought of the age;
while the sayings and doings of other prophets and teachers have been
for the most part subjected to the most unsympathetic criticism, in
which no attempt is made to understand their standpoint. Had even-handed
justice been dealt out all round, the world to-day would have been
richer in sympathy, in wide-mindedness, in comprehension of nature,
humanity, and God, in brief, in soul-experience.
Therefore, in reading the Life of Apollonius let us remember that we
have to look at it through the eyes of a Greek, and not through those of
a Jew or a Protestant. The Many in their proper sphere must be for us as
authentic a manifestation of the Divine as the One or the All, for
indeed the "Gods" exist in spite of commandment and creed. The Saints
and Martyrs and Angels have seemingly taken the places of the Heroes and
Dæmons and Gods, but the change of name and change of view-point among
men affect but little the unchangeable facts. To sense the facts of
universal religion under the ever-changing names which men bestow upon
them, and then to enter with full sympathy and comprehension into the
hopes and fears of every phase of the religious mind--to read, as it
were, the past lives of our own souls--is a most difficult task. But
until we can put ourselves understandingly in the places of others, we
can never see more than one side of the Infinite Life of God. A student
of comparative religion must not be afraid of terms; he must not shudder
when he meets with "polytheism," or draw back in horror when he
encounters "dualism," or feel an increased satisfaction when he falls in
with "monotheism"; he must not feel awe when he pronounces the name of
Yahweh and contempt when he utters the name of Zeus; he must not picture
a satyr when he reads the word "dæmon," and imagine a winged dream of
beauty when he pronounces the word "angel." For him heresy and orthodoxy
must not exist; he sees only his own soul slowly working out its own
experience, looking at life from every possible view-point, so that
haply at last he may see the whole, and having seen the whole, may
become at one with God.
To Apollonius the mere fashion of a man's faith was unessential; he was
at home in all lands, among all cults. He had a helpful word for all,
an intimate knowledge of the particular way of each of them, which
enabled him to restore them to health. Such men are rare; the records of
such men are precious, and require the embellishments of no rhetorician.
Let us then, first of all, try to recover the outline of the early
external life and of the travels of Apollonius shorn of Philostratus'
embellishments, and then endeavour to consider the nature of his
mission, the manner of the philosophy which he so dearly loved and which
was to him his religion, and last, if possible, the way of his inner
life.