PHILOSTRATUS’S LIFE OF APOLLONIUS OF TYANA
Compared with Apuleius—Philostratus’s sources—Time and space
covered—Philostratus’s audience—Object of the _Life_—Apollonius
charged with magic—A confusion of terms—The _Magi_ and
magic—Apollonius and the _Magi_—Philostratus on wizards—Apollonius
and wizards—Quacks and old-wives—The Brahmans—Marvels of the
Brahmans—Magical methods of the Brahmans—Medicine of the
Brahmans—Some signs of astrology—Interest in natural science—Natural
law or special providence?—Cases of scepticism—Anecdotes of
animals—Dragons of India—Occult virtues of gems—Absence of
number mysticism—_Mantike_ or the art of divination—Divining
power of Apollonius—Dreams—Interpretation of omens—Animals and
divination—Divination by fire—Other so-called predictions—Apollonius
and the demons—Not all demons are evil—Philostratus’s faith in
demons—The ghost of Achilles—Healing the sick and raising the
dead—Other marvels—Golden wrynecks and the _iunx_—Why named
_iunx_?—Apollonius in the middle ages.
[Sidenote: Compared with Apuleius.]
Some fifty years after the birth of Apuleius occurred that of
Philostratus, whose career and interests were somewhat similar,
although he came from the Aegean island of Lemnos instead of the
neighborhood of Carthage and wrote in Greek rather than Latin. But
like Apuleius he was a student of rhetoric and went first to Athens
and then to Rome. The resemblance is perhaps closer between Apuleius
and Apollonius of Tyana, whose life Philostratus wrote and of whom
we know more than of his biographer. Like Apuleius Apollonius had
to defend himself in court against the accusation of magic, and
Philostratus gives us what purports to be his apology on that occasion.
Two centuries afterwards Augustine in one of his letters[1122] names
Apollonius and Apuleius as examples of men who were addicted to the
magic art and who, the pagans said, performed greater miracles than
Christ did. A century before Augustine Lactantius states[1123] that a
certain philosopher who had “vomited forth” three books “against the
Christian religion and name” had compared the miracles of Apollonius
favorably with those of Christ; Lactantius marvels that he did not
mention Apuleius as well. Like Apuleius, Apollonius was a man of broad
learning who traveled widely and sought initiation into mysteries and
cults. Apuleius was a Platonist; Apollonius, a Pythagorean. We may
also note a resemblance between the _Metamorphoses_ and the _Life of
Apollonius_. Both seem to elaborate earlier writings and both have
much to say of transformations, wizards, demons, and the occult. The
_Life of Apollonius of Tyana_, however, must be taken more seriously
than the _Metamorphoses_. If the African’s work is a rhetorical
romance embodying a certain autobiographical element, a Milesian tale
to which personal religious experiences are annexed, then the work by
Philostratus is a rhetorical biography with a tinge of romance and a
good deal of sermonizing.
[Sidenote: Philostratus’s sources.]
Philostratus[1124] composed the _Life of Apollonius_ about 217 A. D. at
the request of the learned wife of the emperor Septimius Severus, to
whose literary circle he belonged. The empress had come into possession
of some hitherto unknown memoirs of Apollonius by a certain Damis of
Nineveh, who had been his disciple and had accompanied him upon many of
his travels. Some member of Damis’s family had brought these documents
to the empress’s attention. Some scholars incline to the view that she
was deceived by an impostor, but it hardly seems that there would be
sufficient profit in the venture to induce anyone to take the pains
to forge such memoirs. Also I can see no reason why a contemporary
of Apollonius should not have said and believed everything which
Philostratus represents Damis as saying; on the contrary it seems to me
just what would be said by a naïf, gullible, and devoted disciple, who
was inclined to exaggerate the abilities and achievements of his master
and to take literally everything that Apollonius uttered ironically or
figuratively. Other accounts of Apollonius were already in existence
by a Maximus of Aegae, where Apollonius had spent part of his life,
and by Moeragenes, but the memoirs of Damis seem to have offered much
new material. Philostratus accordingly wrote a new life based largely
upon Damis, but also making use of the will and epistles of Apollonius,
many of which the emperor Hadrian had earlier collected, and of the
traditions still current in the cities and temples which Apollonius had
frequented and which Philostratus now took the trouble to visit. It
has sometimes been suggested, chiefly by Christian writers intent upon
discrediting the career of Apollonius, that Philostratus invented Damis
and his memoirs. But Philostratus seems straightforward in describing
the pains he has been to in preparing the _Life_, and certainly is
more explicit and systematic in stating his sources than other ancient
biographers like Plutarch and Suetonius are. He appears to follow his
sources rather closely and not to invent new incidents, although he
may, like Thucydides and other ancient historians, have taken liberties
with the speeches and arguments put into his characters’ mouths. And
through the work, despite his belief in demons and marvels, he now and
then gives evidence of a moderate and sceptical mind, at least for his
times.
[Sidenote: Time and space covered.]
Apollonius lived in the first century of our era and died during the
reign of Nerva well advanced in years. It is therefore of a period
over a century before his own that Philostratus writes. He is said to
commit a number of errors in history and geography,[1125] but we must
remember that mistakes in geography were a failing of the best ancient
historians such as Polybius, and the general picture drawn of the
emperors and politics of Apollonius’s time is not far wrong. It is
true that Philostratus also makes use of tradition which has gradually
formed since the death of Apollonius, and introduces explanations or
comments of his own on various matters. It is, however, not the facts
either of Apollonius’s career or of his times that concern us but the
beliefs and superstitions which we find in Philostratus’s _Life_ of
him. Whether these are of the first, second, or early third century is
scarcely necessary or possible for us to distinguish. If Damis records
them, Philostratus accepts them, and the probability is that they
apply not only to all three centuries but to a long period before and
after. The territory covered in the _Life_ is almost as extensive; it
ranges all over the Roman Empire, alludes occasionally to the Celts
and Scythians, and opens up Ethiopia and India[1126] to our gaze.
Apollonius was a great traveler and there are many interesting and
informing passages concerning ships, sailing, pilots, merchants and
sea-trade.[1127]
[Sidenote: Philostratus’s audience.]
If we ask further, for what class of readers was the _Life_ intended,
the answer is, for the intellectual and learned. Apollonius himself
was distinctly a Hellene. Philostratus represents him as often quoting
Homer and other bygone Greek authors, or mentioning names from early
Greek history such as Lycurgus and Aristides. One of his aims was to
restore the degenerate Greek cities of his own day to their ancient
morality. Furthermore, Apollonius never cared for many disciples, and
neither required them to observe all the rules of life which he himself
followed, nor admitted them to all his interviews with other sages and
his initiations into sacred mysteries. This aloofness of the sage is
somewhat reflected in his biographer. The _Life_ is an attempt not to
popularize the teachings of Apollonius but to justify him before the
learned world.
[Sidenote: Object of the _Life_.]
The charge had been frequently made that Apollonius came illegitimately
by his wisdom and acquired it violently by magic. Philostratus would
restore him to the ranks of true philosophers who gained wisdom by
worthy and licit methods. He declares that he was not a wizard, as
many suppose, but a notable Pythagorean, a man of broad culture, an
intellectual and moral teacher, a religious ascetic and reformer,
probably even a prophet of divine and superhuman nature. It is not
now so generally held by Christian writers as it used to be that
Philostratus wrote the _Life_ with the Gospel story of Christ in
mind, and that his purpose was to imitate or to parody or to oppose
a rival narrative to the Christian story and teaching. At no point
in the _Life_ does Philostratus betray unmistakably even a passing
acquaintance with the Gospels, much less display any sign of animus
against them. Moreover, the Christian historian and apologist,
Eusebius, who lived in the century following Philostratus and was
familiar with his _Life_ of Apollonius, in writing a reply to a
treatise in which Hierocles, a provincial governor under Diocletian,
had compared Apollonius with Jesus, distinctly states that Hierocles
was the first to suggest such an idea.[1128] Such similarities then as
may exist between the _Life_ and the Gospels must be taken as examples
of beliefs common to that age.
[Sidenote: Apollonius charged with magic.]
Apollonius was accused of sorcery or magic during his lifetime by the
rival philosopher Euphrates. The four books on Apollonius written
by Moeragenes also portrayed him as a wizard;[1129] and Eusebius in
his reply to Hierocles ascribed the miracles wrought by Apollonius
to sorcery and the aid of evil demons.[1130] Earlier the satirist
Lucian described Alexander the pseudo-prophet as having been in his
youth an apprentice to “one of the charlatans who deal in magic and
mystic incantations, ... a native of Tyana, an associate of the great
Apollonius, and acquainted with all his heroics.”[1131]
[Sidenote: A confusion of terms]
In defending his hero against these charges Philostratus is guilty
himself both of some ambiguous use of terms and of some loose thinking.
The same ambiguous terminology, however, will be found in other
discussions of magic. In a few passages Philostratus denies that
Apollonius was a μάγος but much oftener exculpates him from the charge
of being a γόης or γοήτης. With the latter word or words there is no
difficulty. It means a wizard, sorcerer, or enchanter, and is always
employed in a sinister or disreputable sense. With the term μάγος the
case is different, as with the Latin _magus_. It may signify an evil
magician, or it may refer to one of the Magi of the East, who are
generally regarded as wise and good men. This delicate distinction,
however, is not easy to maintain and Philostratus fails to do so,
while Mr. Conybeare in his English translation[1132] makes confusion
worse confounded not only by translating μάγος as “wizard” instead
of “magician,” but by sometimes doing this when it really should be
rendered as “one of the Magi.” It may also be noted that Philostratus
locates the Magi in Babylonia as well as in Persia.
[Sidenote: The Magi and magic]
To begin with, in his second chapter Philostratus says that some
consider Apollonius a magician “because he consorted with the
Magi of the Babylonians, and the Brahmans of the Indians, and the
Gymnosophists in Egypt.” But they are wrong in this. “For Empedocles
and Pythagoras himself and Democritus, although they associated with
the Magi and spake many divine utterances, yet did not stoop to the
art” (of magic). Plato, too, he goes on to say, although he visited
Egypt and its priests and prophets, was never regarded as a magician.
In this passage, then, Philostratus closely associates the Magi with
the magic art, and I am not sure whether the last “Magi” should not
be “magicians.” On the other hand his acquittal of Democritus and
Pythagoras from the charge of magic does not agree with Pliny, who
ascribed a large amount of magic to them both.
[Sidenote: Apollonius and the Magi.]
Apollonius himself evidently did not regard the Magi whom he met in
Babylon and Susa as evil magicians. One of the chief aims of his scheme
of oriental travel “was to acquaint himself thoroughly with their
lore.” He wished to discover whether they were wise in divine things,
as they were said to be[1133]. Sacrifices and religious rites were
performed under their supervision[1134]. Apollonius did not permit
Damis to accompany him when he visited the Magi at noon and again about
midnight and conversed with them[1135]. But Apollonius himself said
that he learned some things from them and taught them some things;
he told Damis that they were “wise men, but not in all respects”; on
leaving their country he asked the king to give the presents which
the monarch had intended for Apollonius himself to the Magi, whom
he described then as “men who both are wise and wholly devoted to
you.”[1136]
[Sidenote: Philostratus on wizards.]
Quite different is the attitude towards witchcraft and wizards of both
Apollonius and his biographer. In the opinion of Philostratus wizards
are of all men most wretched[1137]. They try to violate nature and
to overcome fate by such methods as inquisition of spirits, barbaric
sacrifices, incantations and besmearings. Simple-minded folk attribute
great powers to them; and athletes desirous of winning victories,
shopkeepers intent upon success in business ventures, and lovers in
especial are continually resorting to them and apparently never lose
faith in them despite repeated failures, despite occasional exposure
or ridicule of their methods in books and writing, and despite the
condemnation of witchcraft both by law and nature.[1138] Apollonius
was certainly no wizard, argues Philostratus, for he never opposed the
Fates but only predicted what they would bring to pass, and he acquired
this foreknowledge not by sorcery but by divine revelation.[1139]
[Sidenote: Apollonius and wizards.]
Nevertheless Apollonius is frequently accused of being a wizard
by others in the pages of Philostratus. At Athens he was refused
initiation into the mysteries on this ground,[1140] and at Lebadea the
priests wished to exclude him from the oracular cave of Trophonius for
the same reason.[1141] When the dogs guarding the temple of Dictynna
in Crete fawned upon him instead of barking at his approach, the
guardians of the shrine arrested him as a wizard and would-be temple
robber who had bewitched the dogs by something that he had given
them to eat.[1142] Apollonius also had to defend himself against the
accusation of witchcraft in his hearing or trial before Domitian.[1143]
He then denied that one is a wizard merely because one has prescience,
or that wearing linen garments proves one a sorcerer. Wizards shun the
shrines and temples of the gods; they make use of trenches dug in the
earth and invoke the gods of the lower world. They are greedy for gain
and pseudo-philosophers. They possess no true science, depending for
success in their art upon the stupidity of their dupes and devotees.
They imagine what does not exist and disbelieve the truth. They work
their sorcery by night and in darkness when those employing them
cannot see or hear well. Apollonius himself was accused to Domitian
of having sacrificed an Arcadian boy at night and consulted his
entrails with Nerva in order to determine the latter’s prospects of
becoming emperor.[1144] When before his trial Domitian was about to
put Apollonius in fetters, the sage proposed the dilemma that if he
were a wizard he could not be kept in bonds, or that if Domitian were
able to fetter him, he was obviously no wizard.[1145] This need not
imply, however, that Apollonius believed that wizards really could free
themselves, for he was at times ironical. If so, Domitian replied in
kind by assuring him that he would at least keep him in fetters until
he transformed himself into water or a wild beast or a tree.
[Sidenote: Quacks and old-wives.]
Closely akin to the _goëtes_ or wizards are the old hags and
quack-doctors who offer one Indian spices or boxes supposed to contain
bits of stone taken from the moon, stars, or depths of earth.[1146]
Likewise the divining old-wives who go about with sieves in their hands
and pretend by means of their divination to heal sick animals for
shepherds and cowherds.[1147] We also read that Apollonius expelled
from the cities along the Hellespont various Egyptians and Chaldeans
who were collecting money on the pretense of offering sacrifices to
avert the earthquakes which were then occurring.[1148]
[Sidenote: The Brahmans.]
We have heard Philostratus mention the Brahmans of India in the same
breath with the Magi of Persia and imply that Apollonius’s association
with them contributed to his reputation as a magician.[1149] In another
passage[1150] Philostratus places _goëtes_ and Brahmans in unfortunate
juxtaposition, and, immediately after condemning the wizards and
defending Apollonius from the charge of sorcery, goes on to say that
when he saw the automatic tripods and cup-bearers of the Indians, he
did not ask how they were operated. “He applauded them, it is true, but
did not think fit to imitate them.” But of course Apollonius should not
even have applauded these automatons, which set food and poured wine
before the guests of the Brahmans, if they were the contrivances of
wizards. And in another passage,[1151] where he defends the signs and
wonders wrought by the Brahmans against the aspersions cast upon them
by the Gymnosophists of Ethiopia, Apollonius explains their practice of
levitation as an act of worship and communion with the sun god, and
hence far removed from the rites performed in deep trenches and hollows
of the earth to the gods of the lower world which we have heard him
mention before as a practice characteristic of wizards.
[Sidenote: Marvels of the Brahmans.]
Nevertheless the feats ascribed to the Brahmans are certainly
sufficiently akin to magic to excuse Philostratus for mentioning them
along with the Magi and wizards and to justify us in considering them.
Indeed, modern scholarship informs us that in the Vedic texts the word
“bráhman” in the neuter means a “charm, rite, formulary, prayer,”
and “that the caste of the Brahmans is nothing but the men who have
_bráhman_ or magic power.”[1152] In marked contrast to the taciturnity
of Apollonius as to his interviews with the Magi of Babylon and Susa
is the long account repeated by Philostratus from Damis of the sayings
and doings of the sages of India. As for Apollonius himself, “he was
always recounting to everyone what the Indians said and did.”[1153]
They knew that he was approaching when he was yet afar off and sent a
messenger who greeted him by name.[1154] Iarchas, their chief, also
knew that Apollonius had a letter for him and that a delta was missing
in it, and he told Apollonius many events of his past life. “We see, O
Apollonius,” he said, “the signs of the soul, tracing them by a myriad
symbols.”[1155] The Brahmans lived in a castle concealed by clouds,
where they rendered themselves invisible at will. The rocks along the
path up to their abode were still marked by the cloven feet, beards,
faces, and backs of the Pans who had tried to scale the height under
the leadership of Dionysus and Heracles, but had been hurled down
headlong.[1156] Here too was a well for testing oaths, a purifying
fire, and the jars in which the winds and rain were bottled up.
[Sidenote: Magical methods of the Brahmans.]
When the messenger of the Brahmans greeted Apollonius by name, the
latter remarked to the astounded Damis, “We have come to men who
are wise without art (ἀτεχνῶς), for they seem to have the gift of
foreknowledge.”[1157] As a matter of fact, however, most of the
subsequent wonders wrought by the Brahmans were not performed without
the use of paraphernalia and rites very similar to those of magic.
Each Brahman carries a staff—or magic wand—and wears a ring, which
are both prized for their occult virtue by which the Brahmans can
accomplish anything they wish.[1158] They clothe themselves in sacred
garments made of “a wool that springs wild from the ground” (cotton?)
and which the earth will not permit anyone else to pluck. Iarchas also
showed Apollonius and Damis a marvelous stone called _Pantarbe_, which
attracted and bound other stones to itself and which, although only
the size of his finger-nail and formed in earth four fathoms deep, had
such virtue that it broke the earth open.[1159] But it required great
skill to secure this gem. “We only,” said the Brahman, “can obtain this
_pantarbe_, partly by doing things and partly by saying things,” in
other words by incantations and magical operations. Before performing
their rite of levitation they bathed and anointed themselves with a
certain drug. “Then they stood like a chorus with Iarchas as leader
and with their rods uplifted struck the earth, which heaving like the
sea-wave raised them up in the air two cubits high.”[1160] The metallic
tripods and cup-bearers which served the king of the country when he
came to visit the Brahmans appeared from nowhere laden with food and
wine exactly as if by magic.[1161]
[Sidenote: Medicine of the Brahmans.]
The medical practice, if we may so call it, of the Brahmans was tinged,
to say the least, with magic. A dislocated hip, indeed, they appear to
have cured by massage, and a blind man and a paralytic are healed by
unspecified methods.[1162] But a boy is cured of inherited alcoholism
by chewing owl’s eggs that have been boiled; a woman who complains
that her sixteen-year-old son has for two years been vexed by a demon
is sent away with a letter full of threats or incantations to employ
against the spirit; and another woman’s sufferings in childbirth are
prevented by directing her husband to enter her chamber with a live
hare concealed in his bosom and to release the hare after he has
walked around his wife once. Iarchas, indeed, attributed the origin
of medicine to divination or divine revelation.[1163] His theory was
that Asclepius, as the son of Apollo, learned by oracles what drugs to
employ for the different diseases, in what amounts to mix the drugs,
what the antidotes for poisons were, and how to use even poisons as
remedies. This last especially he affirmed that no one would dare
attempt without foreknowledge.
[Sidenote: Some signs of astrology.]
The Brahmans seem to have made some use of astrology in working their
feats of magic. Damis at any rate said that when Apollonius bade
farewell to the sages, Iarchas made him a present of seven rings named
after the planets, which he wore in turn upon the appropriate days of
the week.[1164] Perhaps, too, the seven swords of adamant which Iarchas
had rediscovered as a child had some connection with the planets.[1165]
Moeragenes ascribed four books on foretelling the future by the
stars to Apollonius himself, but Philostratus was unable to find any
such work by Apollonius extant in his day.[1166] And unless it be an
allusion to Chaldeans which we have already noted, there is no further
mention of astrology in Philostratus’s _Life_—a rather remarkable fact
considering that he wrote for the court of Septimius Severus, the
builder of the Septizonium.
[Sidenote: Interest in natural science.]
The philosopher Euphrates, who is represented by Philostratus as
jealous of Apollonius, once advised the emperor Vespasian, when
Apollonius was present, to embrace natural philosophy—or a philosophy
in accordance with natural law—but to beware of philosophers who
pretended to have secret intercourse with the gods.[1167] There was
justification in the latter charge against Apollonius, but it should
not be assumed that his mysticism rendered him unfavorable to natural
science. On the contrary he is frequently represented by Philostratus
as whiling away the time along the road by discussing with Damis such
natural problems as the delta of the Nile or the tides at the mouth
of the Guadalquivir. He was especially interested in the habits of
animals and the properties of gems. Vespasian was fond of listening
to “his graphic stories of the rivers of India and the animals” of
that country, as well as to “his statements of what the gods revealed
concerning the empire.”[1168] Some of the questions which Apollonius
put to the Brahmans concerned nature.[1169] He asked of what the world
was composed, and when they said, “Of elements,” he asked if there were
four. They believed, however, in a fifth element, ether, from which the
gods had been generated and which they breathe as men breathe air. They
also regarded the universe as a living animal. He further inquired of
them whether land or sea predominated on the earth’s surface,[1170] and
this same attitude of scientific inquiry and of curiosity about natural
forces and objects is frequently met in the _Life_.
[Sidenote: Natural law or special providence?]
Apollonius believed, as we shall see, in omens and portents, and
interpreted an earthquake at Antioch as a divine warning to the
inhabitants.[1171] The Brahman sages, moreover, regarded prolonged
drought as a punishment visited by the world soul upon human
sinfulness.[1172] On the other hand, Apollonius gave a natural
explanation of volcanoes and denied the myths concerning Enceladus
being imprisoned under Mount Aetna and the battle of the gods and
giants.[1173] And in the case of the earthquake the people had already
accepted it as a portent and were praying in terror, when Apollonius
took the opportunity to warn them to cease from their civil factions.
As a matter of fact, both Apollonius and Philostratus appear to regard
portents as an extraordinary sort of natural phenomena. A knowledge of
natural science helps in recognizing them and in interpreting them.
When a lioness of enormous size with eight whelps in her is slain
by hunters, Apollonius at once recognizes the event as portentous
because as a rule lionesses have whelps only thrice and only three
of them on the first occasion, two in the second litter, and finally
but a single whelp, “but I believe a very big one and preternaturally
fierce.”[1174] Here Apollonius is not in strict agreement with Pliny
and Aristotle[1175] who say that the lioness produces five whelps at
the first birth and one less every succeeding year.
[Sidenote: Cases of scepticism]
The scepticism of Apollonius concerning the Aetna myth is not an
isolated instance. At Sardis he ridiculed the notion that trees
could be older than earth,[1176] and he was one of the few ancients
to question the swan’s song.[1177] He denied “the silly story that
the young of vipers are brought into the world without mothers” as
“consistent neither with nature nor experience,”[1178] and also the
tale that the whelps of the lioness claw their way out into the
world.[1179] In India Apollonius saw a wild ass or unicorn from whose
single horn a magic drinking horn was made.[1180] A draught from this
horn was supposed to protect one for that day from disease, wounds,
fire, or poison, and on that account the king alone was permitted to
hunt the animal and to drink from the horn. When Damis asked Apollonius
if he credited this story, the sage ironically replied that he would
believe it if he found the king of the country to be immortal. Either,
however, the scepticism of Apollonius, as was the case with so many
other ancients and medieval men, was sporadic and inconsistent, or
it came to be overlaid with the credulity of Damis and Philostratus,
as the following example suggests. Iarchas told Damis and Apollonius
flatly that the races described by Scylax of men with long heads or
huge feet with which they were said to shade themselves did not exist
in India or anywhere else; yet in a later book Philostratus states that
the shadow-footed people are a tribe in Ethiopia.[1181]
[Sidenote: Anecdotes of animals.]
At any rate the marvels of India are more frequently credited than
criticized in the _Life_ by Philostratus, and the same holds true of
the extraordinary conduct and well-nigh human intelligence attributed
to animals. Especially delightful reading are six chapters on the
remarkable sagacity of elephants and their love for mankind.[1182]
On this point, as by Pliny, use is made of the work of Juba. We read
again of sick lions eating apes, of the lioness’s love affair with
the panther, of the fondness of leopards for the fragrant gum of a
certain tree and of goats for the cinnamon tree; of apes who are made
to collect pepper for men by appealing to their instinct towards
mimicry;[1183] and of the tiger, whose loins alone are eaten by the
Indians. “For they decline to eat the other parts of this animal,
because they say that as soon as it is born it lifts up its front paws
to the rising sun.”[1184] In the river Hyphasis is a creature like a
white worm which yields when melted down a fat or oil that once set
afire cannot be extinguished and which the king uses to burn walls and
capture cities.[1185] In India are griffins who quarry gold with their
powerful beaks, and the luminous phoenix with its nest of spices and
swan-like funeral song.[1186]
[Sidenote: Dragons of India.]
Especially remarkable are the snakes or dragons with which all India
is filled and which often are of enormous size, thirty or even seventy
cubits long.[1187] Those found in the marshes are sluggish and have
no crests; but those on the hills and ridges move faster than the
swiftest rivers and have both beards and crests.[1188] Those in the
plain engage in combats with elephants which terminate fatally for
both parties as we have already learned from Pliny.[1189] The mountain
dragons have bushy beards, fiery crests, golden scales, and a ferocious
glance.[1190] They burrow into the earth, making a noise like clashing
brass, or go hissing down to the shore and swim far out to sea.
Terrifying as they are, the Indians charm them by showing them golden
characters embroidered on a cloak of scarlet and by incantations of a
secret wisdom. They eat the dragon’s heart and liver in order to be
able to understand the language and thoughts of animals.[1191]
[Sidenote: Occult virtues of gems.]
The dragons, however, are prized more for the precious stones in their
heads, which the Indians quickly cut off as soon as they have bewitched
them. The pupils of the eyes of the hill dragons are a fiery stone
possessing irresistible virtue for many occult purposes,[1192] while in
the heads of the mountain dragons are many brilliant stones of flashing
colors which exert occult virtue if set in a ring, “and they say that
Gyges had such a ring.”[1193] But there are many marvelous stones
outside the heads of dragons. “Who does not know the habits of birds,”
says Apollonius to Damis in one of his disquisitions upon natural
phenomena,[1194] “and that eagles and storks will not build their nests
without placing in them, the one the stone _aetites_, and the other the
_lychnites_, as aids in hatching and to drive snakes away?” On parting
from the Indian king Phraotes, Apollonius as usual refused to accept
money presents but picked up one of the gems that were offered him with
the exclamation, “O rare stone, how opportunely and providentially have
I found you!”[1195] Philostratus supposes that he detected some occult
and divine power in this particular stone. The Brahmans had gems so
huge that from one of them a goblet could be carved large enough to
slake the thirst of four men in midsummer, but in this case nothing is
said of occult virtue.[1196] The Brahman Iarchas felt sure that he was
the reincarnation of the hero Ganges, son of the river Ganges, because
as a mere child he knew where to dig for the seven swords of adamant
which Ganges had fixed in the earth.[1197] Presumably these were magic
swords and their virtue in part due to the stone adamant of which they
were made. Less is said in the _Life_ of the virtues of herbs than of
gems, but the Indians made a nuptial ointment or love-charm from balm
distilled from trees,[1198] and drugs and poisons are mentioned more
than once, mandragora being described as a soporific drug rather than a
deadly poison.[1199]
[Sidenote: Absence of number mysticism.]
Considering that Apollonius was a Pythagorean, there is surprisingly
little said concerning perfect numbers and their mystic significance.
Aside from the seven rings and seven swords already mentioned, about
the only instance is the question asked by Apollonius whether eighteen,
the number of the Brahman sages at the time of his visit, had any
especial importance.[1200] He remarked that eighteen was not a square,
nor a number usually held in esteem and honor like ten, twelve, and
sixteen. The Brahmans agreed that there was no particular significance
in eighteen, and further informed him that they maintained no fixed
number of members but had varied from only one to as many as seventy
according to the available supply of worthy men.
[Sidenote: _Mantike_ or the art of divination.]
If Philostratus denies that Apollonius was a magician, he does depict
him as endowed with prophetic gifts, with power over demons, and with
“secret wisdom.” He rather likes to give the impression that the sage
foretold things by innate prophetic gift or divine inspiration, but
even μαντική or the art of divination is not condemned as γοητεία
or witchcraft was. Iarchas the Brahman says that those who delight
in _mantike_ become divine thereby and contribute to the safety
of mankind.[1201] Apollonius himself, when condemning wizards as
pseudo-wise, made the reservation that _mantike_, if true in its
predictions, was not a pseudo-science, although he professed ignorance
whether it could be called an art or not.[1202] He denied that he
practiced it, when he was examined by Tigellinus, the favorite of Nero,
who was persecuting philosophers on the ground that they were addicted
to _mantike_.[1203] His accusers before Domitian again adduced his
alleged practice of divination as evidence that he was a wizard.[1204]
[Sidenote: Divining power of Apollonius.]
If Apollonius practiced neither wizardry nor _mantike_, the question
arises how he was able to foretell the future. In his trial before
Domitian he did not attempt to deny that he had predicted the plague
at Ephesus, but attributed his “sense of the coming disaster” to his
abstemious diet, which kept his senses clear and enabled him to see as
in an unclouded mirror “all that is happening or about to occur.”[1205]
For he was credited with knowledge of distant events the moment they
occurred as well as with foreknowledge of the future. Thus at Ephesus
he was aware of the assassination of Domitian at Rome; and at Tarsus,
although he arrived after the incident had occurred, he was able to
describe and to find the mad dog by whom a boy had been bitten.[1206]
Iarchas told Apollonius that health and purity were requisite for
divination;[1207] and Apollonius in turn, in recounting his life story
to the naked sages of Egypt, represented the Pythagorean philosophy
as appearing before him and promising, “And when you are pure, I will
grant you the faculty of foreknowledge.”[1208]
[Sidenote: Dreams.]
Apollonius often was warned by dreams. When he dreamt of fish who were
cast gasping upon dry land and who appealed for succour to a dolphin
swimming by, he knew that he ought to visit and restore the graves and
assist the descendants of the Eretrians whom Darius had taken captive
to the Persian kingdom over five centuries before.[1209] Another dream
he interpreted as a command to visit Crete.[1210] In defending his
linen apparel before Domitian he declared, “It is a pure substance
under which to sleep at night, for to those who live as I do dreams
bring the truest of their revelations.”[1211] He was not the only
dreamer of the time, however, and when some of his followers were
afraid to accompany him to Rome in Nero’s reign, they made warning
dreams their excuse for deserting him.[1212]
[Sidenote: Interpretation of omens.]
It has been seen that Apollonius not only had prophetic dreams but was
skilful in interpreting them. He was equally adept in explaining the
meaning of omens. The dead lion with her eight unborn whelps he took as
a sign that Damis and he would remain a year and eight months in that
land.[1213] When Damis objected that Homer interpreted the sparrow and
her eight nestlings whom the snake devoured as nine years’ duration of
the Trojan war, Apollonius retorted that the birds had been hatched but
that the whelps, being yet unborn, could not signify complete years. On
another occasion he interpreted the birth of a three-headed child as a
sign of the year of the three emperors.[1214]
[Sidenote: Animals and divination.]
Such interpretation of dreams and omens suggests an art or arts of
divination rather than foreknowledge by direct divine inspiration. So
does the passage in which Apollonius informs Domitian, when accused
before him of having divined the future by sacrificing a boy, that
human entrails are inferior to those of animals for purposes of
divination, since the beasts are less perturbed by knowledge of their
approaching death.[1215] Apollonius himself would not sacrifice even
animal victims, but he enlarged his powers of divination during his
sojourn among the Arab tribes by learning to understand the language of
animals and to listen to the birds as these predict the future.[1216]
The Arabs acquire this power by eating, some say the heart, others the
liver, of dragons,—a fact which gave the church historian Eusebius an
opportunity to charge Apollonius with having broken his taboo of animal
flesh.
[Sidenote: Divination by fire.]
Although he did not sacrifice animals and divine from their entrails,
Apollonius appears to have employed practices akin to those of the
art of pyromancy when he threw a handful of frankincense into the
sacrificial fire with a prayer to the sun, “and watched to see how
the smoke of it curled upwards, and how it grew turbid, and in how
many points it shot up; and in a manner he caught the meaning of the
fire, and observed how it appeared of good omen and pure.”[1217] Again
he visited an Egyptian temple and sacrificed an image of a bull made
of frankincense and told the priest that if he really understood the
science of divination by fire (ἐμπύρου σοφίας), he would see many
things revealed in the circle of the rising sun.[1218]
[Sidenote: Other so-called predictions.]
It should be added that only a very ardent admirer of Apollonius or an
equally ardent seeker after prophecies would see anything prophetic
in some of the apparently chance remarks of the sage which have been
perverted into predictions. At Ephesus he did not actually predict the
plague, which had already begun to spread judging from the account
of Philostratus, but rather warned the heedless population to take
measures to prevent its becoming general.[1219] When visiting the
isthmus of Corinth he began to say that it would be cut through, an
idea which had doubtless occurred again and again to many; but then
said that it would not be cut through.[1220] This sane, if somewhat
vacillating, state of mind received confirmation soon afterwards when
Nero attempted an Isthmian canal but left it uncompleted. Another
similarly ambiguous utterance was elicited from Apollonius by an
eclipse of the sun accompanied by thunder: “There shall be some great
event and there shall not be.”[1221] This was believed to receive
miraculous fulfillment three days later when a thunderbolt dashed
the cup out of which Nero was drinking from his hands but left him
unharmed. Once Apollonius saved his life by changing from a ship which
sank soon afterwards to another vessel.[1222] An instance of more
specific prophecy is the case of the consul Aelian, who testified that
when he was but a tribune under Vespasian, Apollonius took him aside
and told him his name and country and parentage, “and you foretold
to me that I should hold this high office which is accounted by the
multitude the highest of all.”[1223] But Aelian may have exaggerated
the accuracy of Apollonius’s prediction, or the latter may have made a
shrewd guess that Aelian was likely to rise to high office.
[Sidenote: Apollonius and the demons.]
The divining faculty of Apollonius enabled him to detect the presence
and influence of demons, phantoms, and goblins, whose ways he
understood as well as the language of the birds. At Ephesus he detected
the true cause of the plague in a ragged old beggar whom he ordered
the people to stone to death.[1224] At this command the blinking eyes
of the aged mendicant suddenly shot forth malevolent and fiery gleams
and revealed his demon character. Afterwards, when the people removed
the stones, they found underneath, pounded to a pulp, an enormous hound
still vomiting foam as mad dogs do. Later, when accused of magic
before Domitian, Apollonius requested that the emperor question him
in private about the causes of this pestilence at Ephesus, which he
said were too deep to be discussed publicly.[1225] And earlier in the
reign of Nero, when asked by Tigellinus how he got the better of demons
and phantasms, he evaded the question by a saucy retort.[1226] On one
occasion, however, we are told that he got rid of a ghostly apparition
by heaping abuse upon it;[1227] and a satyr, who remained invisible
but created annoyance by running amuck through the camp, he disposed
of by the expedient of filling a trough with wine and letting the
spirit get drunk on it. When the wine had all disappeared, Apollonius
led his companions to the cave of the nymphs where the satyr was now
visible in a drunken sleep.[1228] He also reformed the character of a
licentious youth by expelling a demon from him,[1229] and at Corinth
exposed a lamia who, under the disguise of a dainty and wealthy lady,
was fattening up a beautiful youth named Menippus with the intention of
eventually devouring his blood.[1230] On his return by sea from India
Apollonius passed a sacred island where lived a sea nymph or female
demon who was as destructive to mariners as Scylla or the Sirens were
of old.
[Sidenote: Not all demons are evil]
But the word “demon” is not always employed by Philostratus in the
sense of an evil spirit. The annunciation of the birth of Apollonius
was made to his mother by Proteus in the form of an Egyptian
demon.[1231] Damis looked upon Apollonius himself as a demon and
worshiped him as such, when he heard him say that he comprehended not
only all human languages but also those things concerning which men
maintain silence.[1232] In a letter to Euphrates[1233] Apollonius
affirms that the all-wise Pythagoras should be classed among demons.
But when Domitian, on first meeting Apollonius said that he looked
like a demon, the sage replied that the emperor was confusing demons
and human beings.[1234]
[Sidenote: Philostratus’s faith in demons.]
Philostratus adds his own bit of personal testimony to the existence of
demons, although it cannot be said to be very convincing. After telling
the satyr story he warns his readers not to be incredulous as to the
existence of satyrs or to doubt that they make love. For they should
not mistrust what is supported by experience and by Philostratus’s own
word. For he knew in Lemnos a youth of his own age whose mother was
said to be visited by a satyr, and such he probably was, since he wore
a fawn skin tied around his neck by the two front paws.[1235]
[Sidenote: The ghost of Achilles.]
Apollonius had an interview with the ghost of Achilles which strongly
suggests necromancy. He sent his companions on board ship and passed
the night alone at the hero’s tomb. Nor did he allude to what had
happened until questioned by the curious Damis. He then averred that
his method of invoking the dead had not been that of Odysseus, but
that he had prayed to Achilles much as the Indians do to their heroes.
A slight earthquake then occurred and Achilles appeared. At first he
was five cubits tall but gradually increased to some twelve cubits in
height. At cock-crow he vanished in a flash of summer lightning.[1236]
[Sidenote: Healing the sick and raising the dead.]
Apollonius, as well as the Brahmans, wrought some cures. One was of a
boy who had been bitten by a mad dog and consequently “behaved exactly
like a dog, for he barked and howled and went on all fours.”[1237]
Apollonius first found and quieted the dog, and then made it lick
the wound, a homeopathic treatment which cured the boy. It now only
remained to cure the dog, too, and this the philosopher effected by
praying to the river which was near by and then making the dog swim
across it. “For,” concludes Philostratus, “a drink of water will cure a
mad dog if he only can be induced to take it.” The modern reader will
suspect that the dog was not mad to begin with and that Apollonius
cleverly cured the boy’s complaint by the same force that had induced
it—suggestion. Apollonius once revived a maiden who was being borne to
the grave by touching her and saying something to her, but Philostratus
honestly admits that he is not sure whether he restored her to life
or detected signs of life in the body which had escaped the notice of
everyone else.[1238]
[Sidenote: Other marvels.]
When Apollonius was brought before Tigellinus, the scroll on which
the charges against him had been written was found to have become
quite blank when Tigellinus unrolled it.[1239] Upon that occasion
and again before Domitian he intimated that his body could not be
bound or slain against his will.[1240] The former contention he
proved to the satisfaction of Damis, who visited him in prison, by
suddenly removing his leg from the fetters and then inserting it
again.[1241] Damis regarded this exhibition as a divine miracle, since
Apollonius performed it without magical ceremony or incantations. He
is also represented as escaping from his bonds at about midnight when
imprisoned later in life in Crete.[1242] Philostratus, too, implies
that he vanished miraculously from the courtroom of Domitian and that
he sometimes passed from one place to another in an incredibly short
time, and is somewhat doubtful whether he ever died. But we have seen
that even on the testimony of Damis and Philostratus themselves many
of the marvels and predictions of Apollonius were not “artless” but
involved a knowledge of contemporary natural science and medicine,
or of arts of divination, or the employment, in a way not unlike the
procedure of magic, of forces and materials outside himself, namely,
the occult virtues of things in nature or incantations, rites, and
ceremonies.
[Sidenote: Golden wrynecks and the _iunx_.]
So much for Apollonius and his magic, but the _Life_ contains some
interesting allusions to the ἴυγξ or wryneck, which throw light upon
the use of that bird in Greek magic, but which have seldom been
noted and then not correctly interpreted.[1243] The wryneck was so
much employed in Greek magic, as references to it from Pindar to
Theocritus show, that the word _iunx_ was sometimes used as a synonym
or figurative expression for spells or charms in general. Philostratus,
too, employs it in this sense, representing the Gymnosophists
as accusing the Brahmans of “appealing to the crowd with varied
enchantments (or _iunges_).”[1244] But in other passages he makes it
clear that the wryneck is still employed as a magic bird. Describing
the royal palace at Babylon[1245] he states that the Magi have hung
four golden wrynecks, which they themselves attune and which they
call the tongues of the gods, from the ceiling of the judgment hall
to remind the king of divine judgment and not to set himself above
mankind. Golden wrynecks were also suspended in the Pythian temple at
Delphi, and in this connection they are said to possess some of the
virtue of the Sirens,[1246] or, as Mr. Cook translates it, “to echo
the persuasive note of siren voices.” These two passages seem to point
clearly to the employment of mechanical metal birds which sang and
moved as if by magic. The Greek mathematician Hero in his explanation
of mechanical devices employed in temples tells how to make a bird turn
itself about and whistle by turning a wheel.[1247]
[Sidenote: Why named _iunx_?]
Now this is precisely what the wryneck does in its “wonderful way
of writhing its head and neck” and emitting hissing sounds. The
bird’s “unmistakable note” is “que, que, que, repeated many times
in succession, at first rapidly, but gradually slowing and in a
continually falling key.”[1248] I would therefore suggest that as the
English name for the bird is derived from its writhing its neck, so the
Greek name comes from its cry, for “que” and the root ἰυγ, if repeated
rapidly many times in succession, sound much alike.[1249]
[Sidenote: Apollonius in the middle ages.]
The name, Apollonius, continued to be associated with magic in the
middle ages, when the _Golden Flowers_ of Apollonius, a work on the
notory art or theurgy,[1250] is found in the manuscripts. And we shall
find Cecco d’Ascoli[1251] in the early fourteenth century citing a
“book of magic art” by Apollonius and also a treatise on spirits, _De
angelica factione_. In 1412 Amplonius listed in the catalogue of his
manuscripts a “book of Apollonius the magician or philosopher which is
called Elizinus.”[1252] Works on the causes and properties of things
are also ascribed to Apollonius in medieval manuscripts,[1253] and
a Balenus or Belenus to whom works on astrological images and seals
are ascribed in the manuscripts[1254] is perhaps a corruption for
Apollonius.[1255]