Artephius is one of the earliest names that occur among the students
who sought the philosopher's stone. Of him extraordinary things are
told. He lived about the year 1130, and wrote a book of the Art of
Prolonging Human Life, in which he professes to have already attained
the age of one thousand and twenty-five years. [180] He must by this
account have been born about one hundred years after our Saviour. He
professed to have visited the infernal regions, and there to have seen
Tantalus seated on a throne of gold. He is also said by some to be the
same person, whose life has been written by Philostratus under the
name of Apollonius of Tyana. [181] He wrote a book on the philosopher's
stone, which was published in Latin and French at Paris in the year
1612.