CHAPTER VIII

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]