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Apollonius of Tyana [1 to 97 CE] was a Greek Neo-Pythagorean philosopher and teacher. His teaching influenced both scientific thought and occultism for centuries after his death.
James Francis prefaced a discussion of elements of fiction and reality that confront one another in Philostratus' vita of Apollonius, "The most that can be said further both with certainty and without fear of 'contamination' from posthumous representations is that Apollonius appears to have been a wandering ascetic/philosopher/wonderworker of a type common to the eastern part of the early empire."[1] Apollonius is virtually only known through the medium of Philostratus,[2] whose biography's peripatetic narrative structure is built upon a series of instructive dialogues and the sage's responses to places and events (see Life of Apollonius of Tyana). Apollonius was a vegetarian, and a disciple of Pythagoras. He is quoted as having said "For I discerned a certain sublimity in the discipline of Pythagoras, and how a certain secret wisdom enabled him to know, not only who he was himself, but also who he had been; and I saw that he approached the altars in purity, and suffered not his belly to be polluted by partaking of the flesh of animals; and that he kept his body pure of all garments woven of dead animal refuse; and that he was the first of mankind to restrain his tongue, inventing a discipline of silence described in the proverbial phrase, "An ox sits upon it." I also saw that his philosophical system was in other respects oracular and true. So I ran to embrace his teachings..."
This is The Prayer of Apollonius of Tyana, circa 23: "Oh, Thou Sun, send me as far around the world as is my pleasure and yours; and may I make the acquaintance of good men but never hear anything of bad ones, nor they of me."
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Apollonius was born in the city of Tyana, in the Roman Empire province of Cappadocia in Asia Minor. He was educated in the nearby city of Tarsus in Cilicia, where he devoted himself to the doctrines of Pythagoras and adopted the ascetic habit of life in its fullest sense. He first became a religious teacher as a youth in the temple of Asclepius at Aegae, also in Cilicia (not to be confused with Aegae in Macedonia). After Aegae, Apollonius began his travels in Cilicia and in the neighboring province of Pamphylia.
Having kept a vow of silence for five years, he decided to travel to India, and to learn the wisdom of the Persian magi and the Indian gymnosophists ("Naked Philosophers") and Brahmins. On his way through Asia and before reaching the Euphrates, he visited a sacred city of Syria called Hierapolis ("Ninos" in Philostratus), where he attracted a disciple, Damis, who kept a diary of Apollonius's deeds and sayings. These notes described a number of incidents and adventures in the life of Apollonius, including events relating to Roman emperors from Nero (54-68) to Nerva (96-98). Eventually Damis's notes are said to have come into the possession of the Empress Julia Domna, wife of the emperor Septimius Severus (194-211), who commissioned Philostratus to use them to assemble a biography of the sage.
The narrative of Apollonius's travels, as they are reported by Philostratus on the basis of Damis, is so full of the miraculous that, in the words of Edward Gibbon, "we are at a loss to discover whether he was a sage, an imposter, or a fanatic." If we can believe Philostratus, he continued to travel widely after his return from Europe, going far up the river Nile as far as Ethiopia, and in Spain as far as Gades (modern Cádiz). Though he had many followers and admirers, Philostratus maintains that he also had many enemies, notably the Stoic philosopher Euphrates of Tyre. Both his friendships and his quarrels are also reflected in his extant Letters. He himself claimed only the power of foreseeing the future; yet, again according to Philostratus, he either raised from death or revived from a death-like state the daughter of a Roman senator. In the biographer's account, he is accused of treason both by Nero and by Domitian, but miraculously escapes, and after further travels in Greece finally settles in Ephesus. Philostratus keeps up the mystery of his hero's life by saying, "Concerning the manner of his death, if he did die, the accounts are various," though he seems to prefer a version in which Apollonius disappears mysteriously in the temple of the goddess Dictynna in Crete.
Around 300 CE, a man named Hierocles endeavored to prove that pagans were more reasonable in believing the sayings and doings of Apollonius, as recounted by Philostratus, than Christians were in believing the "ignorant" followers of Jesus who had recounted his life. The Christian bishop, Eusebius of Caesarea, wrote an extant Reply to Hierocles, in which he argued that Philostratus' account of Apollonius was much more incredible than anything that Christian sources said about Jesus, and if what Philostratus said was true, then Apollonius must have been in league with demons. This started a debate on the relative merits of Jesus and Apollonius that has gone on in different forms into modern times; Voltaire and Charles Blount (1654-1693), the English freethinker, have adopted a similar standpoint.
In Late Antiquity, Apollonius became a hero of "pagan" culture, though Christian writers were sometimes sympathetic towards him because of his lifelong chastity, avoidance of alcohol, and devotion to religion. The late fourth-century Historia Augusta says that Apollonius appeared to the Emperor Aurelian when he was besieging Tyana, Apollonius' hometown. In a dream or vision, Aurelian claimed to have seen Apollonius speak to him, beseeching him to spare the city of his birth. In part, Aurelian said Apollonius told him "Aurelian, if you desire to rule, abstain from the blood of the innocent! Aurelian, if you will conquer, be merciful!" Aurelian, who admired Apollonius, therefore spared Tyana. However, the Historia Augusta is another source which contains a great deal of fiction.
