Apollonius of Tyana, the Philosopher-Reformer of the First Century A.D Part 2

In the midst of this war about miracles in the eighteenth century it is pleasant to remark the short treatise of Herzog, who endeavours to give a sketch of the philosophy and religious life of Apollonius,[49] but, alas! there were no followers of so liberal an example in this century of strife.

So far then for the earlier literature of the subject. Frankly none of it is worth reading; the problem could not be calmly considered in such a period. It started on the false ground of the Hierocles-Eusebius controversy, which was but an incident (for wonder-working is common to all great teachers and not peculiar to Apollonius or Jesus), and was embittered by the rise of Encyclopdism and the rationalism of the Revolution period. Not that the miracle-controversy ceased even in the last century; it does not, however, any longer obscure the whole horizon, and the sun of a calmer judgment may be seen breaking through the mist.

In order to make the rest of our summary clearer we append at the end of this essay the t.i.tles of the works which have appeared since the beginning of the nineteenth century, in chronological order.

A glance over this list will show that the last century has produced an English (Berwicks), an Italian (Lancettis), a French (Cha.s.sangs), and two German translations (Jacobs and Baltzers).[50] The Rev. E.

Berwicks translation is the only English version; in his Preface the author, while a.s.serting the falsity of the miraculous element in the Life, says that the rest of the work deserves careful attention. No harm will accrue to the Christian religion by its perusal, for there are no allusions to the Life of Christ in it, and the miracles are based on those ascribed to Pythagoras.

This is certainly a healthier standpoint than that of the traditional theological controversy, which, unfortunately, however, was revived again by the great authority of Baur, who saw in a number of the early doc.u.ments of the Christian era (notably the canonical Acts) tendency-writings of but slight historical content, representing the changing fortunes of schools and parties and not the actual histories of individuals. The Life of Apollonius was one of these tendency-writings; its object was to put forward a view opposed to Christianity in favour of philosophy. Baur thus divorced the whole subject from its historical standpoint and attributed to Philostratus an elaborate scheme of which he was entirely innocent. Baurs view was largely adopted by Zeller in his Philosophie der Griechen (v. 140), and by Rville in Holland.

This Christusbild theory (carried by a few extremists to the point of denying that Apollonius ever existed) has had a great vogue among writers on the subject, especially compilers of encyclopdia articles; it is at any rate a wider issue than the traditional miracle-wrangle, which was again revived in all its ancient narrowness by Newman, who only uses Apollonius as an excuse for a dissertation on orthodox miracles, to which he devotes eighteen pages out of the twenty-five of his treatise. Noack also follows Baur, and to some extent Pettersch, though he takes the subject onto the ground of philosophy; while Mnckeberg, pastor of St. Nicolai in Hamburg, though striving to be fair to Apollonius, ends his chatty dissertation with an outburst of orthodox praises of Jesus, praises which we by no means grudge, but which are entirely out of place in such a subject.

The development of the Jesus-Apollonius miracle-controversy into the Jesus-against-Apollonius and even Christ-against-Anti-Christ battle, fought out with relays of l.u.s.ty champions on the one side against a feeble protest at best on the other, is a painful spectacle to contemplate. How sadly must Jesus and Apollonius have looked upon, and still look upon, this bitter and useless strife over their saintly persons. Why should posterity set their memories one against the other?

Did they oppose one another in life? Did even their biographers do so after their deaths? Why then could not the controversy have ceased with Eusebius? For Lactantius frankly admits the point brought forward by Hierocles (to exemplify which Hierocles only referred to Apollonius as one instance out of many)--that miracles do not prove divinity. We rest our claims, says Lactantius, _not_ on miracles, but on the fulfilment of prophecy.[51] Had this more sensible position been revived instead of that of Eusebius, the problem of Apollonius would have been considered in its natural historical environment four hundred years ago, and much ink and paper would have been saved.

With the progress of the critical method, however, opinion has at length partly recovered its balance, and it is pleasant to be able to turn to works which have rescued the subject from theological obscurantism and placed it in the open field of historical and critical research. The two volumes of the independent thinker, Legrand dAussy, which appeared at the very beginning of the last century, are, for the time, remarkably free from prejudice, and are a praiseworthy attempt at historical impartiality, but criticism was still young at this period. Kayser, though he does not go thoroughly into the matter, decides that the account of Philostratus is purely a _fabularis narratio_ but is well opposed by I. Mller, who contends for a strong element of history as a background. But by far the best sifting of the sources is that of Jessen.[52] Priaulxs study deals solely with the Indian episode and is of no critical value for the estimation of the sources. Of all previous studies, however, the works of Cha.s.sang and Baltzer are the most generally intelligent, for both writers are aware of the possibilities of psychic science, though mostly from the insufficient standpoint of spiritistic phenomena.

As for Tredwells somewhat pretentious volume which, being in English, is accessible to the general reader, it is largely reactionary, and is used as a cover for adverse criticism of the Christian origins from a Secularist standpoint which denies at the outset the possibility of miracle in any meaning of the word. A ma.s.s of well-known numismatological and other matter, which is entirely irrelevant, but which seems to be new and surprising to the author, is introduced, and a map is prefixed to the t.i.tle-page purporting to give the itineraries of Apollonius, but having little reference to the text of Philostratus.

Indeed, nowhere does Tredwell show that he is working on the text itself, and the subject in his hands is but an excuse for a rambling dissertation on the first century in general from his own standpoint.

This is all regrettable, for with the exception of Berwicks translation, which is almost unprocurable, we have nothing of value in English for the general reader,[53] except Sinnetts short sketch, which is descriptive rather than critical or explanatory.

So far then for the history of the Apollonius of opinion; we will now turn to the Apollonius of Philostratus, and attempt if possible to discover some traces of the man as he was in history, and the nature of his life and work.

SECTION VI.

THE BIOGRAPHER OF APOLLONIUS.

Flavius Philostratus, the writer of the only Life of Apollonius which has come down to us,[54] was a distinguished man of letters who lived in the last quarter of the second and the first half of the third century (_cir._ 175-245 A.D.). He formed one of the circle of famous writers and thinkers gathered round the philosopher-empress,[55] Julia Domna, who was the guiding spirit of the Empire during the reigns of her husband Septimius Severus and her son Caracalla. All three members of the imperial family were students of occult science, and the age was preeminently one in which the occult arts, good and bad, were a pa.s.sion.

Thus the sceptical Gibbon, in his sketch of Severus and his famous consort, writes:

Like most of the Africans, Severus was pa.s.sionately addicted to the vain studies of magic and divination, deeply versed in the interpretation of dreams and omens, and perfectly acquainted with the science of judicial astrology, which in almost every age except the present, has maintained its dominion over the mind of man. He had lost his first wife whilst he was governor of the Lionnese Gaul. In the choice of a second, he sought only to connect himself with some favourite of fortune; and as soon as he had discovered that a young lady of Emesa in Syria had _a royal nativity_[56] he solicited and obtained her hand. Julia Domna[57] (for that was her name) deserved all that the stars could promise her. She possessed, even in an advanced age,[58] the attractions of beauty, and united to a lively imagination a firmness of mind, and strength of judgment, seldom bestowed on her s.e.x. Her amiable qualities never made any deep impression on the dark and jealous temper of her husband,[59] but in her sons reign, she administered the princ.i.p.al affairs of the Empire with a prudence that supported his authority, and with a moderation that sometimes corrected his wild extravagances. Julia applied herself to letters and philosophy with some success, and with the most splendid reputation. She was the patroness of every art, and the friend of every man of genius.[60]

We thus see, even from Gibbons somewhat grudging estimate, that Domna Julia was a woman of remarkable character, whose outer acts give evidence of an inner purpose, and whose private life has not been written. It was at her request that Philostratus wrote the Life of Apollonius, and it was she who supplied him with certain MSS. that were in her possession, as a basis; for the beautiful daughter of Ba.s.sia.n.u.s, priest of the sun at Emesa, was an ardent collector of books from every part of the world, especially of the MSS. of philosophers and of memoranda and biographical notes relating to the famous students of the inner nature of things.

That Philostratus was the best man to whom to entrust so important a task, is doubtful. It is true that he was a skilled stylist and a practised man of letters, an art critic and an ardent antiquarian, as we may see from his other works; but he was a sophist rather than a philosopher, and though an enthusiastic admirer of Pythagoras and his school, was so from a distance, regarding it rather through a wonder-loving atmosphere of curiosity and the embellishments of a lively imagination than from a personal acquaintance with its discipline, or a practical knowledge of those hidden forces of the soul with which its adepts dealt. We have, therefore, to expect a sketch of the appearance of a thing by one outside, rather than an exposition of the thing itself from one within.

The following is Philostratus account of the sources from which he derived his information concerning Apollonius:[61]

I have collected my materials partly from the cities which loved him, partly from the temples whose rites and regulations he restored from their former state of neglect, partly from what others have said about him, and partly from his own letters.[62] More detailed information I procured as follows. Damis was a man of some education who formerly used to live in the ancient city of Ninus.[63] He became a disciple of Apollonius and recorded his travels, in which he says he himself took part, and also the views, sayings, and predictions of his master. A member of Damis family brought the Empress Julia the note-books[64]

containing these memoirs, which up to that time had not been known of.

As I was one of the circle of this princess, who was a lover and patroness of all literary productions, she ordered me to rewrite these sketches and improve their form of expression, for though the Ninevite expressed himself clearly, his style was far from correct. I also have had access to a book by Maximus[65] of g which contained all Apollonius doings at g.[66] There is also a will written by Apollonius, from which we can learn how he almost deified philosophy.[67] As to the four books of Mragenes[68] on Apollonius they do not deserve attention, for he knows nothing of most of the facts of his life (i. 2, 3).

These are the sources to which Philostratus was indebted for his information, sources which are unfortunately no longer accessible to us, except perhaps a few letters. Nor did Philostratus spare any pains to gather information on the subject, for in his concluding words (viii.

31), he tells us that he has himself travelled into most parts of the world and everywhere met with the inspired sayings[69] of Apollonius, and that he was especially well acquainted with the temple dedicated to the memory of our philosopher at Tyana and founded at the imperial expense (for the emperors had judged him not unworthy of like honours with themselves"), whose priests, it is to be presumed, had got together as much information as they could concerning Apollonius.

A thoroughly critical a.n.a.lysis of the literary effort of Philostratus, therefore, would have to take into account all of these factors, and endeavour to a.s.sign each statement to its original source. But even then the task of the historian would be incomplete, for it is transparently evident that Philostratus has considerably embellished the narrative with numerous notes and additions of his own and with the composition of set speeches.

Now as the ancient writers did not separate their notes from the text, or indicate them in any distinct fas.h.i.+on, we have to be constantly on our guard to detect the original sources from the glosses of the writer.[70] In fact Philostratus is ever taking advantage of the mention of a name or a subject to display his own knowledge, which is often of a most legendary and fantastic nature. This is especially the case in his description of Apollonius Indian travels. India at that time and long afterwards was considered the end of the world, and an infinity of the strangest travellers tales and mythological fables were in circulation concerning it. One has only to read the accounts of the writers on India[71] from the time of Alexander onwards to discover the source of most of the strange incidents that Philostratus records as experiences of Apollonius. To take but one instance out of a hundred, Apollonius had to cross the Caucasus, an indefinite name for the great system of mountain ranges that bound the northern limits of Aryavarta.

Prometheus was chained to the Caucasus, so every child had been told for centuries. Therefore, if Apollonius crossed the Caucasus, he must have seen those chains. And so it was, Philostratus a.s.sures us (ii. 3). Not only so, but he volunteers the additional information that you could not tell of what they were made! A perusal of Megasthenes, however, will speedily reduce the long Philostratian account of the Indian travels of Apollonius (i. 41-iii. 58) to a very narrow compa.s.s, for page after page is simply padding, picked up from any one of the numerous Indica to which our widely read author had access.[72] To judge from such writers, Porus[73] (the Rajah conquered by Alexander) was the immemorial king of India. In fact, in speaking of India or any other little-known country, a writer in these days had to drag in all that popular legend a.s.sociated with it or he stood little chance of being listened to. He had to give his narrative a local colour, and this was especially the case in a technical rhetorical effort like that of Philostratus.

Again, it was the fas.h.i.+on to insert set speeches and put them in the mouths of well-known characters on historical occasions, good instances of which may be seen in Thucydides and the Acts of the Apostles.

Philostratus repeatedly does this.

But it would be too long to enter into a detailed investigation of the subject, although the writer has prepared notes on all these points, for that would be to write a volume and not a sketch. Only a few points are therefore set down, to warn the student to be ever on his guard to sift out Philostratus from his sources.[74]

But though we must be keenly alive to the importance of a thoroughly critical att.i.tude where definite facts of history are concerned, we should be as keenly on our guard against judging everything from the standpoint of modern preconceptions. There is but one religious literature of antiquity that has ever been treated with real sympathy in the West, and that is the Judo-Christian; in that alone have men been trained to feel at home, and all in antiquity that treats of religion in a different mode to the Jewish or Christian way, is felt to be strange, and, if obscure or extraordinary, to be even repulsive. The sayings and doings of the Jewish prophets, of Jesus, and of the Apostles, are related with reverence, embellished with the greatest beauties of diction, and illumined with the best thought of the age; while the sayings and doings of other prophets and teachers have been for the most part subjected to the most unsympathetic criticism, in which no attempt is made to understand their standpoint. Had even-handed justice been dealt out all round, the world to-day would have been richer in sympathy, in wide-mindedness, in comprehension of nature, humanity, and G.o.d, in brief, in soul-experience.

Therefore, in reading the Life of Apollonius let us remember that we have to look at it through the eyes of a Greek, and not through those of a Jew or a Protestant. The Many in their proper sphere must be for us as authentic a manifestation of the Divine as the One or the All, for indeed the G.o.ds exist in spite of commandment and creed. The Saints and Martyrs and Angels have seemingly taken the places of the Heroes and Dmons and G.o.ds, but the change of name and change of view-point among men affect but little the unchangeable facts. To sense the facts of universal religion under the ever-changing names which men bestow upon them, and then to enter with full sympathy and comprehension into the hopes and fears of every phase of the religious mind--to read, as it were, the past lives of our own souls--is a most difficult task. But until we can put ourselves understandingly in the places of others, we can never see more than one side of the Infinite Life of G.o.d. A student of comparative religion must not be afraid of terms; he must not shudder when he meets with polytheism, or draw back in horror when he encounters dualism, or feel an increased satisfaction when he falls in with monotheism; he must not feel awe when he p.r.o.nounces the name of Yahweh and contempt when he utters the name of Zeus; he must not picture a satyr when he reads the word dmon, and imagine a winged dream of beauty when he p.r.o.nounces the word angel. For him heresy and orthodoxy must not exist; he sees only his own soul slowly working out its own experience, looking at life from every possible view-point, so that haply at last he may see the whole, and having seen the whole, may become at one with G.o.d.

To Apollonius the mere fas.h.i.+on of a mans faith was unessential; he was at home in all lands, among all cults. He had a helpful word for all, an intimate knowledge of the particular way of each of them, which enabled him to restore them to health. Such men are rare; the records of such men are precious, and require the embellishments of no rhetorician.

Let us then, first of all, try to recover the outline of the early external life and of the travels of Apollonius shorn of Philostratus embellishments, and then endeavour to consider the nature of his mission, the manner of the philosophy which he so dearly loved and which was to him his religion, and last, if possible, the way of his inner life.

SECTION VII.

EARLY LIFE.

Apollonius was born[75] at Tyana, a city in the south of Cappadocia, somewhen in the early years of the Christian era. His parents were of ancient family and considerable fortune (i. 4). At an early age he gave signs of a very powerful memory and studious disposition, and was remarkable for his beauty. At the age of fourteen he was sent to Tarsus, a famous centre of learning of the time, to complete his studies. But mere rhetoric and style and the life of the schools were little suited to his serious disposition, and he speedily left for g, a town on the sea-coast east of Tarsus. Here he found surroundings more suitable to his needs, and plunged with ardour into the study of philosophy. He became intimate with the priests of the temple of sculapius, where cures were still wrought, and enjoyed the society and instruction of pupils and teachers of the Platonic, Stoic, Peripatetic, and Epicurean schools of philosophy; but though he studied all these systems of thought with attention, it was the lessons of the Pythagorean school upon which he seized with an extraordinary depth of comprehension,[76]

and that, too, although his teacher, Euxenus, was but a parrot of the doctrines and not a practiser of the discipline. But such parrotting was not enough for the eager spirit of Apollonius; his extraordinary memory, which infused life into the dull utterances of his tutor, urged him on, and at the age of sixteen he soared into the Pythagorean life, winged by some greater one.[77] Nevertheless he retained his affection for the man who had told him of the way, and rewarded him handsomely (i. 7).

When Euxenus asked him how he would begin his new mode of life he replied: As doctors purge their patients. Hence he refused to touch anything that had animal life in it, on the ground that it densified the mind and rendered it impure. He considered that the only pure form of food was what the earth produced, fruits and vegetables. He also abstained from wine, for though it was made from fruit, it rendered turbid the ther[78] in the soul and destroyed the composure of the mind. Moreover, he went barefoot, let his hair grow long, and wore nothing but linen. He now lived in the temple, to the admiration of the priests and with the express approval of sculapius,[79] and he rapidly became so famous for his asceticism and pious life, that a saying[80] of the Cilicians about him became a proverb (i. 8).

At the age of twenty his father died (his mother having died some years before) leaving a considerable fortune, which Apollonius was to share with his elder brother, a wild and dissolute youth of twenty-three.

Being still a minor, Apollonius continued to reside at g, where the temple of sculapius had now become a busy centre of study, and echoed from one end to the other with the sound of lofty philosophical discourses. On coming of age he returned to Tyana to endeavour to rescue his brother from his vicious life. His brother had apparently exhausted his legal share of the property, and Apollonius at once made over half of his own portion to him, and by his gentle admonitions restored him to his manhood. In fact he seems to have devoted his time to setting in order the affairs of the family, for he distributed the rest of his patrimony among certain of his relatives, and kept for himself but a bare pittance; he required but little, he said, and should never marry (i. 13).

He now took the vow of silence for five years, for he was determined not to write on philosophy until he had pa.s.sed through this wholesome discipline. These five years were pa.s.sed mostly in Pamphylia and Cilicia, and though he spent much time in study, he did not immure himself in a community or monastery but kept moving about and travelling from city to city. The temptations to break his self-imposed vow were enormous. His strange appearance drew everyones attention, the laughter-loving populace made the silent philosopher the b.u.t.t of their unscrupulous wit, and all the protection he had against their scurrility and misconceptions was the dignity of his mien and the glance of eyes that now could see both past and future. Many a time he was on the verge of bursting out against some exceptional insult or lying gossip, but ever he restrained himself with the words: Heart, patient be, and thou, my tongue, be still[81] (i. 14).

Yet even this stern repression of the common mode of speech did not prevent his good doing. Even at this early age he had begun to correct abuses. With eyes and hands and motions of the head, he made his meaning understood, and on one occasion, at Aspendus in Pamphylia, prevented a serious corn riot by silencing the crowd with his commanding gestures and then writing what he had to say on his tablets (i. 15).

So far, apparently, Philostratus has been dependent upon the account of Maximus of g, or perhaps only up to the time of Apollonius quitting g. There is now a considerable gap in the narrative, and two short chapters of vague generalities (i. 16, 17) are all that Philostratus can produce as the record of some fifteen or twenty[82] years, until Damis notes begin.

After the five years of silence, we find Apollonius at Antioch, but this seems to be only an incident in a long round of travel and work, and it is probable that Philostratus brings Antioch into prominence merely because what little he had learnt of this period of Apollonius life, he picked up in this much-frequented city.

Even from Philostratus himself we learn incidentally later on (i. 20; iv. 38) that Apollonius had spent some time among the Arabians, and had been instructed by them. And by Arabia we are to understand the country south of Palestine, which was at this period a regular hot-bed of mystic communities. The spots he visited were in out-of-the-way places, where the spirit of holiness lingered, and not the crowded and disturbed cities, for the subject of his conversation, he said, required _men_ and not people.[83] He spent his time in travelling from one to another of these temples, shrines, and communities; from which we may conclude that there was some kind of a common freemasonry, as it were, among them, of the nature of initiation, which opened the door of hospitality to him.

But wherever he went, he always held to a certain regular division of the day. At sun-rise he practised certain religious exercises alone, the nature of which he communicated only to those who had pa.s.sed through the discipline of a four years (? five years) silence. He then conversed with the temple priests or the heads of the community, according as he was staying in a Greek or non-Greek temple with public rites, or in a community with a discipline peculiar to itself apart from the public cult.[84]

He thus endeavoured to bring back the public cults to the purity of their ancient traditions, and to suggest improvements in the practices of the private brotherhoods. The most important part of his work was with those who were following the inner life, and who already looked upon Apollonius as a teacher of the hidden way. To these his comrades (?ta?????) and pupils (????t??), he devoted much attention, being ever ready to answer their questions and give advice and instruction. Not however that he neglected the people; it was his invariable custom to teach them, but always after mid-day; for those who lived the inner life,[85] he said, should on days dawning enter the presence of the G.o.ds,[86] then spend the time till mid-day in giving and receiving instruction in holy things, and not till after noon devote themselves to human affairs. That is to say, the morning was devoted by Apollonius to the divine science, and the afternoon to instruction in ethics and practical life. After the days work he bathed in cold water, as did so many of the mystics of the time in those lands, notably the Essenes and Therapeuts (i. 16).

After these things, says Philostratus, as vaguely as the writer of a gospel narrative, Apollonius determined to visit the Brachmanes and Sarmanes.[87] What induced our philosopher to make so long and dangerous a journey nowhere appears from Philostratus, who simply says that Apollonius thought it a good thing for a young man[88] to travel. It is abundantly evident, however, that Apollonius never travelled merely for the sake of travelling. What he does he does with a distinct purpose.