Book 4

When they saw the man come forward into Ephesus in Ionia, not even the craftsmen kept to their trades any longer, but followed him — one admiring his wisdom, another his appearance, another his manner of life, another his bearing, and some all together. Reports about him came in too: some from the oracle at Colophon, singing of him as a sharer in its own wisdom, and plainly wise, and the like; some from Didyma; some from the temple about Pergamum, for the god bade many of those who sought health to resort to Apollonius, since this both he himself wished and seemed good to the Fates. Embassies came to him also from the cities, holding him a guest-friend and a counsellor of life and of the founding of altars and images; and he set each of these right, in some things writing to them, in others saying that he would come. And when Smyrna too sent an embassy, but did not say what it needed, only entreating him to come, he asked the envoy what they needed of him, and he said, "to see him and to be seen.

Apollonius said: "I will come; but grant, O Muses, that we may love one another too." His first discourse, then, he delivered to the Ephesians from the steps of the temple, not after the manner of the Socratics, but leading them away from other things and turning their zeal from them, and counselling them to give their minds to philosophy alone, and to fill Ephesus with earnestness rather than with the idleness and arrogance he found there. For they were given over to dancers and devoted to Pyrrhic measures; all was full of flutes, full of effeminate men, full of din. And though the Ephesians turned to him, he did not think fit to overlook these things, but rooted them out and made the multitude ashamed of them.

His other discourses he held about the groves in the covered walks. Once, when he was discoursing of fellowship and teaching that men should feed one another and be fed by one another, sparrows sat silent upon the trees, but one of them, flying up, cried out, seeming to urge something on the rest; and they, when they heard it, themselves screamed and flew up, led by the one. Apollonius held to his discourse, knowing whither the sparrows flew, but not interpreting it to the multitude. But when all looked up at them, and some foolishly thought it a portent, Apollonius turned aside from his discourse and said: "A boy has slipped while carrying grain in a bowl, and having gathered it up carelessly has gone off, leaving much of it scattered in such-and-such an alley; and this sparrow, who chanced to be by, has come as a herald to the rest of the windfall, and is making them his messmates." Most of the hearers ran off at a run to this place, and Apollonius went through to those who remained the discourse on fellowship he had begun; and when they came back shouting and full of wonder, he said: "You see how the sparrows care for one another and rejoice in fellowship; but we will not have it so. Nay, if we see a man sharing with others, we count him a prodigal and a wanton and the like, and those fed by him we call parasites and flatterers. And what is left for us but to shut ourselves up, like fatted fowl, and gorge ourselves in the dark, until we burst with growing fat?

When a plague was creeping upon Ephesus, but the disease had not yet swollen up, Apollonius perceived its onset, and perceiving it he foretold it often in his discourses, crying, "O earth, remain as you are," and uttering such things with a threat: "Save these, and you shall not pass this way here." But they paid no heed, and thought such things mere marvel-mongering, the more so as he went about all the temples and seemed to turn it aside and pray it away. And since they were senseless in their suffering, he thought he need no longer help them, but went round the rest of Ionia, setting right the affairs of each people, and ever speaking something for the safety of those present.

As he came to Smyrna, the Ionians met him, for they happened to be sacrificing at the Panionia; and reading too an Ionian decree in which they begged him to share their assembly, and lighting on a name least Ionian — for one Lucullus was inscribed at the head of the resolution — he sent a letter to their council making a rebuke about this barbarism; for he found Fabricius too and other such names among those who had voted. How vigorously he rebuked them, the letter about this shows.

Coming forward another day among the Ionians, he asked, "What is this mixing-bowl?" And they said, "The Panionian." So drawing from it and pouring a libation, he said: "O gods, leaders of the Ionians, grant to this fair colony to use the sea in safety, and that no evil revel come upon the land from it, nor Aegaeon the earth-shaker ever shake the cities." Such things he prophesied, foreseeing, I think, what befell in later times about Smyrna and Miletus and Chios and Samos and many of the Ionian cities.

Seeing the Smyrnaeans earnest about all kinds of discourse, he strengthened them and made them more earnest, and bade them take pride in themselves rather than in the beauty of their city; for though it was the fairest of cities under the sun, and made the sea its own, and held the springs of the west wind, yet it was sweeter for it to be crowned with men than with porticoes and paintings and gold more than is needed. For buildings, he said, remain in the same place and are nowhere seen but in that part of the earth where they are; but good men are seen everywhere and speak everywhere, and make the city from which they spring as great as the land they can travel over. He said that cities so fair were like the statue of Zeus wrought by Pheidias at Olympia, for it sits — so it seemed good to the craftsman — but that men who come to all places are in nothing unlike the Homeric Zeus, whom Homer wrought in many forms, more wonderfully put together than the ivory one; for the one is seen on earth, but the other is conceived in heaven in all its parts.

Moreover he reasoned with the Smyrnaeans about how cities might be safely governed, seeing them at variance with one another and not agreed in their counsels; for he said that the city which is to be rightly governed needs a discord of concord. This being thought said unconvincingly and not in due sequence, Apollonius, understanding that the multitude did not follow the argument, said: "White and black could never become the same, nor could the bitter be soundly blended with the sweet; but concord may quarrel for the safety of cities. And what I mean, let us take to be this: let that faction which leads to swords and to stoning one another be far from a city which needs the rearing of children and laws and men by whom words and deeds are wrought; but the rivalry of citizens with one another for the common good, and how one might speak a better counsel than another, and one preside over an office better than another, and one go on an embassy, and another build something more splendid than his fellow-magistrate — this, I think, is good strife and faction with one another for the common good. For each to pursue a different thing and bring it to the city's benefit seemed to the Lacedaemonians of old a foolish thing, since they laboured at war and all were strong for it and laid hold of this alone; but to me it seems best that each should do what he knows and what he can. For if one be admired for leadership of the people, another for wisdom, another for enriching the common store, another for being honest, another for being grave and unforgiving to wrongdoers, another for keeping his hands clean, the city will be well established, or rather will stand firm.

As he was going through this, he saw a ship of the three-masted kind sailing out, and the sailors each doing his part differently to put her to sea. So turning to those present he said: "Do you see the ship's company, how some have boarded the boats, being rowers, some haul up and stow the anchors, some spread the sails to the wind, some keep look-out from stern and prow? If one of these should fail in his own work, or handle the seamanship ignorantly, they will sail badly and will themselves seem the storm; but if they vie with one another and contend that no one shall seem worse than his fellow, fair are the havens for this ship, and all is full of calm and good sailing, and their good counsel will seem the very Poseidon of safety.

With such discourses he held Smyrna together. But when the disease fell upon the Ephesians and nothing availed against it, they sent an embassy to Apollonius, making him the physician of their suffering. He did not think the journey should be put off, but saying "Let us go," he was in Ephesus — doing, I think, what Pythagoras did, being at once in Thurii and Metapontum. So gathering the Ephesians, he said: "Take courage; for today I will stay the disease." And saying this he led men of every age to the theatre, where the statue of the Averter is set up. There seemed to be an old beggar there, blinking his eyes by craft, and he carried a wallet with a crust of bread in it, and was clad in rags and squalid of face. So setting the Ephesians round him, Apollonius said: "Pelt this enemy of the gods, gathering as many stones as you can." The Ephesians wondered what he meant, and thought it dreadful to kill a stranger so wretchedly off — for he kept entreating them and saying many things to move their pity — but Apollonius pressed on, urging the Ephesians to drive him hard and not let up. And when some began with a few shots at him, and the man who seemed to blink looked up of a sudden and showed eyes full of fire, the Ephesians understood that it was a demon, and stoned him so that they heaped a cairn of stones over him. After a little while Apollonius bade them take away the stones and learn the beast they had killed. So when what seemed to have been pelted was uncovered, the man had vanished, but a dog appeared, in form like a Molossian, but in size like the largest lion, crushed by the stones and foaming at the mouth like a mad thing. So the statue of the Averter, which is Heracles, is set up about the place where the phantom was pelted.

Having purged the Ephesians of the disease and having had enough of the affairs of Ionia, he set out for Greece. So going to Pergamum and delighting in the temple of Asclepius, and suggesting to the suppliants of the god what they should do to win favourable dreams, and healing many, he came to the Troad; and filled with all the ancient lore concerning them, he visited the tombs of the Achaeans, and saying much over them, and offering many bloodless and pure sacrifices, he bade his companions go to the ship, but he himself said he would pass the night on the mound of Achilles. His companions tried to frighten him from it — for by now the Dioscoridae and the Phaedimi and all such company were with Apollonius — saying that Achilles still appeared terrible; for this even those in Ilium were persuaded of him. "And yet," he said, "I know well that Achilles delights in meetings; for he greeted Nestor from Pylos warmly, since he always told him something useful, and he honoured Phoenix his fosterer and attendant and the like, since Phoenix passed his time with him in discourse; and he looked most gently on Priam, though most hostile to him, when he heard him speak; and meeting Odysseus in their quarrel, he showed himself so moderate that he seemed to Odysseus fair rather than terrible. The shield and the helmet that nod, as they say, terribly, are, I think, for the Trojans, since he remembers what he suffered from them when they broke faith with him over the marriage; but I have nothing to do with Ilium, and I shall discourse with him more gracefully than his companions of old; and if he kills me, as you say, I shall lie with Memnon, I suppose, and Cycnus, and perhaps Troy will bury me in a hollow grave, like Hector." Such things he said to his companions, half in play, half in earnest, and went up the mound alone, while they went to the ship, evening being now come.

Apollonius, coming about dawn, said: "Where is Antisthenes the Parian?" Now this man had been with him in Ilium for seven days already. When Antisthenes answered, he said: "Have you anything to do, young man, with Troy?" "Very much," he said; "for I am of old Trojan stock." "And a son of Priam too?" "By Zeus," he said; "for from this I think I am noble and of noble line." "With reason, then," he said, "Achilles forbids me to keep company with you; for when he bade me go on an embassy to the Thessalians concerning the charges he brings against them, and I asked what else besides this I might do to please him, he said, 'Do not make the youth from Paros a companion in your wisdom; for he is sufficiently a son of Priam, and does not cease hymning Hector.'

So Antisthenes went off unwillingly. And when day came, and the wind blew up from the land, and the ship was about to weigh anchor, more others flocked to her, small as she was, wishing to sail with Apollonius; for it was now late autumn and the sea less sure. So all, holding the man mightier than storm and fire and the hardest of things, wished to embark with him, and begged him to give them a share in the voyage. And since the company was many times the ship's measure, looking out for another and larger ship — for there were many about the Aianteum — he said, "Let us embark here, for it is good to be saved with the more." So rounding the Trojan headland, he bade the pilot put in to the Aeolian land, which lies opposite Lesbos, and make his moorings rather towards Methymna. "For there somewhere," Achilles says, "Palamedes lies, where there is also a statue of him a cubit high, in a form older than Palamedes." And as he went out of the ship he said: "Let us care, O men of Greece, for a good man, through whom is all wisdom; for we should become better than the Achaeans themselves, if we honour for his virtue one whom they slew by no justice." So they leapt from the ship, and he came upon the tomb and found the statue buried beside it. On the base of the statue was inscribed, TO THE DIVINE PALAMEDES. So setting it up — as I too saw — and building a shrine about it large enough for the worshippers of Enodia to feast some ten messmates in it, he made this prayer: "Palamedes, forget the wrath you once wrathed among the Achaeans, and grant that men may become many and wise. Yes, Palamedes, through whom are words, through whom are the Muses, through whom am I.

He came also to the shrine of Orpheus, putting in at Lesbos. They say that there once Orpheus delighted in divination, until Apollo took it in charge himself. For when men no longer went to Gryneium for oracles, nor to Clarus, nor to where the Apolline tripod is, but Orpheus alone gave oracles — his head having lately come from Thrace — the god stood over him as he prophesied and said: "Cease from what is mine; for I have endured enough of you even singing.

As they sailed after this over the Euboean sea, which Homer too thinks one of the hard and ill-charted, the sea appeared smooth and fairer than the season warranted, and there was talk about islands, since they fell in with many famous ones, and about shipbuilding and steering, fitting for sailors. But when Damis kept disparaging some of the topics, cutting others short, and not letting others be asked, Apollonius understood that he wished to be earnest about another subject, and said: "What ails you, Damis, that you break up the questions? For it is not seasickness or being ill from the voyage that turns you from the discourse, since the sea, you see, has put itself beneath the ship and bears us along. Why then are you vexed?" "Because," he said, "while a great theme lies in the midst, which it were more fitting to ask about, we ask about stale and ancient things." "And what," he said, "might this theme be, for which you hold the rest superfluous?" "Having met Achilles, Apollonius," he said, "and heard perhaps many things not yet known to us, you do not tell these, nor sketch for us the form of Achilles, but sail round the islands and build ships in your talk." "If I shall not seem to boast," he said, "all shall be told.

The others too begged for this discourse and were eager to hear it. "Well," he said, "it was not by digging a trench, like Odysseus, nor by drawing up souls with the blood of lambs, that I came to converse with Achilles, but by praying such a prayer as the Indians say is made to heroes. 'O Achilles,' I said, 'most men say you are dead, but I do not grant the saying, nor does Pythagoras, the ancestor of my wisdom. If then we speak truly, show us your form; for you would greatly profit my eyes, if you would use them as witnesses of your being.' At this there was a slight earthquake about the mound, and a youth five cubits high rose up, Thessalian in his cloak; but his form was not that of a braggart, as Achilles seems to some, and though terrible to behold he did not lose his brightness, and his beauty seems to me not yet to have found a praiser worthy of it, though Homer said much of it; rather it is unspeakable and is undone by him who hymns it rather than sung in its own likeness. Seen at first, as I said, he grew greater and double and more than that; at least he appeared to me twelve cubits high, when he came to his fullest, and his beauty grew ever with his height. His hair, he said, he had never cut, but kept it unshorn for the Spercheius, for the Spercheius was the first river he used; but his beard had its first growth. Addressing me gladly, he said: 'I have met you, having long needed such a man. For the Thessalians have now for a long time left off their offerings to me, and I do not yet think fit to be wrathful — for if I were wrathful they would perish more than the Greeks here once did — but I use mild counsel, that they outrage not their customs, nor be convicted of being worse than these Trojans here, who, though robbed by me of so many men, sacrifice to me publicly and offer first-fruits of the season, and laying a suppliant's bough beg for a truce, which I will not grant; for the perjuries they swore against me will not let Ilium ever recover its ancient form, nor reach the bloom that has come to many of the ruined cities, but its dwellers shall be no better than if they were taken yesterday. That I may not show the affairs of the Thessalians the like, go on an embassy to their council concerning what I have said.' 'I will go on the embassy,' I said, 'for the purpose of the embassy was that they should not perish. But I, Achilles, have a request of you.' 'I understand,' he said; 'for you are plainly about to ask concerning the Trojan affairs. Ask five questions, such as you yourself wish and the Fates allow.' So I asked first whether, according to the poets' tale, he had met with burial. 'I lie,' he said, 'as was sweetest to me and to Patroclus, for we came together very young, and one golden urn holds us both as we lie, as one. As for the dirges of the Muses and Nereids, which they say were made over me, the Muses never came here at all, but the Nereids still come.' After this I asked whether Polyxena was slain over him. He said this was true, but that she was not slain by the Achaeans, but came of her own will to the tomb, and counting her love and his worthy of great things, fell upon an upright sword. Third I asked: 'Did Helen, Achilles, come to Troy, or did Homer think fit to suppose this?' 'For a long time,' he said, 'we were deceived, going on embassies to the Trojans and making our battles for her, as though she were in Ilium; but she dwelt in Egypt, in the house of Proteus, having been carried off by Paris. And when this was believed, we fought thenceforth for Troy itself, that we might not depart in shame.' I touched on a fourth question too, and said I marvelled that Greece had borne so many and such men together as Homer arrays against Troy. And Achilles said: 'Not even the barbarians fell much short of us, so did all the earth blossom with virtue.' Fifth I asked: 'Why did Homer not know Palamedes, or knowing him, leave him out of the tale about you?' 'If Palamedes,' he said, 'did not come to Troy, neither did Troy exist; but since a man most wise and most warlike died, as Odysseus thought good, Homer does not bring him into his poems, that he might not sing the disgraces of Odysseus.' And lamenting over him as greatest and fairest and youngest and most warlike, surpassing all in temperance, and contributing much to the Muses, 'But you, Apollonius,' he said — 'for the wise have fitting dealings with the wise — care for his tomb and take up the statue of Palamedes that is meanly cast aside; it lies in Aeolis over against Methymna in Lesbos.' Saying this, and at the end the matter of the youth from Paros, he departed with a moderate flash of lightning; for indeed the cocks were already taking up their song.

Such were the events on the ship. Sailing into the Piraeus about the season of the Mysteries, when the Athenians are at their most crowded among the Greeks, he hastened up from the ship to the city; and as he went he met many of the philosophers going down to Phalerum, some of whom were warming themselves naked, for the autumn is sunny for the Athenians, others studying out of books, others practising from memory, others disputing. No one passed him by, but all, judging that it was Apollonius, turned to walk with him and greeted him gladly; and ten young men, meeting him together, said, lifting their hands to the Acropolis, "By Athena yonder, we were just now walking to the Piraeus, to sail to Ionia to you." And he welcomed them, and said he rejoiced with them that they studied philosophy.

It was the day of the Epidauria. Now it is the custom of the Athenians to initiate at the Epidauria, after the proclamation and the victims, at a second sacrifice; and this they ordained on account of Asclepius, because they initiated him when he came late from Epidaurus for the Mysteries. But most of them, neglecting the initiation, were busy about Apollonius, and were more eager for this than to go away initiated; and he said he would be with them again, but bade them attend to the rites then, for he too was to be initiated. But the hierophant would not provide the rites, for he would never, he said, initiate a sorcerer, nor open Eleusis to a man not pure in things divine. Apollonius, in no way the less himself for this, said: "You have not yet named the greatest charge that might be brought against me, that, knowing more about the rite than you, I came nevertheless as if to be initiated by one wiser than myself." When those present praised him for answering so vigorously and like himself, the hierophant, since by excluding him he seemed to be doing what was not dear to the multitude, changed his tone and said, "Be initiated, for you seem to have come a wise man." But Apollonius said: "I will be initiated another time, and so-and-so will initiate me" — using foreknowledge of the hierophant who came after that one, and who four years later presided over the temple.

Damis says the man held very many discussions at Athens, but did not write them all, only the necessary ones and those earnest about great matters. His first discourse, since he saw the Athenians fond of sacrifice, was about rites, and how one should sacrifice, or pour a libation, or pray, in a way proper to each of the gods, and at what hour of day and night; and there is a book of Apollonius to be met with, in which he teaches these things in his own words. He went through these things at Athens, first for the sake of his own wisdom and theirs, then refuting the hierophant for what he had said blasphemously and ignorantly; for who any longer thought that the philosopher was impure in things divine, who knows how the gods are to be served?

As he was discoursing about libation, there chanced to be present at his talk a youth of the luxurious sort, so reputed for wantonness that he had once become a song of the wagoners; his country was Corcyra, and he traced his descent to Alcinous the Phaeacian, the host of Odysseus. Apollonius was going through the matter of libation, and bade them not drink from a certain cup, but keep it for the gods undefiled and undrunk. And when he bade them also make ears for the cup and pour the libation by the ear, from which part men least drink, the youth poured over the discourse a broad and wanton laugh. But Apollonius, looking up at him, said: "It is not you who do this insolence, but the demon who drives you without your knowing it." And indeed the youth was unknowingly possessed; for he laughed at things at which no one else laughed, and changed to weeping without cause, and talked to himself and sang. Most thought it was his rioting youth that carried him into these things; but he was in truth playing the part of the demon, and seemed to be drunk in what he then ran riot. And as Apollonius looked at him, the phantom uttered cries of fear and wrath, such as come from those being burned and racked, and swore to keep away from the youth and to fall upon no man. But when Apollonius, like a master to a slave crafty, knavish, shameless, and the like, spoke to him with anger and bade him depart with a sign, the demon said, "I will throw down such-and-such a statue," pointing to one of those about the Royal Stoa, near which this was happening. And when the statue first stirred, then fell, who could write the uproar at this, and how they clapped for wonder? But the youth, as if waking from sleep, rubbed his eyes and looked at the sun's rays, and drew on himself the respect of all who had turned to him, and no longer appeared wanton, nor looked disorderly, but returned to his own nature, no less than if he had used a drug; and changing his soft mantles and fine robes and the rest of his Sybaritic ways, he came to love squalor and a coarse cloak, and stripped for the manners of Apollonius.

He is said to have rebuked the Athenians about the Dionysia, which they hold in the season of Anthesterion. For he thought they came together to the theatre to hear monodies and melodies and the parabases and rhythms of comedy and tragedy; but when he heard that to the flute's signal they danced with twistings, and in the midst of Orpheus' epic and theology acted now as Hours, now as Nymphs, now as Bacchae, he set himself to rebuke this, and said: "Cease to dance away the Salaminians and many other good men who lie dead. For if this dancing were Laconian, well done, soldiers; for you train yourselves for war, and I will dance with you. But if it is soft and bent on effeminacy, what shall I say of the trophies? For these stand not against Medes or Persians, but against yourselves, who set them up, should you fall short of those men. Whence come these saffron robes and purple and scarlet to you? For not even Acharnae was so arrayed, nor did Colonus ride so. And why do I say this? A woman admiral from Caria sailed against you with Xerxes, and there was nothing womanish about her, but a man's dress and arms; but you are softer than the women of Xerxes, arraying yourselves against yourselves — old men, young men, the company of ephebes, who once swore, going to the temple of Agraulus, to die for their country and to lay down their arms, but now perhaps will swear to play the Bacchant for their country and to take the thyrsus, wearing no helmet, but in a woman-mimicking shape, as Euripides says, shamefully conspicuous. And I hear you become winds too, and are said to wave your robes, billowing them aloft as drapery. But you should at least reverence these winds, who are your allies and have blown mightily for you, and not make Boreas, who is your kinsman and the most manly of all the winds, into a female; for Boreas would never have become the lover of Oreithyia, had he seen her dancing too.

He set right that too at Athens. The Athenians, coming together to the theatre beneath the Acropolis, gave their minds to the slaughter of men, and these things were pursued there more keenly than they now are in Corinth; for adulterers and harlots and burglars and cut-purses and kidnappers and such tribes were brought in, bought for great sums, and men armed them and bade them fight together. Apollonius laid hold of these things too, and when the Athenians called him to their assembly, he said he would not enter a place unclean and full of gore. He said this in a letter. And he said he marvelled how the goddess did not already leave the Acropolis too, when they poured out such blood for her. "For you seem to me," he said, "to be coming, when you celebrate the Panathenaea, no longer to slay oxen, but hecatombs of men, for the goddess. And you, Dionysus, after such blood do you frequent the theatre? And do the wise Athenians there pour libations to you? Depart, you too, Dionysus; Cithaeron is purer." Such are the most earnest of the things he philosophised at Athens then.

He went on an embassy too to the Thessalians on behalf of Achilles, at the assemblies at Pylaea, where the Thessalians conduct the Amphictyonic business; and they, in fear, voted to restore the honours due to the tomb. And the monument of Leonidas the Spartan he all but embraced, in his admiration of the man. Walking to the mound on which the Lacedaemonians are said to have been buried under the arrows, he heard his companions disputing with one another what was the highest spot in Greece — Oeta, the mountain before their eyes, giving rise to the talk; and going up the hill he said: "I hold this to be the highest; for those who died here for freedom raised it level with Oeta and lifted it above many an Olympus. I admire these men, but the Acarnanian Megistias before them; for what he knew they would suffer, in this he desired to share with the men, not fearing to die, but fearing not to die with such men.

He visited all the Greek temples — the Dodonaean and the Pythian and the one at Abae — and went to those of Amphiaraus and Trophonius, and went up to the Museum on Helicon. As he frequented the temples and set them right, the priests went with him, his acquaintances followed, and mixing-bowls of discourse were set up, and the thirsty drew from them. And when the Olympic games were on, and the Eleans invited him to share the contest, he said: "You seem to me to disparage the renown of the Olympics in needing embassies to those who will come of their own accord." Coming to the Isthmus, when the sea about Lechaeum roared, he said: "This neck of land shall be cut, or rather shall not." And this too was a foretelling of the cutting through the Isthmus a little later, which seven years afterwards Nero purposed; for leaving his palace he came to Greece to submit himself to the heralds at the Olympic and Pythian games, and he won at the Isthmus too — his victories being for lyre-singing and heraldry — and he won the tragic prize at Olympia. Then he is said also to have laid hand to the new work at the Isthmus, making a circumnavigation and joining the Aegean to the Adriatic, that no ship need sail round Malea, and that most might be carried through the cut, shortening the long sea-passage. But where did Apollonius' oracle come out? The digging, beginning from Lechaeum, advanced perhaps four stades by continuous digging, but Nero is said to have stopped the cut — some say because the Egyptians who advised him on the seas said that the deep above Lechaeum, overflowing, would make Aegina vanish; others, because he feared changes in his rule. Such, then, was Apollonius' "the Isthmus shall be cut and shall not be cut.

There was philosophising at Corinth at that time one Demetrius, a man who had gathered up all the strength of the Cynic school, whom Favorinus later mentioned not ignobly in many of his discourses. Having felt towards Apollonius what they say Antisthenes felt towards the wisdom of Socrates, he followed him, eager to learn and attached to his words, and turned the more reputable of his own acquaintances towards Apollonius. Among these was Menippus the Lycian, twenty-five years old, of good judgment and well-built in body; indeed he was like a handsome and well-bred athlete in form. Most thought Menippus was loved by a foreign woman, and the woman seemed fair and sufficiently delicate and said she was rich; but none of this was really so, but only seemed so. For as he was walking alone on the road to Cenchreae, a phantom met him and became a woman, and clasped his hand, saying she had long loved him, and that she was a Phoenician and dwelt in a suburb of Corinth, naming the suburb, to which she said that if he came in the evening he should have her song and wine such as he had never drunk, and no rival should trouble him, and she would live, a fair woman, with a fair man. The young man was beguiled by this — for though strong in the rest of philosophy, he was overcome by love-matters — and went to her about evening, and thereafter frequented her like a beloved, not yet understanding that she was a phantom. But Apollonius, looking at Menippus like a sculptor, painted the young man and observed him, and judging him, said: "You who are fair and hunted by fair women are warming a serpent, and a serpent warms you." When Menippus marvelled, he said: "This woman is one you cannot marry. Why? Do you think she loves you?" "By Zeus," he said, "since she is disposed to me as one who loves." "And would you marry her?" he said. "For it would be a charming thing to marry one who loves." So he asked when the wedding was. "Soon," he said, "perhaps tomorrow." So Apollonius, watching for the time of the banquet, and standing over the guests as they had just come, said: "Where is the delicate woman, for whom you have come?" "Here," said Menippus, and rose blushing. "And the silver and gold and the rest with which the hall is adorned, to which of you does it belong?" "To the woman," he said; "for mine is only this," showing his cloak. And Apollonius said: "Have you seen the gardens of Tantalus, how they exist and do not exist?" "In Homer," they said; "for we have not gone down to Hades." "Take it that this adornment too is such, for it is not substance but the appearance of substance. And that you may know what I say, this good bride is one of the empusae, whom the many hold to be lamiae and bogies. These love, and they love sexual pleasure, but most of all they love human flesh, and they lure with their pleasures those they wish to devour." But the woman said, "Hush," and "Away," and seemed to loathe what she heard, and even mocked the philosophers as forever talking nonsense. But when the golden cups and the seeming silver were proved empty wind and all flew from their eyes, and the cup-bearers and cooks and all such attendance vanished, refuted by Apollonius, the phantom seemed to weep and begged him not to torture it, nor to compel it to confess what it was; but when he pressed and did not let up, it said it was an empusa, and was fattening Menippus with pleasures for the eating of his body; for it was wont to feed on fair and young bodies, since their blood is pure. This story, the best known of Apollonius', I have necessarily told at length; for many know it, since it happened in the heart of Greece, but they have received it only in summary, that he once caught a lamia in Corinth, while what she was doing, and that it was for Menippus, they do not yet know; but it has been told by Damis and from his account by me.

At that time too he was at variance with Bassus of Corinth; for this man was both thought and believed to be a parricide, and falsely laid claim to wisdom, and there was no bridle on his tongue. When Bassus reviled him, Apollonius checked him by what he wrote and what he said against him. For everything he said, as against a parricide, seemed true, since such a man would never fall to reviling, nor say what was not so.

His doings at Olympia were these. As Apollonius was going up to Olympia, ambassadors of the Lacedaemonians met him, seeking his company; but there was nothing Laconian about them, and they were more delicate than themselves and full of Sybaris. Seeing men smooth-legged, sleek-haired, beardless, and even soft in their dress, he sent such a letter to the ephors that they made a public proclamation, removing the pitch-plasters from the baths and driving out the women who pluck the hair, and restoring all things to the ancient way; whence the wrestling-schools grew young again, and earnest endeavours, and the common messes returned, and Lacedaemon became like herself. Learning that they had set their house in order, he sent a letter from Olympia shorter than the Laconian scytale. It runs thus: "Apollonius to the ephors, greeting. It is for men not to err, but for the noble even to perceive their errors.

Looking at the statue at Olympia, he said: "Hail, good Zeus; for you are so good that you share even yourself with men." He explained too the bronze Milo and the meaning of the figure about him. For Milo seems to stand on a discus, both feet set together, and holds a pomegranate in his left hand, while of his right the fingers are straight and as it were thrust apart. The stories about Olympia and Arcadia tell that this athlete was immovable and was never forced from the spot on which he stood, and that the clenching of his fingers in holding the pomegranate showed this, and that they could not be parted from one another, even if one contended against a single one of them, since the joints were well fitted in the straight fingers; and the band which he wears they hold a symbol of temperance. Apollonius said this was wisely conceived, but that the truer account was wiser. "And that you may know the meaning of Milo: the Crotoniates made this athlete a priest of Hera. As to the headband, what need I explain further, having mentioned that he was a priest? The pomegranate alone of plants grows for Hera; and the discus beneath his feet — the priest, standing on a small shield, prays to Hera, and this the right hand signifies too. As for the work of the fingers and their not being parted, let it be set down to the ancient art of statuary.

Being present at the games, he approved of the Eleans, how they cared for them and conducted them in order, and thought they were judged no less than the athletes who were to contend, and took thought to err in nothing willingly or unwillingly. When his companions asked him what Eleans he held to be concerning the management of the Olympics — whether wise — he said: "Wise I do not know, but sophists at least.

That he was at odds with those who thought they could write, and held ignorant those who laid hold of a subject too great for them, may be learned from this. A youth, conceited of his wisdom, meeting him about the temple, said: "Be eager with me tomorrow, for I shall read something." When Apollonius asked what he would read, "A discourse," he said, "I have composed to Zeus." And at the same time he showed it beneath his cloak, vaunting in the thickness of the book. "What then," he said, "will you praise of Zeus? The Zeus here, and that there is nothing on earth like it?" "That too," he said, "and many things before this and after it; for the seasons and the things on earth and above the earth, and that the winds and stars are all Zeus's." Apollonius said: "You seem to me to be a great encomiast." "For this reason," he said, "I have composed an encomium of gout too, and of being blind or deaf." "But do not banish dropsies or catarrhs from your wisdom," he said, "if you wish to praise such things; and you will be better still if you follow the dead and go through praises of the diseases by which they died, for fathers and children and the near of the dead will grieve less for them." And seeing the youth bridled by the discourse, the encomiast said: "O writer, will he praise better what he knows or what he does not know?" "What he knows," he said; "for how could one praise what one does not know?" "Have you then ever praised your own father?" "I wished to," he said, "but since he seems to me great and noble, the fairest of the men I know, able to govern a house and to use wisdom in all things, I left off the praise of him, that I might not shame my father with a meaner discourse." Apollonius, vexed — for this he felt towards vulgar men — said: "Then, you offscouring, do you think you could never praise your own father, whom you know as well as yourself, yet praising so easily the father of men and gods and the maker of all things about us and above us, you neither fear him whom you praise, nor understand that you are entering on a discourse too great for a man?

Apollonius' discourses at Olympia were about the most useful things — about wisdom and courage and temperance and, in a word, all the virtues; about these he discoursed from the steps of the temple, astonishing all not only by his thoughts but by the forms of his speech. The Lacedaemonians, standing round him, made him a guest-friend before Zeus, and a father of the young men at home, and a lawgiver of life, and a glory of the old. When a certain Corinthian asked him peevishly whether they would hold a Theophania for him too, "By the Twin Gods," he said, "they are ready." But Apollonius led them away from such things, that he might not be envied. When, crossing Taygetus, he saw Lacedaemon active and the customs of Lycurgus prospering, he thought it not unpleasant to meet too with the magistrates of the Lacedaemonians about what they wished to ask. So they asked, when he came, how the gods are to be served, and he said, "As masters." Again they asked, how the heroes; "As fathers." When they asked a third time, how men, he said, "That question is not Laconian." They asked too what he thought of their laws, and he said, "The best of teachers; but the teachers will be esteemed if the pupils are not idle." When they asked what counsel he gave about courage, "And what," he said, "will you use your courage for?

About this time there was a young Lacedaemonian charged among them with wronging the customs; for he was a descendant of Callicratidas, who was admiral at Arginusae, but he loved ship-owning and gave no heed to public affairs, but sailed off to Carthage and Sicily in ships he had built. Hearing that he was tried for this, Apollonius thought it dreadful to overlook the young man brought to trial, and said: "My good friend, why do you go about full of thought and brooding?" "A public suit," he said, "has been brought against me, since I am given to ship-owning and do not attend to public affairs." "Was your father a ship-owner, or your grandfather?" "Far from it," he said; "gymnasiarchs all, and ephors and patronomi; and Callicratidas my ancestor was one of the admirals." "Do you mean the one at Arginusae?" he said. "Him," he said, "who died in his admiralship." "Then did your ancestor's death not turn you against the sea?" "By Zeus, no," he said; "for I do not sail to fight a sea-battle." "And can you name a more wretched tribe than merchants and ship-owners? First they roam about, seeking a market in distress; then, mixing with brokers and hucksters, they sell and are sold, and pledging their own heads to unholy interest they hasten for the principal; and if they prosper, the ship sails well, and they make much of never having wrecked her, willingly or unwillingly; but if their trade does not meet their debts, they go over into the boats and dash the ships on the rocks, and most impiously call the destruction of others' livelihood the necessity of god, and rob even where they would not. And even if the seafaring and nautical tribe were not such, yet for a man who is a Spartiate and sprung of fathers who once dwelt in the heart of Sparta to lie in a hollow ship, forgetting Lycurgus and Iphitus but mindful of his cargo and the niceties of seamanship — from what shame is it free? For if from nothing else, he should at least consider Sparta herself, how, when she held to the land, she seemed to reach to heaven, but when she desired the sea, she was sunk and made to vanish, not only in the sea but on the land too." With these words he so mastered the young man that, bowing his head to the earth, he wept to hear how far he had fallen short of his fathers, and sold the ships by which he lived. And when Apollonius saw him restored and embracing the land, he led him to the ephors and begged him off the suit.

And this too of his at Lacedaemon. A letter came from the emperor to the Lacedaemonians, bearing a rebuke to their council as men who outraged their freedom; and this was sent to them through the slanders of the governor of Greece. The Lacedaemonians were at a loss, and Sparta was at strife with herself whether to write deprecating the emperor's anger or scornfully. On this they made Apollonius their counsellor about the tone of the letter; and he, seeing them divided, came forward to their council and made this brief speech: "Palamedes discovered letters not only for writing, but also for knowing what one must not write." So he led the Lacedaemonians away from appearing either rash or cowardly.

Having spent some time at Sparta after Olympia, as the winter was ending, he came to Malea at the beginning of spring, to set out for Rome. As he purposed this, he had a dream of this kind: he thought a woman, very tall and very aged, embraced him and begged to be with him before he sailed to Italy, and said she was the nurse of Zeus, and she wore a crown holding all the fruits of earth and sea. Giving himself an account of the vision, he understood that he must first sail to Crete, which we hold to be the nurse of Zeus, since there he was tended at birth; and the crown perhaps signified another island too. There being at Malea many ships about to set out for Crete, he embarked on one sufficient for the company — and he called "the company" his companions and the slaves of his companions, for he did not overlook these either. Sailing to Cydonia and coasting to Cnossus, where the Labyrinth, which is shown there, once held, I think, the Minotaur, when his companions wished to see it, he allowed them this, but said that he himself would not be a spectator of the injustice of Minos. He went on to Gortyna out of longing for Ida. So going up and meeting with the theological lore there, he went also to the temple of Lebena; this is Asclepius', and as Asia resorts to Pergamum, so Crete resorted to this temple, and many of the Libyans too cross over to it, for it faces the Libyan sea about Phaestus, where the small stone keeps back the great sea. They say the temple was named Lebenaean because a headland runs out from it like a lion, as the chance shapes of rocks often show, and they tell a tale about the headland, that this was once one of the lions that drew Rhea's car. There, as Apollonius was once discoursing about noon — and he was discoursing to many men by whom the temple was served — an earthquake fell suddenly on Crete, and thunder sounded not from clouds but from the earth, and the sea withdrew perhaps seven stades. Most were afraid that the retreating sea would draw down the temple and carry them off; but Apollonius said: "Take courage; for the sea has brought forth land." They thought he meant the harmony of the elements, and that the sea would work no new mischief on the land; but a few days later some came from Cydonia and reported that on the day and at the noon when the sign from heaven occurred, an island rose out of the sea about the strait that flows between Thera and Crete. But leaving off length of words, let us come to his doings at Rome, which befell after those in Crete.

Nero did not permit philosophising, but the philosophers seemed to him a meddlesome thing, and a cloak for divination; and once the coarse cloak was brought into court as a figure of divination. I pass over the rest, but Musonius the Babylonian, a man second only to Apollonius, was imprisoned for his wisdom, and remaining there was in danger, and would have died, so far as his jailer was concerned, had he not been very strong.

Philosophy being in such a state, he chanced to be approaching Rome, and a hundred and twenty stades distant he met Philolaus of Citium near the grove at Aricia. Philolaus was polished of tongue, but too soft to endure anything. He was withdrawing from Rome and himself seemed like a fugitive, and exhorted whatever philosopher he met to do the same. So accosting Apollonius, he bade him give way to the time, and not frequent Rome, since philosophising was in disrepute; and he told of what was being done there, often turning round lest someone behind should overhear him. "And you," he said, "having fastened to yourself a chorus of philosophers, go full of envy, not knowing those set at the gates by Nero, who will seize you and these men before you get within." "And what," said Apollonius, "Philolaus, do they say the emperor is busy about?" "He drives a chariot publicly," he said, "and sings as he comes forward into the Roman theatres, and lives with gladiators, and himself fights and slaughters." Apollonius took him up and said: "Do you think, my good man, there is any greater spectacle for educated men than to see a king disgrace himself? For man is the plaything of god, according to Plato's opinion; but a king who becomes the plaything of man and gives his own shame to the crowds for their delight — what discourses would he not provide to philosophers?" "By Zeus," said Philolaus, "if it could be done without danger; but if you are taken and perish, and Nero devours you raw, having seen nothing of what he does, your meeting with him will cost you much, and more than it cost Odysseus when he went to the Cyclops; for he lost many of his companions in his longing to see him, and was overcome by a strange and savage sight." But Apollonius said: "Do you think this man less blinded than the Cyclops, if he works such deeds?

"Let him do," said Philolaus, "what he will; but you at least save these men." He said this in a louder voice and seemed to weep. Then Damis, fearing for the young men, lest they become worse than themselves through Philolaus' panic, drew Apollonius aside and said: "This hare will destroy the young men, filling all with trembling and faintheartedness." But Apollonius said: "Of many good things, which have often come to me from the gods even unprayed for, I should say I have enjoyed this present one most; for there has fallen out a test of the young men, which will sorely prove which of them are philosophers and which do something else rather than this." And at once the unsound among them were proved; for, led astray by Philolaus' words, some said they were sick, some that they had no provision for the journey, some that they longed for home, some that they were terrified by dreams; and Apollonius came down to eight followers from thirty-four who went with him to Rome. The rest fled, escaping both Nero and philosophy.

So gathering those who were left — among whom was Menippus, who had had to do with the empusa, and Dioscorides the Egyptian, and Damis — he said: "I will not revile those who have left us, but rather will praise you, that you are men like myself; nor, if anyone has gone off in fear of Nero, will I count him a coward, but whoever proves stronger than this fear will be addressed by me as a philosopher, and I will teach him all I know. It seems to me, then, first to pray to the gods, by whom these things came into the mind of you and of them, and then to make them our guides; for apart from the gods we are nothing even in other matters. We must enter a city which rules so many parts of the inhabited world; how then could one enter it, unless they guided us? And that too with a tyranny so harsh established in it that it is not permitted to be wise. Let it seem foolish to no one to take courage on a road which many of the philosophers flee; for first I hold that nothing could become so terrible among men as to astound the wise man; and next I would not propose exercises of courage, unless they came with dangers. And besides, having traversed more of the earth than any man yet, I have seen very many beasts of Arabia and India; but this beast, which the many call a tyrant, I know neither how many heads it has, nor whether it is hook-clawed and saw-toothed. And yet this beast is said to be civic and to dwell in the heart of cities, but it is so much more savage than the mountain and forest beasts that lions and leopards are sometimes tamed by flattery and change their nature, while this one, exalted by those who fawn on it, grows more savage than itself and devours all. Of beasts you could not say that they ever feasted on their own mothers, but Nero is gorged with this food. And if these things were done by Orestes and Alcmaeon too, yet for them there was a pretext for the deed in their fathers — the one slain by his own wife, the other sold for a necklace; but this man, adopted by his mother to an old king and inheriting the rule, killed his mother by a shipwreck, contriving against her a boat by which she perished near the shore. If from these things anyone holds Nero terrible and on this account leaps away from philosophy, thinking it unsafe for himself to do anything to vex him, let him know that the terrible belongs to those who lay hold of temperance and wisdom — for to these the things from the gods are well — but let him count the doings of the insolent mere nonsense, as he does those of drunkards; for these too we hold foolish, but not terrible. Let us go then to Rome, if we are strong; for against the proclamations of Nero, by which he bars philosophy, we may say with Sophocles: 'For it was not Zeus who proclaimed this to me, nor the Muses and Apollo of discourse.' And it is likely that Nero himself knows these iambics, since he delights, they say, in tragedy." Here one, calling to mind the saying of Homer, that when the word fits warlike men they become one helmet and one shield, would, I think, find this very thing come to pass about these men; for, knit together by Apollonius' words, they were strong to die for philosophy and to appear better than those who had fled.

So they approached the gates, and the guards asked nothing, but gazed at his appearance and marvelled; for his manner seemed holy and in no way like the begging sort. They put up at an inn near the gates, and as they were taking their supper, since it was now evening, a man came as if to a revel, drunk, with a voice not unpleasant; and he was going round Rome in a circle, singing Nero's songs, and hired for this, and whoever heard him carelessly, or did not pay the fee for the recital, he was permitted to carry off as guilty of impiety. He had a lyre too, and all the gear proper to lyre-playing, and he kept in a box a worn-out string that had been touched and stretched, which he said he had bought from Nero's lyre for two minae and would sell to no one, unless he were a lyre-singer of the best and contending at Pytho. So tuning up, as was his wont, and going through a short hymn of Nero's, he added songs, some from the Oresteia, some from the Antigone, some from wherever in the tragedies set by Nero, and bent his melodies as Nero twisted and ill-wrenched them. When they listened too languidly, he said they were doing Nero impiety and were enemies of the divine voice; but they paid no heed. When Menippus asked Apollonius how he heard him saying these things, "How," he said, "but as when he sang? Yet let us, Menippus, not be provoked at this, but giving the fee for the performance, let us let him sacrifice to the Muses of Nero.

Thus far the man played the drunkard. But at daybreak Telesinus, the other of the consuls, calling Apollonius, said: "What is this garb?" He said it was pure and from nothing mortal. "And what is this wisdom?" "Inspiration," he said, "and how one should pray to the gods and sacrifice." "And is there anyone, philosopher, who does not know these things?" "Many," he said; "and if one knows them rightly, he would become far better than himself for hearing from a wiser man that what he knows, he knows well." When Telesinus heard this — for he chanced to be devout — the man came into his mind from what he had long heard about him, and he did not think fit to ask his name openly, lest he should still wish to be unknown, but led him back again to the discourse about the divine, for he had a turn for conversation; and as to a wise man he said: "What do you pray for when you approach the altars?" "I, for my part," he said, "pray that justice may prevail, that the laws be not broken, that the wise be poor, but the rest rich, yet without fraud." "Then," he said, "in asking so much do you think you will succeed?" "By Zeus," he said; "for I string all together into one prayer, and approaching the altars I pray thus: 'O gods, grant me what is due; if I am of the good men, I shall obtain more than I have asked, but if the gods rank me among the base, the opposite will come to me from them, and I shall not blame the gods if I am held worthy of evils, not being good.'" Telesinus was astounded at these words, and wishing to gratify him said: "Frequent all the temples, and it shall be written by me to the priests to receive you and to yield to you in your reforms." "And if you do not write," he said, "will they not receive me?" "By Zeus, no," he said; "for this is my office." "I rejoice," he said, "that being noble you hold a great office; but I would have you know this too of me: I delight to dwell in temples that are not firmly shut, and none of the gods refuses me, but they make me a sharer of their roof; let this be granted me, for the barbarians too allowed it." And Telesinus said: "The barbarians have anticipated a great praise of the Romans; for this I should wish said of us too." So he dwelt in the temples, shifting them and moving from one to another; and being blamed for this, he said: "Not even the gods dwell all the time in heaven, but go to Ethiopia, and go to Olympus and Athos; and I think it strange that the gods should go round all the nations of men, while men do not resort to all the gods. And yet masters who overlook their slaves will incur no blame, for perhaps they despise them as worthless; but slaves who do not by all means serve their masters would perish at their hands as accursed and god-hated chattels.

As he discoursed about the temples, the gods were the more served, and men came together to them, thinking to have more good things from the gods; and the man's meetings were not yet slandered, because they were earnestly attended publicly and openly spoken of to all; for he did not haunt doors, nor wear himself out about the powerful, but greeted those who came to him and discoursed to them as to the people.

When Demetrius, disposed towards him as I have said in the Corinthian account, came later to Rome and attended Apollonius, but launched himself against Nero, this was suspected to be the man's craft, and he himself seemed to have set Demetrius on to it, and much more when a gymnasium was built for Nero, the most wonderful of those there, and Nero himself and the great senate and the knighthood of Rome were keeping a white-letter day in it. For Demetrius came into the very gymnasium and went through a discourse against those who bathed, as enervated and defiling themselves, and showed that such things were a needless expense; and what helped him not to die at once was that Nero on that day sang most tunefully — and he sang in a tavern built onto the gymnasium, naked, with only a loincloth, like the most wanton of the tavern-keepers. Yet Demetrius did not escape danger for what he said, for Tigellinus, under whom was Nero's sword, drove him from Rome, as having razed the bath by what he said; and he secretly tracked Apollonius, watching for when he too should say something culpable and rash.

But he was neither plainly mocking nor anxious, like those guarding against some danger, but discoursed sufficiently on the matters before him, Telesinus joining him in philosophy, and other men who, though philosophy was in a dangerous case, did not think they would be in danger studying with him. He was suspected, as I said, and much more for what he said about a sign from heaven. For when there was an eclipse of the sun and thunder broke out — which seems least to happen in an eclipse — looking up to heaven he said: "There shall be something great, and there shall not." Those who chanced to be at the discourse could not yet construe the saying, but on the third day from the eclipse all understood it; for as Nero was dining, a thunderbolt fell upon the table and drove through the cup that was in his hands and not far from his mouth. His coming so near to being struck was what Apollonius meant by "something shall be done and shall not be done." Hearing this saying, Tigellinus came to fear the man as wise in things divine, and did not think fit to bring open charges against him, lest he should get some hidden harm from him, but watched him as he discoursed and as he was silent, and as he sat and walked, and what he ate and with whom, and whether he sacrificed or not, with all the eyes with which the government sees.

When a disease fell upon Rome, which the physicians call catarrh — from which arise coughs, and the voice goes ill for those who speak — the temples were full of men entreating the gods, since Nero's throat was swollen and his voice had gone husky. But Apollonius burst out against the folly of the multitude, yet rebuked no one, but even Menippus, provoked by such things, he made temperate and held back, bidding him pardon the gods if they delight in mimes of buffoons. When this saying was reported to Tigellinus, he sent men to bring him to the court, that he might defend himself against the charge of impiety to Nero; and an accuser was made ready against him who had already destroyed many and was full of such Olympiads, and he had a writing-tablet in his hands on which the charge was written, and shaking this like a sword against the man he said it was whetted and would destroy him. But when Tigellinus, unrolling the tablet, found in it no trace of a line, but lit upon a blank book, he was brought to the thought of a daimon. This too Domitian is later said to have suffered with regard to him. So taking Apollonius aside, he brought him into the secret court, in which this government tries the greatest matters in private, and removing all, pressed him with questions as to who he was. Apollonius mentioned his father and his country, and to what end he used wisdom, and said he used it to know the gods and to understand men; for to know another, he said, is harder than to know oneself. "The daimons," he said, "Apollonius, and the apparitions of phantoms, how do you refute them?" "As I do murderous and impious men," he said. This he said mocking at Tigellinus, since he was a teacher to Nero of all cruelty and wantonness. "Would you prophesy for me, if I asked?" he said. "How," he said, "since I am no prophet?" "And yet they say you are the one who said something great would be and would not be." "You heard truly," he said; "but do not set this down to divination, but rather to wisdom, which god reveals to wise men." "And why," he said, "do you not fear Nero?" "Because," he said, "the god who grants him to seem terrible has granted me to be without fear." "And what do you think of Nero?" he said. Apollonius said: "Better than you do; for you think him worthy of singing, but I worthy of silence." Astounded, Tigellinus said: "Go, having found sureties for your body." And Apollonius said: "And who will go surety for a body that no one will bind?" These things seemed to Tigellinus more than human and beyond a man, and as one careful not to war with a god, he said: "Go where you will; for you are too strong to be ruled by me.

And this too is a marvel of Apollonius'. A girl seemed to have died in the hour of her marriage, and the bridegroom followed the bier, crying all that one cries over an unfulfilled marriage, and Rome mourned with him, for the girl belonged to a family of consular rank. Apollonius, chancing to be by at the grief, said: "Set down the bier, for I will stop your tears for the girl." And at once he asked what her name was. Most thought he would deliver a speech, such as those that rouse lamentations at funerals; but he did nothing but touch her and say something secretly, and woke the girl from her seeming death. The girl gave voice and went back to her father's house, as Alcestis, revived by Heracles, did. And when the girl's kin offered him a hundred and fifty thousand pieces, he said he gave them to the girl as a dowry. And whether he found a spark of the soul in her that had escaped those who tended her — for it is said that Zeus drizzled, and steam rose from her face — or whether he warmed and recovered the soul that had gone out, the apprehension of this has proved beyond words, not to me alone, but to those who chanced to be present.

About this time Musonius too was held in Nero's prisons, who they say was the most perfect of men in philosophy; and they did not converse openly with one another, since Musonius begged off this, lest both should be in danger, but held their meetings by letter, Menippus and Damis frequenting the prison. Leaving the letters that are not about great matters, we shall set down the necessary ones, from which one may discern something great. Apollonius to Musonius the philosopher, greeting. "I wish to come to you and share with you discourse and roof, that I may profit you somewhat — unless you disbelieve that Heracles once freed Theseus from Hades. Write what you wish. Farewell." Musonius to Apollonius the philosopher, greeting. "For what you intended, praise shall be laid up for you; but a man who has endured to make his defence and shown himself to do no wrong has saved himself. Farewell." Apollonius to Musonius the philosopher, greeting. "Socrates the Athenian, not willing to be freed by his own friends, came into court and died. Farewell." Musonius to Apollonius the philosopher, greeting.

"Socrates died because he did not prepare himself for a defence; but I will make my defence. Farewell." When Nero set out for Greece and publicly proclaimed that no one should philosophise at Rome, Apollonius turned to the western parts of the earth, which they say are bounded by the Pillars, to see the ebbings of the Ocean and Gadeira. For he heard too something about the philosophy of the men there, how far advanced they were in things divine; and all his acquaintances followed him, praising both the journey and the man.