Book 6

Ethiopia covers the western horn of all the land that lies beneath the sun, as the Indians cover the eastern; and meeting Egypt at Meroe, and skirting some part of unrecorded Libya, it ends at the sea which the poets call Ocean, naming thus all that goes round the earth. It gives the river Nile to Egypt, which, beginning at the Cataracts, leads down from the Ethiopians all the Egypt that it floods. In size this country is not worthy to be compared with India — nor indeed is any other of the continents famous among men; but even if we should join all Egypt to Ethiopia, and let us suppose the river too to do this, the two together, great as the sum is, are still not commensurate with the land of the Indians. Yet the rivers of both are alike, to one who reckons the Indus and the Nile; for they water their continents in the season of the year when the earth desires it, and alone of rivers they produce the crocodile and the hippopotamus, and the rites of worship over them are equal, for much of what is said of the Indians is consecrated to the Nile too. The likeness of the continents is confirmed by the spices in them, and confirmed too by the lions and the elephant, which in each is caught and made to serve. They feed beasts also of a kind found nowhere else, and black men, which other continents do not, and there are nations of Pygmies among them, and of men who bark in different ways, and other marvels of the kind. The griffins of the Indians and the ants of the Ethiopians, though unlike in form, yet have, they say, like purposes; for in each they are sung of as guardians of gold, cherishing the gold-bearing soil of the continents. But no more of these things; let the discourse go on its own way, and let us hold to our man.

For when he came to the borders of the Ethiopians and the Egyptians — they call the place Sycaminus — he met with uncoined gold and linen and ivory and roots and myrrh and spices, all lying unguarded at a parting of the ways. What this means I will explain, for the custom holds even to our own day among us. The Ethiopians bring to market the things which Ethiopia gives, and the Egyptians take all of it up and bring to the same place an Egyptian market of equal worth, buying what they have not with what they have. The people who dwell on the borders of the continents are not yet black, but of one colour with their neighbours, for some are less black than the Ethiopians, others more so than the Egyptians. Apollonius, then, understanding the manner of the market, said: "Our worthy Greeks, unless an obol breed an obol and they raise the price of their wares by selling dear or locking them up, say they cannot live: one pleading a daughter coming of age for marriage, another a son now passing into manhood, another a contribution to a club, another that he is building a house, another that he would be ashamed to be thought a worse man of business than his father. But it would be well if wealth were held in dishonour and equality flourished, and the black iron lay idle, men being of one mind, and all the earth seemed one."

Discoursing thus, and making the occasions, as he was wont, his counsellors of what to discuss, he proceeded toward the statue of Memnon; and there led them an Egyptian youth, of whom Damis writes as follows. Timasion was the youth's name; he was just passing out of boyhood and was still strong in the bloom of youth. While he was living soberly, a stepmother in love with him beset him and made his father harsh toward him, contriving nothing of the sort that Phaedra did, but slandering him as effeminate and rejoicing more in lovers than in women. So he left Naucratis — for these things happened there — and lived about Memphis, and had got himself a private boat and acted as skipper on the Nile. Seeing Apollonius sailing up as he himself sailed down, he understood that the crew was of wise men, judging by the cloaks and the books over which they were busy, and he begged to be given a share in the voyage, since he loved wisdom. And Apollonius said, "The young man is sober, gentlemen, and let him be granted what he asks," and he went through the story of the stepmother to those of his companions who were near, in a lowered tone, while the youth was still sailing up to them. When the ships drew together, Timasion crossed over, and after saying something to his own helmsman about the cargo, addressed the men. So Apollonius, bidding him sit down before his eyes, said, "Egyptian youth — for you seem to be one of the natives — tell me what evil or what good you have done, that for the one you may obtain release from me on account of your age, and for the other, being praised, may join in philosophy with me and these men." But seeing Timasion blush and shift the impulse of his mouth toward speaking or not, he pressed his question again and again, as though he had no foreknowledge of him. Taking courage, Timasion said: "O gods, what shall I call myself? For I am not bad, yet whether I ought to be reckoned good I do not know, for not to do wrong is not yet a matter for praise." And Apollonius said, "Well done, young man! You talk to me as if from India, for this is the view of the divine Iarchas too. But say how you came to think this, and from what; for you seem to be one who has guarded against doing some wrong." And when he began to say that his stepmother had set herself upon him, while he had withdrawn from her love, there was an outcry, since Apollonius had foretold it as by a divine power; but Timasion broke in and said, "My good men, what has come over you? For the things said are as far from wonder, I think, as from laughter." And Damis said, "It was something else we wondered at, which you do not yet know. And you, young man, we praise, because you think you have done nothing brilliant." "Do you sacrifice to Aphrodite, young man?" asked Apollonius; and Timasion said, "Yes, by Zeus, every day, for I hold the goddess great in human and divine affairs." So Apollonius, overjoyed, said: "Let us vote, gentlemen, that he be crowned for self-control even above Hippolytus the son of Theseus; for Hippolytus outraged Aphrodite, and perhaps for this reason was not even mastered by the pleasures of love, nor did any love revel about him, but he was of a more rustic and unsoftened lot; whereas this youth, though he says he is subject to the goddess, was nowise moved toward the woman in love, but went away in fear of the goddess herself, if he did not guard against an evil love. And the very thing of being at variance with any one of the gods, as Hippolytus was with Aphrodite, I do not count self-control; for it is more sober to speak well of all the gods, and that too at Athens, where altars are set up even to unknown divinities." So much earnest care did he bestow on Timasion. Yet he called him Hippolytus for the eyes with which he looked upon his stepmother. He seemed too to take care of his body and to have laid hold of gymnastics gracefully.

Under this guide they say they came to the precinct of Memnon. Concerning Memnon Damis writes as follows. He was the son of Dawn, and died not at Troy, since he never came to Troy, but ended his life in Ethiopia, having reigned over the Ethiopians for five generations. And they, being the longest-lived of men, lament Memnon as one cut off very young, and weep over him all that men weep over the untimely dead. The place in which the statue stands resembles, they say, an ancient market-place, such as are left, in cities once inhabited, of the broken stumps of columns and the traces of walls and seats and door-posts and images of Hermes, some destroyed by hands, some by time. The statue is turned toward the sunbeam, beardless still, of black stone, with both feet set together after the manner of the statuary in the time of Daedalus, and the hands pressed straight upon the seat; for it is seated as if in the act of rising up. This posture, and the expression of the eyes, and all that they sing of the mouth as about to speak, they say wins less wonder at other times, for it does not yet appear to be alive; but when the beam strikes the statue — and this happens at the rising of the sun — they could not hold back their amazement: for the moment the beam came upon its mouth it spoke; and its eyes seemed to stand bright toward the light, as the eyes of men do who love the sun. Then they understood, they say, that it seems to rise up before the Sun, like those who do honour to the higher power standing upright. So having sacrificed to the Ethiopian Sun and to Memnon of the Dawn — for so the priests instructed, naming the one from burning and warming, the other from his mother — they went on by camels to the dwellings of the Naked Sages.

Meeting a man dressed in the fashion of the Memphites, and rather wandering than walking with purpose, those about Damis asked who he was and why he roamed; and Timasion said: "Ask me, not him, for he would not tell you his own suffering, out of shame at the misfortune he is under; but I, since I know the man and pity him, will tell all about him. He killed a Memphite unwillingly; and the laws of Memphis bid him who flees on a charge of involuntary homicide — and he must flee — be with the Naked Sages, and when he has washed himself of the blood, go back to his home now pure, after first going to the tomb of the slain man and slaughtering there something of no great size. In the time before he meets the Naked Sages he must wander about these borders, until they take pity on him as a suppliant." So Apollonius asked Timasion how the Naked Sages were minded toward that fugitive, and he said, "I do not know; for this is the seventh month he has been a suppliant here, and there is yet no release." "You do not speak of wise men," said Apollonius, "if they do not purify him, nor know that Philiscus, whom this man killed, traced his descent to Thamus the Egyptian, who once ravaged the country of the Naked Sages." So Timasion, marvelling, said, "How do you mean?" "As it is, my young man," he said, "and as it was done. For Thamus, once plotting revolution against the Memphites, was checked and held back by the Naked Sages; but failing in his attempt, he laid waste all the land which these men cultivate, for he was strong as a brigand about Memphis. Of him I see Philiscus, whom this man killed, to be the thirteenth descendant, and plainly accursed to those whose land Thamus then ravaged. And where is the wisdom — if this man, whom one ought to crown even had he killed with forethought, they do not purify for an involuntary homicide, and one done on their own behalf?" The youth, then, struck with amazement, said, "Stranger, who are you?" And Apollonius said, "He whom you would find among the Naked Sages. But since it is not yet holy for me to address the man who is in blood, bid him take heart, young man, as one who will at once be pure, if he goes where I am lodging." And when he came, Apollonius performed all that Empedocles and Pythagoras hold lawful for purifications, and bade him go to his home as now pure of the charge.

Setting out thence at sunrise, they came before noon to the place of meditation of the Naked Sages. These Naked Sages, they say, dwell upon a hill of moderate height, a little from the bank of the Nile; in wisdom they fall short of the Indians more than they surpass the Egyptians, and they are clad naked, in the same way as those who take the sun at Athens. There are a few trees in the district, and a grove not large, into which they gather for common business; their sanctuaries are not set in one place, as those of the Indians, but one is here and another there over the hill, accounted worthy of reverence, as the Egyptian accounts say. They worship the Nile above all, for they hold this river to be earth and water. They themselves have no need of hut or house, living in the open air and under the very sky; but for the strangers they had built a portico large enough, of the same length as those of the Eleans, under which the athlete awaits the noonday proclamation.

Here Damis records a deed of Euphrates, which let us think not childish, but less honourable than befits philosophy. For since he often heard Apollonius wishing to match Indian wisdom against Egyptian, he sent to the Naked Sages Thrasybulus of Naucratis to slander the man. He said that he came for their company, but that the Tyanean too would come; and that this would give them no small contest, since he thought himself above the wise men of the Indians, whom he extolled in every discourse, and had got together countless refutations against them; and that he yielded nothing either to sun or sky or earth, for he himself moved and bore and rearranged these things wherever he wished.

Having put together such things, the Naucratite departed; and they, holding this to be true, did not refuse him their company when he came, but pretended to be busy about great matters and engaged with them, and said they would come to discourse with him too, if they had leisure and learned what he wished and what he had come desiring. And the man who came from them bade them lodge in the portico; but Apollonius said, "Of a roof speak nothing, for the sky here allows all men to live naked" — taunting them as being naked not from endurance but from necessity — "but what I wish, and for what I have come, the others I do not wonder at for not yet knowing, but the Indians did not ask me these things."

So Apollonius, reclining under one of the trees, conversed with his companions on whatever they asked; but Damis, taking Timasion aside, asked him privately: "These Naked Sages, my good fellow — for you have, as is likely, kept company with them — how wise are they?" "In many great things," he said. "And yet," said Damis, "their behaviour toward us is not wise, my noble friend; for not to come to terms with such a man about wisdom, but to use arrogance toward him — I do not know what to call it, but conceit, my comrade." "Conceit? Which I never before saw about them, though I have now twice come here; for they were always moderate and good toward those who mingled with them. Lately, indeed — and it is perhaps fifty days ago — Thrasybulus was staying here, doing nothing brilliant in philosophy, and they received him gladly, since he had enrolled himself with Euphrates." And Damis said, "What do you say, young man? You have seen Thrasybulus the Naucratite in this place?" "Yes," he said, "and besides, I brought him down from here in my own ship." "I have the whole of it, by Athena!" cried Damis, crying out and indignant; "for it seems some villainy has been wrought." So Timasion broke in: "The man, when I asked him yesterday who he was, did not yet think me worthy of the secret; but you, if these are not mysteries, tell me who he is, for perhaps I too might contribute something to the hunt for what is sought." And when he heard from Damis that he was the Tyanean, "You have got the matter," he said; "for Thrasybulus, as he sailed down the Nile with me, when I asked him why he went up there, told me, to his own no good wisdom, that he had filled these Naked Sages with suspicions against Apollonius, so that he should be looked down on when he came; and from what he is at variance with him I do not know, but to fall to slandering I hold both womanish and uneducated. I will learn how they are disposed by addressing the men, for they are my friends." And Timasion came back about evening, saying nothing to Apollonius except that he had addressed them, but privately reporting to Damis that they would come on the morrow, full of what they had heard from Thrasybulus.

That evening, then, they were busy with moderate matters not worthy of record, and slept where they had supped; but at daybreak Apollonius, after worshipping the Sun as was his wont, was standing fixed in some thought, when Nilus, who was the youngest of the Naked Sages, ran up to him and said, "We have come to you." "Naturally," said Apollonius, "for I too have come a road to you, the road from the sea here." And saying this he followed Nilus. Having addressed them and been addressed — for they met one another about the portico — he said, "Where shall we sit together?" "Here," said Thespesion, pointing to the grove. Now Thespesion was the eldest of the Naked Sages, and led them all; and the rest followed the eldest with an orderly and leisurely walk, as the Hellanodicae follow theirs. When they had sat down, as it chanced — for this they no longer did in order — they all looked to Thespesion as the host of the discourse, and he began thus: "They say you have visited Pytho and Olympia, Apollonius — for Stratocles of Pharos reported this here, saying he had met you there — and that Pytho escorts those who come to her with flute and song and harping, and thinks fit to offer comedies and tragedies, and then provides the bare contest late after these; whereas Olympia removes such things as unfitting and not good there, and provides for those who come to her naked athletes, this being the ordinance of Heracles. Think these things here to be over against Indian wisdom in this way: for they, as if calling men to Pytho, court the people with varied allurements, but we, as in Olympia, are naked. The earth here spreads nothing beneath us, nor gives us milk, as to Bacchants, or wine, nor does the air bear us aloft; but spreading the earth itself beneath us we live, sharing with it its natural gifts, that it may give them gladly and not be tortured against its will. And that we are not unable to work wonders" — he pointed to a tree, an elm it was, the third from that under which they conversed — "bid the wise Apollonius be addressed by it." And it addressed him, as it was bidden, the tree did, and the voice was articulate and feminine. He did these things to point against the Indians, thinking to turn Apollonius from his opinion of them, since he was always going through every saying and deed of the Indians. And Thespesion added this too: that it is enough for the wise man to be pure of food that has breath in it, and of desire, which comes in through the eyes, and of envy, which comes as a teacher of injustice to the hand and the mind; and that truth has no need of wonder-working and forced art. "For consider Apollo," he said, "the Delphian, who holds the centre of Greece for the utterance of oracles. There, then, as you yourself surely know, he who wants the voice asks a short question, and Apollo, without any prodigy, says what he knows; and yet it would have been easy for him to shake all Parnassus, and to turn the springs of Castalia into wine by changing them, and to refuse Cephisus to be a river; but he, boasting in none of these things, declares the bare truth itself. Let us think that not even the gold or the offerings that seem splendid come to him by his own will, nor that Apollo rejoices in his temple, even though it should be shown twice as great as it now is; for this god once dwelt in a humble roof too, and a little hut was put together for him, into which, they say, the bees contributed wax and the birds feathers. For simplicity is a teacher of wisdom, a teacher of truth, which if you praise you will seem truly wise, forgetting the fables among the Indians. For 'do this' or 'do not do this,' 'I know' or 'I do not know,' 'this thing rather than that' — what need have these of din? What need of thundering, or rather of being thunderstruck? You have seen in the writings of painting the Heracles of Prodicus, how Heracles is a youth, not yet in the choice of his life, and Vice and Virtue, taking hold of him, lead him to themselves: the one decked out in gold and necklaces and a sea-purple robe, with the bloom of the cheek and the braidings of the hair and the painting of the eyes, and she has a golden sandal too, for she is painted exulting in this; while the other is like one worn with toil, of harsh aspect, having made squalor her ornament, unshod is Virtue and plain in dress, and would have appeared naked, had she not known what is seemly in women. Think then of yourself too, Apollonius, as standing midway between Indian and our own wisdom, and hearing the one say that she will spread flowers for you to sleep on, and, by Zeus, give you milk to drink and feed you on honeycombs, and that you shall have nectar from her and wings whenever you wish, and she will wheel in tripods as you drink and golden thrones, and you shall toil at nothing, but all things will come to you of themselves; and the other say that you must lie on the ground in squalor, and appear naked, as we do, toiling, and hold nothing dear or sweet that came to you without labour, and be neither a boaster nor a hunter of conceit, and abstain even from dreams that rise from the earth. If then you choose according to Heracles, and use an adamantine resolve, not dishonouring truth nor declining the simplicity that is according to nature, you will say that you have taken many lions, and cut off many hydras, and Geryones and Nessuses and all his labours; but if you welcome the way of the mountebanks, you will flatter eyes and ears, and you will seem no wiser than another, and you will become the prize of a Naked Egyptian sage."

When he had said this, all turned to Apollonius — those about himself knowing that he would reply, those about Thespesion wondering what he would say against it. He, praising Thespesion for his fluency and force, said, "Do you add anything?" "No, by Zeus," he said, "for I have spoken." And when he asked again whether any other of the Egyptians would, "Of all of them," he said, "you have heard through me." So pausing a little and fixing his eyes on what had been said, Apollonius spoke thus: "The choice of Heracles, which Prodicus says he made as a youth, is soundly stated by you, and in accordance with the mind of philosophy, you wise men of Egypt; but it does not concern me at all. For I have not come to make you counsellors of my life, having long ago chosen what seemed best to me; and being the eldest of you except Thespesion, I myself might more reasonably have counselled you on the choice of wisdom, had I met you not yet having chosen. Yet, old as I am and come so far in wisdom, I shall not hesitate to use you as reckoners of my own resolve, teaching you that I rightly chose these things, than which nothing better has yet come into my mind. For having perceived something great in Pythagoras, and that by a wisdom unspeakable he knew not only who he himself was but who he had been, and that he came pure to the altars, and used a belly undefiled by the eating of things that breathe, and a body pure of all garments made of dead creatures, and that he was the first of men to restrain his tongue, finding the rule of silence under the device of an 'ox upon it,' and that he established all the rest of his philosophy as oracular and true — I ran to his doctrines, not choosing one wisdom out of two, as you, best Thespesion, counsel. For philosophy, setting before me her own doctrines, all that they are, and throwing about them an order suited to each, bade me look upon them and choose soundly. The grace of all of them was august and divine, and a man might have shut his eyes before some of them out of amazement; but my eye stood firm toward all of them, for they encouraged me, drawing me on and proclaiming what they would give. And when one of them said that she would pour over me, without my toiling, a great swarm of pleasures, and another that she would give me rest after toil, and another that she would mingle good cheer with the toil — everywhere pleasures showed through, and the reins of the belly were loosed, and a hand ready toward wealth, and no bridle of the eyes, but loves and longings and such passions were allowed; one of them boasted that she could restrain such things, but she was bold and abusive and with elbows thrust against everything — I saw a form of wisdom unspeakable, by which even Pythagoras was once mastered, and which stood not among the many, but apart from them and silent. Understanding that I did not consent to the others, but that I did not yet know hers, she said, 'My young man, I am unpleasant and full of toils; for if any one come to my ways, he must of his own choice take away from his table all that has life, and forget wine, and not muddy the bowl of wisdom which stands in souls free of wine; nor shall a cloak warm him, nor wool sheared from a living creature; sandals of papyrus I give them, and to sleep where they may; and if I perceive them mastered by the pleasures of love, there are pits for me, down which justice, the attendant of wisdom, bears and thrusts them; and so harsh am I to those who choose my ways that I hold even bonds upon their tongues. But what shall be yours if you endure these things, learn from me. Self-control and justice straightway, and to think no man enviable, and to be terrible to tyrants rather than to lie beneath them, and to appear sweeter to the gods, sacrificing little, than those who pour out before them the blood of bulls; and being pure I will give you foreknowledge too, and so fill your eyes with light that you may discern a god and know a hero and convict shadowy phantoms when they belie the forms of men.' This is the choice of life I made, you wise men of Egypt, which choosing soundly and according to Pythagoras I neither deceived nor was deceived; for I became what the true philosopher should, and of all that she said she would give to one who pursued philosophy, I have all. For I made a study of the origin of the art and whence its principles came, and it seemed to me to belong to men of surpassing endowment who had searched out divine things best, and the soul, of which the immortal and unbegotten are the springs of generation. Now to the Athenians this argument seemed not at all suited; for the argument of Plato, which he there divinely and most wisely uttered about the soul, they themselves slandered, admitting opinions about the soul contrary to this and untrue. So one had to consider what city, what nation of men there was, among whom — not this man yes, that man no — every age should speak the same about the soul. And I, my youth so leading me, and my not yet understanding, looked to you, since you were said to know things prodigiously; and I went through these matters to my own teacher. But he, checking me, said: 'If you happened to be one of those who love, or of an age for loving, and then, meeting a fair youth and admiring him for his bloom, you sought too whose son he was — and his father were a breeder of horses and a general, and his grandfathers furnishers of choruses, and you called him the son of some captain of a trireme or phylarch — do you think you would win the favourite by these names, or that he might find you unpleasant for naming the youth not from his father but from an alien and bastard stock? So, loving wisdom which the Indians found, you name it not from its natural fathers but from those by adoption, and you give the Egyptians something greater than if, as they themselves sing, the Nile should rise for them mingled with honey.' This turned me to the Indians rather than to you, when I had reflected about them that such men are finer in understanding, dwelling among purer beams, and truer in their opinions about nature and the gods, as being near the gods and dwelling at the springs of the life-giving and warm substance; and when I met them I felt toward the profession of the men something like what the Athenians are said to have felt toward the wisdom of Aeschylus. For he became a poet of tragedy, and seeing the art unfurnished and not yet adorned — if he had only contracted the choruses, which were drawn out at length, or invented the dialogues of the actors, doing away with the length of the monologues, or devised the dying behind the scenes, so as not to slay in open view — even this would not have been divorced from wisdom, and he might be thought to have given an idea to another less skilful in poetry. But he, considering himself, that he should speak worthily of making tragedy, and considering the art too, that it was naturally suited to grandeur rather than to the abased and underfoot, laid hold of costume modelled on the forms of the heroes, and set the actors upon buskins, that they might walk evenly with the heroes; and first he adorned them with robes such as it befits heroes and heroines to wear; whence the Athenians held him the father of tragedy, and called him even when dead to the Dionysia, for by their decree the plays of Aeschylus were produced again, and he won the victory anew. And yet of a well-furnished tragedy the grace is small, for it delights in a little part of the day, like the season of the Dionysia; but of philosophy, when it is composed as Pythagoras judged right and held divine, as before Pythagoras the Indians did, the grace is not for a short time, but for boundless and more than number. So I think I have felt nothing unreasonable in being mastered by a well-furnished philosophy, which the Indians, arraying it for what is fitting, wheel out upon a lofty and divine machine. That I admired them with justice, and with justice hold them wise and blessed, it is now time to learn. I saw men dwelling upon the earth and not upon it, and walled without walls, and possessing nothing yet possessing the things of all. And if I touch on riddles, the wisdom of Pythagoras allows this, for he handed down riddling too, having found silence a teacher of speech. Of this wisdom you yourselves were once the counsellors of Pythagoras, in the time when you praised the things of the Indians, being yourselves of old Indians. But when, out of shame at the reason for which you came here from the wraths of the earth, you wished to seem other men rather than Ethiopians come from the Indians, everything was done by you toward this end; whence you were stripped of the equipment that came from there, as though stripping off with it the being Ethiopians, and you voted to worship the gods after the Egyptian rather than your own fashion, and fell to discourses not fitting about the Indians, as though you yourselves were not slandered by the very thing from which you have come to be slandered. Nor have you yet refashioned this, you who even today have made a display of it, abusive and iambic, saying that the Indians practise nothing good but astonishments and seductions, some for the eyes, some for the ears; and not yet knowing my wisdom, you appear insensible of the opinion held of it. For myself I will say nothing — may I be what the Indians hold me — but the Indians I do not allow you to touch. But if there is in you any sound wisdom of the Himeraean man, who, singing of Helen contrary to his former tale, called it a palinode — 'this story is not true' — it is now time for you too to say so, taking up a better opinion of them than that which now stands by you. And if you are unmusical even toward a palinode, yet you ought at least to spare men whom the gods, thinking them worthy of their own possessions, do not think themselves unworthy of what those men have got. You went through, Thespesion, an account of Pytho too, as giving her oracles simply and without furnishing, and your example of the argument was the temple put together of wax and feathers. To me, however, not even these seem unfurnished; for the line 'bring feathers, you birds, and wax, you bees' belongs to one furnishing a house and the form of a house; and he, I think, thinking these small things and beneath his wisdom, needed another temple and another, and now great ones and a hundred feet long, and on one of them he is said to have hung golden Sirens too, holding a certain persuasion of the Sirens; and he gathered the most esteemed offerings into Pytho for ornament's sake, and neither drove away statuary, which brought him colossi to the temple, some of gods, some of men, some of horses and bulls and other creatures, nor Glaucus coming with his stand, nor the captured citadel of Ilium which Polygnotus paints there. For surely he did not think the Lydian gold an ornament of Pytho, but brought that in on behalf of the Greeks, showing them, I think, the wealth of the barbarians, that they might long for that rather than for sacking one another's goods; but the Greek manner, suited to his own wisdom, he furnished, and with it adorned Pytho. And I think that for ornament's sake too he set his oracles into metre. For had he not been making this display, he would have made his answers thus: 'Do this' or 'do not do this,' and 'go' or 'do not go,' and 'make allies' or 'do not' — for these are brief, or, as you say, naked; but that he might appear grand of speech and pleasanter to those who ask, he fitted on poetry, and does not think there is anything he does not know, but says he knows even the sand, how much it is, having numbered it, and that he has comprehended all the measures of the sea. Or do you set down these things too as wonder-mongering, because Apollo declares them haughtily and with a right pride? But, that you may not be vexed, Thespesion, at the saying — old women with sieves hung on them go to shepherds, and at times to herdsmen, healing the sick of the flocks by divination, as they say, and they think fit to be called wise and wiser than the plain seers. This is what you too seem to me beside the wisdom of the Indians; for they are divine and adorned after the Pythian manner, but you — yet nothing shall be said further, for fair speech is dear to me, and dear to the Indians, which I would welcome as at once the attendant and the leader of my tongue, hunting what is possible to me with praise and love of them, but what is not within my reach, leaving it untouched by blame. But you, hearing in Homer's Cyclopeia how the earth feasts the wildest and most lawless, unsown and unploughed, rejoice in the tale; and if certain Edonians or Lydians keep Bacchic revel, you do not disbelieve that it will give them springs of milk and wine and make them drink of these; yet from the Bacchants of all wisdom will you take away gifts coming of themselves from the earth? Tripods of themselves come to the banquets of the gods too, and Ares, ignorant and hostile as he is, has not yet been painted as charging Hephaestus over them, nor is there any record that the gods ever heard such a charge: 'You do wrong, Hephaestus, in adorning the banquet of the gods and setting marvels about it.' Nor was he ever blamed for the golden handmaidens, as corrupting the materials, because he made the gold to breathe; for every art will care for ornament, since the very existence of the arts was found out for ornament's sake. And to go unshod, and the cloak, and to have a wallet hung on one — this is a device of ornament; for even being naked, as you are, though it resembles an unfurnished and plain attire, is studied for ornament's sake, and is not even free of what is called conceit in another. As for the ancestral customs of the Sun and the Indians, and the manner in which he rejoices to be worshipped, let them hold their own law; for the gods below welcome trenches and the rites done in the hollow earth, but of the Sun the air is the chariot, and those who would fittingly sing him must rise from the earth and soar aloft with the god. This all men wish, but the Indians alone can do."

Damis says he breathed again when he heard these things; for by the words of Apollonius the Egyptians were so affected that Thespesion, though black, was plainly seen to blush, and there appeared in the rest too a kind of astonishment at the things they heard from him as he discoursed forcibly and with fluency; and the youngest of the Egyptians, whose name was Nilus, even leaped up in wonder, and crossing over to Apollonius joined hands with him and begged him to tell the conversations he had had with the Indians. And Apollonius said, "To you I would grudge no discourse, since you are, as I see, a lover of hearing and welcome all wisdom; but to Thespesion, and any other who holds the things of the Indians nonsense, I would not pour out the discourses from there." Whereupon Thespesion said, "But if you were a merchant or skipper and brought us some cargo from there, would you, because it came from India, think fit to dispose of it untested, giving neither taste nor sample of it?" And Apollonius, taking him up, said, "I would furnish it to those who wished. But if someone, coming to the sea just as the ship had put in, abused the cargo and slandered it as coming from a land that bears nothing sound, and rebuked me for not having sailed for serious freight, and persuaded the rest to think so too — do you think anyone, having put into such a harbour, would cast an anchor or a cable, rather than shake out his sails and lift his ship into the open sea, entrusting his goods to the winds more gladly than to surly and inhospitable manners?" "But I," said Nilus, "lay hold of the cables, and entreat you, skipper, to share with me the cargo you bring; and I would gladly embark with you in the ship, a supercargo and mindful of your freight."

Wishing to break off such talk, Thespesion said: "I am glad, Apollonius, that you are vexed at what you heard; for you may pardon us too for being vexed at the things by which you slandered the wisdom here, before you had even come to a trial of it." He, struck for a moment by the saying, because he had not yet heard about Thrasybulus and Euphrates, but conjecturing, as was his wont, what had happened, said: "The Indians, Thespesion, would not have suffered this, nor would they have given heed to Euphrates letting down such things, for they are wise to foreknow. As for me, I have no private quarrel with Euphrates; but by drawing him away from money and from praising gain got from anything, I seemed to him to give counsel neither suitable nor possible to him; and he counts this a reproach, and never ceases putting together something against me. But since he seemed to you plausible in slandering my character, consider that he slandered you before me; for to me the dangers about him who is to be slandered seem no small thing, for he will be hated, no doubt, though doing no wrong; but neither do those who will listen to the slanders seem free of dangers, if first they are caught honouring falsehood and thinking it worthy of what truth is, and then lightness and easy leading — to be mastered by which is shameful even for a youth — and they will seem envious, making envy their teacher of unjust hearing, and themselves more liable to the slanders which they hold true against others; for the natures of men are more ready to do what they do not disbelieve. May such a man never be a tyrant, nor preside over a people, for under him democracy too will be a tyranny; nor judge a cause, for he will discern nothing aright; nor command a ship, for the ship will be in mutiny; nor lead an army, for the enemy will fare well; nor practise philosophy in such a state, for he will not form opinions toward the truth. And of you Euphrates has taken away even the being wise; for those whom he has led on by falsehood, how could they think themselves worthy of a wisdom from which they have fallen away by being persuaded of things not plausible?" Soothing him, Thespesion said, "Enough of Euphrates and of mean-spirited words; for we might even be reconcilers between you and him, thinking it wise to arbitrate among wise men." "And between me and you," he said, "who will reconcile me? For one slandered must surely be set at war on behalf of the truth." "Let it be so," said Apollonius, "and let us lay hold of earnest things, for this will reconcile us better."

Nilus, longing for the man's discourse, said: "And indeed it befits you to begin the earnest talk, going through for us the journey you made to the nation of the Indians, and the earnest pursuits there, which surely you carried on for brilliant ends." "And I," said Thespesion, "long to hear also about the wisdom of Phraotes; for you are said to bring from the Indians images of his words too." So Apollonius, making the things at Babylon the beginning of his discourse, went through everything, and they listened gladly, subjecting themselves to the discourse. And when it was noon, they broke off the conference, for at this hour the Naked Sages too betake themselves to the sacred rites.

As Apollonius and those about him were supping, Nilus stood by them with vegetables and bread and sweetmeats, carrying some himself and others through others, and very wittily said: "The wise men send these gifts of hospitality to you and to me; for I too will sup with you, not uninvited, as they say, but inviting myself." "A pleasant gift of hospitality you bring, young man," said Apollonius, "yourself and your own character, for you seem to philosophize without guile and to welcome the things of the Indians and of Pythagoras. Recline here, then, and sup with us." "I am reclining," he said, "but there will not be food enough to fill me." "You seem to be a hearty eater," he said, "and a terrible feeder." "Most terrible indeed," he said; "for after you have set before me so great and so splendid a feast, I am not yet filled, and after a little I come back to feed again; what will you call me but insatiable and dreadfully a glutton?" "Eat your fill," he said; "and as for openings of discourse, hand over some yourself, and I will give others."

When they had supped, Nilus said: "Up to now I served as a soldier together with the Naked Sages, ranging myself with them as with light-armed troops or slingers; but now I will be a man-at-arms, and your shield shall adorn me." "But I think, Egyptian," he said, "you will incur blame from Thespesion and the rest, for going over to our ways more readily than the choice of a life allows, and without even staying for a fuller test of us." "Perhaps," he said; "but if there is to be blame for choosing, there may also be blame for not choosing, and they will be the more open to blame for choosing what I have chosen; for that men older and at once wiser have not long ago chosen what I now choose would be a juster charge against them, that having such advantage they did not choose the better thing to follow." "You have spoken no ignoble word, my young man; but take care lest, by the very fact of their being so wise and of such age, they appear to have chosen those things rightly and to decline these with reasonable argument, while you seem to lay hold of a bolder word, setting yourself up rather than following them." Turning about, the Egyptian said, against the opinion of Apollonius: "What it is reasonable for a young man to share with his elders I have not neglected; for when I thought there was about these men a wisdom belonging to no other men, I attached myself to them. The occasion of my impulse was this. My father once sailed of his own will to the Red Sea, commanding the ship which the Egyptians send to the nation of the Indians; and mingling with the Indians of the coast, he brought back tales about the wise men there, near to those you have gone through to us. Hearing from him too some such tale as this — that the Indians are the wisest of men, and the Ethiopians colonists of the Indians, and that these inherit their wisdom from their fathers and look to their home — when I became a youth I gave up my patrimony to those who wished it, and naked I came to these Naked Sages, to learn the things of the Indians, or at least things akin to them; and they seemed to me wise indeed, but not in that way. And when I asked them why they did not practise the philosophy of the Indians, they fell to slanders like those uttered today against you, and enrolled me, young as I still am, as you see, in their own community, fearing, I think, lest, leaping away from them, I should sail to the Red Sea, as my father once did — which, by the gods, I would not have given up; for I would have gone on even to the hill of the wise men, had not some god sent you here as a helper to me, that without sailing the Red Sea or risking the voyage to the Gulf-dwellers I might taste of Indian wisdom — not making today my choice of a life, but having long ago chosen it, while not having what I thought I should have. For what is strange if, having failed of something, a man returns to what he was hunting? And if I should bring these men over to this too, and become to them a counsellor of what I have persuaded myself, what bold thing, tell me, should I be doing? For neither is youth to be driven off from thinking out something better even than old age; and whoever becomes to another a counsellor of a wisdom which he has himself chosen, surely escapes the charge of persuading what he is not persuaded of; and whoever, receiving the goods that come from fortune, uses them alone, wrongs the goods, for he takes from them the appearing sweeter to more men."

When Nilus had spoken such things, and so boyishly, Apollonius took him up and said: "Will you not first discuss with me about a fee, since you love my wisdom?" "Let us discuss," said Nilus, "and ask what you will." "I ask you," he said, "to keep what you yourself have chosen, but not to trouble the Naked Sages by counselling things you will not persuade." "I will obey," he said, "and let the fee be agreed." Thus they made their compact in earnest. And when Nilus afterward asked him how long he would spend among the Naked Sages, "As long," he said, "as the wisdom of these men is worth to one who consorts with them; and then we will make the road to the Cataracts for the sake of the springs; for it is delightful not only to see the beginnings of the Nile, but also to hear it roaring."

Having discoursed thus, and recalling some Indian matters, they slept in the grass; and at daybreak, after praying as they were wont, they followed Nilus, who led them to Thespesion. Greeting one another and sitting down together in the grove, they laid hold of a discussion, and Apollonius began it. "How much worth it is not to hide wisdom, yesterday's discourses show; for the Indians having taught me all of their wisdom that I thought befitted me, I both remember my teachers and go about teaching what I heard from them. And I might be of profit to you too, if you would send me forth knowing your wisdom as well, for I would not cease going through your doctrines to the Greeks and writing them to the Indians."

"Ask," they said, "for an argument follows, no doubt, upon a question." And Apollonius said: "About the gods I will ask you first: what made you hand down to the men here strange and ridiculous forms of gods, except for a few? A few? Yes, very few that are wisely and godlikely set up; but the rest of your sanctuaries appear to be honours of dumb and inglorious animals rather than of gods." And Thespesion, taking it ill, said: "And the images among you, how do you say they are set up?" "As it is fairest and most god-loving," he said, "to fashion gods." "You mean, I suppose, the Zeus at Olympia," he said, "and the seat of Athena, and that of the Cnidian and that of the Argive goddess, and all such fair things full of grace." "Not only these," he said, "but I say outright that statuary among other peoples lays hold of what is fitting, while you laugh at the divine rather than reverence it." "Did your Phidias," he said, "and your Praxiteles go up to heaven and take a cast of the forms of the gods and so make their art, or was there something else that set them to fashioning?" "Something else," he said, "and a thing full of wisdom." "What kind?" he said; "for you could say nothing but imitation." "Imagination," he said, "wrought these, a craftsman wiser than imitation; for imitation will fashion what it has seen, but imagination what it has not seen too, for it will set it up with reference to the reality, and imitation is often baffled by amazement, but imagination by nothing, for it moves unbaffled toward what it has itself set up. He who would conceive a form of Zeus must see him along with heaven and the seasons and the stars, as Phidias then strove to do; and he who would fashion Athena must think of armies and counsel and arts and how she sprang from Zeus himself. But if you make a hawk or an owl or a wolf or a dog and bring it into the temples instead of Hermes and Athena and Apollo, the beasts and birds will seem enviable in their images, but the gods will stand far away from their own dignity." "You seem," he said, "to examine our ways without testing them; for it is wise, if anything is among the Egyptians, not to be bold toward the forms of the gods, but to make them symbolic and full of hidden meaning, for so they would appear the more august." Laughing, Apollonius said: "O men, great profit have you gained from the wisdom of the Egyptians and Ethiopians, if a dog and an ibis and a goat shall seem to you more august and more godlike — for this I hear from the wise Thespesion. But what is august or fearful in these? For perjurers and temple-robbers and ribald nations are likely to despise such sanctuaries rather than to fear them; and if these are more august for being hinted at, the gods in Egypt would have fared far more augustly, if no image of them had been set up at all, but you had used a different way of theology, wiser and more secret. For it was open to you to build temples for them and to mark out altars, and to lay down what one should sacrifice and what not, and when and how much and what saying or doing, but not to bring in an image, leaving the forms of the gods to those who enter the sanctuaries; for the mind sketches and shapes something better than craftsmanship. But you have taken from the gods both the being fairly seen and the being conceived." To this Thespesion said: "There was a certain Athenian, Socrates, foolish, like us, an old man, who held the dog and the goose and the plane-tree to be gods and swore by them." "Not foolish," he said, "but divine and truly wise; for he swore by these not as gods, but that he might not swear by gods."

After this Thespesion, as though shifting from this argument, asked Apollonius about the Laconian scourge, and whether the Lacedaemonians are flogged in public. "With the strokes that come from men, Thespesion," he said, "especially the free and esteemed among them." "And the household slaves who do wrong, what do they do to them?" he said. "They no longer kill them," he said, "as Lycurgus once allowed, but the same scourge is used on them too." "And how does Greece judge of these things?" he said. "They gather," he said, "as to the Hyacinthia and the Gymnopaediae, to look on with pleasure and all eagerness." "Then are not the worthy Greeks ashamed," he said, "either to see men who once ruled them flogged in public, or to be ruled by men who are flogged in public? And how did you not set this right? For they say you took thought even for the Lacedaemonians." "What could be set right," he said, "I counselled, and they did it eagerly, for they are the most freedom-loving of the Greeks, and alone obedient to one who counsels well; but the custom of the scourging is done to the Scythian Artemis, the oracles, they say, enjoining this; and to oppose the gods is madness, I think." "You have spoken of the gods of the Greeks, Apollonius," he said, "as not wise, if they became counsellors of scourging to men who practise freedom." "Not of scourging," he said, "but of sprinkling the altar with the blood of men, since among the Scythians too they were held worthy of this; but the Lacedaemonians, contriving against the inexorable demand of the sacrifice, have come to a contest of endurance, from which it is possible neither to die and yet to offer first-fruits to the goddess of their own blood." "Why then," he said, "do they not sacrifice strangers to Artemis, as the Scythians once held right?" "Because," he said, "it is not according to the temper of any Greeks to practise barbarous customs." "And yet they would seem more humane in sacrificing one or two than in driving out strangers altogether." "Let us not lay hold of Lycurgus, Thespesion," he said; "for one must understand the man, and that his not allowing strangers to stay among them had not the meaning of inhospitality, but of keeping their practices sound, the men from outside not consorting with Sparta. But I would have held the Spartiates to be such men as they think fit to seem, had they kept their home ways while consorting with strangers; for they ought, I think, to win their virtues not by the absence of strangers but by being seen the same in their presence. But they, though they used expulsions of strangers, were corrupted in their practices, and seemed to do the very things like those of the Greeks whom they most hated. Their dealings about the sea, at any rate, and the later imposition of tributes, were counselled in a more Attic fashion, and the very things for which they thought they must war against the Athenians, these they came to do themselves, conquering the Athenians in war but worsted in what they thought right to practise. And the very bringing in of a deity from the Taurians and the Scythians was the work of men holding strange ways. And if these things were by oracles, what need of the scourge? Why fashion a slavish endurance? It were more Laconian, I think, toward strength against death, that a Spartiate youth should of his own will be sacrificed upon the altar. For this would have shown Sparta the braver, and turned Greece away from setting itself in rivalry against them. And if it was reasonable to spare the young for war, yet the law among the Scythians laid down for those of sixty years would have been more proper for the Lacedaemonians to practise than for the Scythians, if they praise death truly and not for boast's sake. These things I have said not against the Lacedaemonians but against you, Apollonius; for if we examine bitterly the ancient customs, more venerable than we can know, setting ourselves to convict the divine because it delights in them, many strange arguments will spring up out of such philosophy; for we might lay hold of the rite at Eleusis too, because this and not that, and of the rites the Samothracians perform, since this and not that is done by them, and of the Dionysia and the phallus and the form at Cyllene, and we should never have done playing the slanderer over everything. Let us go on, then, to whatever else you wish, honouring also the saying of Pythagoras, which is of our own country; for it is well, if not about all things, yet at least about such things, to keep silent." Apollonius took him up: "If you had wished, Thespesion, to take the argument in earnest, Lacedaemon would have seemed to you to say many noble things on behalf of what she practises soundly and beyond all the Greeks; but since you so decline it as to think it not even holy to speak of such things, let us go on to another argument of great worth, as I persuade myself; for I will ask something about justice."

"Let us lay hold of the argument," said Thespesion, "for it befits both the wise and the unwise. But, that we may not confound it by weaving in the opinions of the Indians, and go away with the argument unfinished, first tell us what the Indians held about justice; for it is likely you tested this there, and if the opinion be right, we shall agree; but if we say something wiser, do you agree, for this too is of justice." "Excellent, Thespesion," he said, "and most pleasing to me has been your speech; hear, then, what was discussed there. I went through with them how I had become helmsman of a great ship, in the time when my soul tended another body, and how I held myself most just, since, when brigands hired me to betray the ship by mooring it where they meant to lie in wait for it, on account of what it carried, I promised this, that they might not fall upon us, but sailed past them and rose above the place." "And did the Indians agree," said Thespesion, "that this was justice?" "They laughed at it," he said; "for justice, they said, is not the mere not doing wrong." "Soundly," he said, "did the Indians decide; for neither is it prudence not to think anything foolishly, nor courage not to leave one's post, nor temperance not to fall into the ways of adulterers, nor is it worthy of praise not to appear bad; for everything that stands equally distant from honour and from punishment is not yet virtue." "How then, Thespesion," he said, "shall we crown the just man, or for doing what?" "More completely and more fittingly," he said, "would you have been earnest about justice when the king, ruling so great and so happy a country, stood by while you philosophized, than about kingship, the most just of possessions." "If it had been Phraotes who came," he said, "you would rightly blame us for not being earnest about justice before him; but since you saw the man in the state I described yesterday, drunken and vexed at all philosophy, what need was there to give trouble? Why should they be ambitious before a man who held all things mere wantonness? But since justice must be tracked by wise men, as by us, rather than by kings and generals, let us go on to the simply just man. For what I thought myself, when I was on the ship, and what others are who do not lay hold of wrong, you say are not yet just, nor worthy of honour." "And reasonably," he said; "for never would a decree have been written among the Athenians or Lacedaemonians to crown So-and-so, because he is not of those who have prostituted themselves, or to make So-and-so a citizen, because he does not rob the temples. Who then is the just man, and the man doing what? For I know of no one crowned for justice, nor a decree written over a just man, that So-and-so ought to be crowned, since doing such a thing he appears just; for to one who considers the affair of Palamedes at Troy and of Socrates at Athens, justice will not seem even to fare well among men, for these men suffered most unjustly, being most just. Yet these perished on a reputation of wrongdoings, by a vote carried aside from the straight; but Aristides the son of Lysimachus justice itself once destroyed, and such a man on such a virtue went away into exile. And I know that justice will seem ridiculous, for, appointed by Zeus and the Fates to keep men from being wronged, she nowhere appoints herself to keep from being wronged herself. But the case of Aristides is enough for me to show who is the not-unjust man and who the just. For tell me, is not this that Aristides whom you who come from the Greeks say sailed to the islands about the tributes, fixed them in due measure, and came back in the same cloak?" "It is he," he said, "through whom love of poverty once flowered." "Suppose then," he said, "two demagogues at Athens praising Aristides just come from the allies, and one should propose to crown him because he has come back not rich nor having gathered any livelihood for himself, but poorest of the Athenians and poorer than himself; and the other should propose some such decree as this: 'Since Aristides, having fixed the tributes not above the power of the allies but as each has of land, took care both of their concord with the Athenians and that they should not seem to bear these things with vexation, be it resolved to crown him for justice' — do you not think that to the first decree he would himself object, as not worthy of the life he had lived, if he were honoured for what is mere not-wronging; but the second he might perhaps himself praise, as aiming at what he intended? For looking, I think, to the advantage both of the Athenians and the subjects, he took care of the due measure of the tributes; and this was shown the more after Aristides, for when the Athenians, transgressing the amounts he had fixed, imposed heavier ones on the islands, their naval power, by which most of all they were terrible, was torn apart, and that of the Lacedaemonians came forward to the sea, and none of their power held together, but all the subject states rushed to revolution and laid hold of escape. So that the just man, Apollonius, by the straight account, is not he who does no wrong, but he who himself does just things and sets others too to do no wrong; and from such justice will spring other virtues too, but especially the judicial and the legislative. For such a man will judge far more justly than those who swear over the cut victims, and will legislate, as the Solons and Lycurguses did, for to those men too justice was the beginning of writing laws."

So much, Damis says, they discussed about the just man, and Apollonius agreed with the argument, for it accorded with what was soundly said. And having philosophized about the soul too, that it is immortal, and about nature in terms near to the opinions of Plato, and having discoursed more about the laws among the Greeks, Apollonius said: "My journey here was for your sake and for the springs of the Nile, which, to one who goes forward only as far as Egypt, it is pardonable to be ignorant of, but to one who has gone on to Ethiopia, as I have, it would bring reproach to pass them by and not draw from them some discourses." "Go and prosper," he said, "and whatever is dear to you, pray for it at the springs, for they are divine. And you will make your guide, I think, the once Naucratite, now Memphite, Timasion, for he is acquainted with the springs and is so pure as to have no need of being sprinkled. But with you, Nilus, we wish to discuss something by ourselves." The meaning of the words was not hidden from Apollonius, for he understood that they were ill-disposed, since Nilus loved him; but withdrawing from the discourse, he went away to make ready, as if to set out at dawn. And not long after Nilus came, and reported nothing of what he had heard, but kept laughing to himself; and no one asked about the laughter, but they spared the secret.

So then, having supped and discoursed not about great things, they slept there; and at daybreak, after addressing the Naked Sages, they went on the road that stretches toward the mountains, keeping the Nile on the left, seeing these things worth recounting. The Cataracts are earthy mountains, like the Tmolus of the Lydians, and the Nile flows down from them, drawing the earth with it of which it makes Egypt. And the echo of the stream as it breaks down from the mountains and falls with a crash into the Nile seems hard and unbearable to hear, and many who have gone forward beyond the moderate distance have turned back, having lost their hearing.

As Apollonius and those about him went forward, breast-like mountains appeared, bearing trees whose leaves and bark and tears the Ethiopians count as fruit. They saw also lions near the road, and leopards and other such beasts; but none of them attacked them, but leaped away from them, as though startled at the men. Deer too and gazelles and ostriches and wild asses were seen, many of these, but most of all the wild oxen and the goat-stags; and these beasts are compounded, the one of deer and bull, the other of the creatures from which it has taken its name. And they came upon bones of these and half-eaten bodies, for the lions, when they have gorged on the warm prey, disdain its remains, trusting, I think, that they will hunt again.

Here dwell nomad Ethiopians, settled on wagons, and near these the hunters of elephants, who cut them up and make a market of them, whence they are named from the selling of elephants. The Nasamones and the Eaters of Men and the Pygmies and the Shadow-foots are nations of Ethiopians too, and these reach down to the Ethiopian Ocean, into which only those sail who are carried thither against their will.

As the men were discoursing about the beasts and philosophizing about nature, which feeds one kind in one way and another in another, an echo struck upon them like thunder not yet harsh, but still hollow and within the cloud. And Timasion said, "Near is the cataract, men, the last for those who go down, the first for those who go up." And going forward about ten stades, they say they saw a river issuing from the mountain no less than the Marsyas and the Maeander at their first meeting; and praying to the Nile they went on, and saw beasts no longer — for these, being timid by nature, dwell rather near the calm waters than the violent and resounding — but they heard another cataract some fifteen stades on, now hard and unbearable to perceive, for it was twice the former and fell from higher mountains. Damis says that his own ears and those of one of the companions were so stunned that he himself turned back and begged Apollonius not to go forward, but that he held to the third cataract stoutly with Timasion and Nilus, and on his return reported about it as follows. Peaks hang over the Nile there, about eight stades in height, and the bank that lies over against the mountains is a brow of unspeakable rock; and the springs, hanging from the mountains, fall over onto the rocky bank, and pour thence into the Nile, surging and white. And the workings that come about them, being many times greater than the former, and the echo leaping from these to the mountains, make the study of the stream hard to hear. The road further on, leading to the first springs, they say is impossible to travel, and impossible even to think upon, for they tell many tales of spirits, such as Pindar too in his wisdom has hymned of the spirit whom he sets over these springs for the due measure of the Nile.

Having lodged after the cataracts in a not large village of Ethiopia, they were supping toward evening, mingling earnest with play, when they heard a sudden cry of the women in the village, calling to one another to seize and pursue, and summoning their own husbands too to share in the work; and the men, snatching up sticks and stones and whatever came to each one's hand, called out as though wronged in their marriages. For there was haunting the village, now for the tenth month, an apparition of a satyr, mad after the women, and it was said to have killed two of them, of whom it seemed most enamoured. So when his companions were dismayed, "Do not fear," said Apollonius, "for a certain satyr is rioting here." "Yes, by Zeus," said Nilus, "one whom we Naked Sages have long failed to turn from his leaping, though he has long been rioting." "But there is," he said, "a remedy against these riotous ones, which Midas once is said to have used; for this Midas had a share of the race of satyrs, as his ears showed, and one satyr, on the strength of the kinship, revelled against him, deriding the ears of Midas, and not only singing but also playing the flute at him; and Midas, I think, having heard from his mother that a satyr, when hunted by wine, falls into sleep and grows sober and is reconciled, mixed the spring that was about his palace with wine and let the satyr at it; and he drank and was caught. And that the tale lies not, let us go to the headman, and if the villagers have wine, let us mix it for the satyr, and he shall suffer the same as Midas's." This seemed good, and pouring four Egyptian amphoras into a trough from which the sheep in the village drank, he called the satyr, rebuking him in some unseen way; and the satyr was not yet seen, but the wine gave way, as if drunk; and when it was drunk up, "Let us make peace with the satyr," he said, "for he is asleep." And saying this he led the villagers to a cave of the Nymphs, not yet a plethron distant from the village, in which, pointing to him asleep, he bade them refrain from striking or abusing him, "for he has ceased from his follies." Such a deed of Apollonius — no, by Zeus, no by-work of his road, but a work of his passing through. And if anyone meets a letter of the man, in which, writing to a riotous youth, he says he sobered even a satyr-spirit in Ethiopia, he must remember this account. That satyrs exist and lay hold of love let us not disbelieve; for I know in Lemnos one of my own age, whose mother a satyr was said to visit, as was likely from this tale; for he seemed to wear a fawn-skin grown to him along the back, the foremost flaps of which, grasping the neck, were fastened about his breast. But no more of these things, for neither is experience to be disbelieved, nor am I.

When he came down from Ethiopia, the quarrel with Euphrates increased most of all then, out of the daily discussions; and he committed these to Menippus and Nilus, himself rebuking Euphrates but little, while of Nilus he took great care.

When Titus had taken Solyma and all the neighbouring lands were full of corpses, the bordering nations would have crowned him; but he did not think himself worthy of this, for he himself had not done these things, but had lent his hands to a god who had shown his wrath. Apollonius praised this, for there appeared judgement in the man and understanding of human and divine things, and it was full of self-control not to be crowned for blood. So he put together a letter to him, of which he made Damis the bearer, and wrote thus: "Apollonius to Titus, general of the Romans, greeting. Since you would not be proclaimed for war, nor for hostile blood, I give you the crown of self-control, since you know for what one ought to be crowned. Farewell." Overjoyed at the letter, Titus said: "Both on my own behalf I am grateful to you, and on my father's, and I will remember these things; for I have taken Solyma, but you have taken me."

Proclaimed emperor in Rome and thought worthy of these honours, he was setting out to share the rule with his father, when, considering how much Apollonius would be worth to him even if they met for a little, he begged him to come to Tarsus; and embracing him when he came, he said: "My father wrote me everything in which he made you his counsellor, and here is the letter, in which you are written as his benefactor and all that we are; and I, though I am but thirty years old, am thought worthy of what my father was at sixty, and am called to rule before I know, perhaps, even how to be ruled; and I fear I am laying hold of greater things than I ought." So Apollonius, feeling his neck — for indeed he was as strong as those who train their bodies — said, "And who shall force a bull-neck so strong as this to bend beneath the yoke?" "He who reared me from a calf," said Titus, meaning his own father, and saying that he would be ruled by him alone, who from childhood had accustomed him to listen to him. "I am glad," said Apollonius, "first to see you prepared to follow your father, by whom even those who are not his children by nature are glad to be ruled, and to wait upon his doors, with whom you will be waited upon. When youth and age go together to rule, what lyre, what flute will sing so sweet and blended a harmony? For the older will accord with the younger, whence both age will have strength and youth will not be disorderly."

"And to me, Tyanean," he said, "about rule and kingship, what will you lay down?" "What you have persuaded yourself," he said; "for being subject to your father, it is plain that you will make yourself like him. And I would now tell you the saying of Archytas, for it is noble and worth learning. Archytas was a man of Tarentum, wise in the things of Pythagoras; he, writing about the rearing of children, says: 'Let the father be a pattern of virtue to his children'; for fathers too will walk the more strenuously toward the virtues, if their children are made like to them. And I will introduce to you Demetrius too, my own companion, who will be with you as much as you wish, teaching you what a good ruler ought to do." "And what, Apollonius," he said, "is the wisdom of this man?" "Frankness," he said, "and the speaking of truth and being dismayed by no one, for he is of the Cynic strength." And when Titus heard the word 'dog' with displeasure, "Yet in Homer," he said, "Telemachus, being young, seemed to need two dogs, and Homer sends them as attendants for the youth into the market-place of the Ithacans, though they were without speech; but you shall have a dog who, on your behalf against others and against yourself, if you should err, will bark wisely and not unreasonably." "Give me," he said, "the attendant dog, and I allow him even to bite, if he perceive me doing wrong." "A letter shall be written to him," he said, "for he philosophizes in Rome." "Let it be written," he said; "and I could wish someone would write to you too on my behalf, that you might become a companion of our road to Rome." "I will come," he said, "when it is better for us both."

Having sent away those present, Titus said: "We are by ourselves, Tyanean; for you allow me, I think, to ask about what is most serious to me?" "Ask," he said, "and the more eagerly, the greater the matter." "About my own soul," he said, "will my question be, and whom I should most guard against — unless I shall seem a coward in fearing these things already." "Cautious, rather," he said, "and on your guard, for of this one should most take forethought." And looking up to the sun he swore by it that he had himself been about to speak to Titus of these things even unasked, for the gods had revealed to him to foretell to him that while his father lived he should fear his father's bitterest enemies, but when he was dead, his own nearest kin. "And in what manner shall I die?" he said. "As Odysseus is said to," he said, "for they say that to him too death came from the sea." Damis interprets this thus: that he should guard against the spine of the trygon, with which they say Odysseus was struck; and that after holding the rule two years from his father, he died by the sea-hare; for this fish furnishes secret juices beyond all things on sea or land that slay men; and Nero put this hare into the dishes of his bitterest enemies, and Domitian put it into the dishes of his brother Titus, thinking it grievous not to rule with a brother, but to rule with a gentle and good one. Having discussed such things in private, they embraced one another in public; and as Titus went away, Apollonius said, "Conquer, O king, your enemies with arms, and your father with virtues."

The letter to Demetrius ran thus: "Apollonius the philosopher to Demetrius the Cynic, greeting. I give you to King Titus as a teacher of the character of kingship; do you make my words true to him, and be to him, save anger, all things. Farewell."

The inhabitants of Tarsus had at other times been vexed at Apollonius, both for his rebukes, since he made them strenuous, and because, being slack and luxurious, they could not endure even the force of his speech; but then they were so far overcome by the man that they held him their founder and the support of their city. For the emperor was sacrificing in public, and the city, gathering, made supplication about the greatest matters; and he said he would remember these things to his father and would himself be an ambassador for what they asked. But Apollonius, coming forward, said: "If I should convict some of these men as enemies to you and your father, and as having gone on embassies to Solyma about revolution, and as secret allies of your most open foes, what would they suffer?" "What else," he said, "than perish?" "Then is it not shameful," he said, "to demand punishments at once, but to give benefits late, and to make the one by yourself, but to refer the others to a sharing of judgement?" Overjoyed, the emperor said, "I grant the gifts; for my father will not be vexed at me for being overcome by truth and by you."

So many nations, they say, did Apollonius visit, being earnest and earnestly sought. The journeys that followed were many for the man, yet not so many as before, nor to other nations than those he knew; for about Egypt on the sea, when he had come down from Ethiopia, he spent a longer time, and about the Phoenicians and Cilicians and Ionians and Achaeans and Italians again, nowhere falling short of appearing the same. For though the knowing of oneself seems hard, I hold it harder still for the wise man to remain like himself; for he will not change those who are ill-born to the better unless he has first practised the not changing himself. About these things I have said enough in other discourses, teaching those who do not deal softly with them that the truly perfect man neither anything will change nor enslave. But that we may neither go into length of discourse, teaching in detail what was philosophized by him among each people, nor again seem to leap over an account which we hand down to those without experience of the man, not without labour, it seems good to me to go through the more serious of these, and all that will be held worthy of memory. Let us think them like the visits of the Asclepiads.

There was a youth uneducated in himself, but who educated birds and made them his housemates for wisdom's sake; and he taught them to chatter all that men do, and to pipe all that flutes do. Meeting him, Apollonius said, "What is your pursuit?" And when he went through the nightingales he had, and the blackbirds, and how he gave good tongue to the plovers, while his own voice appeared uneducated, "You seem to me," he said, "to corrupt the birds, first by not allowing them their own note, so sweet that not even the instruments of music could come to the imitation of it, and then by yourself, talking worst of all Greeks, making them your pupils in tonelessness. And you wear out your own house too, young man; for to one who looks at your attendants and how you are furnished, you appear of the delicate and not poor, and such men the informers drain, raising their tongues against them like goads. And what use will you make of your love of birds then? For not even by bringing the songs of all the nightingales will you scare them off when they press and lean on you, but you must pour out your substance and throw them gold, like the sops to dogs, and if they bark, give it again and again, and then yourself go hungry afterward and be in want. You need, then, some splendid turning and some change of your ways, lest, before you know it, you moult away your wealth, and, deserving rather to be wept over by birds than sung to, fare ill. The remedy of the change is not great; for there is in all cities a kind of men whom you do not yet know, but they are called teachers; to these giving a little of your substance you will safely possess the more, for they will teach you the rhetoric of the courts, and the art is easy. For if I saw you still a child, I would have counselled you to frequent the doors of philosophers and sophists and to fence your house with all wisdom; but since you are past the age for these things, learn at least to speak on your own behalf, reckoning that, if you had learned the more perfect things, you would have seemed like a man-at-arms and formidable, but having learned these you will have the equipment of the light-armed and slingers, for you might pelt the informers, as you do the dogs." The youth understood these things, and leaving the pastimes of the birds went to the teachers, by whom both his judgement and his tongue were strengthened.

Two accounts being told at Sardis, the one that the Pactolus once brought down gold-dust to Croesus, the other that the trees are older than the earth, the first he said was plausibly believed, for there were once sands of gold in Tmolus, and the rains carried them down, sweeping them into the Pactolus, but in time, as such things are wont, they failed, being washed away; but laughing at the other account, "You say," he said, "that the trees are older than the earth; but I, who have philosophized so long a time, have not yet found that the stars are older than the heaven" — teaching that nothing could come to be when that in which it grows is not.

When the governor of Syria was setting Antioch in faction and letting down suspicions among them, by which the city, holding assembly, was divided, and a mighty earthquake fell upon them, they cowered, and, as is wont in signs from heaven, they prayed for one another. So Apollonius, coming forward, said: "The god has become a plain reconciler of you, and you would not fall to faction again, fearing the same things." And he set them to the thought of what they would suffer, and that they would fear the same as one another.

This too is worth remembering. A man was sacrificing to Earth for a treasure, and did not hesitate to pray about this even before Apollonius; and he, considering what kind of things the man loved, said, "I see a money-maker, and a clever one." "A wretched one, rather," he said, "for I have nothing but a little, not enough to feed my house." "You seem," he said, "to keep many and idle servants, for you do not appear yourself one of the unwise." And the man, weeping quietly, said, "I have four little daughters, and there is need of four dowries; and I have now some twenty thousand drachmas, but when they are divided among the daughters, they will seem to have got little, and I shall perish having nothing." Apollonius, feeling something for him, said, "I and Earth will take care of you, for they say you sacrifice to her." And saying this he went on to the suburbs, like those who buy crops; and seeing a place full of olives and pleased with the trees, since they were well-grown and great, and there being a little garden in it, in which were seen hives and flowers, he went into the little garden as if to inspect something greater, and after praying to Pandora went into the city. Going to the owner of the field, whose wealth had been got by the most lawless means, informing against the estates of the Phoenicians, he said, "Such-and-such a place — for how much did you buy it, and what has been spent by you on it?" And when the man said he had bought the field last year for fifteen thousand, and had not yet spent anything on it, he persuaded the man to sell it to him for twenty thousand, making the five thousand a windfall. Now the lover of the treasure did not yet understand the gift, but did not even think he had got equal value, and so much less, inasmuch as the twenty thousand, being in his hands, were his own, but the field instead of them would lie at the mercy of frosts and hail and the other things that destroy crops. But when he straightway found an amphora of three thousand darics about the very hive in the little garden, and the olive crop proved abundant when the rest of the land was not then fruitful, hymns were sung by him to the man, and all his house was full of suitors paying court to him.

These things too I found worth recording of the man. Someone seemed to be in love with the statue of Aphrodite which stands naked in Cnidus, and made dedications to it, and said he would make more for the marriage. To Apollonius this seemed strange in any case; but since Cnidus did not refuse it, and they said the goddess would seem the more manifest if she were loved, it seemed good to the man to purge the sanctuary of this folly; and when the Cnidians asked him if he wished to set right anything of the sacrifices or prayers, "I will set right eyes," he said, "but let the ancestral customs of the sanctuary remain as they are." So calling the affected man, he asked him whether he believed in gods; and when he said that he so believed in gods as even to love them, and recalled the marriage which he thought he would celebrate, "You," he said, "the poets exalt, saying that Anchises and Peleus were wedded to goddesses; but about loving and being loved I know this: gods love gods, and men men, and beasts beasts, and in a word like loves like, for the begetting of true and kindred offspring; but a thing of one kind coming together with what is unlike is neither a wedlock nor a love. And if you considered the things of Ixion, you would not even come to the thought of loving what is not like. But he, made like a wheel, is bent through heaven; while you, unless you depart from the sanctuary, will perish over all the earth, with no power even to gainsay that the gods judged justly upon you." Thus the drunken folly was quenched, and the man who said he was in love went away, having sacrificed for pardon.

When earthquakes once held the cities on the left of the Hellespont, Egyptians and Chaldeans went begging about them for the gathering of money, that they might sacrifice ten-talent sacrifices to Earth and Poseidon, and the cities contributed, some from the common funds, some from their houses, subject to fear; but the men said that unless the silver were set out on tables they would not sacrifice on their behalf. So it seemed good to the man not to overlook the Hellespontines, and coming to the cities he drove out the ones who had made the calamities of others their treasure, and grasping the causes of the wraths, and sacrificing as was fitting to each, he prayed away the visitation at small cost, and the earth stood firm.

When the emperor Domitian about this same time made a law that no eunuchs should be made and that no vines should be planted any longer, and that the vines already planted should be cut down, Apollonius, coming forward among the Ionians, said: "These ordinances are not for me, for I alone perhaps of men need neither things of love nor wine; but the most marvellous man has forgotten that, while sparing men, he is making a eunuch of the earth." Whence Ionia took courage to send an embassy to the emperor about vines, and to deprecate the law which ordered both that the earth be laid waste and that it be not planted.

This too they sing of the man in Tarsus. A dog had fallen, mad, upon a youth, and the bite carried the youth off into all the ways of dogs, for he barked and howled and ran on four feet, holding his hands to the running. When he had been sick thirty days, Apollonius, just come to Tarsus, stood by him, and bade them track out the dog which had done this; but they said they had neither met the dog, for he had been caught outside the wall while the youth was among the javelin-throwers, nor could they learn from the sick man what the dog was like, since he no longer even knew himself. So pausing, "Damis," he said, "the dog is white, shaggy, a sheep-dog, the size of an Amphilochian; he stands by such-and-such a spring, trembling, for he both desires the water and fears it. Bring me this dog to the bank of the river, where the wrestling-grounds are, only saying that he is called by me." When the dog was dragged by Damis, he cowered at the feet of Apollonius, weeping like a suppliant at the altars; and he tamed him still more and soothed him with his hand, and set the youth near, holding him himself; and that the great secret might not escape the many, he said: "The soul of Telephus the Mysian has passed into this youth, and the Fates wish the same for him." And saying this he bade the dog lick round the bite, that the very one who wounded might become the youth's healer again. Thereupon the youth turned to his father, and knew his mother, and addressed his fellows, and drank of the Cydnus; nor was the dog neglected either, but praying to the river over him too, he sent him through it. And the dog, when he had crossed the Cydnus, standing on the bank, gave tongue, which seldom happens with mad dogs, and laying back his ears wagged his tail, knowing that he was well; for water is a drug of madness, if the mad creature take courage at it. Such were the man's doings on behalf of sanctuaries and cities, and toward peoples and on their behalf, and on behalf of the dead or the sick, and toward the wise and the unwise, and toward kings, who made him a counsellor of virtue.