Book 7

I am aware that tyrannies are the finest touchstone of men who pursue philosophy, and I grant that we may examine how each man has shown himself, more or less, to be a man than another. But my argument bears upon this: in the time when Domitian held tyranny, accusations and indictments hemmed our man about. How they began, and from what source, and what the name of each was, I shall set out presently. Since, however, it is necessary to tell what he said, and as what kind of man he left the trial—having convicted the tyrant rather than been convicted himself—it seems best to me, before all this, to go through whatever I have found worth relating of the deeds of wise men against tyrants, and to set these beside the deeds of Apollonius; for so, I suppose, one ought to seek the truth.

Zeno of Elea, then—he who is held to have been the founder of dialectic—when he was bringing down the tyranny of Nearchus the Mysian, was caught and put to the rack. He kept silence about his own fellow-conspirators, but those who were firmly the tyrant's men he slandered as not being firm, so that some of them died as though on true charges, while he set the affairs of the Mysians free, overthrowing the tyranny by turning it against itself. Plato says that he himself took up the struggle for the freedom of the Sicilians, sharing this design with Dion. Phyton, when he was driven out of Rhegium, took refuge with Dionysius the tyrant of Sicily; but being judged worthy of greater honour than befits an exile, he understood that the tyrant was also in love with Rhegium, and when he wrote of this to the Rhegians he was caught. The tyrant then bound him alive to one of his siege-engines and brought him up to the walls, so that the Rhegians might not strike the engine out of sparing for Phyton; but Phyton shouted to them to strike, for they were the mark of their own freedom. Heracleides and Python, who killed Cotys the Thracian, were both young men, but by their admiration of the discussions of the Academy they became wise and so free men. And who does not know the deeds of Callisthenes of Olynthus? On the same day he both praised and reviled the Macedonians, when they were at the height of their power, and so died with a name for giving offence. Diogenes of Sinope and Crates of Thebes—the one, coming straight from Chaeronea, rebuked Philip on behalf of the Athenians; saying that he was a Heracleides, he destroyed with arguments those who had taken up arms on Philip's behalf; the other, when Alexander said that he would rebuild Thebes for his sake, declared that he had no need of a fatherland that someone, grown strong with arms, might raze again. And many such things might be told; but the argument does not allow length to one who is bound also to contradict these examples—not as though they were not noble, or not held in account by all, but as being less than the deeds

of Apollonius, even if they appear the finest among others. The deed of the Eleatic, then, and that of the men who slew Cotys, are not yet worth much account; for to enslave Thracians and Getae is easy, but to set them free is folly, since they do not even rejoice in freedom, holding it, I suppose, no disgrace to be slaves. As for Plato—that he fared in no wise wisely in setting Sicily to rights rather than Athens, or that he was fittingly sold when he both failed and made others fail—I do not speak, out of regard for those who hear such things grudgingly. The deeds of the Rhegian against Dionysius were daring, for Dionysius held Sicily insecurely; yet since he would certainly have died at that man's hands, even had he not been struck by the Rhegians, he did nothing wonderful, I think, in choosing rather a death for the freedom of others than one for his own slavery. Callisthenes could not even now escape the appearance of being a base man; for in praising and reviling the same men he either reviled those he thought worthy of praise, or praised those whom he ought to have been seen reviling—and besides, the man who sets himself to abuse good men cannot escape seeming a slanderer, while he who flatters the wicked with praise will himself take upon him the blame for the wrongs they do, since the wicked are made worse by being praised. Diogenes, had he said these things to Philip before Chaeronea, might have kept the man pure of his arms against the Athenians; but coming upon the deeds already done he reproached, yet did not set them right. And Crates might even be charged by a man who loves his city with not having joined Alexander in the counsel he used for rebuilding Thebes. But Apollonius—neither fearing for an endangered fatherland, nor despairing of his life, nor drawn into senseless words, nor on behalf of Mysians or Getae, nor against a man who ruled a single island or no great country, but against him under whom were the sea and the whole earth—against this man, since he tyrannized harshly, set himself in array on behalf of the gain of the ruled. He had used this same purpose against Nero too; though one may regard

those acts as skirmishings, since he did not come to close grips, but by strengthening Vindex and by terrifying Tigellinus made the tyranny more rotten; and here some boastful argument springs up, that there was nothing noble in attacking a Nero who lived the life of some lyre-girl or flute-girl. But of Domitian what will they say? His body was strong; pleasures from instruments and from clashing sounds, which wear away the spirited part, he rejected, but the griefs of others, and whatever a man might lament, he drew toward his own delight. Mistrust he called the people's safeguard against tyrants, and the tyrant's against all men; and night he held it fitting for a king to make an end of all business and a beginning of murders—whence the Senate was shorn of its most distinguished members, and philosophy so cowered that some, casting off their dress, fled away into the western land of the Celts, others into the deserts of Libya and Scythia, and some were carried off into arguments that counselled wrongdoing. But he—just as Sophocles has made Teiresias speak of himself to Oedipus, "For I do not live as a slave to you, but to Loxias"—having so made wisdom his mistress, was free of Domitian's current, prophesying to himself the words of Teiresias and Sophocles, fearing nothing of his own, but pitying those whom others were destroying. Hence he gathered against the tyrant such youth as the Senate held, and such understanding as was seen in some of them, going about among the nations and discoursing philosophy to the governors, that the strength of tyrants was not immortal, and that by the very seeming terrible they are the more easily caught. He related to them also the Attic Panathenaea, in which Harmodius and Aristogeiton are sung, and the deed from Phyle, which overthrew thirty tyrants at once; and he set forth the ancestral history of the Romans themselves, how they too, being of old a free people, used to thrust out tyrannies with arms.

When a tragic actor came to Ephesus to perform the drama of Ino, and the governor of Asia was listening—a man who, though young, was conspicuous among those of consular rank, yet held over-timid views on these matters—the actor was already reaching the iambic lines in which Euripides says that tyrants, who have grown great over a long time, are caught by small means; and Apollonius leapt up and cried: "But this coward understands neither Euripides nor me."

When word came, moreover, that Domitian had made a brilliant purification of the Hearth of the Romans, having killed three of the Vestals on the charge of breaking the girdle and of not keeping themselves pure of marriage—they who ought chastely to have served the Trojan Athena and the fire there—he said: "Would that you too, O Sun, might be purified of the unjust murders of which the whole world is now full." And he did not say this in private, like cowards, but in the throng and to all men he proclaimed it and made his prayer.

When Domitian, having killed Sabinus, one of his own kinsmen, was taking Julia to wife—Julia being the wife of the man slain, and Domitian's niece, one of the daughters of Titus—Ephesus was sacrificing for the marriage; and Apollonius, standing over the rites, said: "O night of the Danaids of old, how singular you were!" And in Rome itself things were brought about for him in this fashion.

It seemed that Nerva was suited to the rule which, after Domitian, he took up soberly; and the same opinion was held of Orfitus and Rufus. These men Domitian, saying that they were plotting against him, shut up in islands—two of them—while to Nerva he assigned Tarentum to dwell in. Now Apollonius, being a friend to them, during all the time that Titus ruled, both together with his father and after his father, was forever sending these men letters about temperance, attaching them to the emperors as good men; but under Domitian, since he was harsh, he detached the men from him and strengthened them for the freedom of all. Counsels by letter, however, he thought not safe for them, for many of the powerful were betrayed even by slaves and friends and wives, and no house then kept a secret. So, taking aside at different times the most discreet of his own companions, he would say: "I make you the bearer of a brilliant secret; you must go to Rome, to such a one, and speak with him, and become, for the persuading of the man, all that I myself would be." But when he heard that they had fled—after showing some impulse against the tyrant, but falling away through hesitation from what they had purposed—he was discoursing about the Fates and Necessity in the grove of Smyrna,

in which the Meles flows; and knowing that Nerva would soon hold rule, he was carrying through his argument, that not even tyrants are able to do violence to the things that come from the Fates. A bronze image of Domitian had been set up by the Meles, and turning the bystanders toward it he said: "Fool, how greatly you go astray concerning the Fates and Necessity! For the man fated to be tyrant after you—even if you kill him, he will come back to life." This came to Domitian through the slanders of Euphrates; and for which of the men he uttered it as oracle, no one understood. But the tyrant, taking his own fear for good ground, set out to kill the men; and that he might not be seen acting beyond reason, he summoned Apollonius to defend himself concerning the secrets shared with them. For if Apollonius came and were condemned, Domitian would not seem to have killed men untried, but men convicted in him; or if by some cleverness Apollonius slipped away from public view, then the men would the sooner perish, as having been condemned even by their partner in the charge.

While Domitian was purposing this, and was already writing to the governor of Asia that Apollonius should be seized and brought up, the Tyanean foresaw it all, divinely and as was his custom; and saying to his companions that he had need of a secret journey, he put some in mind of the ancient Abaris, and that he had set out upon some such undertaking. But he, not revealing his own mind even to Damis, sailed with him to Achaea; and landing at Corinth and doing for the Sun about midday all that he was wont to do, he set out at evening for the land of the Sicilians and the Italians. Meeting a fair wind and a smooth current that ran beneath the sea, he came to Dicaearchia on the fifth day. There he fell in with Demetrius, who was held the boldest of the philosophers, since he was living not far from Rome; and Demetrius understood that he had withdrawn himself from the tyrant. But, for the sake of conversation, Apollonius said: "I have caught you living delicately, and in the most blessed dwelling-place of happy Italy—if indeed it is happy—where they say that Odysseus too, abiding with Calypso, forgot the smoke of Ithaca and his home." Demetrius embraced him, and with some words of good omen said: "O gods, what will philosophy suffer, being endangered in such a man as this?" "And in what danger is it?" said Apollonius. "In the very things," he said, "that you have come foreknowing; for if I am ignorant of your mind, I do not even know my own. But let us not talk here; let us go where our converse will be ours alone, and let Damis be present too—Damis, whom I, by Heracles, hold the Iolaus of your labours."

Having said this, he led them to the country place of the elder Cicero, which is near the town. When they had seated themselves under a plane-tree, the cicadas, as the breeze played softly under them, were at their songs; and Demetrius, looking up at them, said: "O blessed and truly wise, how the Muses have taught you a song not yet brought to trials or slanders, and have made you stronger than the belly, and have settled you, away from human envy, in these trees, on which, happy beings, you sing the happiness that is yours and the Muses'." Apollonius understood whither this tended, and finding fault with the words as feebler than his profession, said: "When you wished to deliver a praise of cicadas, you did not deliver it openly, but cowered here, as though there were a public law laid down that no one should praise cicadas." "It was not for praise," he said, "that I spoke thus, but to show that to these their music-halls are left free, but to us not even to mutter is allowed; rather, wisdom has been found to be an indictment. And while the charge of Anytus and Meletus says, 'Socrates does wrong by corrupting the young and bringing in strange divinities,' against us they write thus: 'So-and-so does wrong by being wise and just, by understanding the gods, by understanding men, and by knowing much concerning the laws.' And you—by how much you are the wisest of us, by so much the wiser an accusation has been found against you; for Domitian wishes you to share in the charges on which Nerva and his fellows are in exile." "And they are in exile—but on what charge?" "On the greatest of present charges, as it seems to the prosecutor; for he says he has caught them leaping at his own rule, and that you stirred the men to this, having, I suppose, cut up a boy." "What," he said, "as though the rule were dissolved by a eunuch?" "It is not this," he said, "that we are falsely accused of; they say that you sacrificed a boy for the sake of the divination which the fresh entrails reveal; and there is added to the indictment something about your dress and your way of life, and the fact that there are those by whom you are worshipped. I heard this from Telesinus, a man dear to both you and me." "A godsend," he said, "if we shall meet Telesinus; for you mean, I suppose, the philosopher who held consular office under Nero." "Him I mean," he said. "But how should you come together with him? For tyrannies are more suspicious toward all men of repute, if they enter into common talk with men in such a charge as you now bear; and besides, Telesinus withdrew himself even by the edict that has now been proclaimed against all philosophy, choosing rather to flee as a philosopher than to remain as a consular." "Let the man not run risk on my account," said Apollonius, "for he runs risk enough on behalf of philosophy. But tell me this, Demetrius: what do you think I should best say or do to dispose of my own fear?" "Do not jest," he said, "nor say that you fear what you dread; for if you held these things fearful, you would have gone off in flight from the argument about them." "And would you," he said, "have fled, if you were in the danger I am in?"

"No, by Athena," he said, "if anyone were giving judgement; but where there is no trial, and where, even if I made my defence, no one would hear—or would hear, yet would kill me though I did no wrong—you would never have allowed me to choose so cold and servile a death in place of the one that befits philosophy. And to philosophy, I think, it befits to die either freeing a city, or defending one's parents and children and brothers and the rest of one's kin, or contending for friends, who to wise men are more to be chosen than kinsmen, or than those purchased through love. But to die not for true charges, but for trumped-up ones, and to furnish the tyrant occasion to seem wise—this is far heavier than if a man, like Ixion (as they say), were bent upon a wheel in mid-air. For you, I think, the very coming here will be the beginning of a contest; for you add it to a sound mind, and to the fact that you would not have ventured the road hither if you had done any wrong; but to Domitian you will not seem so—rather, that having some secret strength you are boldly confident. For that he summoned you, yet not ten days have passed, as they say, and you have already arrived for the trial, not even having heard that you are to be tried—this will give point to the accusation, for you would appear to have foreknown it; and the argument about the boy will gain force. And take care lest the matter of the Fates and Necessity, on which they say you discoursed in Ionia, come upon you, and lest, fate wishing something out of the way, you, being constrained, go toward it unaware—for it is ever the wiser course to be on guard. If you have not forgotten what passed under Nero, you know my part, I suppose, and that I am no slave toward death. But those things had some ease in them; for Nero's lyre seemed to knock away from him the bearing proper to royalty, yet otherwise it fitted not unpleasantly, since through it he often granted truces and held back from murders—me at any rate he did not kill, though I was drawing the sword upon myself, because of those words of yours and mine which I went through at the bath; and the cause of his not killing me was that his voice was then at its prime, and that he was, as he thought, laying hold of brilliant melody. But now—by what fine voice, by what lyre shall we sacrifice? For all things are unmusical and full of gall, and he could be charmed neither by himself nor by others. And yet Pindar, praising the lyre, says that it charms even the spirit of Ares and holds him from war; but this man, though he established a musical contest here and crowns the victors in public, has killed some even of them—men who, they say, sang and played at a musical contest for the last time. You must take counsel also for the men's sake, for you will destroy them too, either by seeming bold, or by saying what you will not persuade. But your safety is at your very feet: of these ships—many, as you see, there are—some will set sail for Libya, some for Egypt, some for Phoenicia and Cyprus, some straight for Sardo, some beyond Sardo; embark on one and make your way to whatever of these nations you will; for tyrannies are less harsh to men in the public eye, if they perceive that such men approve of not living in the public eye."

Damis, overcome by the words of Demetrius, said: "Be then a friend at hand to the man, and you may do him some great good; for my word is of small weight, if I should counsel him not to tumble onto upright swords, nor to fling himself against a tyranny held no easier than any. Indeed, of this very journey hither, had I not chanced upon you, I did not even know the meaning; for I follow him faster than a man follows himself, yet if you should ask me whither I sail or for what, I am ridiculous in my voyage, measuring out the Sicilian seas and the Tyrrhenian gulfs, but not knowing for what. And if I ran the risk on a forewarning, I could say to those who ask, that Apollonius is in love with death, and I sail as a rival lover; but since I know nothing, it is now my part to speak of what I do know, and I will speak of it for the man's sake. For if I should die, philosophy will not yet suffer terribly, since I am like a baggage-carrier of a noble soldier, accounted worthy of mention because I follow such a man; but if there shall be someone who kills this man—and tyrannies are well supplied to compose some things and to exalt others—a trophy, I think, will stand against philosophy, fallen in the person of the best of men that ever practised it; and there will be many an Anytus and Meletus against us, indictments now from this quarter, now from that, against those who have associated with Apollonius—how this one laughed as he attacked the tyranny, how that one urged him on as he spoke, how another gave him leave to speak, how another went off with praise of what he heard. But I say that one should die for philosophy as for temples and walls and tombs; for the safety of such things many famous men have welcomed death; but that philosophy should perish—may neither I die for that, nor anyone who loves both her and Apollonius."

To this Apollonius said that Damis, having spoken cautiously about present things, deserved pardon; for being an Assyrian and dwelling near the Medes, where men do reverence to tyrannies, he gives no great thought to freedom. "But you, Demetrius—I do not know how you will defend yourself to philosophy, laying before me fears of which, even if any seemed true, one ought rather to lead a man away than to settle him deeper into fearing, who did not even dread the things he was likely to suffer. Let the wise man die for the things you named; yet a man might die for these even if he were not wise. For to die for freedom is enjoined by law; to die for one's kin or friends or loved ones, nature has appointed; and nature and law enslave all men—nature even the willing, law the unwilling. But it is more proper to the wise to die for the things they have practised; for those things which, though no law commanded and no nature bred them, they have themselves trained in by strength and daring—for these, if anyone would do them away, let fire come upon the wise man, let the axe come, for none of these will conquer him, nor will it drive him round to any falsehood, but he will hold fast all that he knows, no less than what he has been initiated into. I know more than other men, since I know all things; but of what I know, some I know for the earnest, some for the wise, some for myself, some for the gods, and for tyrants nothing. That I have not come for senseless ends, one may consider: for concerning my own body I run no risk at all, nor could I die at the tyranny's hands, not even if I myself should wish it; but I understand that I run risk concerning the men, of whom the tyrant makes me either the beginning or the addition; and I am all that he wishes. But if I betrayed them, either by delaying or by playing the coward toward the charge, what should I seem to earnest men? Who would not justly kill me, as trifling with men to whom the things I asked from the gods had been entrusted? That I could not escape seeming a traitor, I wish to make plain. The characters of tyrannies are twofold: some kill men untried, others bring them before courts. The former resemble the hot and ready among beasts, the latter the softer and more sluggish. That both are harsh is clear to all who take for example, of the headlong and untried sort, Nero, and of the lurking sort, Tiberius; for the one destroyed men who did not even suspect it, the other men who had long been afraid. But I hold those tyrannies the harsher which make a pretence of judging and of voting something as if from the laws; for they do nothing according to them, yet they vote the very things that men who have judged nothing vote, giving the name of law to that which dwells upon anger; and the dying of men condemned takes from the wretched even the pity of the many, which one ought, like a burial-gift, to bring to those who have departed unjustly. The form of this tyranny I see to be judicial, but it seems to me to end in the untried; for those whom it has condemned before judging, it brings to trial as though not yet judged, and the man caught by the vote in the trial plainly says he has perished at the hands of one who did not judge by the laws, while the man who forsakes the trial—how could he escape having voted against himself? But for me, now that such men lie in my hands, to flee my own struggle and theirs—where on earth will it leave me to seem clean? For grant that you have said these things, and that I, persuaded as though they were rightly said, have obeyed, and that the men have been slaughtered: what prayer for fair sailing is left to such a man? Whither will he put in? To whom will he go? For he must, I think, depart from all the earth the Romans rule, and come to men who are friendly and not dwelling in the open. Such would be Phraotes and the Babylonian and the divine Iarchas and the noble Thespesion. If, then, I were to set out for the Ethiopians, what, my excellent friend, should I say to Thespesion? For if I hid these things, I should seem a lover of falsehood—nay rather a slave; and if I went to report them, I should need some such words as these: 'Thespesion, Euphrates slandered me to you for things I am not conscious of in myself; for he called me a boaster and a portent and an insulter of wisdom, of all that is Indian. But I—I am not these things, but a traitor of my own friends, and a slayer, and faithless, and such things am I; and a crown of virtue, if any, I come to be crowned with, since I have so destroyed the greatest of the houses in Rome that they shall not even be inhabited again.' You blush, Demetrius, hearing this—I see it. What then, if you should call to mind Phraotes too, and me fleeing to that man among the Indians—how should I look at him? What should I say of the things I fled? That I came noble and good before, and not faint-hearted toward death on behalf of friends; but that, when I had been with him, I cast this most divine of human things, dishonoured, to you? And Iarchas will not even ask me anything as I come, but, just as Aeolus once bade Odysseus depart from the island in dishonour, since he had used ill the gift of fair sailing, so he too, I suppose, will drive me from the hill, saying that I have done ill toward the cup of Tantalus; for they wish that he who has bent over it should share dangers with his friends too. I know how clever you are, Demetrius, to cut short all arguments, and so I think you will say to me some such thing as this: 'But do not go to these men; go to men with whom you have not yet mingled, and the flight will lie well with you, for among those who do not know you, you will more easily escape notice.' But let this argument too be tested, where it stands as to plausibility; for I think thus about it: I hold that the wise man does nothing privately or by himself, nor would even purpose anything so without witness as not to have himself at least present to himself. And whether the saying at Pytho is Apollo's own, or some man's who soundly came to know himself and therefore made it a maxim for all, the wise man, it seems to me, knowing himself and having his own mind as a comrade, would neither cower at any of the things the many cower at, nor would dare any of those things which others lay hold of not without shame; for being slaves of tyrannies, they have at times set out to betray even their dearest to them, fearing things not fearful, and not fearing the things one ought to fear. But wisdom does not allow this; for besides the Pythian inscription, it praises also the saying of Euripides, who holds that the disease which destroys men is understanding, when they reflect that they have done evil deeds. For this it was, I suppose, that pictured for Orestes the shapes of the Eumenides, when he raged over his mother; for the mind is lord of what is to be done, but understanding is lord of what has seemed good to the mind. If, then, the mind chooses good things, understanding sends the man at once into all temples, all streets, all sacred precincts, all the haunts of men, applauding and singing; and it will chant over him even as he sleeps, setting beside him a chorus of good omen out of the people of dreams. But if the mind's purpose slips into base things, understanding does not allow the man to send a straight glance to any human being, nor a free word from his tongue; it drives him from temples and from prayer, nor does it suffer him to lift his hand to the images, but checks him as he lifts it, as the laws check those who raise their hands against others; and it sets such men apart from every company, and frightens them as they sleep; and what they see by day, and what they think they hear or say, it makes for them dreamlike and empty as wind, while the dim and phantom-like flutterings it makes for them, by their fear, true now and plausible. That understanding, then, will convict me, coming as I do to men who know me and to men who do not, if I should turn traitor to the men, has, I think, been clearly shown me, and as truth makes manifest. But I will not betray even myself; I will contend against the tyrant, adding the word of noble Homer: 'Enyalius is shared in common.'"

By these words Damis says that he himself was so disposed as to recover impulse and courage, and that Demetrius did not despair of the man, but praising him and agreeing with what he said, called the blessing of the gods upon him for that for which he was in danger, and upon philosophy herself, for whose sake he endured these things; and he offered to lead them to where he chanced to be lodging. But Apollonius declined this, saying that it was now late afternoon, and that about the lighting of the lamps the ships must set out for the Roman harbour, for this was the custom for these vessels. "We will dine together," he said, "when my affairs go well; for now some charge might be got up against you, as having dined with the emperor's enemy; and do not even come with us to the harbour, lest your having shared talk with me also slander you for secret counsels." Demetrius gave way; and embracing them he went off, turning about and wiping away his tears. But Apollonius, looking at Damis, said: "If you are stout-hearted, and have the courage that I have, let us both go to the ship; but if you are faint-hearted, it is time for you to remain here, for you will be with Demetrius this while—a man dear to both you and me." Damis took him up: "And what should I think myself," he said, "if, after such things as you have discoursed today about friends and the sharing of dangers that come upon them, I, deaf to the argument, should flee you and abandon your peril—I, who have never before seemed base on your behalf?" "You speak rightly," he said, "and let us go—I as I am, but you must change yourself into a more common guise, and neither wear your hair as you do now, but exchange this linen for that cloak there, and put off this footwear. Why this is my wish, I must explain. It is better to endure more before the trial; for I do not wish you to share these things with me, being seized, and you would be seized if your dress were brought into suspicion. Rather, follow me and be present at what I do as one not practising philosophy, but otherwise a friend of mine." This was the reason for Damis's changing the Pythagorean dress; for he says that he gave it up not as being base, nor out of any change of mind, but in praise of the art he assumed for the advantage of the moment.

Sailing from Dicaearchia, on the third day they put in at the mouths of the Tiber, from which the voyage up to Rome is of measured length. The imperial sword was then in the hands of Aelian; and this man had long admired Apollonius, having once been with him in Egypt, and openly he said nothing on his behalf to Domitian, for the office did not allow it—how could he praise to him a man held to be hateful to the emperor, or excuse him as a friend of his own?—but with all the secret arts by which one may defend a man, he used them all on his behalf. Even during the time before Apollonius arrived, while he was being slandered, Aelian said: "Sire, the sophists are a light-tongued tribe, and their art is a thing of boasting; and since they reap no good from being alive, they crave death, and do not wait for its coming of itself, but draw death upon themselves, challenging those who hold swords. This, I think, Nero too reflected on, that he might not be led by Demetrius to kill him; for when he perceived that the man courted death, he remitted death to him not out of pardon, but out of contempt for the killing. And Musonius the Tyrrhenian, who opposed the rule in many things, he confined to the island called Gyara; and so much weaker are the Greeks than these sophists, that then they sailed there to be with him, and now they sail to see the spring; for on that island, which was waterless before, a spring became Musonius's discovery, which the Greeks celebrate as they do the horse's spring on Helicon."

With these things Aelian put off the emperor before Apollonius arrived; but when he had come, he set to wiser stratagems. He ordered that he be seized and brought up to him; and when the framer of the accusation reviled Apollonius as a sorcerer and one mighty in his art, Aelian said: "Keep yourself and his case for the imperial court." But Apollonius said: "If I am a sorcerer, how am I being tried? And if I am being tried, how am I a sorcerer?—unless indeed he says that the power of false accusation is so strong as not to be overcome even by sorcerers." When the accuser wished to say something still more ignorant, Aelian cut him off and said: "Leave me the time before the trial; for I will make trial of the sophist's mind in private and not before you, and if he admits that he does wrong, the arguments in court will be cut short for him and you will depart in peace; but if he denies it, the emperor will judge." Then, going forward into the secret court, in which great matters are both examined and kept silent, he said: "Withdraw from here, and let no one listen, for this is the emperor's pleasure."

When they were by themselves, he said: "I, Apollonius, was a stripling at the time when the emperor's father came to Egypt to sacrifice to the gods and to consult you about his own affairs; and the emperor was already leading me as a tribune, since I knew matters of war; and you were so kindly disposed toward me, that while the emperor was giving audience to the cities, you took me aside in private and bade me tell of what country I was, and what my name, and how I stood with my father; and you foretold me also this office, which to the many seems the greatest, and greater than all human things together, but to me appears a crowd and a wretchedness. For I am the guardian of a harsh tyranny, and if I fail it, I dread what comes from the gods. How I am well-disposed toward you, I have shown; for he who said—from what I have somewhere said—that you would never cease loving a man as long as the memory of those things remained: my willingness to question you in private about what the accuser has framed has become no mean device for my converse with you, that you may take heart at the things that lie with me, and may foreknow the things that lie with the emperor. What he will vote concerning you, I do not know; but he is disposed like those who desire to condemn, yet are ashamed to do so on charges not true, and he makes you a pretext for the destruction of men of consular rank; for he wishes what he ought not, but does it, setting it in order to the appearance of justice. I too, then, must have my fiction and my onset against you; for if he suspects me of slackening, I do not know which of us two will perish the sooner."

To this Apollonius replied: "Since we discourse soundly, and you have said to me all that your heart holds, and it is just that I too should speak to you; and since you philosophize about your own affairs, as do those who have associated much with me, and—by Zeus—are so humanely disposed toward us as to think that you share my danger, I will tell you my own mind. For me it was possible to flee you all into many parts of the earth that do not hearken to you, and to come to men wise—and wiser than I—and to serve the gods with right reason, going among the ways of men dearer to the gods than those here, among whom there is neither information laid nor any indictment, for by the very fact of neither doing wrong nor suffering wrong they have no need of courts. But fearing to incur the charge of a traitor, if I myself should flee the defence, and the men who are in danger through me should perish, I have come to make my defence. Tell me, then, the things I must defend myself against."

"The kinds of the indictment," he said, "are various and many; for they slander your dress and the rest of your manner of life, and the fact that there are those by whom you are worshipped, and the oracle you once gave at Ephesus about the plague; and they say you have spoken against the emperor—some things secretly, some openly, and some as one who has heard the gods. The charge least credible to me—for I know that you do not even endure the blood of sacrifices—but most credible as it is slandered to the emperor, is this: they say that you went into the country to Nerva and cut up for him an Arcadian boy, sacrificing against the emperor, and that you raised him up by these rites; and that this was done by night, when the month was already waning. This accusation, since it is far the greater, let us hold none other beside it; for he who lays hold of your dress and your way of life and your foreknowledge tends, I suppose, to this very point, and says that these very things gave you both your lawlessness against him and your boldness for the sacrifice. You must therefore have your defence prepared concerning these matters; and let your speech not be one that despises the emperor." And Apollonius said: "Let your proof that I do not despise him be that I have come for the sake of defence; and if my affairs stood so boldly that I were lifted above tyrannies, yet I have submitted myself to you, being such as you are and loving me. For to seem base to an enemy is no terrible thing, since enemies hate not for what a man is publicly slandered for, but for what privately he has given offence in; but to take from a friend the charge of seeming base—this is heavier than all the enemy's charges together; for one could not escape being hateful to those friends as well, for the things for which one was base."

It seemed to Aelian that he spoke well; and exhorting him to take heart, he laid hold of himself, so that the man should not be dismayed, "not even if a Gorgon's head were raised against him." So, calling those appointed to such tasks, he said: "I bid you keep this man fast, until the emperor learns that he has come and is saying what he has said." And he seemed like men very angry. Then, going into the palace, he did the things proper to his office. Here Damis records a deed both like and unlike that done in former times at Athens to Aristeides; for they drove out Aristeides with the ostracon on the score of his virtue, and as he was already outside the wall, one of the rustics came up to him and begged him to write something for him on the ostracon against Aristeides—the man knowing neither Aristeides nor even how to write, but only envy at justice; but here a tribune, of those who knew Apollonius very well, addressing him, asked insolently for what he was in danger; and when he said he did not know, "But I," he said, "know; for your being worshipped by men has slandered you as one held worthy of equal honour with the gods." "And who," said Apollonius, "is it that worshipped me?" "I," he said, "at Ephesus, while still a boy, when you healed us of the plague." "It was well done," he said, "both for you and for the city of the Ephesians that was saved." "For these things, then," he said, "I have also prepared a defence for you, which will free you of the charge; for let us go outside the wall, and if I strike off your neck with the sword, the charge is dissolved and you are acquitted; but if you confound me and I let go the sword, then you must needs be held divine and tried as though on true charges." So much more boorish was this man than the one who drove out Aristeides; and he said this chewing and with laughter, while Apollonius, as one who had not heard, talked with Damis about the Delta, where they say the Nile divides.

When Aelian, calling him, bade him dwell in the free prison until the emperor should have leisure—"for he wishes to be with you in private first"—Apollonius left the court, and entering the prison said: "Let us talk, Damis, with those here; for what else should one do for the time during which the tyrant will discourse with me about his wants?" "They will think us babblers," he said, "if we drive them off from the defences they are preparing; and besides, it is out of place to walk among men so faint-hearted." "And yet these most of all," he said, "have need of one to talk with and to tend them; for if you should call to mind the verses of Homer in which Homer says that Helen poured the Egyptian drugs into the bowl, that the griefs of the soul might be steeped away, I think Helen, having learned Egyptian words, chanted them over the faint-hearted into the bowl, healing them by word mingled with wine." "It is likely," he said, "if indeed she came to Egypt and conversed with Proteus, or, as Homer thinks, was with Polydamna the wife of Thon. But for now let these men be put off, for I wish to ask you something." "I know what you will ask me," he said; "for you wish to hear from me the words that passed between me and the man, and what he said, and whether he was terrible or mild." And he went through them all. Damis, doing him reverence, said: "I do not disbelieve, then, that Leucothea once gave Odysseus her veil after the wreck of his ship, when, having fallen from it, he measured the sea with his own hands; for as we too have embarked on things desperate and dreadful, some god, I think, holds his hand over us, that we may not fall from all safety." Apollonius, rebuking the speech, said: "Whither will you stretch on, fearing these things, and not yet knowing that wisdom dismays all things that understand her, but is herself dismayed by nothing?" "But we," he said, "have come to one who understands nothing, and who not only is not dismayed at us, but does not even think there is anything that will dismay him." "Do you understand, then, Damis," he said, "that he is puffed up and senseless?" "I understand—how should I not?" he said. "Then by you too," he said, "the tyrant must be the more despised, by so much as you know him."

As they were talking thus, a man came up—a Cilician, I think—and said: "I, sirs, am in danger for my wealth." And Apollonius said: "If you are rich from sources not lawful—such as robbery or poisons, those that are man-slaying, or by disturbing tombs, such as belong to the kings of old, which are full of gold and treasure—you ought not only to be tried, but to perish; for these things are wealth indeed, but ill-spoken-of and cruel. But if you are rich by inheritance, or by trade that is free and not huckstering, who is so harsh as to take from you, under the form of law, what you have lawfully gained?" "What I have," he said, "is from many kinsmen, and has come into my single house, mine; and I use it neither as another's, for it is mine, nor as mine alone, for it is common to me with good men. But the informers slander us as having gained our wealth to no good end for the tyranny; for if I attempted any innovation, it would be a provision for the road, they say, and for whomever I should attach myself to, my means would be no small weight. Charges have already been divined against us: that all wealth beyond measure breeds insolence; that he who is above the many sets his neck stiff and rouses his spirit, and will not be persuaded by the laws, and all but strikes on the cheek the governors who come to the provinces, making them slaves by money. I, when I was a stripling, before I had gained a substance of a hundred talents, held everything a thing to laugh at, and feared little for my possessions; but when five hundred talents came to me on a single day, by the death of my father's uncle to me, my mind so changed as horse-breakers change a horse from an untaught and unruly temper. As my wealth increased, bringing me gains by land and sea, I was so enslaved by the fear about it, that I had to bale out of my substance: part to the informers, whom one had to soften with this sop; part to the governors, that I might have strength against those who plotted against me; part to my kinsmen, that they might not envy my wealth; part to my slaves, that they might not grow worse, complaining of neglect; and there was pastured for me a brilliant herd of friends, who, foreseeing things for me, partly did them themselves and partly forewarned me. But for all that—having so fenced my wealth, having so safely walled it in—we are now in danger over it, and it is not yet clear even whether we shall stay unharmed in our body." And Apollonius said: "Take heart; for you have your wealth as a surety for your body; for through it you are bound, but it will release you when you are set free—not only from this prison, but from the tending of informers and slaves, to whom you were subject because of it."

When another in his turn said that he was on trial because, while sacrificing at Tarentum, where he held office, he had not added to the public prayers that Domitian was the son of Athena, Apollonius said: "You thought, I suppose, that Athena could not bear a child, being a virgin for all time; but you did not know, it seems, that this goddess once bore a serpent to the Athenians."

Another was imprisoned on a charge of this sort: having a piece of land in Acarnania near the mouths of the Achelous, he was sailing round the Echinades in a little skiff; and having examined one of them, which now joined the mainland, he planted it with seasonable trees and sweet-wined vines, and made for himself a sufficient dwelling for his body upon it—for there was even water brought from the mainland enough for the island. From this an indictment arose: that this Acarnanian was not pure, but, conscious of unbearable deeds, withdrew and departed from the rest of the earth as defiled for him, and had chosen for himself the release of Alcmaeon the son of Amphiaraus—through which, after his mother, he dwelt at the mouths of the Achelous—if not for the like deeds, yet perhaps for cruel ones, and not far from those. But he said it was not so, but that out of love for a quiet life he had dwelt there, and that it had so fallen out to involve him in lawsuits, on account of which he was even imprisoned.

When more men within came to Apollonius, lamenting such things—for there were, I suppose, some fifty in that prison; and some of them were sick, some lay faint-hearted, some held out against death, some called upon their children and parents and their marriages—he said: "Damis, these men seem to me to need the drug I mentioned at the outset. Whether, then, it be Egyptian, or grow in all the earth, wisdom cutting its roots from her own gardens, let us add some of it to these wretched men, lest their own judgement destroy them before the event." "Let us add it," said Damis, "for they seem to need it." So Apollonius, calling them together, said: "Men who share this roof with me, I pity you, that you are destroyed by yourselves, not yet knowing whether the accusation will destroy you; for you seem to me, by killing yourselves before the death that, as you think, would be voted against you, to take courage at what you dread, and to dread what you should take courage at. Yet this is not fitting; rather, calling to mind the saying of Archilochus of Paros, who, naming endurance under griefs 'patience,' says that patience is the very discovery of the gods—you must bear up against these cruel things, as those who by skill rise above the surge, when the wave stands over the ship, and must not hold these things hard, to which you have come unwilling, and I willing. For if you agree with the charges, the day is more to be lamented on which your reasoning, setting out toward unjust and cruel deeds, undid you; but if neither you will say that you dwelt on the island in the Achelous for the reasons the accuser names, nor you that you set your wealth as a reserve against the kingship, nor you that you willingly took from the governor the seeming reverence due to Athena, nor each of you, who are in danger for the things for which you have come, will say that these are true—what means this lamentation over things that are not? For by so much as you call upon your nearest, by so much ought you the rather to be strong; for those things are the prizes, I suppose, of this patience. Or do you say that to be imprisoned here, and to live in prison, is terrible? Or is it the beginning of what you think you will suffer? Or is it of itself a punishment, even if you suffer nothing through it? But I, knowing human nature, will teach you an argument in no way like the food of physicians; for it both puts in strength and will not suffer a man to die. We men are in a prison this whole time which is called life; for this soul, bound into a perishable body, endures much, and is slave to all the things that come upon man. And those who first contrived houses seem to me not to have known that they were casting another prison about themselves; for indeed all those who dwell in palaces, safely furnished within them, we should hold rather bound than those whom they themselves will bind. And as I reflect, cities and walls seem to me to be common prisons, so that men are bound as they buy in the market, bound as they sit in assembly, and again as they watch the spectacles and send the processions. And the Scythians who wander in wagons are bound no less than we, for the Ister and the Thermodon and the Tanais set bounds to them—rivers not easy to cross unless they stand still from the frost—and they have houses upon their wagons, and they are carried, yet cowering within them. And, if the argument is not childish, they say that even Ocean was cast about the earth for the sake of binding. Come, poets—for these things are yours—and chant to these faint-hearted men, how Cronus was once bound by the counsels of Zeus, and Ares, the most warlike, was bound in heaven first by Hephaestus, and on earth by the sons of Aloeus. Reflecting on these things, and on many of the wise and blessed men whom wanton peoples bound and tyrannies insulted, let us accept these things too, that we may not fall short of those who accepted them." So did his words change the men in prison, that most of them touched food and departed from their tears, and came to the hope of suffering nothing at all, being with such a man.

On the next day he was discoursing, straining toward the same purpose, when there was sent in as a listener to his discourses one let down by Domitian. His appearance seemed downcast, as of one in some great danger, as he professed; and his tongue was not unstudied, like those of the informers who have gathered eight or ten phrases. But Apollonius, understanding the trick, discoursed of things that gave the man no opening; for he spoke to them of rivers and mountains, and went through beasts and trees, with which the others were entertained, but the man accomplished nothing. And when he tried to lead him into reviling the tyrant, "My good man," he said, "say what you will, for you shall not be slandered by me; but what I have to find fault with in the emperor, I will say to himself."

There were other episodes too in this prison—some contrived, some happening as they fell out, not yet great, nor worth my earnest care; but Damis, I think, that he might not leave any of them out, made mention of them. The matter worth telling is this: it was evening, and the man had now been confined five days, when one came into the prison, Greek in speech, and said: "Where is the Tyanean?" And taking him aside, "Tomorrow," he said, "the emperor will discourse with you"; and he hinted that he had heard this from Aelian. "I understand the secret," said Apollonius, "for only he knows it." "And to the keeper of the prison it has been ordered," he said, "to be everything you wish, friendly to you." "You do well," he said; "but I lead the same life here and outside; for I discourse on whatever comes to hand, and have need of nothing." "Not even of one to counsel you, Apollonius," he said, "how you shall discourse with the emperor?" "By Zeus, yes," he said, "if he persuade me not to flatter." "But what if he should persuade you not to despise and not to scorn the man?" he said. "He will counsel best," he said, "and as I have persuaded myself." "For these things I have come," he said, "and I rejoice to see you fitly prepared; but you must be prepared also against the emperor's voice and against the harshness of his countenance, for he speaks heavily even when he discourses mildly, and his brow lies over the look of his eye, and his cheek is full of gall—for this most of all it shows." "Let us not be dismayed at these things, Tyanean—they are rather of his nature and always the same." And Apollonius said: "Yet Odysseus, going into the cave of Polyphemus, neither having heard before how huge he was, nor what he feeds on, nor how his voice thunders, both took courage against him—though at first afraid—and left the cave a man indeed; but for me it is enough to come out, having saved myself and the companions for whom I am in danger." Having discoursed thus with the man who had come, and reported it to Damis, he slept.

About dawn a clerk of the imperial trials came and said: "The emperor bids you, Apollonius, come to the court about the time when the market is full—not yet to make your defence, but he wishes to see you, whatever you are, and to be with you alone." "What then," he said, "do you discourse with me about these things? For are you not Apollonius?" "By Zeus," said the Tyanean, "I am." "To whom, then," he said, "shall I say this?" "To those who will lead me," he said; "for I must go forth as from a prison." "It has been ordered," he said, "to those others first; and I too will come at the proper time; but now I have come to give the order, for these things were ordered late in the evening."

So he went off, and Apollonius, having rested himself on the couch, said: "I have need of sleep, Damis, for the night has been hard for me, wishing to recall the things I once heard from Phraotes." "And yet," he said, "you ought rather to be awake and to set yourself in order for the thing announced, since it is so great." "And how should I set myself in order," he said, "not even knowing what he will ask?" "Will you then improvise," he said, "about your life?" "By Zeus," he said, "Damis, for I use it itself as improvisation. But what I recalled of Phraotes I wish to go through with you, for it will seem useful to present matters, to you too. The lions which men tame, Phraotes bids one neither strike—for they bear malice if struck—nor fondle, for from this they grow arrogant; but rather, stroking them with a threat, to bring them into manageable tempers. This he said not of lions—for we were not earnest about the handling of beasts—but giving a rein for tyrants, by using which he held that one would not fall away from due measure." "This argument," he said, "is most well said toward the tempers of tyrants; but there is also in Aesop a certain lion, the one in the cave; and Aesop says that he was not sick, but seemed so, and laid hold of the beasts that came to him, but the fox said: 'What shall we make of this one, from whom no one comes back, nor is any footprint of those that go forth shown?'" And Apollonius said: "But I should have held the fox wiser, if, having gone in, she had not been caught, but had come out of the cave, showing her own footprints."

Having said this, he snatched a very little sleep, only so much as came upon his eyes; and when day came, having prayed to the Sun, as is natural in a prison, he discoursed with those who came to him on whatever they asked; and so, when the market was full, the clerk came, bidding him be at the doors. "Let us not be summoned too late," he said. And saying "Let us go," he went forth with eagerness. As he went, four spearmen followed him, keeping farther off than those who accompany for the sake of guard; and Damis followed too, afraid, yet like one in thought. All men looked toward Apollonius, for his very dress drew their gaze, and the dismay about his form seemed divine; and the very fact that he came to be in danger on behalf of men made even those who had before maligned him friendly then. Standing by the palace and seeing some tended and some tending, as men went in and out with a clatter, he said: "This seems to me, Damis, like a bath; for I see those outside hastening in, and those inside out, and some resemble men who have bathed, others the unbathed." This saying I bid be kept inviolate, and not ascribed to this man or that, since it is so much Apollonius's that it is even written up for him in a letter. Seeing a very old man eager to rule, and for this very reason ruled and tending this emperor, he said: "Damis, not even Sophocles has yet persuaded the raging and savage master to depart." "Whom we ourselves too, Apollonius, have chosen," he said; "for it is for this that we stand at such doors." "You seem to me, Damis," he said, "to hold that Aeacus too, who is said to be in Hades, is the warden of these gates; for you are like a dead man." "Not a dead man," he said, "but one about to die." And Apollonius said: "You seem to me, Damis, to be ill-fitted toward death, though you have been with me a long time, philosophizing from a stripling; I thought you were prepared for it, and knew all my tactics; for as those who fight and bear arms need not courage only, but order too, that interprets the moments of battle, so those who pursue philosophy must take care for the moments in which they will die, that they may be borne to them not without order, nor death-courting, but with the best choice. That I have chosen to die best and at the moment befitting philosophy, if anyone should wish to kill me, I have defended both to others in your presence, and you yourself I have given up teaching."

So far for these things. But when the emperor had leisure, having thrust aside all that was at his feet, to come to talk with the man, the officers of such matters led him into the palace, not allowing Damis to follow him in. The emperor, wearing a wreath of olive, had just been sacrificing to Athena in the court of Adonis—and the court bloomed with gardens of flowers, such as the Assyrians make for Adonis, planting them under their own roofs for the mysteries. Being still by the rites, he turned about, and, dismayed by the form of the man, said: "Aelian, you have brought me a daemon." But Apollonius, not at all dismayed, and laying hold of what he had heard, said: "I thought, sire, that Athena had cared for you in the manner she once cared for Diomedes at Troy; for she took from the eyes of Diomedes the mist by which men see worse, and gave him to distinguish gods and men. But you the goddess has not yet purified with this purification, sire; though surely she ought, that you might see Athena herself better, and not rank men among the shapes of daemons." "And you, philosopher," he said, "when did you purify yourself of this mist?" "Long ago," he said, "and ever since I have practised philosophy." "How then," he said, "did you account men most hostile to me to be gods?" "And what war," he said, "is there for you with Iarchas, or with Phraotes among the Indians, whom alone of men I hold to be gods and worthy of this name?" "Do not lead me off to the Indians," he said; "but speak about your dearest Nerva and those who share his charge." "Shall I defend him," he said, "or—" "Do not defend him," he said; "for he is caught doing wrong; but teach me this—not that you yourself do wrong, sharing in such things with him." "If you wish to hear what I am conscious of," he said, "hear it; for why should I hide the truth?" The emperor thought he was to hear brilliant secrets, and that all things would tend to the destruction of the men; but Apollonius, seeing him uplifted by this opinion,

said: "I know Nerva to be the most temperate of men, and the gentlest, and most suited to you, and a good ruler, but so cautious toward the weight of affairs that he even dreads honours. As for those about him—Rufus, I suppose, and Orfitus you mean—these men too are temperate, so far as I know, and slandered toward wealth, but sluggish to do even what is permitted, and would neither themselves conceive of innovations, nor join with another who had conceived them." The emperor, swelling with rage at what he heard, said: "So you have caught me out as an informer against them, that those whom I have found the foulest of men and leaping upon my own, you should say are good and sluggish? For I think those men too, being questioned about you, would say neither that you are a sorcerer, nor a reckless man, nor a boaster, nor a money-lover, nor one who thinks himself above the laws. So, you foul heads, you have leagued yourselves in wickedness. The accusation will convict everything; for I know no less of all your oaths, and for what, and when, and what you sacrificed, than if I had been present and shared in it." But Apollonius, not dismayed even at this, said: "It is shameful, sire, and not according to the laws, either to judge of what you have been persuaded, or to be persuaded of what you have not judged. But if it is so, allow me to begin my defence from this point: you think ill of me, sire, and wrong me more than the informer; for what he said he would teach you, you are persuaded of before hearing it." "Begin your defence from where you will," he said; "but I know both where I shall end, and from what point it is now fitting to begin."

From this point began the outrage against the man: he cut off his beard and his hair, and bound him among the worst malefactors. As to the shearing, "Sire," he said, "I did not know I was in danger about my hair; but as to the bonds—if you hold me a sorcerer, how will you bind me? And if you bind me, how will you say I am a sorcerer?" "And I will not loose you," he said, "until you become water, or some beast, or a tree." "These things," he said, "not even if I could would I become, that I might never betray men who are in danger by no justice; but being such as I am, I will submit myself to all you do about this body, until I have defended the men." "And for you," he said, "who will be the defender?" "Time," he said, "and the breath of the gods, and the love of wisdom, with which I dwell."

This is the preliminary contest of the defence, which took place between him and Domitian in private, such as Damis sets down. But those who have put these matters together maliciously say that he first made his defence, and was bound afterward, when indeed he was shorn; and they have fabricated a certain letter, composed in the Ionic manner, but unpleasant in its length, in which they would have Apollonius become a suppliant of Domitian, begging release from his bonds. But Apollonius renders his own will in the Ionic manner; yet a letter composed in the Ionic dialect I have never met with of Apollonius's, though I have collected very many of his; nor have I ever found long-windedness in the man in a letter, for they are all short and, as it were, from a Spartan despatch-staff. And besides, he left the court having won his case; and how then could he ever have been bound after the acquitting vote? But not yet the things in the court: let the matters concerning the shearing, and what he discoursed, be told first, for they are worth earnest attention.

The man having been bound two days, someone came to the prison saying that he had bought the right to approach him, and that he had come as a counsellor of his safety. This man was a Syracusan, the mind and tongue of Domitian, and was let down like the former one, but for more plausible ends. For the first came from afar, but this one, taking hold of present things, said: "O gods, who would have thought that Apollonius would be bound?" "He who bound me," he said; "for he would not, unless he had thought it, have bound me." "And who would ever have thought the ambrosial locks would be cut off?" "I," he said, "who wore them." "And how do you bear these things?" "As is fitting," he said, "for one who came to them neither willingly nor unwillingly." "And how does your leg hold out?" he said. "I do not know," he said, "for my mind is on other things." "And yet," he said, "the mind is with the part that pains." "Not at all," he said; "for the mind, at least in such a man, will either not feel pain, or will make the pain cease." "And what does the mind reflect upon?" "On this very thing," he said, "of not reflecting upon these matters." Again, calling up the locks and turning the talk to them, "You have profited, young man," he said, "by not being one of the Achaeans at Troy; for very much, I think, you would have lamented the locks of Achilles cut for Patroclus—if indeed they were cut—and would have fainted over them; for you who say you pity mine, which were grey and rough with neglect, what would you not have felt over those, dressed and golden?" Now this was said with a plot, that he might learn for what he grieved, and—by Zeus—whether he reviled the emperor for what he had suffered; but, cut short by what he heard, he said: "You are slandered to the emperor on many counts, and most of all on those for which Nerva and his party are in exile as wrongdoers; for some slanders have come to him also about the arguments in Ionia, which you spoke against him and hatefully; but he despises these, they say, since he is provoked toward greater things—though the man who slandered even those has gone high in repute." "What an Olympic victor you have described," he said, "if he says he lays hold of repute by being strong in slanders! And I understand that it is Euphrates, whom I know to be doing everything against me; and I have been wronged by him in other and greater things; for once, perceiving that I was about to go to the Naked Sages in Ethiopia, he set himself to slander me to them, and had I not understood the plot, I should perhaps have gone away without even seeing the men." The Syracusan, marvelling at the speech, said: "Then do you hold it greater than being slandered to the emperor, that you should seem to the Naked Sages not a good man, by the things Euphrates let down?" "By Zeus," he said; "for there I went to learn, but here I have come for the sake of teaching." "Teaching what?" he said. "That I am a noble and good man," he said; "but this the emperor does not yet know." "But it is possible," he said, "to set your own affairs well, by teaching him those things which, had you said them before coming here, you would not even have been bound." Understanding, then, that the Syracusan was driving him into talk like the emperor's, and thought that, weary of his bonds, he would say something false against the men, "My good man," he said, "if, having told Domitian the truth, I was bound, what shall I suffer if I do not tell the truth? For to him the truth seems worthy of bonds, but to me the falsehood does."

The Syracusan, admiring him as one who out-philosophized, for he went off saying just this, departed from the prison; and Apollonius, looking at Damis, said: "Do you understand this Python?" "I understand," he said, "that he lurked and tried to draw you on; but what your 'Python' means to you, and what the sense of the name is, I do not know." "There was," he said, "a Python the Byzantine, a clever orator, they say, at persuading to evil; he, going as ambassador for Philip the son of Amyntas to the Greeks, about their enslavement, let the others be, but among the Athenians themselves—at the very time when they were strongest in oratory—declared that Philip was being wronged by them, and that the Athenians did dreadful things in freeing what was Greek. Python, flowing on copiously with these things, as they say—but Demosthenes of Paeania, alone contradicting him as he played the bold, set down the withstanding of him among his own labours. And I would never call my not being drawn into the things this man wished a labour of mine, but I said that he did the same as Python, since he came as the hireling of a tyrant and a counsellor of base things."

Apollonius, then, discoursed many such things; but Damis says that he himself was at a loss about present matters, and saw no release of them, save such as have come to some, by their prayers, even from far harder straits, from the gods. A little before noon: "Tyanean,"—for he greatly rejoiced at this address—"what shall we suffer?" "What we have suffered," he said, "but nothing beyond, nor will anyone kill us." "And who," he said, "is so invulnerable? When will you be loosed?" "As far as it lies with the judge," he said, "today; but as far as it lies with me, this moment." And saying this he drew his leg out of the fetter, and said to Damis: "I have given you a proof of my own freedom—take heart." Then first, Damis says, he truly understood the nature of Apollonius, that it was divine and more than human; for without sacrificing—how, in a prison?—and without praying anything, or saying anything, he laughed at the fetter, and fitting his leg back again did the part of a prisoner.

The simpler sort of men refer these things to sorcerers; and they suffer this in many human affairs. For athletes need the art, and all contestants need it, through their craving to win; and it helps them nothing to victory, but the things they win by chance, these wretches, robbing themselves of them, reckon to this art; nor do even those of them who lose disbelieve it, for "if I had sacrificed this, and burned that incense, victory would not have escaped me"—such things they say and such they think. And the art frequents the doors of merchants too in the same way; for we should find these also reckoning the lucky strokes of trade to the sorcerer, and the unlucky to their own stinginess, and to not having sacrificed as much as they ought. And the art fastens most upon lovers; for being sick with so easily-misled a sickness as to discuss it even with old wives, they do nothing wonderful, I think, in going to these sophists and listening to such things from them—men who give them to carry a love-charm and stones, some from the secrets of the earth, some from the moon and stars, and all the spices that India cultivates; and brilliant sums of money they exact of them for these things, but they do nothing along with them. For if, the loved ones having felt something toward the lovers, or been led on by gifts, the love affair goes forward, the art is hymned as sufficient for all; but if the attempt fails, the reference is to what was left out—that one did not burn this incense, or sacrifice, or melt that—and this is great and impossible. The ways, then, by which they make portents of signs in the sky and many other things, and which have been written up by certain men who laughed broadly at the art—let it be declared by me too that the young should not even associate with those men, that they may not be accustomed even to jest at such things. Enough of this digression of the argument; for why should I lay hold further of a thing that is slandered both by nature and by law?

When Apollonius had shown himself to Damis and discoursed further, someone stood by about noon, signifying by word of mouth thus much: "The emperor releases you, Apollonius, from these bonds, on Aelian's counsel, and grants you to dwell in the free prison until the defence shall be; and you will perhaps make your defence on the fifth day." "Who then," he said, "will remove me hence?" "I," he said, "and follow me." And the men in the free prison, seeing him, all embraced him, as though he had returned when they did not even think it. For such longing as children have toward a father who sets himself to admonitions pleasant and measured to them, or who interprets the things of their time of life, the same these men had toward Apollonius, and acknowledged it; and he did not cease ever counselling them something.

Calling Damis the next day, he said: "For me the matters of the defence will be on the appointed day; but you, go the road to Dicaearchia—for it is better to go on foot—and when you have greeted Demetrius, turn about by the sea where lies the island of Calypso, for there you will see me appear." "Alive," said Damis, "or what?" Apollonius, laughing, said: "As I think, alive; but as you think, restored to life." Damis says that he went off unwilling, neither despairing as of one to perish, nor of good hope as of one who would not perish; and that on the third day he came to Dicaearchia, and heard also about the storm which arose in those days—that a rainy wind, bursting upon the sea, sank some of the ships sailing there, and drove others off to Sicily and the strait—and that he understood then for what reason Apollonius had bidden him travel on foot.

What followed upon this Damis records from what he says he heard Apollonius tell both to Demetrius and to himself. A stripling from Messene in Arcadia, conspicuous for his beauty, came to Rome, and many loved him, but Domitian beyond all; and they loved him so, that they did not even fear to rival the emperor in love. But the stripling was temperate and spared his own beauty. Now if he had despised gold, or money, or horses, or such baits as draw on some loved ones, let us not praise him, for so a man ought to be prepared; but he, judged worthy of greater things than all together that the eyes of kings have drawn to themselves, did not hold himself worthy of what he was held worthy of. He was therefore bound, for this seemed good to his lover. And coming up to Apollonius, he seemed to wish to say something, but, having modesty as a counsellor of silence, did not yet take heart. So Apollonius, understanding, said: "You, not even at an age for wrongdoing, have been shut up, like us clever ones." "And I shall die too," he said; "for to be temperate is rated at death by the laws of our day." "And by those of Theseus's day too," he said; "for Hippolytus his own father destroyed for temperance." "And me too," he said, "my father has destroyed; for being an Arcadian from Messene, he did not have me taught the things of the Greeks, but sent me here to learn legal customs, and the emperor looked ill upon me as I came for these things." But Apollonius, as though not understanding what he said, said: "Tell me, stripling, the emperor does not, surely, hold you to be grey-eyed—though you are black-eyed, as I see—or crooked-nosed, though you have it squared like the well-trained Hermae, or your hair to be other than it is? But it is, I think, sun-touched and gleaming faintly; and your mouth too is so measured as to befit both silence and speech, and your neck so free and high-minded. What other of these things, then, will the emperor hold you to be, since you say you were looked upon ill by him?" "This very thing has destroyed me," he said; "for being led on to love me, he spares not the things he praises, but purposes to dishonour me, like those who love women." Apollonius, admiring him, passed over the question of what he thought of lying together, and whether this were shameful or not, and such questions, since he saw the Arcadian blushing and speaking with decorum; and he asked him thus: "Do you possess any slaves in Arcadia?" "By Zeus," he said, "many." "Of these, then," he said, "what do you hold yourself?" "Their master," he said, "for the laws make me so." "And ought slaves," he said, "to obey their masters, or to refuse what seems good to the lords of their body?" The youth, reflecting into what an answer he was being led round, said: "That the strength of tyrants is unconquerable and harsh, I know; for it is for this very reason that they wish to lord it over free men; but of my own body I am master, and will keep it inviolate." "How?" he said; "for the talk is of a lover who revels with a sword against your bloom." "I will rather offer my throat," he said, "for it is that the sword needs." Apollonius, praising him, said: "I see you are an Arcadian indeed." And of this stripling he makes mention also in a letter, and describes him far more pleasantly than I do here, praising his temperance; and to the man to whom he writes he says that this stripling did not even die at the tyrant's hands, but, marvelled at for his strength, sailed off to Malea, more to be envied among the Arcadians than those who win at the endurance of the lash among the Lacedaemonians.