Book 8

Let us go into the court to hear the man make his defence against the charge; for the sun is already rising, and the entrance to it is opened to men of repute. And those who dwell with the emperor say that he had not even touched food, for he was poring, I think, over the matters of the trial; and he held a book ready in his hand, partly in anger, partly less so. One must figure him as one vexed at the laws, since they have brought courts into being.

We shall also meet the man as one who held that he would converse rather than run a contest for his life; and this we may infer from what passed before the court. For going forward he asked the clerk by whom he was being led, whither they were going; and when the clerk said that he was leading him to the court, "And before whom," he said, "shall I plead?" "Before your own accuser," he said, "and the emperor will judge." "And for me and the emperor," he said, "who will be judge? For I shall show that he wrongs philosophy." "And what account," he said, "does an emperor make of philosophy, even if he should chance to wrong her?" "But philosophy makes great account of an emperor," he said, "that he may rule fitly." The clerk, praising this—for indeed he was moderately disposed toward Apollonius, as he showed even at the outset—said, "By how much water will you measure out your speech? For this I must know before the trial." "If the trial allows me to say all that it demands," he said, "the Tiber itself would not be measured out in time; but if I am to answer only what I am asked, then the questioner is the measure of the answerer." "You have practised opposite virtues," he said, "professing both brevity and length on the same matters." "Not opposite," he said, "but alike; for he who is master of one would fall short in nothing of the other. And a due proportion compounded of both I would not call a third virtue, but the first virtue of speech; and I count silence in a court a fourth virtue too." "A profitless one, at least," he said, "to yourself and to anyone about to be in danger." "And yet it greatly profited Socrates the Athenian," he said, "when he avoided the indictment." "And how did it profit him, since, because he kept silence, he was put to death?" "He was not put to death," he said; "the Athenians only thought so."

Thus was he prepared against all that came from the tyrant. But as he stood before the court, another clerk came up and said, "Tyanean, enter naked." "Are we to bathe, then," he said, "or to plead?" "It is not about your dress," he said, "that this is ordered; but the emperor forbids you to bring in either amulet or book or any written thing at all." "Nor a cane," he said, "against those who foolishly persuade him to such things?" The accuser cried out, "Sire, the sorcerer threatens me with blows; for it was I who persuaded you to this." "Then you," he said, "are the greater sorcerer; for what I have not yet persuaded the emperor of—that I am no sorcerer—you say you have persuaded him that I am." While the accuser was reviling thus, there was present one of the freedmen of Euphrates, who was said to have been sent by Euphrates as a messenger of Apollonius's discourses in Ionia, together with money that was given to the accuser.

Such was the skirmishing before the trial; and these were the things in it. The court had been adorned as for a gathering to hear a festal oration; and all the men of mark shared in it, the emperor making it a contest to convict him before as many as possible upon the charge concerning the men. But Apollonius so far overlooked the emperor as not even to glance at him; and when the accuser reproached him with this contempt and bade him look toward the god of all men, Apollonius lifted his eyes to the roof, showing that he was looking toward Zeus, and holding the man who was impiously flattered to be baser than the flatterer. The accuser cried out such things as these: "Measure now, sire, the water; for if you allow him length of speech, he will choke us. And I have here a book in which the charges are set down on which he must speak; let him defend himself against them one by one."

The emperor, praising this as the best of counsel, ordered the man to make his defence according to the informer's plan; and passing over the other charges as not worthy to bring a man into argument, he questioned him about four, which he thought hard and difficult to answer, thus: "What was it, Apollonius, that you learned, that you do not wear the same dress as all men, but one peculiar and special?" "Because," he said, "the earth that nourishes me also clothes me, and I do not trouble the wretched animals." Again he asked, "On what account do men name you a god?" "Because," he said, "every man held good is honoured with the title of god." (Whence this argument was reasoned out by the man, I have shown in the discourses about the Indians.) Third he asked about the plague at Ephesus: "For from what source," he said, "or by reckoning what did you foretell to the Ephesians that they would fall sick?" "By using, sire," he said, "a lighter diet, I was the first to perceive the danger; and if you wish, I will tell the causes of plagues too." But the emperor, fearing, I think, lest he should ascribe to such sicknesses his own injustice and impure marriages and the things he did against reason, said, "I have no need of such an answer." But when he brought the fourth question to bear upon the men, he did not set out at once, but, after a long pause, and much reflection, and like one dizzy, he asked not according to the expectation of all; for they thought that, leaping out of his pretence, he would not even spare to name the men, and would cry out cruel things about the sacrifice. But he did not so; rather, slinking up to the question, "Tell me," he said, "having gone forth from the house on such a day and journeyed into the country, for whom did you sacrifice the boy?" And Apollonius, as though chiding a stripling, said, "Speak fair words; for if I went forth from the house, I was in the country; and if so, I also sacrificed; and if I sacrificed, I also ate. But let those of credit say these things." When the man had said this, and a praise was raised greater than the imperial court allowed, the emperor, thinking that those present bore witness with him, and being affected by the answers, since they were vigorous and full of sense, said, "I release you from the charges; but you will wait until we are together in private." But Apollonius, recovering himself, said, "I thank you, sire; but through these accursed men the cities have perished, the islands are full of exiles, the mainland of lamentation, the armies of cowardice, the Senate of suspicion. Give me too a place, if you will; if not, send one to take my body, for my soul you cannot; nay, you will not even take my body, for you shall not kill me, since I am not fated to die." And saying this he vanished from the court, ordering well the present moment, with regard to matters about which the tyrant plainly meant to question him not simply, but at leisure and out of his abundance—for he prided himself, I suppose, on not having killed him—and foreseeing how not to be drawn into such things. And this he held it best to attain, if he were not unknown in his nature, but known to be such as could never be caught against his will. For the fear about the men was now well with him; for those concerning whom the tyrant did not even set out to ask anything, how could he plausibly have killed them on charges not credited in the court? Such I have found to be the things of the trial.

Since a speech too was composed by him, as for one who would deliver his defence by the water-clock, but the tyrant cut him short into the questions I have related, let the speech also be recorded. For I am not unaware that those who praise the buffoonish styles will slander it, as being less chastened than they themselves say it should be, and as overdoing it both in words and in sentiments; yet, as I reflect upon the man, it does not seem to me that the wise man would soundly play his own character if he practised balanced clauses and antitheses, and made his tongue clatter like a castanet. For such things suit rhetoricians, and not even they need them; for cleverness in courts, if open, may slander a man as one plotting against the jurors, but if hidden, may go off victorious; for to escape the notice of the judges that one is clever is the truer cleverness. But a wise man making his defence—for the wise man will not accuse those he is strong enough to reprove—needs a character other than that of the men of the courts; and a speech composed indeed, but not seeming so; and let it be somewhat solemn, not far from the bearing of one who overlooks his peril; and let pity be absent from the speaker—for he who will not consent even to entreat, what could he say toward pity? Such will the speech seem to those who hear me and the man not softly; for it was composed by him thus:

The contest is for great things, both for you, sire, and for me; for you are in danger over things in which no autocrat should ever be—if you shall seem to have slandered philosophy by no just trial—and I over things in which not even Socrates ever was at Athens, whom those who drew up the indictment held to deem the divinities new, but neither called nor thought a daemon. Since, then, the danger has come so hard upon each of us, I will not shrink from counselling you too in whatever I have persuaded myself of. For when the accuser set us into this contest, there came over the many an untrue opinion about me and about you. For they thought that you, taking anger as your counsellor in the hearing, would even kill me—whatever 'to kill' may be—and that I would remove myself from the court by whatever ways there are of escaping; and there were, sire, ten thousand of them. But hearing this, I did not come to a prejudgement, nor did I condemn your hearing as not holding the straight course; rather, agreeing with the laws, I stand under the argument. Of this I become a counsellor to you too; for it is just not to prejudge, nor to sit persuaded that I have done you some evil; nor, while concerning the Armenian and the Babylonian and all who rule there—men who have horse in plenty and every kind of archery and a golden land and a throng of men, as I know—you would laugh to hear that you would suffer anything from them which should take this rule from you—to believe of a wise and naked man that he has a weapon against the Roman autocrat, and to accept this from an Egyptian informer saying things which you never heard even from Athena, whom you say foresees for you; unless, by Zeus, flattery and false accusation have now so increased among these accursed men, that they say the gods are fit counsellors to you in small things—such as ophthalmias, and not running a fever, and not having some swelling of the inwards—touching you and tending you like physicians wherever you are ill, but in the danger to your rule and your person they neither counsel whom you must guard against, nor teach what weapon there will be for you against them when they come; rather, the informers are to you the aegis of Athena and the hand of Zeus, professing to know about you what not even the gods know, watching for you while you wake and sleeping for you—if indeed these men sleep—pouring evils upon evils, as the saying is, and forever composing these Iliads. And as for their keeping horses, and being wheeled out into the marketplace on chariots of white horses, and their gluttony in silver and gold, and the favourites bought for two and three myriads, and their adultery while they go unnoticed, and their marrying the women they have adulterously taken whenever they are caught with them, and those who applaud them for their fine victories, whenever a philosopher or a consul, doing no wrong, is caught by these men and destroyed by you—let it be granted to the luxury of the accursed, and to there being for them no longer any fear of laws or of eyes. But to think so far above men as to wish to foreknow what is the gods'—this I neither praise, and hearing it I dread; and if you should accept it, they will perhaps write against you too as slandering the opinion about the divine; for there is hope that such indictments will be composed against you as well, when none is left for the informers. And I understand that I rebuke rather than defend; but let this be said by me on behalf of the laws, which, if you do not hold to be your rulers, you will not rule. Who, then, will be my advocate as I plead? For if I should call upon Zeus, under whom I know I have lived, they will say that I practise sorcery and bring heaven down to earth. Let us discourse, then, about this with a man whom the many say is dead, but I deny it; and this man is your father, to whom I am worth as much as he is to you; for he made you, but by me he was made. He, sire, will be my helper in the defence, knowing my affairs far better than you. For he came to Egypt when he was not yet autocrat, to sacrifice to the gods in Egypt and to confer with me about the rule; and meeting me with my hair long and dressed as I am, he asked not a single thing about my appearance, holding all in me to be well; and confessing that he had come for my sake, he went off praising me, having said what he would say to no other and heard what he would hear from no other. And the resolve with which he used to grasp at rule was strengthened in him above all by me, having now been shifted by others not unfit, yet not so as to please you; for those who persuaded him not to rule were, I suppose, also taking from you the holding of this after him; but when I counselled him not to think himself unworthy of a rule that came knocking at his door, and to make you its heirs, he said his judgement was well, and was himself raised up great and raised you up. And if he had thought me a sorcerer, he would not have joined me in fellowship of his cares; for he did not come and discourse such things as, "Compel the Fates, or Zeus, to declare me tyrant," or "work me portents in the sky, showing the sun rising from the west and setting where it begins." For he would not have thought me fit to rule, either holding me capable of such things, or hunting by tricks a rule that ought to be won by virtues. And besides, I discoursed with him publicly, in a temple; but the meetings of sorcerers shun the temples of the gods, for these are hateful to those about the art; and putting forward night and all that is lightless as their cover, they do not allow the foolish even to have eyes or ears. He discoursed with me in private too, yet Euphrates and Dion were present all the same—the one most hostile to me, the other most familiar; for may I never cease to write Dion among my friends. Who, then, among wise men, or those who lay claim to wisdom, would come to the arguments of sorcerers? And who would not equally guard against appearing base both among friends and among enemies? And the arguments were opposed to sorcerers; for you, perhaps, hold that your father, longing for kingship, trusted to sorcerers rather than to himself, and sought from me a constraint upon the gods to attain it; but he thought he had it even before he came to Egypt, and afterward discoursed with me of greater things—of laws and of just wealth, and how the gods are to be served, and what goods come from them to those who rule by the laws; which he longed to learn. To all of which the sorcerers are a thing opposed; for if these things have force, there will be no such art. And it befits, sire, to have considered this too: of all the arts among men, each does one thing, but all for money's sake—some for small, some for great, some for what they will be fed by; and not the mechanical only, but the others too are alike wise and half-wise, except true philosophy. I call wise poetry, music, astronomy, the sophists, and those of the orators who are not of the marketplace; and half-wise painting, sculpture, statuary, pilots, husbandmen, if they follow the seasons; for these arts too fall not far short of wisdom. But there is a sort, sire, of false-wise and beggars—do not take it for divination, for that is worth much, if it tell true, though whether it is an art I do not yet know—but I say the sorcerers are false-wise; for that things which are not, are, and that things which are, are disbelieved—all this I ascribe to the opinion of the deceived, for the cleverness of the art lies upon the folly of those deceived and sacrificing; and the art is wholly money-loving, for what they trick out, this is found by them for a wage, and they hunt for excesses of money, drawing on those who are in love with anything, as men able to do all. What wealth, then, sire, have you seen about me, that you think I practise false-wisdom, and that too when your father held me above money? And that I speak the truth, where is the letter of the noble and divine man, who in it sings of me, among other things, that I am poor? "The autocrat Vespasian to Apollonius the philosopher, greeting. If all, Apollonius, wished to philosophize as you do, philosophy and poverty would fare very happily—philosophy keeping herself unbribed, poverty self-chosen. Farewell." Let your father defend me by this, defining for me the unbribedness of philosophy and the self-choosing of poverty; for he remembered, I suppose, the things in Egypt too, when Euphrates and many of those who profess philosophy approached him and asked for money not even covertly, but I not only did not approach for money, but thrust those others away as unsound; and I was set against money while still a stripling. My patrimony, at least—and it was a brilliant estate—having looked on it for a single day, I gave up to my brothers and friends and to the poor of my kin, practising, as it were from the very Hearth, to need nothing. Let Babylon be set aside, and the parts of India beyond the Caucasus and the river Hyphasis, through which I journeyed like myself; but of things here, and of my not looking to silver, I make this Egyptian a witness; for saying that dreadful things have been done and counselled by me, he has not said for how much money I did these crimes, nor what gain I had in mind; rather, I seem to him so senseless as to practise sorcery, yet—what others do for much money—I myself to do wrong not even for money, proclaiming, I suppose, a market of this sort: "Come, you fools, for I practise sorcery, and not even for money, but free of charge; and you will gain, each of you, the going off with what he loves, but I dangers and indictments." But that we may not go into senseless arguments, let us ask the accuser on which charge he must speak first. And yet why ask? For he went through the matter of my dress at the beginning of his speech, and—by Zeus—of what I eat and do not eat. Defend yourself on these things, divine Pythagoras; for we are tried for things which you discovered and I approve. The earth, sire, grows all things for men; and to those who wish to keep peace with the animals there is need of nothing, for some things they reap of her, and others they sow while she nurses them, as it suits the seasons; but some, as though deaf to the earth, have whetted the knife against the animals for the sake of dress and food. The Indian Brahmans then themselves did not approve this, and taught the Naked Sages of the Egyptians not to approve it; and from this Pythagoras took it—the first of the Greeks to mingle with the Egyptians—and gave back to the earth what was ensouled, but ate what she herself grows, saying it was undefiled, for it is fit to nourish body and mind; but the dress that the many wear from dead skins he said was not pure, and clad himself in linen, and on the same reasoning plaited his sandal of papyrus; and he reaped of his being pure many fruits, but first the perceiving of his own soul. For having lived in the times when Troy fought for Helen, and being the fairest of the sons of Panthus and most fairly dressed, he died so young as even to furnish Homer a lament; and passing into more bodies, by the ordinance of Adrasteia, which the soul changes about, he came back again into the form of a man, and was born to Mnesarchides the Samian, wise out of a barbarian, and Ionian out of a Trojan, and so far immortal as not even to have forgotten that he was Euphorbus. The forefather of my own wisdom I have named, and that I am not its discoverer, but hold it as an inheritance from another. And I do not condemn those who fare delicately for the sake of the phoenix-bird, nor for the one from the Phasis or the Paeonians, which those who indulge the belly in all things fatten for their feasts; nor have I ever indicted anyone over the fish which they buy at a higher price than the brilliant once bought their horses branded with the koppa; nor have I begrudged anyone purple, or any Pamphylian or soft garment; but for asphodel, O gods, and dried fruits and pure simple fare I am under indictment, and not even my dress is inviolate, but the accuser strips even that from me as worth much to sorcerers. And yet, take away the argument about ensouled and unensouled things, by which one seems pure or not, and how is linen better than wool? The one was shorn from the gentlest of animals, and one cared for by the gods, who do not disdain to be shepherds, and—by Zeus—who once held it worthy even of a golden form, whether gods or stories. But flax is sown as it chances, and there is no tale of gold about it; yet all the same, since it was not plucked from anything ensouled, it seems pure to the Indians, pure to the Egyptians, and to me and Pythagoras it has become, for this reason, the dress of those who discourse, pray, and sacrifice. And it is pure too to sleep the night beneath it; for dreams come truer to those who live as I do. Let us defend ourselves also about the hair we once had, since an indictment has been found even about neglect; and let it be judged not by the Egyptian, but by the blond and well-combed striplings, who kindle the lovers and the courtesans they revel after, and let them hold themselves happy and enviable for their hair and the perfume that drips from it, and me wholly devoid of love-charm and a lover of not loving. For this will be said to them: O wretches, do not falsely accuse the discovery of the Dorians; for wearing the hair long comes from the Lacedaemonians, practised by them in the times when they were most warlike, and Leonidas was king of Sparta wearing his hair long, for the sake of manliness and of appearing solemn to friends and terrible to foes; and so Sparta wears her hair long for him no less than for Lycurgus and Iphitus. But of a wise man's hair let the iron be sparing; for it is not lawful to bring it where are all the springs of the senses and all the voices, whence prayers come forth and reason, the interpreter of wisdom. For Empedocles, fastening a fillet of the most purple about his hair, swept through the streets of the Greeks composing hymns that he would be a god out of a man; but I, using neglected hair and not yet having needed such hymns over it, am led to indictments and courts. And what shall I say of Empedocles? That he sang of himself, or of the happiness of the men of his day, among whom these things were not falsely accused? Let us discourse no further about the hair, for it has been cut, and envy has forestalled the accusation; on account of which one must defend oneself about the other charge, which is grave, and such, sire, as to furnish fear not to you alone but to Zeus. For he says that men hold me a god, and publicly proclaim this, thunderstruck by me; and yet, even before the charge, he ought to have shown what I discoursed, what so marvellous thing I said or did, that I drew men to pray to me. For I never discoursed among the Greeks—though I knew them—either into what my soul has changed or will change, nor did I send forth such opinions about myself, nor did I go off into oracles and chanting of prophecies, as is the way of those who invoke gods; nor do I know any city in which it was resolved that men should gather to sacrifice to Apollonius. And yet I was worth much to each, in whatever they asked of me; and they asked such things as these: that the sick not be sick; that they be holier in initiation, holier in sacrifice; that insolence be cut out; that the laws be strong. And my wage for these things was that they should appear better than themselves; and I was doing you a favour in this. For as the herdsmen of oxen render their not being unruly a favour to the owners of the oxen, and the keepers of flocks fatten them to the profit of those who possess them, and the keepers of bees take away their diseases, that the swarm may not perish for its master—so I too, stopping civic faults, was setting the cities right for you; so that even if they held me a god, the deceit held profit for you, for they listened to me, I suppose, with eagerness, fearing to do what does not seem good to a god. But it was not this they thought, rather that there is a certain kinship of man to god, through which alone of animals he knows the gods, and philosophizes about his own nature and how he shares in the divine. He says, then, that the very form is like to god, as statuary interprets and colours; and he is persuaded that the virtues come to him from god, and that those who share them are nigh to gods and divine. And let us not call the Athenians the teachers of this thought, since they first set up the titles 'the just,' 'the Olympians,' and such names—titles, as is likely, more divine than to lie upon a man—but Apollo at Pytho. For Lycurgus from Sparta came to his temple when his laws, by which Lacedaemon is ordered, had just been written; and Apollo, addressing him, tests the opinion about him, saying at the beginning of the oracle that he is at a loss whether to call him god or man; but going on he declares and votes him this title, as to a good man. And no contest or danger came upon Lycurgus from this among the Lacedaemonians, as immortalizing him, since he did not rebuke the Pythian for addressing him so, but they agreed with the oracle, being persuaded, I suppose, of these things even before the oracle. And the affairs of the Indians and Egyptians are these: the Egyptians in other matters falsely accuse the Indians and slander their opinions on affairs, but the argument which is spoken about the Demiurge of all they so praise as even to teach it to others, though it is the Indians'. The argument knows a god as Demiurge of the generation and being of all things, and the cause of his conceiving this is that he is good. Since, then, these things are akin, I hold to the argument and say that good men have something of god. And let the cosmos that lies under god the Demiurge be reckoned the things in heaven and all the things in sea and earth, of which the share is equal to men, except for fortune. But there is also a certain cosmos upon a good man, not exceeding the measures of wisdom—which you yourself, sire, will say has need of a man likened to god. And what is the form of this cosmos? Souls that are disorderly seize more madly upon every form; their laws are stale to them, and temperance nowhere, and the honours of the gods dishonoured; they are in love with chatter and luxury, from which springs idleness, an evil counsellor of every work. And drunken souls leap upon many things, but nothing checks this skipping, not even if they drank all the drinks that, like mandragora, are held sleep-bringing. But there is need of a man who will care for the cosmos about them—a god come of wisdom. For he is enough to lead them away from loves, toward which they are carried more savagely than their wonted company, and from money-loving, through which they say they have not yet all, since they do not also hold their mouth under the inflowing wealth. For to keep them from laying hands on murders is perhaps not impossible to such a man, but to wash them clean is possible neither to me nor to the god the Demiurge of all. Let there be, sire, an accusation about Ephesus too, since it was saved, and let the Egyptian judge me, as is fit for the indictment. For the accusation is, I suppose, of this sort: among the Scythians or Celts, who dwell by the river Ister or the Rhine, a city has been founded no smaller than Ephesus in Ionia; this city, being a base of barbarians who do not hearken to you, a plague was about to destroy, and Apollonius healed it. There is some defence even to this for a wise man, if the emperor should wish to take what is opposed to him by arms and not by diseases—for may no city ever be wiped out, neither for you, sire, nor for me, nor may I see by the temples a disease through which the sick will lie within them. But let the affairs of barbarians not be in earnest, nor let us rank in health those who are most hostile and not in treaty with our race. But who will take from Ephesus its being saved—a city which had the beginnings of its race from the purest Attica, which has advanced beyond all that are Ionian and Lydian, which has gone forward to the sea because it overtops the land on which it was founded, which is full of philosophic and rhetorical reflections, by which the city is strong not in horse but in myriads of men, praising wisdom? What wise man do you think would forsake the contest for such a city, when he reflects on Democritus, who once freed the Abderites of a plague, and bethinks himself of Sophocles the Athenian, who is said even to have charmed winds that blew out of season, and has heard the deeds of Empedocles, who held back the rush of a cloud bursting upon the Acragantines? The accuser cuts me off—for you too, sire, hear it, I suppose—and says that it is not because I became the cause of safety to the Ephesians that I am indicted, but because I foretold that the sickness would fall upon them; for this, he says, is beyond wisdom and portentous, and I could not have reached such truth unless I were a sorcerer and ineffable. What then will Socrates say here, about what he said he learned from his daemonic sign? What Thales and Anaxagoras, the two Ionians, the one foretelling the abundance of olives, the other many of the heavenly phenomena—did they foretell these by sorcery? And indeed these men too were brought before courts on other charges, and nowhere among the charges is it said that they were sorcerers because they foreknow. For this seemed ridiculous, and not even in Thessaly was it credible to say against wise men—where the little women had an ill name for drawing down the moon. Whence, then, did I perceive the sickness about Ephesus? You heard the accuser too say that I do not live as the rest; and about my own food, that it is light and pleasanter than another's Sybaris, it was said at the beginning. This, sire, keeps my senses in a certain ineffable clearness and allows nothing turbid to be about them, and lets me see through, as in the gleam of a mirror, all things coming to be and to come. For the wise man will not wait for the earth to exhale or the air to grow corrupt, if the danger flows from above, but will understand these things even while they are at the doors, later than the gods, but quicker than the many; for the gods perceive things to come, men things coming to be, and wise men things drawing near. But the causes of plagues, sire, ask in private, for they are too wise to be told to the many. Does living so, then, work only fineness of the senses, or also strength toward the greatest and most marvellous things? One may observe what I say from other things, but not least from what was done in Ephesus about that sickness; for the form of the plague—it was likened to a beggarly old man—I both saw and, seeing, seized, not stopping the disease but rooting it out; and to whom I prayed, the temple shows which I founded in Ephesus for this—for it is of Heracles Averter—for I chose him as fellow-worker, since, being wise and brave, he once cleansed Elis of a plague by washing away the exhalations which the earth furnished under the tyranny of Augeas. Who, then, sire, do you think, ambitious to appear a sorcerer, would ascribe to a god what he himself had wrought? What admirers of his art would he win by yielding to a god the being marvelled at? And who, being a sorcerer, would pray to Heracles? For such things the wretches ascribe to pits and to the gods below, from whom Heracles must be set apart, for he is pure and kindly to men. I prayed to him once in the Peloponnese too, for there was there a certain phantom of a lamia about Corinth, feeding on the fair among the young, and he joined me in the contest, asking for no marvellous gifts, but honey-cake and frankincense, and the doing of something for the saving of men; for this, even under Eurystheus, he held a wage for his labours. Be not vexed, sire, to hear of Heracles; for Athena cared for him, since he was good and saving to men. But since you bid me defend the sacrifice—for you signify this with your hand too—hear a true defence: I, who do all for the saving of men, have never yet sacrificed for them, nor would I sacrifice anything, nor would I touch rites in which there is blood, nor would I pray looking toward a knife or a sacrifice such as he says. You have not caught a Scythian, sire, nor one from somewhere unmingled, nor have I ever mixed with Massagetae or Tauri, since I would have changed even those from the custom of human sacrifice; but to what folly should I be driven, that I, discoursing most of all about divination and where it is strong or not, and having perceived best of men that the gods reveal their counsels to holy and wise men even without divining, should lay hands on bloodshed and on entrails unsacrificed by me and unblessed? For at these the very voice of the daemonic would have left me, as not being pure. And indeed, if one took away the pollution of the sacrifice and examined the accuser against what he said a little before, he himself frees me of the charge; for him whom he says I foretold the sickness to the Ephesians without needing any sacrifice—what need had I of victims for things which it was given me to know even without sacrificing? And what need of divination about things of which I myself, and another, was persuaded? For if I am tried about Nerva and his party, I will say again what I said before, when you charged this: I hold Nerva worthy of all rule and of every word of good omen that comes; but no good contestant in cares, for his body is dissolved by sickness, through which his judgement too is full of weariness and not even sufficient for affairs at home. He praises you, at least, in body and praises you in judgement, likely, I think, suffering somewhat, for human nature is indeed more ready to praise the things in which it is not itself strong. And Nerva has felt something kindly toward me too; I have never known him laugh in my presence, nor play any of the usual jests among friends; but like striplings toward their fathers and teachers, he speaks cautiously all that is before me, and still blushes; and knowing that I praise gentleness, he so practises it overmuch that he appears even to me lowlier than is fitting. How, then, would anyone hold it credible that Nerva desired rule, who is content to rule his own house, or that he discoursed with me of great things, who took no courage even about small ones, or that he joined judgement with me about things which, if he considered mine, he would join with no other? Or how am I still wise to interpret a man's judgement, trusting divination but distrusting wisdom? And Orfitus and Rufus, the just and temperate but sluggish men, as I well know—if they say they were slandered as tyrant-mongers, I do not know whether they err more about these or about Nerva; but if as having become counsellors, is Nerva more credible to attempt rule, or these to counsel it? But surely the man who judges these things ought to have reflected on this too: what did my helping those who came to innovation mean for me? For he does not say that money came to me from them, nor that I did this lifted up by gifts; but let us consider whether, needing great things, I deferred their benefactions to the time when I thought they would rule, in which it would be open to me to ask great things and to be held worthy of greater. How, then, will this be plain? Reflect, sire, on yourself and on those who ruled before you—your brother, I suppose, and your father, and Nero—under whom they ruled; for it is chiefly under these emperors that I have lived in public view, spending the rest of the time among the Indians. Of these eight-and-thirty years—for so long is the span down to you—I have never frequented imperial doors except in Egypt, your father's, since he was not yet emperor and confessed that he came for my sake; nor have I discoursed anything servile to emperors or about emperors to peoples, nor have I made myself brilliant by letters, either by emperors writing to me or by myself showing that I write; nor have I betrayed myself, flattering emperors for the sake of gifts. If, then, you should ask me, having reflected on the rich and the poor, to which of these nations I enrol myself, I will say the richest; for to need nothing is, for me, Lydia and all the Pactolus. How, then, would I either have deferred the gifts of those who were not yet emperors to the time when I thought they would rule—I who did not even choose those from you, whom I held to rule securely—or have devised changes of kingdoms, who did not use even those established for the sake of being honoured? And how much accrues to a philosopher who flatters the powerful, the case of Euphrates shows; for to him from this—why do I say money? They are very springs of wealth; and now at the tables he bargains, a huckster, an under-huckster, a tax-gatherer, an obol-weigher, becoming all the things sold and selling; and he is forever stamped at the doors of the powerful and stands before them longer than the doormen, and has often been shut out even by the doormen, like the greedy among dogs; and never having laid out a drachma even to a philosopher, he fortifies his own wealth against others, feeding this Egyptian here with money and whetting against me a tongue that deserves to be cut out. Euphrates, then, I leave to you; for you, if you do not praise flatterers, will find the man worse than I describe. But hear the rest of the defence. What is it, and about what? A certain lament for an Arcadian boy was sung, sire, in the accusation: that he was cut up by me by night—but whether he speaks of a dream, I do not yet know—and that this boy was of good parents and of the form that the fair Arcadians have in their roughness. They say that this boy, supplicating and lamenting, was slaughtered, and that I, dipping my hands in the boy's blood, prayed to the gods for truth. Thus far they try me, but what follows touches the gods; for they say that the gods heard me praying thus, and gave favourable victims and did not kill me for my impiety. As for the hearing being impure, what, sire, should I say? But about what I must defend myself—who is this Arcadian? For if he is not nameless in his fathers, nor servile in form, it is time for you to ask what was the name of his parents, of what house he was, what city in Arcadia reared him, from what altars he was led here to be sacrificed. He does not say this, though he is clever at not telling the truth. So then he tries me about a slave. For one who has no name himself, nor any of those he was born of, no city, no estate—must we not, O gods, rank this one among slaves? For all is nameless. Who, then, is the trader of the slave? Who bought him from the Arcadians? For if the race of these is fit for the slaughtering divination, it is likely the boy was bought for much money, and that someone sailed to the Peloponnese, that the Arcadian might be brought up to us from there; for Pontic or Lydian or Phrygian slaves one might buy even here, of whom one may meet whole herds coming hither; for these nations, and all the barbarians, having all time hearkened to others, do not yet think it shameful to be slaves. The Phrygians, at least, hold it native to sell their own, and not to be concerned when they are enslaved; but the Greeks are still lovers of freedom, and a Greek man will not sell even a slave beyond the borders; whence neither slave-dealers nor slave-traders may go among them, and to Arcadia still less, for besides their being free above all Greeks they have need also of a throng of slaves. And Arcadia is rich in crops and grassy and wooded, not only the heights but all that is underfoot. They have need, then, of many husbandmen, of many goatherds, swineherds and shepherds and oxherds, some over oxen, some over horses; and the country needs many woodcutters, and they are trained in this from childhood. And even if the affairs of the Arcadians were not such, but they could, like others, sell their own slaves besides, what did being from Arcadia contribute to the much-talked-of wisdom, that the slaughtered one be Arcadian? For the Arcadians are not the wisest of the Greeks, that they should show in the rational parts of their entrails something more than another man; rather, they are the most rustic of men and swinish, both in other things and in stuffing themselves on acorns. I have perhaps defended myself more rhetorically than my manner, interpreting the ways of the Arcadians and passing in my argument into the Peloponnese. For what is the defence proper to me? I did not sacrifice, I do not sacrifice, I do not touch blood, not even if it be of an altar; for Pythagoras knew it so, and those from him likewise, and in Egypt the Naked Sages and the wise of the Indians, from whom the principles of wisdom came even to those about Pythagoras. Sacrificing by these rules, they do not seem to wrong the gods, but the gods grant them to grow old whole in body and free of disease, and to seem ever wiser, and to be tyrannized over by none and to need nothing. And it is not unfitting, I think, that they should ask good things for pure offerings. For I think the gods too, having the same mind as I about sacrifices, grow the incense-bearing things of the earth in a pure part of the world, that from them we may sacrifice without bearing iron in temples, nor sprinkling blood on altars. But I, as it seems, forgetting myself and the gods, sacrificed in a way that neither I am wont to, nor any man would. Let the time too free me of the charge, which the accuser has named; for that day on which he says these things were done by me—if I was in the country, I sacrificed; and if I sacrificed, I also ate. Then, sire, you often ask whether I was not dwelling in Rome at the time? And you too, best of emperors, were dwelling there, but you would not say you sacrificed such things; and the informer too, but he will not confess to doing the deeds of murderers, though he lived in Rome; and myriads of men, whom it were better to drive out as aliens than to bring under indictments in which being here will be a proof of crimes. And yet to have come to Rome rather acquits one of seeming to innovate; for to live in a city in which all are eyes, all ears, of things that are and are not, does not allow a man to lay hands on innovation, at least if he is not over-eager to die, and brings the more cautious and temperate slowly even to what is permitted. What, then, informer, was I doing on that night? If you ask as you would ask yourself—since you too have come to ask—I was preparing contests and accusations against good men, to destroy those who did no wrong, and to persuade the emperor by not speaking the truth, that I might be in repute and this man defiled; but if you inquire as of a philosopher, I was praising the laughter of Democritus, with which he laughs at all human things; but if as of me, Philiscus of Melia, who had philosophized with me four years, was then sick, and I lodged with him, so grievously affected as even to die of the sickness. And yet I would have prayed for many love-charms for that man's soul, and—by Zeus—if there are any songs of Orpheus over the dead, I would not have been ignorant of those either; for I think I would even have gone beneath the earth for his sake, if these things were possible; so was I bound to him by all that he did philosophically and according to my mind. This you may hear, sire, even from Telesinus the consul, for he too was present with the Melian, tending him by night as much as I. And if you distrust Telesinus, since he is of the philosophers, I call the physicians as witnesses; and these are Seleucus of Cyzicus and Stratocles of Sidon. Ask these whether I speak the truth; and more than thirty disciples followed them, witnesses, I suppose, of the same things; for to summon hither the kinsmen of Philiscus you will perhaps think a delay of the trial, since they straightway departed Rome for the country of the Melians for the burial of the dead. Come, witnesses—for indeed you have been charged about this. WITNESSES. By how far, then, the indictment was composed apart from the truth, the testimony of the men shows clearly; for not in the suburbs but in the city, not outside the wall but in a house, not with Nerva but with Philiscus, not slaughtering but praying for a soul, not for kingship but for philosophy, not voting in a younger man in place of you, but saving a man like myself. What, then, has the Arcadian here? What the tales of victims? What the persuading of such things? For there will be sometime even what has not been, if it is judged as having been. But the incredibility of the sacrifice, sire, where will you rank it? For there were of old too good diviners by victims, and such as to name—Megistias from Acarnania, Aristander from Lycia, and Ambracia bore Silanus; and the Acarnanian sacrificed for Leonidas king of Sparta, the Lycian for Alexander the Macedonian, and Silanus for Cyrus who longed for kingship; and if anything in human entrails lay clearer or wiser or truer, the sacrifice was not difficult, with kings standing over it, who had many cup-bearers, many captives, and lawlessness without danger, and no fear of accusation if they slaughtered anyone; but, I think, it occurred to the men, as it does to me now in danger over such things, that the irrational animals, since they are slaughtered in ignorance of death, likely have nothing of the entrails troubled by their not understanding what they will suffer; but a man, always having in his soul some dread of death even when it is not yet at hand—how is it likely that, when it is already present and before his eyes, he should show anything on the entrails divinatory, or rightly sacrificed at all? That I conjecture these things rightly and according to nature, consider thus, sire. The liver, in which those clever at this say the tripod of their divination is, is composed of blood not pure; for all that is unmixed the heart holds, drawing it off through blood-bearing veins to all the body; and the gall, lying upon the liver, anger rouses, but fears draw down into the hollows of the liver. By the things that provoke, then, the gall, seething and not even bearable to its own vessel, is poured over upon the liver, where all the gall holds back the smooth and divinatory parts of the inward; but by the things that frighten, sinking together, it draws down with it the light in the smooth parts, for then even the pure part of the blood withdraws, by which the liver is spleen-like, running by nature beneath the membrane about it and floating upon the muddy part. What, then, sire, is the work of the bloodshed, if the sacred parts shall be unmarked? And human nature makes them unmarked, understanding death, and the very men who die; for the stout-hearted die with anger, the more faint-hearted with fear. Whence the art, among the barbarians not unskilled in it, praises the slaughtering of she-goats and lambs, since the animals are simple and not far from senseless, but does not hold cocks and swine and bulls worthy of its secrets, since these are spirited. I understand, sire, that I provoke the accuser, since I have made you a wiser hearer, and you seem to me even to attend to the argument; but if I should not state anything of it clearly, I grant you to ask me. I have said what is to be said against the Egyptian's indictment; and since, I think, the slanders of Euphrates too must not be overlooked, do you, sire, judge which of us philosophizes the more. For he contends not to speak the truth about me, but I deem it unworthy; and he holds you a master, but I a ruler; and he gives you a sword against me, but I a word. But the things over which he has slandered me are the arguments I made in Ionia, and he says they were spoken by me not to your advantage. And yet what was said was about the Fates and Necessity; and the affairs of kings became my example of the argument, since your affairs seem the greatest of human things; and I philosophized about the strength of the Fates, and that the things they spin are so unalterable that, even if they should vote a kingship to another which already belonged to him, and he should kill this man, lest the rule should ever be taken from him by him, yet the dead man would come back to life for the things resolved by the Fates. For we bring in the excesses of arguments for the sake of those who disbelieve the plausible, just as if I should say this too: he to whom it is fated to be a carpenter, this man, even if his hands be cut off, will be a carpenter; and he to whom it is to win a victory at Olympia in the race, this man, even if his leg be maimed, will not miss the victory; and he to whom the Fates nodded the mastery in archery, this man, even if he lose his eyes, will not fall from the mark. And the affairs of kings I spoke of, looking, I suppose, to the Acrisii and the Laii and Astyages the Mede and many others who seemed to set their affairs well at the start, of whom some, thinking to kill their sons, some their grandsons, were stripped by them of their kingship, when they sprang up out of obscurity with destiny. And if I delighted in flattery, I would say that I had your own affairs in mind too, when you were shut up here by Vitellius, and the temple of Zeus was being burned about the brows of the city, and he said his own affairs would lie well if you did not escape him—and yet you were quite a stripling and he was not yet what he became—but all the same, since the Fates resolved otherwise, he perished by his own counsels, and you now hold what was his. But since I am vexed by the harmony of flattery, for it seems to me to be of the ill-rhythmed and ill-sounding, let this string be cut for me, and think I have had nothing of yours in mind, but have discoursed only the things about the Fates and Necessity; for these he says were spoken by me against you. And yet this argument even the many of the gods endure, nor is even Zeus vexed to hear it, when the poets in the Lycian tales sing to him "Ah me, that Sarpedon..." and such things, in which he says he yields his son to the Fates; and again in the Weighing of Souls, when they say that he honoured Minos the brother of Sarpedon, when he died, with a golden sceptre, and set him to judge in the marketplace of Aidoneus, yet did not beg him off from the Fates. But you, sire, on what account are you vexed at the argument, when the gods endure it, for whom things are forever fixed, and do not kill the poets for it? For it befits to follow the Fates and not to be harsh at the changes of affairs, and not to distrust Sophocles, who says best of men: "For the gods alone there is no old age, nor ever to die; but all else all-mastering time confounds." For human prosperities go in a circle, and the length of bliss, sire, is for a day; this man holds my things, another his, and so-and-so, holding the things of so-and-so, holds them not. Reflecting on these things, sire, cease exiles, cease bloodshed, and use philosophy for what you will, for the true philosophy is unaffected; but take away the tears of men, since now an echo, a myriad from the sea, far more from the mainlands, comes of men lamenting, each what is worthy of his lament. And the things that spring from these, more than can be numbered, are fastened upon the tongues of the informers, who slander all to you and you, sire, to all.

Thus were the things from preparation with the man; but at the end of the speech I found the last words of the former speech, "for you shall not kill me, since I am not fated to die," and the things before this still, from which this comes. And when he left the court in a daemonic manner, and not easy to tell, the tyrant did not suffer what the many thought; for they thought that he would cry out cruel things about this and make a pursuit of the man, and proclaim through all his realm that he was nowhere to be approached; but he did none of these things, either contending against the opinion of the many, or understanding at last that nothing was sufficient against the man. But whether he overlooked it, let us reckon from what follows; for he would appear rather confounded than contemptuous.

For he was hearing another trial after that one—it was a city contending against a man over a will, I think—and there escaped him not only the names of the litigants, but even the sense of the suit; for his questions were senseless, and his answers not even on the matter of the trial; which strongly convicted the tyrant of being dismayed and at a loss, chiefly because he had been persuaded by his flatterers that nothing could escape him.

Having so disposed the tyrant and shown to be a plaything of his own philosophy the man terrible to all Greeks and barbarians, he left the court before noon, and about late afternoon appeared at Dicaearchia to Demetrius and Damis; and this was indeed the meaning of his charging Damis not to wait for the defence, but to go on foot to Dicaearchia. For he did not foretell what he had resolved, but bade the man most fit to him do the things that followed upon his resolves.

Now Damis had arrived the day before and met with Demetrius about the things before the trial; and Demetrius was more cautiously disposed than befits one who hears about Apollonius, by what he had heard; and again the next day he was asking about the same things, walking with him along the sea where are the tales about Calypso; for they despaired, as of one who would not come, since the affairs of the tyranny were grievous to all, but they honoured what he had ordered because of the man's nature. Giving up, then, they sat down in the nymphaeum where is the jar—it is of white stone, holding a spring of water that neither overflows the mouth nor, if one bales it out, falls short. Having discoursed about the nature of the water, not very earnestly because of their despondency over the man, they led the argument back to the things before the trial.

When Damis had lamented and said something of this sort, "Shall we then ever, O gods, see the noble and good comrade?" Apollonius, hearing—for indeed he chanced to be already standing by the nymphaeum—said, "You shall see; or rather, you have seen." "Alive?" said Demetrius; "but if dead, we have not yet ceased weeping over you." Apollonius then, stretching out his hand, said, "Take hold of me; and if I escape you, I am a phantom come to you from Persephone, such as the gods below show to the more despondent in their mourning; but if I endure your touch, persuade Damis too that I am alive and have not cast off my body." They were no longer able to disbelieve, but rising up they hung upon the man and embraced him, and asked about the defence; for Demetrius held that he had not even made his defence, since he would have perished though doing no wrong, but Damis that he had defended himself—more quickly perhaps, for he did not think it was on that very day. But Apollonius said, "I have made my defence, men, and we are victors; and the matters of the defence came to me today, not long before this hour, for it was already advancing toward noon." "How then," said Demetrius, "did you accomplish so great a journey in a little of the day?" And Apollonius said, "Think anything you like, except a ram and wings of joined wax, and ascribe the procession to a god." "Everywhere," said Demetrius, "I hold that a god foresees your deeds and words, from whom your affairs are so; but the defence, what it was, and what the accusation held, and the character of the judge, and what he asked, and to what you assented or did not—tell all together, that I may tell each to Telesinus, for he will not cease asking about your affairs, who even some fifteen days ago, drinking with me at Antium, fell asleep at the table, and, his cup half-full, seemed in a dream that fire, spreading like a sea over the earth, took off some of the men, while others slipped away in time; for indeed it flowed like water; and that you, not as the many suffered, but swam through it when it parted. And upon this dream he poured libation to the gods of good omen and bade me take courage about you." And Apollonius said, "I do not wonder that Telesinus sleeps over me, for indeed he has long watched over me; but about the trial you shall hear, yet not here, for it is now late afternoon enough and it is time to go to the town, and the talk on the road is pleasanter as it escorts men walking. Let us go, then, talking about what you ask; and I will tell what was done today in the court. For the things before the trial you both know, the one being present, the other having heard, I think, of this man—not once, by Zeus, but again and again, if I do not forget Demetrius; but what you do not yet know, I will go through, threading it from the prophecy and the entering naked." And he went through his own speeches, and at the end of all the "for you shall not kill me," and the leaving of the trial, how he left.

Then Demetrius cried out, "I thought you had come saved, but these things are the beginning of dangers for you; for he will seize you when you are denounced and barred from all retreat." But Apollonius, declaring himself strong against the fear of Demetrius, said, "If you too were so easy to catch as he! But how his affairs now stand, I know; for being ever a hearer of flattering words, he has now heard rebuking ones, and the natures of tyrants are torn by such things and grow bilious about them. But I need rest, not having yet bent my knee from the contest." And Damis said, "I, Demetrius, was so disposed toward this man's affairs as even to lead him away from this road on which he has come, and you too, I suppose, counselled this, that he might not go into dangers willing and grievous; but when he chanced to be bound, as it seemed to me, and I held his affairs hopeless, and he said that it lay with himself to be loosed, and, freeing his leg of the bond, showed it—then first I understood the man, that he was divine and stronger than our wisdom; whence, if I should meet even harder things than these, I should fear nothing under him, even in danger. But since evening is near, let us go to the lodging and take care of the man." And Apollonius said, "I need only sleep; the rest I hold in equal account, whether any of it be present or absent." After this, having prayed to Apollo and again to the Sun, he went into the house where Demetrius dwelt, and washing his feet and bidding Damis and his company dine, since they seemed to him to have eaten nothing, he cast himself on the couch, and, chanting over his sleep the verse of Homer, slept, as one who held the present matters not worth pondering.

About dawn, when Demetrius asked him whither on earth he would turn, and seemed to have his ears dinned by the thought of horsemen whom he supposed already pressing upon Apollonius through the tyrant's anger, "He will pursue," he said, "neither me nor any other; and for me the voyage will be to Greece." "A slippery one," he said; "for the place is most conspicuous; and one whom you could not escape even in obscurity, how should you escape notice in the open?" "I have no need to escape notice," he said; "for if, as you think, all the earth is the tyrant's, better are those who die in the open than those who live in obscurity." And to Damis: "Do you perceive a ship setting out for Sicily?" "I perceive it," he said; "for we are lodging by the sea, and the herald is near the doors, and the ship is already getting under way; I infer it from the shout of those aboard and from what they do about the weighing of the anchors." "Let us embark on this ship, Damis," he said, "to sail now to Sicily, and thence to the Peloponnese." "It seems good to me," he said;

"and let us sail." And greeting Demetrius, who was despondent over them, and exhorting him to take courage as a man for men, they sailed for Sicily with a fair wind, and, passing Messene, came to Tauromenium on the third day. After this, carried to Syracuse, they put out for the Peloponnese about the beginning of autumn, and crossing the open sea came in six days to the mouths of the Alpheus, from which this river pours, fit to drink, into the Adriatic and Sicilian sea. Disembarking, then, from the ship, and holding it of great worth to come to Olympia, they lodged in the temple of Zeus, never going off beyond Scillus; and when a rumour, thronging and intense, seized the Greek world that the man was alive and had come to Olympia, at first the report seemed not strong, for besides their having no human hope of him, since they had heard he was bound, they were not unacquainted with the tales that he had died burned, or had been dragged living, hooks fastened into his collar-bones, or had been thrust into a pit, or into the depths; but when it was believed that he had come, not for any Olympiad did Greece gather so uplifted as for him then. Elis and Sparta came from near at hand, Corinth from the bounds of the Isthmus, and the Athenians, though outside the Peloponnese, were not behind the cities that are at the doors of Pisa; the most distinguished of the Athenians themselves marching to the temple, and the youth from all the earth that frequents Athens. And indeed some from Megara dwelt at Olympia then, and many from Boeotia, and from Argos, and whatever was of repute among the Phocians and Thessalians; some who had already been with Apollonius to recover wisdom, since they thought to hear more and more marvellous things, and some unacquainted with him, holding it a terrible thing to seem to have been deaf to such a man. To those who asked in what manner he escaped the tyrant, he thought he need say nothing vulgar, but said only that he had made his defence and was saved; but when many came from Italy who proclaimed the things in the court, Greece was not far from doing him reverence, holding him a divine man chiefly for this very reason, that he set up no boast about these things.

When a young man of those who had come from Athens said that Athena was very kindly to the emperor, "Cease," he said, "at Olympia to applaud these things and to slander the goddess to her father." But when the young man pressed his vexation and said that the goddess did rightly, since the emperor too held office under her name at Athens, "Would," he said—silencing him with the former of his answers, that he knew ill about the gods if he held them kindly to tyrants, and with the next, that the Athenians' voting was not consistent with their decrees for Harmodius and Aristogeiton, if, while thinking to honour those men in the marketplace for what they did at the Panathenaea, they should henceforth grant to tyrants

to rule over them as elected." When Damis counselled him about money, since very little of their provision was left them, "Tomorrow," he said, "I will see to this." And going the next day into the temple, "Give me, priest," he said, "a thousand drachmas from the moneys of Zeus, if you do not think he will be very angry." And the priest said, "He will not be angry about these things, but rather if you do not take more."

When a Thessalian man, whose name was Isagoras, was with him at Olympia, "Tell me, Isagoras," he said, "is there such a thing as a festival?" "By Zeus," he said, "the pleasantest and most god-beloved of human things." "And what is its matter?" he said; "as if I had asked about the matter of this statue, and you had answered that it was composed of gold and ivory." "And what matter, Apollonius," he said, "is there of the incorporeal?" "The greatest," he said, "and most various; for in it are sacred precincts and temples and racecourses and a theatre, I suppose, and nations of men, some from the neighbouring land, some from beyond the borders and beyond the sea. And indeed it is composed of very many arts and devices and of true wisdom and of poets and counsels and discourses and naked contest and music, as is ancestral at Pytho." "It seems, Apollonius," he said, "that the festival is not only corporeal, but of more marvellous matter than the cities; for it gathers and settles together the most earnest of the earnest and the most notable of the notable." "Shall we then, Isagoras," he said, "as some hold walls and ships, hold the men to be it, or shall we need another opinion of it?" "This opinion is complete, Tyanean," he said, "and it is just to follow it." "And yet incomplete," he said, "as I reflect about it in my own way; for it seems to me that ships need men and men ships, and that men would never even have conceived the sea if there had been no ship, and that walls save men and men walls; and that a festival, on the same reasoning, is both the gathering of the men and the very place into which they must gather, and so much the more as walls and ships would never even have come to be except through the hands of men, but these places, having been spoiled by human hands only in being deprived of their spontaneity, came of nature well-furnished and were held worthy of being frequented. For gymnasia and porticoes and fountains and houses were wrought by human art, like the walls and the ships; but this Alpheus and the hippodrome and the stadium and the groves came, I suppose, before men—the river fit to be drink and bath, the plain wide for the horses to contend in, the place for the athletes to roll in the dust and run, because it furnishes a certain limit, a hollow of a stadium's length, and the groves to crown the victors and to train the runners among the athletes. For these things, I suppose, when Heracles reflected and admired the self-grown nature of Olympia, the place seemed to him worthy of the things still earnestly practised here."

Having discoursed forty days in Olympia and shown the greatest earnestness, he said, "I will discourse to you, men of Greece, in the cities, at festivals, in processions, in mysteries, in sacrifices, in libations—but they need a man of taste—but now I must go down to Lebadeia, since I have not yet met Trophonius, though I once visited the temple." And saying this he went off into Boeotia, none of his admirers being left behind. The mouth in Lebadeia is sacred to Trophonius the son of Apollo, and is enterable only by those who come about oracles; it is seen not in the temple, but a little above the temple on a hillock, and iron spits, set in a circle about it, close it; and the descent is such as draws a man down when he has seated himself. They who go down are sent clothed in white dress, carrying honey-cakes in their hands as soothings of the reptiles which assail those who descend. And the earth sends them up, some not far off, some very far; for they are sent up even beyond the Locrians and beyond the Phocians, but most about the bounds of the Boeotians. Going in, then, to the temple, he said, "I wish to go down for the sake of philosophy." The priests opposed him, and to the many said that they would never furnish the temple's test to a sorcerer, but to the man they pretended that the days were unlucky and not pure for the oracle. That day, then, he discoursed by the springs of Hercyna about the cause and manner of the oracle—for that alone gives its responses through the inquirer himself; and when evening came, going to the mouth with the young men who followed him, and pulling up four of the spits which hold the bars of the passage, he went underground in his very cloak, as if he had dressed himself for a discourse, doing things so dear to the god that Trophonius, appearing to the priests, rebuked them on behalf of the man, and bade all follow to Aulis, since there he would come up most marvellously of men. For he came up after seven days, more than any who had ever gone under the oracle, bearing a book most fit to the question. For he had gone down saying, "What, Trophonius, do you too hold the most perfect and purest philosophy?" And the book held the opinions of Pythagoras, as though the oracle too agreed with this wisdom.

This book is set up at Antium and is held in earnest because of the affair; and Antium is of the Italians on the sea. These things, then, I grant may be heard even from the inhabitants of Lebadeia; but about this book let my opinion be declared, that it was conveyed later to the emperor Hadrian, when indeed some of Apollonius's letters too—not all of them—and that it remained at the palace in Antium, in which of the palaces about Italy he most rejoiced.

There came to him from Ionia too all his followers, whom Greece named the Apollonians, and mingling with those from the place they became a youth worthy to marvel at for their number and their impulse toward philosophy. For rhetoric lay neglected, and they paid small heed to those who beat together the art, holding the tongue alone its teacher; but all pressed toward his philosophy. And he, as they say the Gyges and the Croesuses furnish the doors of their treasuries unlocked, that those who need may bale them, so furnished his own wisdom to those who loved it, granting them to ask about everything.

When some slandered him for shunning the visits of the governors and leading his hearers rather into quiet places, and one mocked him with driving his sheep elsewhere whenever he learned that the marketplace-men were approaching, "By Zeus," he said, "that the wolves may not fall upon the flock." And what did this mean for him? Seeing the marketplace-men gazed upon by the many and advancing from poverty to wealth, and so welcoming hatreds as to sell the very being hated, he led the young away from being with them, and rebuked rather bitterly those who had been with them, as one washing out a strange dye; for he was set against them at other times too, but by the prisons in Rome and the bound and the dying he was so disposed toward the art as to hold all these the work of the informers and of those puffed up with cleverness rather than of the tyrant.

About the time when he was earnest in Greece, such a sign held the heaven: a crown like a rainbow, going round the disk of the sun, dimmed its ray. That the sign bore toward innovation was plain to all; and the governor of Greece, calling him from Athens to Boeotia, said, "I hear, Apollonius, that you are wise in things daemonic." "If indeed you hear," he said, "that I am so in human things too." "I hear," he said, "and I agree." "Since, then," he said, "you agree, do not meddle with the counsels of the gods, for this human wisdom praises." But when he entreated Apollonius to say what he intended—for he feared lest all should pass into night—"Take courage," he said, "for there shall be some light out of this night."

After this, since he had had enough of the affairs of Greece, having spent two years in it, he sailed to Ionia with his fellowship following, and most of the time he philosophized about Smyrna and Ephesus, visiting the others too and seeming in no one of the cities unpleasant, but worthy to be longed for and a great gain to the discerning.

But the gods were now thrusting Domitian from his presidency over men. For he chanced to have killed Clemens, a man of consular rank, to whom he had given his own sister; and he had made a command about the third or fourth day after the murder that she too should go to a husband. Stephanus, then, a freedman of the woman, whom the form of the sign signified, whether reflecting on the dead man, or on all, set out, like the most freedom-loving of the Athenians, against the tyrant; and, slipping a sword under the forearm of his left arm and taking up his hand in bandages as though it were broken, he came up to him as he left the court and said, "I beg you, sire, alone, for great are the things you shall hear." And when the tyrant did not refuse the hearing, but took him aside into the men's hall where the palace is, he said, "Your most hostile Clemens has not died, as you think, but is where I know, and is arraying himself against you." When he had cried out greatly at what he heard, Stephanus, falling upon him as he was confounded, and drawing the sword from his arrayed hand, drove it through his thigh—not mortal to the immediate death, but not unseasonable to the death thereafter. And he, being otherwise strong in body, and about five-and-forty years of age, grappled with him though wounded, and throwing down Stephanus pressed upon him, digging out his eyes and crushing his cheeks with the base of a golden cup that lay there about the rites, and called also on Athena to help. The spearmen, then, understanding that he fared ill, came in together and killed the tyrant, who was already swooning.

These things were done in Rome, but were seen by Apollonius in Ephesus. For discoursing about the groves of the colonnades at noon, when indeed the things in the palace were happening, first he let his voice sink, as if afraid; then he interpreted more falteringly than was his power, like men who see something else amid their words; then he was silent, like those who have lost their argument; and looking terribly to the ground and advancing three or four of the steps, he cried, "Strike the tyrant, strike!"—not as one drawing the phantom of truth from some mirror, but as one seeing the very things and seeming to lay hold of what was being done. And Ephesus being dismayed—for all of it was present at his discourse—he paused as long as those who see, until something of the doubtful things should come to its end, and said, "Take courage, men, for the tyrant has been slaughtered today. Why do I say today? Just now, by Athena, just now, about the moment of the words at which I fell silent." Those in Ephesus held this madness, and wished it true but feared the danger of the hearing; "I do not wonder," he said, "at those who do not yet accept the argument, which not even all Rome yet knows. But behold, it knows; for it spreads abroad, and already myriads believe, and twice as many leap for joy, and twice as many again, and four times, and all the peoples there. This word will come hither too; and let your sacrificing upon it be deferred to the time when these things shall be reported; but I will go to pray to the gods for what I have seen."

While these things were still disbelieved, the runners of the good news came, witnesses of the man's wisdom; for the slaughter of the tyrant, and the day that brought it, and the noontide, and the killers to whom the exhortation was given, were so as the gods revealed each of these to the man as he discoursed. Thirty days after this, when Nerva sent him word that he already held the rule of the Romans by the counsels of the gods and of him, and that he would more easily hold it if Apollonius came as his counsellor, he wrote to him at once this riddle: "We shall be together, sire, the longest time with one another, in which neither we shall rule another, nor another us"—understanding, perhaps, of himself that not long after he would depart from men, and of Nerva that he would rule a short time, for his kingship advanced to a year and four months, he seeming most temperate.

But that he might not seem to neglect a good friend and ruler, he composed after this a letter to him, a counsel of imperial matters, and calling Damis said, "These things need you, for the secrets of the letter are written to the emperor, but are such as to be spoken either by me or through you." And late Damis says he understood the device; for the letter was excellently and on great matters composed by him, but might have been sent through another too. What, then, was the man's device? All the time he lived, he is said often to have uttered, "Live unnoticed; and if you cannot, depart life unnoticed." Drawing Damis, then, away from himself, that he might not put off his life before witnesses, he made the pretext of the letter and of his going up to Rome. And Damis says that he himself suffered something as he departed from him, not even knowing what was to come, but that the man, knowing well, said nothing to him, as those are wont who will see each other no more, but had so much over and above of being persuaded that he would forever be, that he charged him thus: "Damis, even when you philosophize by yourself, look to me."

The things recorded by Damis the Assyrian about Apollonius the Tyanean end in this discourse; for about the manner in which he died, if indeed he died, there are many accounts, but none is told by Damis. Yet I must not leave even this out; for the discourse, I suppose, ought to have its own end. Nor has anything been said by Damis about the man's age; but some say he came to eighty, some past ninety, some even beyond a hundred, whole in all his body and sound, and pleasanter than youth. For there is a certain bloom even about wrinkles, which flowered most about him, as the images of the man in the temple at Tyana show, and as the accounts that hymn the old age of Apollonius rather than the youth of Alcibiades of old.

As for his death, some say he died in Ephesus, tended by two maidservants—for the freedmen of whom I spoke at the beginning were already dead—and that, having freed one, he was blamed by the other for not holding her worthy of the same, and that Apollonius said to her, "It befits you to be a slave to her, for this will be the beginning of good for you." After his death, then, the one was a slave to that woman, and she, on a small charge, sold her to a trader, from whom one bought her though she was not even comely; but he, being in love and a sufficient money-maker, both declared her wife and entered children by her on the registers. Others say he died in Lindus, going into the temple of Athena and vanishing within. And those in Crete tell a thing more marvellous than those in Lindus; for they say that Apollonius was living in Crete, marvelled at more than before, and came to the temple of Dictynna at an unseasonable hour. Now a guard of dogs is set over the temple, wardens of the wealth in it, and the Cretans hold them worthy to fall short of neither the bears nor the wild beasts there; but these neither barked when he came, but, approaching, fawned upon him as they would not even upon the very familiar. The keepers of the temple, then, seizing him as a sorcerer and a robber, bound him, saying that he had thrown some soothing to the dogs; but he, about the middle of the night, loosed himself, and calling those who had bound him, that he might not escape their notice, ran to the doors of the temple, which flew open; and when he had passed within, the doors came together as they had been closed, and there fell out a cry of maidens singing. And the song was: "Go from earth, go to heaven, go." Such as: Go up from the earth.

About the soul, that it is immortal, he was still philosophizing, teaching that the argument about it is true, but not allowing men to meddle with such great things. For there came to Tyana a stripling bold in disputes and not agreeing with a true argument; and when Apollonius was now out of the world, and was marvelled at for his change, and none dared to gainsay that he was immortal, most of the discourses were about the soul—for there was there a youth in love with wisdom—but the stripling in no way agreed with the immortality of the soul, and said, "I, gentlemen, this tenth month now keep praying to Apollonius to reveal to me the argument about the soul; but he is so dead as not even to stand by me when I beg, nor to persuade me that he is immortal." Such things the stripling said then; but on the fifth day from that, having been earnest about the same things, he fell asleep where he was discoursing, and of the young men who were earnest with him some were at their books, some busy scratching geometric figures in the earth, when he, as though mad, leaping up half-asleep, streaming with much sweat, cried, "I believe you." And when those present asked what had befallen him, "Do you not see," he said, "Apollonius the wise, how he is present with us, listening to the argument, and chants marvellous things about the soul?" "And where is he?" they said; "for to us he appears nowhere, though we should wish this rather than to have the goods of all men." And the stripling said, "He seems to have come to discourse with me alone about the things I disbelieved; hear, then, what he chants over the argument: 'The soul is immortal, and not your possession, but Providence's, and after the body has withered, like a swift horse loosed from bonds, lightly leaping forth it mingles with the light air, having loathed its dreadful and much-suffering servitude. But what is this to you, who, when you are no longer, shall then seem to be? Or why, while you are among the living, do you search about these things?'" And this clear tripod of Apollonius stands about the secrets of the soul, that, of good cheer and knowing our own nature, we may go on to where the Fates appoint. Now to a tomb or false-tomb of the man I have nowhere come, though I have traversed most of the earth, however great it is; but everywhere to daemonic accounts of him, and there is a temple at Tyana wrought at imperial cost; for not even emperors held him unworthy of the honours of which they themselves were held worthy.