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You yourself told me that by his desire Philostratus is writing a life of Apollonius of Tyana; and, though he may turn up his nose at the hair-splitting and frittering of the sages of the Museum, it is in his blood to look for marvels from those privileged philosophers.
He was a man too active to be ignored, too unstable to be trusted, too famous for ascetic piety to be lightly made an open enemy. His friendship was compromising, his enmity dangerous. We left him professing the Nicene faith before the council of Tyana. For the next three years we lose sight of him. He reappears as a friend of Basil in 370, and heartily supported him in his strife with Valens.
Philostratus has described for us a famous interview which Apollonius of Tyana maintained that he had had with the shade of Achilles. The philosopher related that it was not by digging a trench nor by shedding the blood of rams, like Odysseus, that he raised the ghost of Achilles; but by prayers such as the Indians are said to make to their heroes.
The grave senator Cassius Dio here stepped forward and observed that there were advantages in their amiable friend's withdrawal from the turmoil of court life. His Life of Apollonius, to which all the world was looking forward, would come all the sooner to a close. "If only that I might talk to him of the man of Tyana," cried the emperor, "I wish his biographer were here to-day.
She was lithe as a serpent, graceful as a young panther, another Lamia come to damn the souls of men with those arts denounced in a long dead age by Apolonius of Tyana. "She seemed, at once, some penanced lady elf, Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self...."
Mita's relations with Kue, Tabal and Carchemish do not, in themselves, argue that his seat of power was anywhere else than in the east of Asia Minor, where Moschi did actually survive till much later times: but, on the other hand, the occurrence of inscriptions in the distinctive script of Phrygia at Eyuk, east of the Halys, and at Tyana, south-east of the central Anatolian desert, argue that at some time the filaments of Phrygian power did stretch into Cappadocia and towards the land of the later Moschi.
'His belief that Aurelian will reward baseness though to an enemy. He never did it yet, and he cannot do it. Were there within the thick skull of Antiochus the brains of a foolish ostrich, he would have read in the fate of Heraclammon, the rich traitor of Tyana, his own. If I err not, he has indiscreetly enough thrust himself into a lion's den.
The confession next presented by Theophronius of Tyana was more to their mind, for it contained a direct anathema against "Marcellus and those who communicated with him." It secured a momentary approval, but the meeting broke up without adopting it. The Lucianic formula remained the creed of the council.
He was thinking, no doubt, of the miracle-monger of Tyana, Apollonius, who certainly had heard of the doctrine of the Redeemer. But among the thousand nine hundred and ninety, who here bring beasts to the altar, who ever remembers this? Quite lately I heard one of our garden laborers ask how much a day he ought to sacrifice to the sun, his god.
From this are emitted all the mundane forces; and, since God cannot do evil, the existence of evil in the world must be imputed to these emanating forces. It is very clear, therefore, that though Philo declined Oriental pantheism, he laid his foundation on the Oriental theory of Emanation. As aiding very greatly in the popular introduction of Orientalism, Apollonius of Tyana must be mentioned.
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