The messenger sent to meet Apollonius carried what Damis calls a golden anchor (iii. 11, 17), and if this is an authentic fact, it would suggest a forerunner of the Tibetan dorje, the present degenerate symbol of the “rod of power,” something like the thunder-bolt wielded by Zeus. This would also point to a Buddhist community, though it must be confessed that other indications point equally strongly to Brāhmanical customs, such as the caste-mark on the forehead of the messenger (iii. 7, 11), the carrying of (bamboo) staves (daṇḍa), letting the hair grow long, and wearing of turbans (iii. 13). But indeed the whole account is too confused to permit any hope of extracting historical details.
Of the nature of Apollonius’ visit we may, however, judge from the following mysterious letter to his hosts (iii. 51):
“I came to you by land and ye have given me the sea; nay, rather, by sharing with me your wisdom ye have given me power to travel through heaven. These things will I bring back to the mind of the Greeks, and I will hold converse with you as though ye were present, if it be that I have not drunk of the cup of Tantalus in vain.”
It is evident from these cryptic sentences that the “sea” and the “cup of Tantalus” are identical with the “wisdom” which had been imparted to Apollonius—the wisdom which he was to bring back once more to the memory of the Greeks. He thus clearly states that he returned from India with a distinct mission and with the means to accomplish it, for not only had he drunk of the ocean of wisdom in that he has learnt the Brahmā-vidyā from their lips, but he has also learnt how to converse with them though his body be in Greece and their bodies in India.
But such a plain meaning—plain at least to every student of occult nature—was beyond the understanding of Damis or the comprehension of Philostratus. And it is doubtless the mention of the “cup of Tantalus”[100] in this letter which suggested the inexhaustible loving cup episode in iii. 32, and its connection with the mythical fountains of Bacchus. Damis presses it into service to “explain” the last phrase in Apollonius’ saying about the sages, namely, that they were “possessed of nothing but what all possess”—which, however, appears elsewhere in a changed form, as “possessing nothing, they have the possessions of all men” (iii. 15).[101]
On returning to Greece, one of the first shrines Apollonius visited was that of Aphrodite at Paphos in Cyprus (iii. 58). The greatest external peculiarity of the Paphian worship of Venus was the representation of the goddess by a mysterious stone symbol. It seems to have been of the size of a human being, but shaped like a pine-cone, only of course with a smooth surface. Paphos was apparently the oldest shrine dedicated to Venus in Greece. Its mysteries were very ancient, but not indigenous; they were brought over from the mainland, from what was subsequently Cilicia, in times of remote antiquity.
The worship or consultation of the Goddess was by means of prayers and the “pure flame of fire,” and the temple was a great centre of divination.[102]
Apollonius spent some time here and instructed the priests at length with regard to their sacred rites.
In Asia Minor he was especially pleased with the temple of Æsculapius at Pergamus; he healed many of the patients there, and gave instruction in the proper methods to adopt in order to procure reliable results by means of the prescriptive dreams.