Philostratus’s sources.
Philostratus[1124] composed the Life of Apollonius about 217 A. D. at the request of the learned wife of the emperor Septimius Severus, to whose literary circle he belonged. The empress had come into possession of some hitherto unknown memoirs of Apollonius by a certain Damis of Nineveh, who had been his disciple and had accompanied him upon many of his travels. Some member of Damis’s family had brought these documents to the empress’s attention. Some scholars incline to the view that she was deceived by an impostor, but it hardly seems that there would be sufficient profit in the venture to induce anyone to take the pains to forge such memoirs. Also I can see no reason why a contemporary of Apollonius should not have said and believed everything which Philostratus represents Damis as saying; on the contrary it seems to me just what would be said by a naïf, gullible, and devoted disciple, who was inclined to exaggerate the abilities and achievements of his master and to take literally everything that Apollonius uttered ironically or figuratively. Other accounts of Apollonius were already in existence by a Maximus of Aegae, where Apollonius had spent part of his life, and by Moeragenes, but the memoirs of Damis seem to have offered much new material. Philostratus accordingly wrote a new life based largely upon Damis, but also making use of the will and epistles of Apollonius, many of which the emperor Hadrian had earlier collected, and of the traditions still current in the cities and temples which Apollonius had frequented and which Philostratus now took the trouble to visit. It has sometimes been suggested, chiefly by Christian writers intent upon discrediting the career of Apollonius, that Philostratus invented Damis and his memoirs. But Philostratus seems straightforward in describing the pains he has been to in preparing the Life, and certainly is more explicit and systematic in stating his sources than other ancient biographers like Plutarch and Suetonius are. He appears to follow his sources rather closely and not to invent new incidents, although he may, like Thucydides and other ancient historians, have taken liberties with the speeches and arguments put into his characters’ mouths. And through the work, despite his belief in demons and marvels, he now and then gives evidence of a moderate and sceptical mind, at least for his times.
Time and space covered.
Apollonius lived in the first century of our era and died during the reign of Nerva well advanced in years. It is therefore of a period over a century before his own that Philostratus writes. He is said to commit a number of errors in history and geography,[1125] but we must remember that mistakes in geography were a failing of the best ancient historians such as Polybius, and the general picture drawn of the emperors and politics of Apollonius’s time is not far wrong. It is true that Philostratus also makes use of tradition which has gradually formed since the death of Apollonius, and introduces explanations or comments of his own on various matters. It is, however, not the facts either of Apollonius’s career or of his times that concern us but the beliefs and superstitions which we find in Philostratus’s Life of him. Whether these are of the first, second, or early third century is scarcely necessary or possible for us to distinguish. If Damis records them, Philostratus accepts them, and the probability is that they apply not only to all three centuries but to a long period before and after. The territory covered in the Life is almost as extensive; it ranges all over the Roman Empire, alludes occasionally to the Celts and Scythians, and opens up Ethiopia and India[1126] to our gaze. Apollonius was a great traveler and there are many interesting and informing passages concerning ships, sailing, pilots, merchants and sea-trade.[1127]
Philostratus’s audience.
If we ask further, for what class of readers was the Life intended, the answer is, for the intellectual and learned. Apollonius himself was distinctly a Hellene. Philostratus represents him as often quoting Homer and other bygone Greek authors, or mentioning names from early Greek history such as Lycurgus and Aristides. One of his aims was to restore the degenerate Greek cities of his own day to their ancient morality. Furthermore, Apollonius never cared for many disciples, and neither required them to observe all the rules of life which he himself followed, nor admitted them to all his interviews with other sages and his initiations into sacred mysteries. This aloofness of the sage is somewhat reflected in his biographer. The Life is an attempt not to popularize the teachings of Apollonius but to justify him before the learned world.
Object of the Life.
The charge had been frequently made that Apollonius came illegitimately by his wisdom and acquired it violently by magic. Philostratus would restore him to the ranks of true philosophers who gained wisdom by worthy and licit methods. He declares that he was not a wizard, as many suppose, but a notable Pythagorean, a man of broad culture, an intellectual and moral teacher, a religious ascetic and reformer, probably even a prophet of divine and superhuman nature. It is not now so generally held by Christian writers as it used to be that Philostratus wrote the Life with the Gospel story of Christ in mind, and that his purpose was to imitate or to parody or to oppose a rival narrative to the Christian story and teaching. At no point in the Life does Philostratus betray unmistakably even a passing acquaintance with the Gospels, much less display any sign of animus against them. Moreover, the Christian historian and apologist, Eusebius, who lived in the century following Philostratus and was familiar with his Life of Apollonius, in writing a reply to a treatise in which Hierocles, a provincial governor under Diocletian, had compared Apollonius with Jesus, distinctly states that Hierocles was the first to suggest such an idea.[1128] Such similarities then as may exist between the Life and the Gospels must be taken as examples of beliefs common to that age.
Apollonius charged with magic.
Apollonius was accused of sorcery or magic during his lifetime by the rival philosopher Euphrates. The four books on Apollonius written by Moeragenes also portrayed him as a wizard;[1129] and Eusebius in his reply to Hierocles ascribed the miracles wrought by Apollonius to sorcery and the aid of evil demons.[1130] Earlier the satirist Lucian described Alexander the pseudo-prophet as having been in his youth an apprentice to “one of the charlatans who deal in magic and mystic incantations, ... a native of Tyana, an associate of the great Apollonius, and acquainted with all his heroics.”[1131]