Some signs of astrology.
The Brahmans seem to have made some use of astrology in working their feats of magic. Damis at any rate said that when Apollonius bade farewell to the sages, Iarchas made him a present of seven rings named after the planets, which he wore in turn upon the appropriate days of the week.[1164] Perhaps, too, the seven swords of adamant which Iarchas had rediscovered as a child had some connection with the planets.[1165] Moeragenes ascribed four books on foretelling the future by the stars to Apollonius himself, but Philostratus was unable to find any such work by Apollonius extant in his day.[1166] And unless it be an allusion to Chaldeans which we have already noted, there is no further mention of astrology in Philostratus’s Life—a rather remarkable fact considering that he wrote for the court of Septimius Severus, the builder of the Septizonium.
Interest in natural science.
The philosopher Euphrates, who is represented by Philostratus as jealous of Apollonius, once advised the emperor Vespasian, when Apollonius was present, to embrace natural philosophy—or a philosophy in accordance with natural law—but to beware of philosophers who pretended to have secret intercourse with the gods.[1167] There was justification in the latter charge against Apollonius, but it should not be assumed that his mysticism rendered him unfavorable to natural science. On the contrary he is frequently represented by Philostratus as whiling away the time along the road by discussing with Damis such natural problems as the delta of the Nile or the tides at the mouth of the Guadalquivir. He was especially interested in the habits of animals and the properties of gems. Vespasian was fond of listening to “his graphic stories of the rivers of India and the animals” of that country, as well as to “his statements of what the gods revealed concerning the empire.”[1168] Some of the questions which Apollonius put to the Brahmans concerned nature.[1169] He asked of what the world was composed, and when they said, “Of elements,” he asked if there were four. They believed, however, in a fifth element, ether, from which the gods had been generated and which they breathe as men breathe air. They also regarded the universe as a living animal. He further inquired of them whether land or sea predominated on the earth’s surface,[1170] and this same attitude of scientific inquiry and of curiosity about natural forces and objects is frequently met in the Life.
Natural law or special providence?
Apollonius believed, as we shall see, in omens and portents, and interpreted an earthquake at Antioch as a divine warning to the inhabitants.[1171] The Brahman sages, moreover, regarded prolonged drought as a punishment visited by the world soul upon human sinfulness.[1172] On the other hand, Apollonius gave a natural explanation of volcanoes and denied the myths concerning Enceladus being imprisoned under Mount Aetna and the battle of the gods and giants.[1173] And in the case of the earthquake the people had already accepted it as a portent and were praying in terror, when Apollonius took the opportunity to warn them to cease from their civil factions. As a matter of fact, both Apollonius and Philostratus appear to regard portents as an extraordinary sort of natural phenomena. A knowledge of natural science helps in recognizing them and in interpreting them. When a lioness of enormous size with eight whelps in her is slain by hunters, Apollonius at once recognizes the event as portentous because as a rule lionesses have whelps only thrice and only three of them on the first occasion, two in the second litter, and finally but a single whelp, “but I believe a very big one and preternaturally fierce.”[1174] Here Apollonius is not in strict agreement with Pliny and Aristotle[1175] who say that the lioness produces five whelps at the first birth and one less every succeeding year.
Cases of scepticism
The scepticism of Apollonius concerning the Aetna myth is not an isolated instance. At Sardis he ridiculed the notion that trees could be older than earth,[1176] and he was one of the few ancients to question the swan’s song.[1177] He denied “the silly story that the young of vipers are brought into the world without mothers” as “consistent neither with nature nor experience,”[1178] and also the tale that the whelps of the lioness claw their way out into the world.[1179] In India Apollonius saw a wild ass or unicorn from whose single horn a magic drinking horn was made.[1180] A draught from this horn was supposed to protect one for that day from disease, wounds, fire, or poison, and on that account the king alone was permitted to hunt the animal and to drink from the horn. When Damis asked Apollonius if he credited this story, the sage ironically replied that he would believe it if he found the king of the country to be immortal. Either, however, the scepticism of Apollonius, as was the case with so many other ancients and medieval men, was sporadic and inconsistent, or it came to be overlaid with the credulity of Damis and Philostratus, as the following example suggests. Iarchas told Damis and Apollonius flatly that the races described by Scylax of men with long heads or huge feet with which they were said to shade themselves did not exist in India or anywhere else; yet in a later book Philostratus states that the shadow-footed people are a tribe in Ethiopia.[1181]
Anecdotes of animals.
At any rate the marvels of India are more frequently credited than criticized in the Life by Philostratus, and the same holds true of the extraordinary conduct and well-nigh human intelligence attributed to animals. Especially delightful reading are six chapters on the remarkable sagacity of elephants and their love for mankind.[1182] On this point, as by Pliny, use is made of the work of Juba. We read again of sick lions eating apes, of the lioness’s love affair with the panther, of the fondness of leopards for the fragrant gum of a certain tree and of goats for the cinnamon tree; of apes who are made to collect pepper for men by appealing to their instinct towards mimicry;[1183] and of the tiger, whose loins alone are eaten by the Indians. “For they decline to eat the other parts of this animal, because they say that as soon as it is born it lifts up its front paws to the rising sun.”[1184] In the river Hyphasis is a creature like a white worm which yields when melted down a fat or oil that once set afire cannot be extinguished and which the king uses to burn walls and capture cities.[1185] In India are griffins who quarry gold with their powerful beaks, and the luminous phoenix with its nest of spices and swan-like funeral song.[1186]