XXXIV
After this Philostratus sets forth four counts of the indictment which he imagines it will be easy for his hero to defend himself from, and he admits that he has collected these out of a great many others. Of these the first was: What induced him to wear a different robe from everybody else? and the second: Why was it that men esteemed him to be a god? the third, How had he managed to predict the plague to the Ephesians? and last of all: In whose behoof had he gone to a certain field and cut up the Arcadian boy? To meet these then he alleges Apollonius to have written an apology. But first of all he relates how he was cast into prison, and the miracle which he wrought there. For we hear that Damis was extremely downcast at the misfortunes which he imagined had befallen his teacher; whereupon Apollonius showed him his leg released without effort from the chain. Then having thus alleviated his follower's grief, he put his foot back again into its former condition and habit. After that he was brought to trial before the Emperor Domitian, and we read that he was acquitted on the charges, and that after being so acquitted he, wiih curious inopportuneness, as it seems to me, cried out in the court exactly as follows: " Accord me too, if you will, an opportunity to speak; but if not, then send someone to take my body, for my soul you cannot take. Nay you cannot even take my body,' for thou shalt not slay me, since I tell thee I am not mortal.'" And then after this famous utterance, we are told that he vanished from the court, and this is the conclusion of the whole drama.
XXXV
Now in regard to the miracle in the prison, which it seems was an illusion, imposed on the eyes of Damis by the familiar demon, our author adds the following remark; " Damis says that it was then for the first time that he truly understood the nature of Apollonius, to wit that it was divine and superhuman; for without offering any sacrifice,---and how indeed in prison could he have offered one?--and without a single prayer, without even a word, he quietly laughed at the fetters, and then inserting his leg in them afresh, he comported himself like any other prisoner." I should be the last to accuse his pupil of being a dull-witted man, because, after being with him all his life, and witnessing him work miracles by means of certain uncanny agencies, he failed to regard him as in any way superior to the rest of mortal men; but now after such a display of thaumaturgic energy as the above, he is still ignorant of his true character; and taking him to be a mere man he is full of anxiety (as in that case he might well be), and full of apprehension in his behalf, lest any affliction should come upon him against his own wish and will. But if indeed it was now for the first time, after having passed so long a time with him, that he realised that he was indeed divine, and superior to the rest of the human race, then it behoves us to scrutinize the reason which our author alleges for his doing so, in these words: " For without any sacrifice, and without a single prayer, and without uttering a single mysterious word " he saw that he had wrought this miracle. It follows that the fellow's earlier feats were accomplished by the help of some uncanny trick, and that is why, as he says, Damis was not astounded at these things, nor filled with wonder by them. Naturally, then he now for the first time experienced these feelings, because he felt that his master had accomplished something which was quite unusual and contrary to his habitual performances. In reference however to the phantom chains shown to Damis and to his departure from the law-courts, I will quote the words which Apollonius himself addresses to Domitian. For when the monarch ordered him to be thrown into chains, Apollonius, with perfect consistency, argued as follows: " If you think me a wizard, how will you bind me? And if you bind me, how can you say that I am a wizard." Surely one may invert this argument and use it against him somewhat as follows, keeping to his own premisses: If you are not a wizard, then how was your leg liberated from the chains? and if it was liberated, then how are you not a wizard? And if, because he submits to the chains, he is not a wizard, then if he does not submit to them, he is a wizard by his own admission. And again if, because he submitted to be brought to trial, he was not a wizard, he was yet clearly revealed as such when he ran off and eluded the court and retinue of the Emperor, I mean of course the bodyguard that stood round him. Now I believe that our author is aware of this, and endeavours to gloze over the fact, when he pretends that this miracle was exhibited without sacrifice or any sort of incantation by some ineffable and superhuman power.
XXXVI
MOREOVER we have not got to go far, before a fresh test of his character is supplied to us; for presently a messenger presents himself and says: " O Apollonius, the Emperor releases you from these chains, and permits you to reside in the jail where prisoners are not bound "; whereupon Apollonius, who is superior to mankind and has foreknowledge of what is coming, and according to the poet
" Hath understanding of the dumb and heareth him who speaks not"
is so overjoyed., as well he might be, at the news, that he suddenly drops out of his gift of foreknowledge, and asks outright: " Who then will get me out of this place? " and the messenger replied: " I myself, so follow me."
XXXVII
NEXT this most divine of men composes in the most careful of manners an harangue in defence of himself, quite unaware that after all his composition would prove a mere waste of effort. For he imagines that the Emperor will listen to his defence of his case, and on that assumption he arranges his apology along extremely plausible lines; but the latter, by refusing to wait, renders all his trouble useless and unnecessary. I would ask you then to listen to the following, for what he says is a refutation of himself: "But inasmuch as he had composed an oration which he meant to deliver in defence of himself by the clock, only the tyrant confined him to the questions which I have enumerated, I have determined to publish this oration also." Note then how utterly at fault this entirely divinest of beings was about the future, if he took so much trouble and care to proportion the length of his apology to the time allowed him by the water-clock.
XXXVIII
BUT we must not omit to pass in review the defence which he so vainly composed, for it contains among many examples of the arrogance with which he addressed Domitian, the following utterance, to wit, when he says " as Vespasian made you Emperor, so I made him." Heavens, what braggadocio! No ordinary person anyhow, nor any real philosopher either, transcending the rest of mankind, could indulge in such high-faluting bombast without exposing himself in the eyes of sensible men to a charge of being mad. Next in trying to rid himself of the suspicion which weighed upon him, he holds the following language concerning magicians and wizards; " But I call wizards men of false wisdom, for with them the unreal is made real, and the real becomes incredible." One may learn then from the whole treatise and from the particular episodes set forth therein, whether we ought to rank him among divine and philosophic men or among wizards. We have only to observe what he himself has said about wizards and falsely wise men together with what is published in his own history. For when oak trees and elms talk in articulate and feminine tones, and tripods move of their own accord, and waiters of copper serve at table, and jars are filled with showers and with winds, and water of sandarac and all the other things of the kind are introduced among those whom he accounted gods and also did not hesitate to entitle his teachers, of whom else are all these things characteristic, except of people who can exhibit "the unreal as real and the real as incredible "? In himself calling the latter wizards, he shows that they are people whose wisdom is false. Is it then on the strength of these things that this divine man, endowed with all virtue and the darling of the gods, is to bind on his brow the prize of wisdom, and to be accounted truly more divine than Pythagoras and his successors, and to be considered far more blessed than he; is he not rather to be found guilty of false wisdom and carry off the first prize for wretches?
XXXIX
IN the same book we are told that he had reasoned in Ionia about the power of the Fates, and had taught that the threads they spin are so immutable that, if they decree a kingdom to another which already belongs to some one, then, even if that other were slain by the possessor for fear lest he should ever have it taken away by him, the latter would yet be raised from the dead and live again in fulfilment of the decrees of the Fates; and he continues in these very words: "He who is destined to become a carpenter, will become one, even though his hands have been cut off; and he who has been predestined to carry off the prize for running in the Olympic games, will never fail to win, even though he break his leg; and the man to whom the Fates have decreed that he shall be an eminent archer, will not miss the mark, even though he lose his eyesight." And then by way of flattering the sovereign he adds the following: " And in drawing my examples from royalty, I had reference, I admit, to the Acrisii and to the house of Laius, and to Astyages, the Mede, and to many other monarchs who thought that their power was well established, and of whom some were supposed to have slain their own children and others their descendants, yet were deprived by them of their thrones, when they grew up and issued forth against them out of obscurity in accordance with destiny. Well, if I were inclined to flattery I should have said that I had your own history in my mind, when you were blockaded by Vitellius, and the temple of Jupiter was burnt on the brow of the hill, overlooking the city. And Vitellius declared that his own fortune was assured, so long as you did not escape him, although you were at the time quite a stripling, and not the man you are now. And yet because the Fates had decreed otherwise, he perished with all his counsels, while you are now in possession of his throne. However, since I abhor the forced concords of flattery, for it seems to me that they are everything that is out of time and out of tune, let me at once cut this string out of my lyre, and request you to consider that on that occasion I had not your fortunes in my mind." In this passage, a treatise written ostensibly in the interest of truth draws a picture of a man who was at once a flatterer and a liar, and anything rather than a philosopher; for after inveighing so bitterly on the earlier occasion against Domitian, he now flatters him, generous fellow that he is, and pretends that the doctrines he mooted in Ionia about the Fates and Necessity, so far from being directed against him rather told in his favour.
Take then your history, my author, and regaining your sobriety after, your fit of drunkenness, read out loud and in a truth-loving tone the passages you wrote on a former occasion, without concealing anything; read how when he was staying in Ephesus he did his best "to alienate his friends from Domitian, and encouraged them to espouse the cause of the safety of all, and as it occurred to him that intercourse with them by letter was dangerous to them, he would take now one and now another of the most discreet of his own companions aside and say to them: ' I have a most important secret business to entrust to yourselves, so you must betake yourself to Rome to such and such persons, and converse with them !' " And of how " he delivered a discourse on the subject of the Fates and Necessity. and argued that not even tyrants can overpower the decrees of the Fates." And how "directing the attention of his audience to a brazen statue of Domitian which stood close by that of the Meles, he said: ' Thou fool, how much art thou mistaken in thy views of Necessity and of the Fates. For even if thou shouldst slay the man who is fated to be despot after thyself, he shall come to life again.' " The man then who, after holding such language as this, proceeds to flatter the tyrant, and cynically pretends that none of this language was directed against him, how can we judge him other than capable of all villainy and meanness; unless indeed you assume that the authors who have handed down to us these details of him were lying fellows who meant to accuse their hero and not true historians? But in that case what becomes, to use the language of the Lover of Truth, of those who " were historians at once most highly educated and respectful of the truth, namely Damis the philosopher who even lived with the man in question and Philostratus the Athenian?" For these are the authors who lay these facts before us, and they are clearly convicted by the light of truth, since they thus contradict themselves, of being vapouring braggarts and nothing else, convicted by their inconsistencies of being downright liars, men devoid of education and charlatans.
XL
THE story proceeds to tell us that after all this, Apollonius, liberated from the court, made up his mind to descend into the cave of Trophonius in Lebadea; but the people there would not allow him to do so, because they too regarded him as a wizard. Surely it is legitimate in us to be puzzled, when one compares what one reads at the beginning of the book of Philostratus, I mean the passage where he owns that he is puzzled at people having regarded his hero as a wizard, and expresses his surprise at the circumstance, remarking withal, that "although Empedocles and Pythagoras and Democritus had consorted with the same Magi without ever stooping to the magic art, and Plato had derived much from the priests and prophets in Egypt, and had mingled their ideas with his own discourses, without ever being held by anyone to be a magician, yet men so far had failed to recognise his hero as one inspired by the purest wisdom, but had long since accounted him a magician and still did so, because he had consorted with the Magi of Babylon and the Brahmans of India, and the Naked sages of Egypt." What answer then can we make to him, except this?-- My good fellow, what was your hero up to in this line, for him alone to have been regarded both long ago and now as a wizard in contrast with these great men; who though, as you admit, they had made trial of the same teachers as he, yet were eminent both in the age in which they nourished, and also bequeathed to posterity in their philosophy a gift of such excellence that its praises are still sung. Is such a contrast possible, unless he was caught by men of good sense meddling with things that were unlawful? There are still among our contemporaries those who say that they have found superstitious devices dedicated in the name of this man; though I admit I have no wish to pay attention to them. However as regards his death, although Philostratus follows in his book the accounts of earlier writers, he declares that he knows nothing of the truth; for he says that people in Ephesus related that Apollonius died there, while others said that he died in Lindus after entering the temple of Athene, and others in Crete; and after shedding so much doubt on the manner of his end, he yet inclines to believe that he went to heaven body and all. For he says that after he had run into the temple, the gates were closed and a strange hymn of maidens was heard to issue from the building, and the words of their song were: " Come, come, to heaven, come." But he says that he had never come across any sepulchre or "cenotaph of his hero, although he had visited the greater part of the whole earth; but what he would like us to believe is that his hero never encountered death at all, for on a former occasion when he is canvassing the manner in which he died, he adds the proviso: " If he did die." But in a later passage he declares in so many words that he went to heaven. This is why he avows, no less in the exordium of his book than throughout it, that it was by reason of his being such as he was that he wooed philosophy in a diviner manner than Pythagoras and Empedocles.
XLI
ALTHOUGH then the limits of our discourse are reached in the above, I would yet, if you will allow me, raise a few points in connexion with the Fates and with destiny, in order to ascertain what aim his work has in view, when throughout its argument it sets itself to demolish our responsibility, and to substitute for it necessity, and destiny and the Fates. For in this way we shall finally and completely refute the tenets professed by the author and prove their falsity. If then, according to the views of true philosophy, every soul is immortal, for that which is perpetually moving is immortal, whereas that which moves another, and is itself moved by others, in admitting a cessation of its own movement, admits a cessation of life; and if responsibility depends on personal choice, and God is not responsible, then what reason is there for concluding that the nature, which is ever in movement, is actuated against its will, and not rather in accordance with its own choice and ' decision; for otherwise it would resemble a lifeless body in being moved by some outside agency, and would be as it were a puppet pulled by strings hither and thither. The nature which ever moves itself would, on such ail hypothesis, effect nothing of its own initiative and movement, nor could it refer to itself the responsibility of its actions." In such a case, when it reasoned of truth it would surely not be worthy of praise; nor on the other hand be blameworthy, because it was filled with vice and wickedness? Why then, I would ask you, my good fellow, do you revile Euphrates and find fault with him, if it is not of his own initiative, but by the force of destiny, that he devoted himself to gain, as you pretend, and neglected the philosophical ideal? And why do you insult wizards, by calling them false sophists, if they are dragged down by the Fates, as you believe, to their miserable life? And why do you keep in your vocabulary at all such a word as vice, when any evil man is unjustly condemned by you, since it is by necessity that he fulfils his destined term? And again on what principle do you solemnly enroll yourself a disciple of the wonderful teacher Pythagoras, and insist on praising one who, instead of being a lover of philosophy, was a mere toy in the hands of the Fates? And as for Phraotes and Iarchas, the philosophers of the Indians, what have they done to win from you the reputation of being gods, unless the glory they acquired by their culture and virtue was their own? And in the same way with regard to Nero and Domitian, why do you not saddle upon the Fates and on Necessity the responsibility for their unbridled insolence, and acquit them of all responsibility and blame? But if as you say a man who is destined to be a runner, or an archer or a carpenter, cannot avoid being so, surely also if it has been destined that a man should be a wizard, and that being his character, a magician or a murderer and a wicked man and a reprobate, come what will, he must of necessity end by being such a person. Why then do you go wandering about, preaching the virtues to those who are incapable of reform? Why do you blame those who are the monsters they are, not of their own choice, but by predestination? And why too, if it was decreed by fate that you yourself being of a divine nature should transcend the glory of kings, did you visit schools of teachers and philosophers, and trouble yourself about Arabians and about the Magi of Babylon, and the wise men of India? For in any case surely, even without your holding communications with them, the decrees of the Fates were bound to be fulfilled in your case.
And why do you vainly cast before those whom you consider to be gods, your honey-cake and your frankincense, and putting on the cloak of religion encourage your companions to be diligent at their prayers? And what do you yourself in your prayers ask of the gods, inasmuch as you admit that they too are subject to Destiny? Nay you ought to make a clean sweep of all the other gods, and sacrifice to Necessity alone and to the Fates, and pay your respects rather to Destiny than to Zeus himself. In that case no doubt you would have no gods left; and rightly too, seeing that they are not even able to help mankind. And again, if it were decreed by fate that the citizens of Ephesus should be afflicted with pestilence, why did you sanction the opposite and so try to thwart destiny? Nay, why did you dare to transcend destiny, and as it were raise a trophy over her? And again in the case of the maiden raised to life, the thread of Clotho had reached its limit, and that being so why did you, when she was dead, bind a fresh thread on the spindle, by coming forward yourself in the role of the saviour of her life?
But perhaps you will say the Fates drove you also on to these courses. Yet you cannot say that they did so out of respect to your merits; far from it, seeing that before you passed into this body of yours, you were yourself, by your own account, a sea-faring man who spent his life upon the waves, and that of necessity, for even this could not have been otherwise. There is therefore nothing remarkable about your earliest birth, or your upbringing, or your education in the circle of arts, or in your wise self-discipline in the prime of your life, or of your training . in philosophy; for it was after all some necessity of . the Fates that led you to Babylon, and you were as it were driven on to associate with the sages of India; and it was not your own will and choice, nor a love of philosophy either, but Fate that led you in her noose to the Naked sages of the Egyptians, and to Gadeira and to the pillars of Hercules; and it was she who forced you to wander about the eastern and western oceans, and along with her spindles whirled you idly around. But if anyone admits, as they must, that his endowment with wisdom was due to these causes, then it was destiny that was responsible for them; and we must no longer reckon your hero among those who are fond of learning, nor can we with any pretence of reason admire a philosophy which was provided, not intentionally, but by necessity, for him. And we shall have to class on one and the same level, according to him, Pythagoras himself with any pretentious and abject slave, and Socrates himself, who died in behalf of philosophy with those who accused him and clamoured for his death. Diogenes, too, with the golden youth of Athens; and, to sum up, the wisest man will not differ from the most imprudent, nor the unjustest from the justest, nor the most abandoned from the most temperate, nor the worst of cowards from the greatest of heroes; for they have all been demonstrated to be playthings of destiny and of the Fates.
XLII
HOWEVER, the herald of truth will raise his voice against such arguments, and say: O ye men, mortal and perishable race, whither are you drifting, after drinking the unmixed cup of ignorance? Be done with it at last, wake up and be sober; and, raising the eyes of your intelligence, gaze upon the august countenance of truth. It is not lawful for truth to be in conflict and contradiction with herself; nor that of two pronounced opposites there should exist but one and the same ground and cause. The universe is ordered by the divine laws of the providence of God that controls all things, and the peculiar nature of man's soul renders him master of himself and judge, ruler and lord of himself; and it teaches him through the laws of nature, and the tenets of philosophy, that of things which exist some are within our own control, but others not; and within our control is everything which comes into being in accordance with our will and choice and action, and these are naturally free, unhindered and unimpeded. But such things as are not in our control are weak and servile, restrained and alien to ourselves; for example, our bodily processes and external objects which are both lifeless and destitute of reason, and in their manner of existence wholly foreign to the proper nature of a reasonable living creature. As for things which are in our control, each one of us possesses in the will itself alternative impulses of virtue and vice; and while the principle which controls the universe and governs it executes its rounds in direct accordance with nature, it is at the same time always accompanied by a justice which punishes infractions of the divine law; but for the motives on which we act the responsibility lies not with destiny nor fate, nor with necessity. It lies with him who makes the choice, and God is not to be blamed. If therefore anyone is so foolhardy as to controvert the fact of our responsibility, let him be duly exposed; and let him openly proclaim that lie is an atheist, seeing that he does not recognise either providence or God or anything else except the Fates and necessity. And let him bare-headed enumerate the consequences of these doctrines, let him cease to call anyone wise or foolish, just or unjust, virtuous or vicious, or charlatan; let him deny that anyone is divine in our humanity, that there is any philosophy, any education, in a word any art of any kind, or science, let him not call anyone else by nature good or evil, but admit that everything whatever is whirled round in an eddy of necessity by the spindles of the Fates. Let such a person then be registered as an atheist and impious man in the tribunal of the pious and of philosophers. And if anyone under the cloak of other opinions undertakes to entertain ideas of Providence and of the gods, yet , in addition to these champions the cause of Destiny and Fate, so upholding conflicting and opposed opinions, let him be classed among the senseless and condemned to pay the penalty of his folly. This then is so. But if after this there still remain those who are disposed to register this man's name in the schools of philosophers, it shall be said that, even if they succeed in clearing him from the filth thrown by others, nay in disentangling him from the pinchbeck properties in which the author of this book has wheeled him in upon the stage, we shall raise no objection to their doing so. At the same time if anyone ventures to overpass the limits of truth and tries to deify him as no other philosopher has been deified, he will at the best, though unawares, be rubbing into him the accusation of wizardry; for this work of pretentious sophistry can only serve, in my opinion, to convict him, and lay him open in the eyes of all men of sense to this terrible accusation.
This text was transcribed by Roger Pearse, 4th January 2002. All material on this page is in the public domain - copy freely.