Apollonius of Tyana.

— Except among scholars, Apollonius of Tyana is almost known by name alone. His name is not popular, for want of a history within everyone's reach. There existed only a few translations, based on a Latin translation of an inconvenient format. We must therefore thank the learned Hellenist who has just popularized him by means of a conscientious translation, modeled on the original Greek text, as well as the publishers, for having, with this publication, filled a regrettable gap.

There are no precise dates concerning Apollonius's life. According to certain calculations, he would have been born two or three years before Jesus Christ and died at ninety-six years of age, toward the end of the first century. He was born in Tyana, a Greek city of Cappadocia, in Asia Minor. From an early age he gave proof of great memory and remarkable intelligence, demonstrating great enthusiasm for study. Of all the philosophies he studied, he adopted that of Pythagoras, whose precepts he followed rigorously until death. His father, one of the wealthiest citizens of Tyana, left him a considerable fortune, which he divided among his relatives, reserving only a small part for himself, because, as he said, the wise man must know how to be content with little. He traveled much in order to instruct himself; he traversed Assyria, Scythia, India, where he visited the Brahmins, Egypt, Greece, Italy, and Spain, teaching wisdom everywhere, thanks to the gentleness of his character and the honesty of his virtues, recruiting numerous disciples who followed in his footsteps in order to hear him, some of whom accompanied him on his travels. One of them, however — Euphrates — envious of his superiority and his good reputation, became his detractor and mortal enemy, never ceasing to spread calumnies against him in order to ruin him; but he only managed to debase himself. Apollonius was never troubled by this and, far from harboring any resentment toward him, lamented his weakness and always sought to repay evil with good. On the contrary, Damis, a young Assyrian whom he met in Nineveh, attached himself to him with a fidelity proof against all trials, was the assiduous companion of his travels, the depositary of his philosophy, and left behind the greater part of the information we possess concerning him. The name of Apollonius of Tyana is mingled with that of all the legendary personages whom the imagination of men has delighted in clothing with marvelous attributes. Whatever the exaggeration of the facts attributed to him, it is evident that, alongside the fables, there is found a substratum of truths more or less adulterated. No one could safely cast doubt on the existence of Apollonius of Tyana; what is equally certain is that he must have done notable things, without which they would not have spoken of them. For the empress Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus, to have asked Philostratus to write his life, it was necessary that he had given cause for talk, for it is not probable that she would have commissioned a novel about an imaginary or obscure man. That Philostratus amplified the facts, or that he found them amplified, is probable and even certain; at least some of them lie beyond all probability. But what is no less certain is that he gathered the essence of his narrative from accounts that were almost contemporary and that must have enjoyed sufficient notoriety to merit the empress's attention. Sometimes the difficulty lies in disentangling fable from truth. In this case there are creatures who find it simpler to deny everything. Personages of this nature are appraised very diversely; each one judges them according to his opinions, his beliefs, and even according to his interests. More than any other, Apollonius of Tyana was bound to give cause for controversy, by the epoch in which he lived and by the nature of his faculties. Among other things, they attribute to him the gift of healing, prescience, vision at a distance, the power of reading thought, of expelling demons, and of transporting himself instantaneously from one place to another, etc. Few philosophers enjoyed greater popularity during their lifetime. His prestige was further increased by the austerity of his habits, by his gentleness, simplicity, disinterestedness, benevolent character, and reputation for learning. Paganism was then casting its last gleams, and was struggling against the invasion of nascent Christianity: it wished to transform him into a God. Mingling Christian ideas with pagan ideas, some took him for a saint; the less fanatical saw in him no more than a philosopher. This is the most reasonable opinion and the only title he ever accepted, for he refused that of son of Jupiter, as some claimed for him. Although a contemporary of Christ, it seems that he did not hear him spoken of, because in his life he makes no allusion to what was then taking place in Judea. Among the Christians who later judged him, some declared him a knave and impostor; others, unable to deny the facts, claimed that he worked prodigies through the assistance of the demon, without thinking that they thereby confessed the very same prodigies, making Satan the rival of God, by the difficulty of distinguishing divine prodigies from diabolical ones. These are the two opinions that have prevailed in the Church.

The author of this translation maintained a wise neutrality. He espoused no version and, in order to allow each one to appraise them, indicated with scrupulous care all the sources from which they may be gathered, leaving to each the liberty of drawing, by the comparison of favorable and contrary arguments, the conclusion he judges fitting, limiting himself to making a faithful and conscientious translation.

Spiritist, magnetic, and somnambulistic phenomena today cast an entirely new light upon the facts attributed to this personage, demonstrating the possibility of certain effects, until now relegated to the fantastic domain of the marvelous, and allowing us to separate the possible from the impossible.

— Before all else, what is the marvelous? Skepticism answers: It is all that which, being outside the laws of Nature, is impossible. Then it adds: If the ancient accounts are prodigal in facts of this kind, it is owing to man's love of the marvelous. But whence comes this love? That it does not say, and we shall attempt to explain it. This will not be useless to that which concerns us. That which man calls the marvelous transports him in thought beyond the limits of the known, and it is the intimate inspiration of a better order of things that leads him to seek avidly for what may there connect him with it and give him an idea of it. Such aspiration comes to him from the intuition he has that this order of things must exist; not finding it on Earth, he seeks it in the sphere of the unknown. But is not this very aspiration a providential indication that something exists beyond corporeal life? It is given only to man, because, hoping for nothing, animals do not seek the marvelous. Intuitively man understands that there is, outside the visible world, a force, of which he forms a more or less accurate idea, according to the development of his intelligence, and, quite naturally, he sees the direct action of that force in all the phenomena he does not understand. Thus, formerly, an immensity of facts passed for marvelous and today are perfectly explained, entering into the domain of the natural laws. From this it resulted that all men who possessed faculties or knowledge superior to the common run would pass for having a portion of that invisible force, or dominion over it; they were called magi or sorcerers. The opinion of the Church caused the idea to prevail that such a force could only proceed from the Spirit of evil, when exercised outside its bosom. Those were times of barbarism and ignorance, in which the supposed magi and sorcerers were burned; the progress of Science has restored them to Humanity.

— Where do you find — the incredulous ask — the most marvelous histories? Is it not in Antiquity, among savage peoples, in the less enlightened classes? Is this not proof that they result from superstition, daughter of ignorance? Of ignorance it is incontestable, and for a very simple reason. The ancients, who knew less than we, were no less impressed by the same phenomena; knowing less of the true causes, they sought supernatural causes for the most natural things. Aided by imagination and seconded by fear, on the one hand, and by poetic genius, on the other, they engendered fantastic tales, enlarged by the taste for allegory peculiar to the peoples of the Orient. Struggling laboriously with the fire that consumed him, Prometheus was bound to pass for a superhuman being, punished for his temerity, for having usurped the rights of Jupiter. Franklin, the modern Prometheus, is for us a simple sage. Montgolfier, rising into the air, in mythological times would have been Icarus. For whom would they have taken Mr. Poitevin, raising himself on a horse?

— Having brought a portion of facts into the natural order, Science has considerably reduced the marvelous facts. But has it explained everything? Does it know all the laws that govern the worlds? Has it nothing more to teach? Each day gives the lie to this proud pretension. Not having yet investigated all the secrets of God, it results from this that many ancient facts find themselves unexplained. Now, admitting as possible only that which it understands, it finds it simpler to call them marvelous, fantastic, that is, inadmissible by reason. In its eyes all the men who are supposed to have produced them are either myths or impostors, and, before such a judgment, Apollonius of Tyana would find no favor. Behold him thus condemned by the Church, which admits the facts, as a supposed agent of Satan, and by the scientists, who do not admit them, as a skillful conjurer.

The law of gravitation opened a new path to Science and explained a multitude of phenomena upon which absurd theories had been erected; the law of molecular affinities came to give it a new step forward; the discovery of the microscopic world opened new horizons to it; in its turn electricity came to reveal to it a new force, of which it had no suspicion. With each of these discoveries it saw many difficulties, many problems, many misunderstood or falsely interpreted mysteries resolved. But how many things still to elucidate! Can one not admit the discovery of a new law, of a new force, which may come to cast light upon points still obscure? Well then! It is a new force that Spiritism comes to reveal; this force is the action of the invisible world upon the visible. Showing in this action a natural law, it pushes back still further the limits of the marvelous and the supernatural, because it explains a portion of things that seemed inexplicable before the discovery of electricity.

— Does Spiritism limit itself to admitting the invisible world as a hypothesis and as a means of explanation? No, for that would be to explain the unknown by the unknown. It proves its existence by patent, irrefutable facts, as the microscope proved the existence of the world of the infinitely small. Having therefore demonstrated that the invisible world surrounds us, that this world is essentially intelligent, since it is composed of the souls of the men who have lived, one easily conceives that it may play an active role in the visible world and produce phenomena of a particular order. It is these phenomena that Science calls marvelous, because it cannot explain them by the known laws. Such phenomena being a law of Nature, they must have been produced in all times. Now, as they rested upon the action of a force outside Humanity, and as all religions have for their principle the homage rendered to that force, they served as the basis of all creeds; this is the reason why all the ancient accounts, as well as all the theogonies, are prodigal in allusions and allegories concerning the relations of the invisible world with the visible, unintelligible if one does not know such relations. To wish to explain them without this is to wish to explain electrical phenomena without electricity. This law is a key that will open the greater part of the mysterious sanctuaries of Antiquity. Once recognized, historians, archaeologists, philosophers will see an entirely new horizon unfold and light will be made upon the most obscure points. If this law still meets with opponents, it has this in common with all that is new; it is owing, moreover, to the materialist spirit that dominates our epoch and, in the second place, because in general one forms of the invisible world an idea so false that incredulity is a consequence of it. Spiritism not only demonstrates its existence, but presents it under an aspect so logical that doubt has no longer any reason to be in whoever takes the trouble to study it conscientiously.

We do not ask scientists to believe; since, however, Spiritism is a philosophy that occupies a vast space in the world, even if it were no more than a dream it would merit examination, were it only to know what it says. We ask of them only one thing: to study it, but to study it thoroughly, so as not to impute to it that which it does not say. Then, afterward, whether they believe or do not believe, aided by this lever, taken as a simple hypothesis, let them try to resolve the thousands of historical, archaeological, anthropological, theological, psychological, moral, social, etc., problems before which they have failed, and they will see the result of it. Not to ask of them faith is not to demand much.

— Let us return to Apollonius. Incontestably the ancients knew magnetism. We find proof of it in certain Egyptian paintings. They likewise knew somnambulism and second sight, which are natural psychological phenomena. They knew the diverse categories of Spirits, whom they called gods, and their relations with men. Healing, seeing, speaking, hearing, inspired mediums, etc., must have existed among them as in our days, as one sees numerous examples among the Arabs. With the aid of these data and of the knowledge of the properties of the perispirit — the fluidic corporeal envelope of Spirits — we can perfectly account for several facts attributed to Apollonius of Tyana, without resorting to magic, to sorcery, or to cunning. We say of several facts, for there are some whose impossibility Spiritism itself comes to demonstrate; it is in this that it serves to distinguish truth from error. We leave to those who have made a serious and complete study of this science the care of establishing the distinction between the possible and the impossible, which will be easy for them.

— Let us now consider Apollonius from another point of view. Alongside the medium, who in that time converted him into an almost supernatural being, there was in him the philosopher, the sage. His philosophy revealed the gentleness of his habits and of his character, of his simplicity in all things. One may judge him by some of his maxims.

Having censured the degenerate and effeminate Lacedaemonians, and these having profited from his counsels, he wrote to the ephors: “Apollonius to the ephors: greetings! True men ought not to commit faults; but it belongs only to men of heart, if they commit them, to acknowledge them.”

Having received from the emperor a letter of censure, the Lacedaemonians wavered between averting his wrath or answering him with arrogance. They consulted Apollonius as to the manner of replying. He came to the assembly and said to them only these words: “If Palamedes invented writing, it was not only that one might write, but that one might know when one ought not to write.”

Interrogating Apollonius, the Roman consul Telesinus [Gaius Luccius Telesinus] asked him: “When you approach the altar, what is your prayer? — I ask the gods that justice may reign, that the laws may be respected, that the wise may be poor, that the others may grow rich, but by honest means. — What! when you ask so many things do you think to be answered? — Without doubt, for I ask all this in a single word, on approaching the altar: ‘O gods! Give me what is due to me.’ If I belong to the number of the just, I shall obtain more than I asked; if, on the contrary, the gods place me among the number of the wicked, they will punish me and I shall not be able to reproach them, since, not being good, I shall be chastised.”

Conversing with Apollonius about the manner of governing when he should be emperor, Vespasian said to him: “Seeing the empire debased by the tyrants whom I have just cited to you, I wished to take counsel with you as to the manner of rehabilitating it in the esteem of men. — One day, said Apollonius, one of the most skilled flute-players sent his pupils to the worst flute-players to teach them how they ought not to play. You now know, Vespasian, how one ought not to reign: your predecessors taught it to you. Let us now reflect upon the manner of reigning well.”

Being imprisoned in Rome, in the time of Domitian, he gave a discourse to the prisoners, to remind them of courage and resignation, and said to them: “All of us who find ourselves here are imprisoned during this which is called life. Bound to the perishable body, our soul suffers numerous ills and is the slave of all the necessities of the human condition.”

In his prison, answering an emissary of Domitian who incited him to accuse Nerva, in order to obtain his liberty, Apollonius said: “My friend, if I was put in irons for having told the truth to Domitian, what would happen to me, if I had lied? The emperor believes that it is frankness that merits the irons, but I believe that it is the lie.”

In a letter to Euphrates: “I asked the rich whether they had no cares. ‘How should we not have them?’ they answered. — ‘And whence come your cares? — From our riches.’ Euphrates, I lament you, for you have just grown rich.”

To the same: “The wisest men are the briefest in their discourses. If chatterers suffered what they make others suffer, they would not speak so much.”

Another to Crito: “Pythagoras said that Medicine is the most divine of the arts. If it is so, it is necessary that the physician occupy himself with the soul and, at the same time, with the body. How could a being be healthy, when the most important part of itself were sick?”

Another to the Platonists: “If they offer money to Apollonius and this seems reasonable to him, he will have no difficulty in accepting it, however little he may need it. But a salary for what he teaches, never, however much he may need it.”

Another to Valerius: “No one dies, except in appearance, just as no one is born, except in appearance. In effect, the passage from essence to substance, this is what is called being born; and what is called dying is, on the contrary, the passage from substance to essence.”

To the sacrificers of Olympus: “The gods do not need sacrifices. What, then, ought one to do to be agreeable to them? If I am not mistaken, one must seek to acquire divine wisdom and to render, as much as possible, services to those who merit them. This is what the gods love. The impious themselves can make sacrifices.”

To the Ephesians of the temple of Diana: “You have preserved all the rites of the sacrifices, all the pomp of royalty. As banqueters and merry companions, you are irreproachable; but how many reproaches cannot be made to you, as neighbors of the goddess night and day? Is it not from your midst that there come forth the swindlers, the brigands, the merchants of slaves, all the impious and unjust men? The temple is a den of thieves.”

To those who deem themselves wise: “You say that you are my disciples? Well then! add that you always remain at home, that you never go to the baths, that you do not kill animals, that you do not eat meat, that you are free from the passions, from envy, from malignity, from hatred, from calumny, from resentment, that, in short, you belong to the number of free men. Do not act like those who, in lying discourses, make others believe that they live in one way, while they live in a wholly opposite way.”

To his brother Hestiaeus: “Everywhere I am regarded as a divine man; in some places they go so far as to take me for a god. In my homeland, however, I am no more than an unknown. Is it to be wondered at? You yourselves, my brothers, I see well, are not yet convinced that I am superior to many men by my speech and by my conduct. And how have my fellow citizens and my relatives deceived themselves concerning me? Ah! this error is most painful to me! I know that it is beautiful to consider the whole Earth as one's homeland and all men as brothers and friends, since all descend from God and are of one same nature, seeing that they equally have the same passions and are all, equally, men, whether born Greeks or barbarians.”

Being in Catania, in Sicily, in an instruction given to his disciples, speaking of Etna, he said: “Listening to them, beneath that mountain there groans, in chains, some giant, Typhoeus or Enceladus, who, in his long agony, vomits forth all that fire. I grant that giants have existed, because, in diverse places, half-opened tombs let us see skeletons that indicate men of extraordinary stature; but I could not admit that they entered into struggle against the gods; at most they would have outraged their temples and their statues. But that they scaled the heavens and from there expelled the gods, it is senseless to say and to believe. Another fable, which seems less irreverent toward the gods and of which we ought now to take no account, is that Vulcan labors at the forge in the depths of Etna and that there he ceaselessly makes the anvil ring. In diverse points of the Earth there are other volcanoes and no one thinks to say that there are as many giants and Vulcans.”

— Certain readers would have found it more interesting that we cited the prodigies of Apollonius in order to comment on them and explain them; but, before all, we wished to show the philosopher and the sage, instead of the thaumaturge. One may accept or reject as much as one wishes of the marvelous facts attributed to him, but it seems difficult that a man who utters such words, who professes and practices such principles, should be a conjurer, a knave, or one possessed by the demon.

With respect to prodigies, we shall cite only one, which sufficiently proves one of the faculties with which he was endowed. After narrating in detail the assassination of Domitian, Philostratus adds:

“While such facts were taking place in Rome, Apollonius saw them in Ephesus. Domitian was assailed by Clemens around midday [See the details of the emperor's death on the web ]; on the same day, at the same moment, Apollonius was discoursing in the gardens adjoining the xysti. Suddenly he lowered his voice a little, as if seized with sudden dread. He continued his discourse, but his language did not have its habitual force, as happens to those who speak while thinking of something else. Then he fell silent, like one who loses the thread of the conversation; he cast toward the ground a frightful glance, took three or four steps forward, and exclaimed: ‘Strike down the tyrant! strike him down!’ One would have said that he saw not the image of the fact in a mirror, but the fact itself in all its reality. The Ephesians (for all Ephesus was attending Apollonius's discourse) were seized with astonishment. Apollonius stopped, like a man who sought to see the outcome of a doubtful event. At last he exclaimed: ‘Take good courage, Ephesians. The tyrant has been slain today. What do I say, today? By Minerva! He has just been slain this very moment, when I interrupted myself.’ The Ephesians thought that Apollonius had lost his reason; they keenly desired that he had told the truth, but they feared that some danger might result from this discourse. ‘I am not surprised — said Apollonius — that you still do not believe me: Rome itself does not yet know it completely. But behold, it will know it, the news spreads and thousands of citizens already believe it; this makes the double of those men leap with joy, and the quadruple, and the whole people. The news will soon arrive here; you may postpone, until you learn of the fact, the sacrifice you must offer to the gods on this occasion. As for me, I withdraw to render them thanks for what I have seen.’ The Ephesians remained in their incredulity, but soon messengers came to announce to them the good news and to bear witness in favor of Apollonius's knowledge; because the assassination of the tyrant, the day and the hour at which it was consummated, the author of the assassination, who had stirred Apollonius's enthusiasm, all the details were perfectly conformable to those that the gods had shown him on the day when he was discoursing to the Ephesians.” In that epoch nothing more was needed to make him pass for a divine man. In our days scientists would have treated him as a visionary. For us he was endowed with the second sight, the explanation of which is given by Spiritism. (See the theory of somnambulism and of second sight in The Spirits' Book, no. 455.)

His death presented another prodigy. One evening, having entered the temple of Dictynna [Artemis Dictynna], in Lyndus (Crete), notwithstanding the ferocious dogs that guarded its entrance and which, instead of barking at his arrival, came to caress him, he was, for this very reason, detained as a magician by the guards of the temple, and put in chains. During the night he disappeared from the sight of the guards, without leaving traces and without their finding his body. It is said that on that occasion voices of young women were heard singing: “Leave the Earth; go to Heaven, go!” as if to exhort him to rise from the Earth toward the superior regions.

Thus Philostratus ends the narration of the life of Apollonius:

“Even after he had disappeared, Apollonius upheld the immortality of the soul and taught that what is said in this regard is true. There were then in Tyana a certain number of young men impassioned for his philosophy; the greater part of their discussions revolved around the soul. One of them could not admit that it was immortal. ‘For ten months now — he said — I have been begging Apollonius to reveal to me the truth about the immortality of the soul; but he is so dead that my prayers are useless, he not even appearing to me to prove that he was immortal.’ Five days later he spoke of the same subject with his companions and fell asleep in the very place where the discussion had taken place. Suddenly he leaped up, as if stricken by a fit of madness: he was half asleep and bathed in sweat. ‘I believe you,’ he cried out. His comrades asked him what was the matter. ‘Do you not see the wise Apollonius? He is in our midst, he hears our discussion and recites melodious songs about the soul. — Where is he? asked the others, for we do not see him and that would be a happiness we should prefer to all the goods of the Earth. — It seems he has come for me alone: he wishes to teach me that which I refused to believe. Listen, then, listen to the divine songs he makes me hear: ‘The soul is immortal; it is not yours, but Providence's. When the body is spent, like a swift runner who completes all his course, the soul rises up and casts itself into the ethereal spaces, taken with contempt for the sad and harsh slavery it has suffered. But what do these things matter to you! I shall know them when you no longer exist. Why try to penetrate these mysteries, while you still find yourselves among the living?’ ‘Such is the oracle, so clear, given by Apollonius about the destinies of the soul. He wished that, knowing our nature, we should march with a joyful heart toward the end that the Fates destine for us.’”

— The apparition of Apollonius after death is treated as a hallucination by the majority of his commentators, Christian or otherwise, who claimed that the young man had his imagination wounded by the very desire to see him, which led him to think that he had seen him. In all times, however, the Church has recognized this type of apparition; it cites several examples as authentic. Spiritism comes to explain the phenomenon, based on the properties of the perispirit, the envelope or fluidic body of the Spirit which, by a kind of condensation, takes on a visible appearance and can, as is known, become tangible. Without the knowledge of the constitutive law of Spirits, this phenomenon is marvelous; once the law is known, the marvelous disappears to give place to a natural phenomenon. (See in The Mediums' Book the theory of visual manifestations, chapter VI.) Admitting that the young man had been the plaything of an illusion, it would remain for the deniers to explain the words attributed to Apollonius, words sublime and entirely opposed to the ideas which, moments before, he had just been upholding. What was lacking to Apollonius to be a Christian? Very little, as one sees. May God not permit that we establish a parallel between him and Christ! What proves the incontestable superiority of the latter and the divinity of his mission is the revolution produced in the whole world by the doctrine that he, obscure, and his apostles, as obscure as he, preached, whereas that of Apollonius died with him. It would be, then, impiety to present him as a rival of Christ! But, if we wish to pay attention to what he said concerning the pagan cult, we shall see that he condemns the superstitious forms and deals them a terrible blow, substituting for them sounder ideas. Had he spoken thus in the time of Socrates he would, like the latter, have paid with his life for what they would have called his impiety. But in the epoch in which he lived the pagan beliefs had already done their part and he was heard. By his morality he prepared the pagans, in whose midst he lived, to receive, with less difficulty, the Christian ideas, to which he served as a transition. Thus, we believe we are in the truth in saying that he served as a link of union between paganism and Christianity. Under this aspect, perhaps he too had a mission. He could be heard by the pagans, but he was not heard by the Jews. [see Spiritualism and the Ideal in the Art and Poetry of the Greeks, by the same author.] [1] Apollonius of Tyana, his life, his travels, his prodigies [Appolonius de Tyane, sa vie, ses voyages, ses prodiges - Google Books]; by Philostratus. New translation of the Greek text, by Mr. Chassang, master of conferences at the Normal School. — 1 vol. in-12 of 500 pages. Price: 3.50 francs. House of Didier & Co., publishers, Quai des Augustins, 35, Paris.

[2] [see Julia Domna, Septimius Severus, Philostratus… on the web.