Apollonius of Tyana, the Philosopher-Reformer of the First Century A.D Part 4

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 G.o.ddess 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 G.o.ddess 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 sculapius 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.

At Troy, we are told, Apollonius spent a night alone at the tomb of Achilles, in former days one of the spots of greatest popular sanct.i.ty in Greece (iv. 11). Why he did so does not transpire, for the fantastic conversation with the shade of the hero reported by Philostratus (iv.

16) seems to be devoid of any element of likelihood. As, however, Apollonius made it his business to visit Thessaly shortly afterwards expressly to urge the Thessalians to renew the old accustomed rites to the hero (iv. 13), we may suppose that it formed part of his great effort to restore and purify the old inst.i.tutions of h.e.l.las, so that, the accustomed channels being freed, the life might flow more healthily in the national body.

Rumour would also have it that Achilles had told Apollonius where he would find the statue of the hero Palamedes on the coast of olia.

Apollonius accordingly restored the statue, and Philostratus tells us he had seen it with his own eyes on the spot (iv. 13).

Now this would be a matter of very little interest, were it not that a great deal is made of Palamedes elsewhere in Philostratus narrative.

What it all means is difficult to say with a Damis and Philostratus as interpreters between ourselves and the silent and enigmatical Apollonius.

Palamedes was one of the heroes before Troy, who was fabled to have invented letters, or to have completed the alphabet of Cadmus.[103]

Now from two obscure sayings (iv. 13, 33), we glean that our philosopher looked upon Palamedes as the philosopher-hero of the Trojan period, although Homer says hardly a word about him.

Was this, then, the reason why Apollonius was so anxious to restore his statue? Not altogether so; there appears to have been a more direct reason. Damis would have it that Apollonius had met Palamedes in India; that he was at the monastery; that Iarchas had one day pointed out a young ascetic who could write without ever learning letters; and that this youth had been no other than Palamedes in one of his former births. Doubtless the sceptic will say: Of course! Pythagoras was a reincarnation of the hero Euphorbus who fought at Troy, according to popular superst.i.tion; therefore, naturally, the young Indian was the reincarnation of the hero Palamedes! The one legend simply begat the other. But on this principle, to be consistent, we should expect to find that it was Apollonius himself and not an unknown Hindu ascetic, who had been once Palamedes.

In any case Apollonius restored the rites to Achilles, and erected a chapel in which he set up the neglected statue of Palamedes.[104] The heroes of the Trojan period, then, it would seem, had still some connection with Greece, according to the science of the invisible world into which Apollonius was initiated. And if the Protestant sceptic can make nothing of it, at least the Roman Catholic reader may be induced to suspend his judgment by changing hero into saint.

Can it be possible that the attention which Apollonius bestowed upon the graves and funeral monuments of the mighty dead of Greece may have been inspired by the circle of ideas which led to the erection of the innumerable dagobas and stupas in Buddhist lands, originally over the relics of the Buddha, and the subsequent preservation of relics of arhats and great teachers?

At Lesbos Apollonius visited the ancient temple of the Orphic mysteries, which in early years had been a great centre of prophecy and divination.

Here also he was privileged to enter the inner shrine or adytum (iv.

14).

The Tyanean arrived in Athens at the time of the Eleusinian Mysteries, and in spite of the festival and rites not only the people but also the candidates flocked to meet him to the neglect of their religious duties.

Apollonius rebuked them, and himself joined in the necessary preliminary rites and presented himself for initiation.

It may, perhaps, surprise the reader to hear that Apollonius, who had already been initiated into higher privileges than Eleusis could afford, should present himself for initiation. But the reason is not far to seek; the Eleusinia const.i.tuted one of the intermediate organisations between the popular cults and the genuine inner circles of instruction.

They preserved one of the traditions of the inner way, even if their officers for the time being had forgotten what their predecessors had once known. To restore these ancient rites to their purity, or to utilise them for their original object, it was necessary to enter within the precincts of the inst.i.tution; nothing could be effected from outside. The thing itself was good, and Apollonius desired to support the ancient inst.i.tution by setting the public example of seeking initiation therein; not that he had anything to gain personally.

But whether it was that the hierophant of that time was only ignorant, or whether he was jealous of the great influence of Apollonius, he refused to admit our philosopher, on the ground that he was a sorcerer (????), and that no one could be initiated who was tainted by intercourse with evil ent.i.ties (da????a). To this charge Apollonius replied with veiled irony: You have omitted the most serious charge that might have been urged against me: to wit, that though I really know more about the mystic rite than its hierophant, I have come here pretending to desire initiation from men knowing more than myself. This charge would have been true; he had made a pretence.

Dismayed at these words, frightened at the indignation of the people aroused by the insult offered to their distinguished guest, and overawed by the presence of a knowledge which he could no longer deny, the hierophant begged our philosopher to accept the initiation. But Apollonius refused. I will be initiated later on, he replied; _he_ will initiate me. This is said to have referred to the succeeding hierophant, who presided when Apollonius was initiated four years later (iv. 18; v. 19).

While at Athens Apollonius spoke strongly against the effeminacy of the Baccha.n.a.lia and the barbarities of the gladiatorial combats (iv. 21, 22).

The temples, mentioned by Philostratus, which Apollonius visited in Greece, have all the peculiarity of being very ancient; for instance, Dodona, Delphi, the ancient shrine of Apollo at Ab in Phocis, the caves of Amphiaraus[105] and Trophonius, and the temple of the Muses on Helicon.

When he entered the adyta of these temples for the purpose of restoring the rites, he was accompanied only by the priests, and certain of his immediate disciples (???????). This suggests an extension to the meaning of the word restoring or reforming, and when we read elsewhere of the many spots consecrated by Apollonius, we cannot but think that part of his work was the reconsecration, and hence psychic purification, of many of these ancient centres. His main external work, however, was the giving of instruction, and, as Philostratus rhetorically phrases it, bowls of his words were set up everywhere for the thirsty to drink from (iv. 24).

But not only did our philosopher restore the ancient rites of religion, he also paid much attention to the ancient polities and inst.i.tutions.

Thus we find him urging with success the Spartans to return to their ancient mode of life, their athletic exercises, frugal living, and the discipline of the old Dorian tradition (iv. 27, 31-34); he, moreover, specially praised the inst.i.tution of the Olympic Games, the high standard of which was still maintained (iv. 29), while he recalled the ancient Amphictionic Council to its duty (iv. 23), and corrected the abuses of the Panionian a.s.sembly (iv. 5).

In the spring of 66 A.D. he left Greece for Crete, where he seems to have bestowed most of his time on the sanctuaries of Mount Ida and the temple of sculapius at Lebene (for as all Asia visits Pergamus so does all Crete visit Lebene); but curiously enough he refused to visit the famous Labyrinth at Gnossus, the ruins of which have just been uncovered for a sceptical generation, most probably (if it is lawful to speculate) because it had once been a centre of human sacrifice, and thus pertained to one of the ancient cults of the left hand.

In Rome Apollonius continued his work of reforming the temples, and this with the full sanction of the Pontifex Maximus Telesinus, one of the consuls for the year 66 A.D., who was also a philosopher and a deep student of religion (iv. 40). But his stay in the imperial city was speedily cut short, for in October Nero crowned his persecution of the philosophers by publishing a decree of banishment against them from Rome, and both Telesinus (vii. 11) and Apollonius had to leave Italy.

We next find him in Spain, making his headquarters in the temple of Hercules at Cadiz.

On his return to Greece by way of Africa and Sicily (where he spent some time and visited tna), he pa.s.sed the winter (? of 67 A.D.) at Eleusis, living in the temple, and in the spring of the following year sailed for Alexandria, spending some time on the way at Rhodes. The city of philosophy and eclecticism _par excellence_ received him with open arms as an old friend. But to reform the public cults of Egypt was a far more difficult task than any he had previously attempted. His presence in the temple (? the temple of Serapis) commanded universal respect, everything about him and every word he uttered seemed to breathe an atmosphere of wisdom and of something divine. The high priest of the temple looked on in proud disdain. Who is wise enough, he mockingly asked, to reform the religion of the Egyptians?--only to be met with the confident retort of Apollonius: Any sage who comes from the Indians.

Here as elsewhere Apollonius set his face against blood-sacrifice, and tried to subst.i.tute instead, as he had attempted elsewhere, the offering of frankincense modelled in the form of the victim (v. 25). Many abuses he tried to reform in the manners of the Alexandrians, but upon none was he more severe than on their wild excitement over horse-racing, which frequently led to bloodshed (v. 26).

Apollonius seems to have spent most of the remaining twenty years of his life in Egypt, but of what he did in the secret shrines of that land of mystery we can learn nothing from Philostratus, except that on the protracted journey to Ethiopia up the Nile no city or temple or community was unvisited, and everywhere there was an interchange of advice and instruction in sacred things (v. 43).

SECTION X.

THE GYMNOSOPHISTS OF UPPER EGYPT.

We now come to Apollonius visit to the Gymnosophists in Ethiopia, which, though the artistic and literary goal of Apollonius journey in Egypt as elaborated by Philostratus, is only a single incident in the real history of the unrecorded life of our mysterious philosopher in that ancient land.

Had Philostratus devoted a chapter or two to the nature of the practices, discipline, and doctrines of the innumerable ascetic and mystic communities that honeycombed Egypt and adjacent lands in those days, he would have earned the boundless grat.i.tude of students of the origins. But of all this he has no word; and yet he would have us believe that Damis reminiscences were an orderly series of notes of what actually happened. But in all things it is very apparent that Damis was rather a _compagnon de voyage_ than an initiated pupil.

Who then were these mysterious Gymnosophists, as they are usually called, and whence their name? Damis calls them simply the Naked (?????), and it is very clear that the term is not to be understood as merely physically naked; indeed, neither to the Indians nor to these ascetics of uppermost Egypt can the term be applied with appropriateness in its purely physical meaning, as is apparent from the descriptions of Damis and Philostratus. A chance sentence that falls from the lips of one of these ascetics, in giving the story of his life, affords us a clue to the real meaning of the term. At the age of fourteen, he tells Apollonius, I resigned my patrimony to those who desired such things, and _naked_ I sought the _Naked_ (vi. 16).[106]

This is the very same diction that Philo uses about the Therapeut communities, which he declares were very numerous in every province of Egypt and scattered in all lands. We are not, however, to suppose that these communities were all of the same nature. It is true that Philo tries to make out that the most pious and the chief of all of them was _his_ particular community on the southern sh.o.r.e of Lake Mris, which was strongly Semitic if not orthodoxly Jewish; and for Philo any community with a Jewish atmosphere must naturally have been the best.

The peculiarity and main interest of our community, which was at the other end of the land above the cataracts, was that it had had some remote connection with India.

The community is called a f???t?st?????, in the sense of a place for meditation, a term used by ecclesiastical writers for a monastery, but best known to cla.s.sical students from the humorous use made of it by Aristophanes, who in The Clouds calls the school of Socrates, a _phrontisterion_ or thinking shop. The collection of _monasteria_ (?e??), presumably caves, shrines, or cells,[107] was situated on a hill or rising ground not far from the Nile. They were all separated from one another, dotted about the hill, and ingeniously arranged. There was hardly a tree in the place, with the exception of a single group of palms, under whose shade they held their general meetings (vi. 6).

It is difficult to gather from the set speeches, put into the mouths of the head of the community and Apollonius (vi. 10-13, 18-22), any precise details as to the mode of life of these ascetics, beyond the general indications of an existence of great toil and physical hardship, which they considered the only means of gaining wisdom. What the nature of their cult was, if they had one, we are not told, except that at mid-day the Naked retired to their _monasteria_ (vi. 14).

The whole tendency of Apollonius arguments, however, is to remind the community of its Eastern origin and its former connection with India, which it seems to have forgotten. The communities of this particular kind in southern Egypt and northern Ethiopia dated back presumably some centuries, and some of them may have been remotely Buddhist, for one of the younger members of our community who left it to follow Apollonius, says that he came to join it from the enthusiastic account of the wisdom of the Indians brought back by his father, who had been captain of a vessel trading to the East. It was his father who told him that these Ethiopians were from India, and so he had joined them instead of making the long and perilous journey to the Indus itself (vi. 16).

If there be any truth in this story it follows that the founders of this way of life had been Indian ascetics, and if so they must have belonged to the only propagandising form of Indian religion, namely, the Buddhist.

After the impulse had been given, the communities, which were presumably recruited from generations of Egyptians, Arabs, and Ethiopians, were probably left entirely to themselves, and so in course of time forgot their origin, and even perhaps their original rule. Such speculations are permissible, owing to the _repeated_ a.s.sertion of the original connection between these Gymnosophists and India. The whole burden of the story is that they were Indians who had forgotten their origin and fallen away from the wisdom.

The last incident that Philostratus records with regard to Apollonius among the shrines and temples is a visit to the famous and very ancient oracle of Trophonius, near Lebadea, in Botia. Apollonius is said to have spent seven days alone in this mysterious cave, and to have returned with a book full of questions and answers on the subject of philosophy (viii. 19). This book was still, in the time of Philostratus, in the palace of Hadrian at Antium, together with a number of letters of Apollonius, and many people used to visit Antium for the special purpose of seeing it (viii. 19, 20).

In the hay-bundle of legendary rigmarole solemnly set down by Philostratus concerning the cave of Trophonius, a small needle of truth may perhaps be discovered. The cave seems to have been a very ancient temple or shrine, cut in the heart of a hill, to which a number of underground pa.s.sages of considerable length led. It had probably been in ancient times one of the most holy centres of the archaic cult of h.e.l.las, perhaps even a relic of that Greece of thousands of years B.C., the only tradition of which, as Plato tells us, was obtained by Solon from the priests of Sas. Or it may have been a subterranean shrine of the same nature as the famous Dictan cave in Crete which only last year was brought back to light by the indefatigable labours of Messrs. Evans and Hogarth.

As in the case of the travels of Apollonius, so with regard to the temples and communities which he visited, Philostratus is a most disappointing _cicerone_. But perhaps he is not to be blamed on this account, for the most important and most interesting part of Apollonius work was of so intimate a nature, prosecuted as it was among a.s.sociations of such jealously-guarded secrecy, that no one outside their ranks could know anything of it, and those who shared in their initiation would say nothing.

It is, therefore, only when Apollonius comes forward to do some public act that we can get any precise historical trace of him; in every other case he pa.s.ses into the sanctuary of a temple or enters the privacy of a community and is lost to view.

It may perhaps surprise us that Apollonius, after sacrificing his private fortune, could nevertheless undertake such long and expensive travels, but it would seem that he was occasionally supplied with the necessary monies from the treasuries of the temples (_cf._ viii. 17), and that everywhere he was freely offered the hospitality of the temple or community in the place where he happened to be staying.

In conclusion of the present part of our subject, we may mention the good service done by Apollonius in driving away certain Chaldan and Egyptian charlatans who were making capital out of the fears of the cities on the left sh.o.r.es of the h.e.l.lespont. These cities had suffered severely from shocks of earthquake, and in their panic placed large sums of money in the hands of these adventurers (who trafficked in the misfortunes of others), in order that they might perform propitiatory rites (vi. 41). This taking money for the giving instruction in the sacred science or for the performance of sacred rites was the most detestable of crimes to all the true philosophers.