In the ancient world few figures have divided opinion as much as Apollonius of Tyana. For some he was a divine sage, a religious reformer, a master of the Pythagorean life. For others he was a magician, an impostor skilled in wonders. For others still he became, over the centuries, a pagan rival of Christ. What we know of him comes mainly from a great biography written more than a century after his death.
The sources
Apollonius lived in the first century AD and came from Tyana, in Cappadocia, in present-day Turkey. The main source on his life is the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, written in Greek by the sophist Philostratus in the early third century. Philostratus states that he received the commission from the empress Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus, a cultivated woman who gathered a circle of intellectuals around her.
Philostratus claims to have used, among other sources, the memoirs of a disciple named Damis, a native of Nineveh. Many scholars doubt that these memoirs ever existed and regard them as a literary device. The Life should therefore be read as a work that combines genuine traditions, narrative invention and philosophical purpose.
A Pythagorean rule of life
Apollonius is presented as a strict follower of Pythagoras. His discipline included:
- abstaining from meat and wine;
- wearing linen rather than wool, which was considered to be of animal origin;
- rejecting blood sacrifices, replaced by offerings of incense and prayers;
- long hair and bare feet;
- a period of five years of silence, during which he communicated only through gestures and looks.
This way of life made him a recognisable figure, almost an itinerant priest, who visited temples to reform their cults.
The great journeys
Much of the Life is a travel narrative. Apollonius crosses Mesopotamia and Persia and reaches India, where he meets the Brahmin sages and their leader, Iarchas, with whom he discusses reincarnation and the nature of the cosmos. Then he visits Egypt and travels up the Nile to Ethiopia, where he meets the so-called gymnosophists, the "naked sages".
The journey has a precise meaning: Apollonius gathers the wisdom of all peoples, showing that true philosophy does not belong to a single nation.
The wonders
The Life attributes numerous wonders to Apollonius. Some of the most famous:
- at Corinth he unmasks the bride of his disciple Menippus, revealing that she is an empusa, a spirit that seduces young men;
- in Rome he brings back to life, or awakens, a young bride who had died on her wedding day; Philostratus himself admits he does not know whether she was really dead;
- at Ephesus, while speaking in public, he breaks off and describes, as if he were watching it, the murder of the emperor Domitian, which was taking place at that very moment in Rome.
The trial before Domitian
One of the central moments of the story is the confrontation with the emperor Domitian. Accused of magic and conspiracy, Apollonius goes to Rome of his own accord, endures imprisonment and faces judgement. At the end of the hearing, according to Philostratus, he vanishes from the court and reappears shortly afterwards at Dicaearchia, modern Pozzuoli, where his disciples are waiting for him.
In the Life Apollonius firmly rejects the label of magician. Philostratus insists that his wonders came from wisdom and purity of life, not from magical techniques. It is the same boundary between philosopher and magician that we find in Apuleius' Apology.
A rival of Christ?
At the beginning of the fourth century the imperial official Hierocles, hostile to the Christians, wrote a work comparing Apollonius with Jesus and claiming that the former's wonders were greater. He was answered by the Christian historian Eusebius of Caesarea in a treatise criticising the reliability of the Life.
A late and unreliable source, the Historia Augusta, also relates that the emperor Severus Alexander kept in his household shrine images of Apollonius alongside those of Christ, Abraham and Orpheus.
Balinas: Apollonius in the Arabic world
Apollonius' fame did not die with antiquity. In the Arabic tradition he became Balinas, author of treatises on talismanic magic and natural philosophy. To him was attributed the Book of the Secret of Creation, a text containing one of the oldest versions of the Emerald Tablet, the famous Hermetic text. By this route the sage of Tyana also entered the history of alchemy.
In short
- Apollonius of Tyana was a first-century AD Pythagorean philosopher, known chiefly from Philostratus' Life.
- The biography was written in the early third century at the request of the empress Julia Domna.
- Apollonius followed a strict Pythagorean rule and travelled as far as India and Ethiopia.
- Philostratus credits him with wonders and a vanishing from Domitian's court, denying he was a magician.
- In the Arabic tradition he became Balinas, associated with the Emerald Tablet.
