Against Hierocles 369–385

Is it right, then, my friend, to admire in the writer those things too which he tells as marvels when he compares the man of Tyana with our Saviour and Teacher? For as to the rest of what is in his Lover of Truth (so he thought fit to entitle his discourse against us), there would be no point in stopping over it at present, since it is not his own but has been very shamelessly plundered from others, not only in thoughts but almost in words and syllables. Those things may receive their fitting refutation in due time; but in effect they have already been overturned and refuted in advance, even before his own writing against us, in eight whole books written by Origen against Celsus's True Discourse, a title more boastful than Lover of Truth. In these books the said author, bringing up together everything that anyone has said or will say on the same

subject, has solved it in advance and called each to account without omission. To these we refer those who wish to know our affairs exactly and with love of truth; and let us now examine only the comparison of our Lord Jesus Christ made in this Lover of Truth, thinking it of no importance to fight against the rest, which he has filched from elsewhere. It is reasonable that we now look only at what concerns Apollonius, since he alone, of all who have ever written against us, has made this comparison and parallel of that man with our Saviour his own special point. He admires him and accepts that he worked his wonders by a divine and ineffable wisdom and not by the sophistries of sorcery, and he believes that these things really were just as they are told, insisting on it without proof. Hear, then, what he says in his very syllables: “They go up and down making much of Jesus, as having given sight to the blind and having done some other such wonders.” Then, after saying some things in between, he adds: “Let us consider how much better and more intelligently we take such things, and what opinion we hold of virtuous men.” And after this, passing by Aristeas of Proconnesus and Pythagoras as being more ancient, he goes on to say: “But in the time of our ancestors, in the reign of Nero, there flourished Apollonius of Tyana, who from his early boyhood, and from the time when he served as priest to the benevolent Asclepius at Aegae in Cilicia, did many wonderful things; of which I shall leave aside the greater part and mention a few.” Then he enumerates his marvels, beginning from the first, and after them he adds these words

word for word: “Why, then, have I mentioned these things? So that one may compare our accurate and firm judgment in each case with the levity of the Christians; since we consider the man who did such things not a god but a man dear to the gods, while they, on account of a few wonders, proclaim Jesus a god.” After other things he adds to this: “This too is worth considering, that the deeds of Jesus have been bragged about by Peter and Paul and some others like them, liars, uneducated men and sorcerers; but those of Apollonius by Maximus of Aegae, by Damis the philosopher who lived with him, and by Philostratus of Athens, men who reached the highest point of education and honoured the truth, who out of love for mankind did not wish the deeds of a noble man and friend of the gods to remain hidden.” These things were said, in his own words, by Hierocles, who wrote the Lover of Truth against us.

Damis, then, who spent most of his time with Apollonius, came from the land of the Assyrians; he first met him there in his own country, and recorded the time he spent with the man from then on. Maximus wrote down only a very few of the particular things he did. But Philostratus of Athens, saying that he had collected everything that was reported, from the works of Maximus and of Damis himself and of others, has composed the most complete history of all of the man's life from his birth to his death. Since, then, it is possible to set side by side the levity and credulity of which we are accused and the accurate and firm judgment of the Lover of Truth in each case, come, let us inquire, not which of the two was the more divine,

nor which did the more wonderful and the more numerous marvels; nor how our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ alone had been foretold by divine inspiration, among the wise men of the Hebrews who lived countless years before, as one who would come to men; nor how he drew more people to the word of his divine teaching; nor how he gained genuine and truly real disciples, prepared almost readily to die for his words; nor how he alone established a school of a temperate life for the time to come as well; nor how by his own divinity and virtue he saved the whole inhabited world, drawing even now countless multitudes from everywhere to his divine teaching; nor how he alone of all who have ever lived, though warred upon for very many years by almost all men, rulers and ruled alike, has been shown stronger and far mightier than the unbelievers who bitterly persecute him, easily dealing with those who rise up from time to time against his divine teaching by a divine and ineffable power, and establishing the divine word which he planted and handed down over the whole inhabited world for endless ages; nor how even now he shows the virtue of his divine power by driving out, through his ineffable name alone, certain wicked and base demons that lie in wait for the souls and bodies of men, as we have learned by experience. To seek these things in Apollonius, or even to ask, would be foolish. Let us examine only the writing of Philostratus, by which we hold him to account, to show that he is not worthy to be ranked, I do not say among philosophers, but even among fair and moderate men,

much less to set Apollonius beside our Saviour Christ, as far as concerns the account of the writer who, in the Lover of Truth's words, reached the highest point of education but did not honour the truth. For such, among the others, was Philostratus of Athens, according to him; and from him we may easily learn the case with the rest of his kind, men who reached the highest point of education but did not examine and verify the history of Apollonius. When we have made this clear, the firm and, as he thinks, accurate judgment against the Christians of the Lover of Truth, who has taken upon himself the highest courts and those over all, will be made plain; and so will the credulity and levity with which they charge us, whom they think fools and dupes.

Another man would come to close quarters at once and slander the one against whom he was arguing, reviling him as his enemy and foe. But I, my friend, have thought that the man of Tyana was wise in human affairs, and I should still gladly hold to that opinion; and if you asked me I would set out my own view of him. If anyone wishes to count the man among philosophers, without troubling further with the fables about him, I do not grudge it. But if some Damis the Assyrian, or Philostratus, or some historian or speech-writer, should be so bold as to overstep the bounds and think higher than philosophy, turning away from sorcery in word but loading the man with it in deeds more than words, masking himself with the Pythagorean way of life like an actor, then the philosopher will be gone from us, and in place of the

lion an ass hiding in its skin will be found out, a sophist truly going round the cities collecting money, and in fact simply a sorcerer instead of a philosopher. How do I say this, you ask, and on what grounds? Learn. The limits of nature, which embrace the beginnings, middles and ends of the substance of all things, measures and laws, have been laid down for all things, by which this whole machine and architecture of the whole world is brought to completion, preserving with unbreakable laws and bonds the all-wise will of the providence that orders all things. No one could move or change anything of the order of what has once been laid down. It has been fixed by the law of nature that everyone who has a bolder longing to go beyond to what lies beyond is restrained from overstepping the divine law. A fish that lives in water will not be able to pass to dry land and live there contrary to nature; nor will a creature reared on dry land plunge into the waters and welcome a lasting dwelling there; nor will any of the creatures on earth, however high it leaps, be lifted into the air because it longs to soar with the eagles. Those birds, indeed, may come to earth, weighing their strength downward, slackening the wing and relaxing their nature, since this too is defined by divine laws, that what is aloft can come down from the height, but not, conversely, that what is low and earthy can be raised aloft. In this way the mortal race of men too, sharing soul and body, is bounded by divine limits. No one on earth, despising life on earth, could ever go through the air with his body without at once paying the penalty for his folly; nor, raised in mind, will he reach things beyond his reach, or else he would fall into the disease of melancholy.

He would be wise to go on earth with sound feet in body, and to support his soul with education and philosophy, and to pray that some helper may come to him from above, from the dwellings in heaven, and appear to him as teacher of the salvation that is there. For by a strong example, it is right for the physician to visit the sick, for the teacher to come together with the beginner in his lessons, and for the one above and on high to come down to the lowly; but not the reverse. Therefore no argument would forbid that the divine nature, being beneficent, saving, and provident for those who give themselves to it, should once come into converse with men, since this too is granted by the limit of divine providence. For he was good, according to Plato, and in the good no envy arises about anything. The good one who governs this universe will not care for bodies alone, but much more for souls, to which the prize of immortality and self-rule has been granted. To these, as the lord of all the ordering of things and of the graces by which he benefits their nature, which is able to receive them, he will generously give rays, as it were, of the light that is his own, sometimes sending those of his company who are most closely joined to him for the salvation and help of those here. If anyone is so fortunate as to meet one of these, he is purified in mind, scatters the mist of mortality, and will truly be recorded as divine, bearing in his soul the image of a great God. Such a one would stir the whole race of men and would light up the inhabited world more than the sun, leaving the work of the eternal Godhead for the time to come to behold, no less than the works made from soulless matter,

having provided the pattern of a divine nature. In this way human nature might share in what is above man; but otherwise it is not right to overstep the limits, nor for one whose body is wingless to practise the ways of birds, nor for one who is a man to meddle with the affairs of spirits. Whom, then, do you bring before us as Apollonius, writer? If he is divine and better than a philosopher, in a word above man in nature, keep this assumption for me throughout the whole history, and show the work of his divinity even now. For is it not most absurd that the work of carpenters and builders should last a very long time even after the death of the makers, as a kind of immortal monument publishing the memory of those who built it, while a divine nature that has shone on men should achieve something dark and short-lived, and not show its virtue for ever, not beggared for one Damis or a few other men, but making its way to the benefit of countless men, not only of those of the time when it was known, but also of those to be born afterward? In this way the wise men of old made men zealous imitators and successors of their virtue, providing them a truly immortal achievement. But if you describe the man's nature as mortal, see that you do not pay the penalty for unreason by favouring it more than is fitting. Yet he is presented by him as a divine man, taking on from his very birth the form and mask of a sea spirit. “For to his mother,” he says, “when she was pregnant, there came the apparition of a sea spirit, Proteus, who in Homer changes his shape. She was not at all afraid

and asked him what she would bear. He said, ‘Me.’ ‘And who are you?’ she asked. ‘Proteus,’ he said, ‘the Egyptian god.’” Then he writes that a meadow and swans attended the woman as midwives, without saying where this was taken from; for surely Damis the Assyrian will not be set down as the narrator of this too. And not long after, in the same history, he brings in Apollonius as being of a divine nature, saying to Damis himself these very words: “I, my friend, understand all languages, though I have learned none,” and, “Do not be surprised; I know also what men keep silent.” And again he describes him as honoured by the god in the temple of Asclepius, and as having a natural and untaught foreknowledge from childhood, and as born simply better than a man from his very birth, and so throughout the whole history. When he once freed himself from fetters, he adds: “Then first, says Damis, he understood exactly the nature of Apollonius, that it was divine and better than a man's; for without sacrificing anything (how could he, in prison?), without praying, without saying anything, he laughed at the fetter.” At the end he says that no tomb of his is found anywhere on earth, but that he went to heaven in his body with hymns and dances. Naturally, then, as being so much “more divine than Pythagoras, Empedocles and Plato,” he says the man came to philosophy. Let the man, then, be enrolled among the gods by us on these grounds, and let envy be absent from his innate and self-taught understanding of all languages. Why, then, does he take him to a teacher, and slander one who learned no language, as if he became Attic in speech by practice and study and not by nature?

For he says that “as he grew in years he showed letters, power of memory and strength of application, and his tongue was Attic”; and “when he was fourteen years old his father took him to Tarsus to Euthydemus of Phoenicia, who was a good rhetorician and taught him, and he attached himself to his teacher.” Then: “Platonists, Chrysippeans and Peripatetics studied philosophy with him; he also heard the doctrines of Epicurus, for he did not despise these either, but he grasped those of the Pythagoreans with an ineffable wisdom.” So much was the man taught who had learned no language and by divine power knew in advance even what men keep silent! After an interval he again admires him for how far he came in understanding the speech of animals, and adds: “He came to understand the speech of animals too, and learned this while travelling through Arabia from the Arabs, who know and practise it best. For it is possible among the Arabs to hear swans and birds prophesying like oracles; and they understand the irrational creatures by eating, some say, the heart of serpents, others the liver.” Here, surely, it was fitting that the Pythagorean, who abstained from animal food and would not dare even to sacrifice to spirits, should taste the hearts and livers of serpents, so as to share in the wisdom of these people! For how else could one taught by such men achieve the practice, unless he imitated his teachers in the same things? So besides those already listed we have the wise men of the Arabs as teachers of the man's science of augury, from which naturally he started when, later on, the sparrow, what

it meant when it called the others to food, he seemed by foretelling it to present a very great wonder to those present. In the same way, seeing on the road to the Assyrians a lioness just slaughtered together with her eight cubs, he at once inferred from the sight and foretold the length of the stay he would make among the Persians. In keeping with his schooling among the Arabs, the same writer relates that he set to work among the Persians too. For he forbade Damis, who was his only disciple and companion, to go to the Magi, and went alone, so that he might learn the arts of magic, evidently, without a witness; and he held his sessions with them at noon and about midnight. Further, he represents him, when he came into conversation with Vardanes, king of Babylon, as speaking thus: “My wisdom is that of Pythagoras, a man of Samos, who taught me to worship the gods in this way, to understand them whether seen or unseen, and to frequent the conversations of the gods.” But who would grant him this, when Pythagoras left no such writing, nor any secret treatises, from which one might suspect that he took his start; while his teacher in the philosophy of Pythagoras is testified by Philostratus himself to have differed in no way from the Epicureans? For he speaks roughly thus: “His teacher of the doctrines of Pythagoras was not at all serious, nor did he practise his philosophy in deed; he was a slave to his belly and to sexual pleasures and modelled himself on Epicurus. This was Euxenus of Heraclea in Pontus. He knew the maxims of Pythagoras as birds know what they learn from men.” Alas for the absurdity, if anyone should say that from

this man he had received the understanding of conversation with the gods! But let it be granted that he also heard other guides, though the writer nowhere indicates it. Which of them, then, professed himself to know, as having learned it from Pythagoras, and to teach others, the understanding and frequenting of the conversations of the gods, seen and unseen? Not even the renowned Plato, who more than anyone shared in the philosophy of Pythagoras, nor Archytas, nor Philolaus himself, who handed down in writing the discourses of Pythagoras, nor any others who became the man's disciples and handed down his opinions and maxims in writing to those after him, boasted of any such wisdom. So he learned such things from elsewhere and not from Pythagoras, and assumes the name of philosopher as a pretext for his solemn talk; and so that one might grant, most unreasonably, that the falsehood was true, he says, I know not how, that he learned these things from the Samian himself, who had departed from among men countless years before. Besides the Arabs, then, this man too must be enrolled as his teacher in the so-called secret knowledge about the gods. If, then, he was of a divine nature, the account has lied about his teachers; and if this is true, the myth was false, and the writing that he was divine is not true. I am not yet minded to busy myself with the apparition of Proteus and to demand proof of it, nor proofs of the swans with him, which he absurdly reports acted as midwives to his mother when she bore him. Nor do I demand a witness for the tale about the thunderbolt;

for, as I said, Damis will not come to us as witness of these things either, since he joined the man much later, at Ninus in Assyria. For my part, I very readily believe what is likely and keeps to the truth, and even if things somewhat greater are said by exaggeration in praise of a good man, I think them credible and acceptable, provided they are not merely marvellous and full of nonsense. So I would not grudge it if the writer says that the man was of an ancient family going back to the founders of the city, and wealthy, if so it was, beyond all the natives; and that as a young man he not only had the teachers mentioned but, if you like, became the teacher and guide even of them. Let him also be clever in common matters, as when by excellent judgment he freed from his illness a man who had come to the temple of Asclepius for treatment: for to one sick with dropsy he prescribed a suitable diet of self-control, and so restored him to health; and on this score the youth is to be approved for his good sense. So too when he kept away from the temple one who was prepared to sacrifice lavishly, a man, it seems, notorious for wickedness; for he represents him as the richest and most prominent of all the natives. Nor do I grudge enrolling him among the temperate, because he reviled the lover who made an attempt on his youthful beauty, and because, as the account says, he kept himself pure of intercourse with women to the end. Let what is told of his five years' silence after the manner of Pythagoras be credible too, and the way he completed it worthy of praise. These and similar things, human and truly not far from philosophy and truth, I would gladly accept. But

to suppose him better than a man in nature and then at once contradict it and forget the assumption made, I think would bring blame and discredit on the writer himself and much earlier on the one written about. So much from the first book; let us go on to what is in the second. The writer leads him on the journey from Persia to India, … a marvel, some spirit, which he also calls an empusa, which he says Apollonius drove away. And when animals were brought to them for food, he says that he told Damis that he allowed him and his companions to eat the meat, since abstaining from it would lead them to nothing, while for himself it led to what he had professed toward philosophy from childhood. Yet who would not be puzzled that he did not keep even the one man whom he seemed to have as the only imitator of his life, and whom he urged to philosophy, from animal food as from food unholy according to Pythagoras, as one dearest to him? And by what reasoning did he say that it would not profit himself, but admit that for them nothing would come of abstaining? Besides this, see what proofs of truthfulness Philostratus presents, who the Lover of Truth testifies honoured the truth. He says that when Apollonius was among the Indians he engaged an interpreter and through him conversed with Phraotes (this was the name of the king of the Indians); and he who a little before, according to him, understood all languages, now again, according to the same writer, needs an interpreter. And again he who knows what men have in mind

and all but that of the god among them asks through an interpreter what way of life the king follows, and asks that someone be given him as guide on the journey to the Brahmans. Meanwhile the king of the Indians, a barbarian by nature, sends the interpreter out of the way and converses with him in Greek … [The writer has Apollonius] amazed at his education and learning … and at his speaking the Greek tongue, writing, it seems, to suit himself. For how would he have been astonished unless he thought him a barbarian? Admiring such a man, he would never have expected him to speak Greek. Then, as though the king had shown him some marvel, astonished and still ignorant of its cause, “Tell me, O king,” said Apollonius, “where did you get such command of the Greek tongue, and where did the philosophy about you come from here? For I do not suppose you refer it to teachers, since it is not likely that the Indians have teachers of this.” Such are the strange questions of the man who comprehends everything by foreknowledge! … [The king tells him of his] teachers, who they were, and each detail of his family. When the king of the Indians was judging a case about a treasure found in a field, whether it should be assigned to the buyer or to the one who had sold the land, the all-wise philosopher, dear to the gods, being asked, decided for the buyer, adding as his reasoning, in his very words, “that he was not

a bad man, and the gods would not have given him even what was under the ground, if he had not been better than the seller.” So, according to him, it follows that we must consider the well-off and those distinguished by wealth, even if they are most shameful and utterly depraved, thrice happy and dear to the gods, and only the poorest wretched and miserable, even if they were Socrates, or Diogenes, or Pythagoras himself, or another of the most temperate and fair-minded of all men. For anyone following the argument might say that according to him the gods would not take from the poor, the very men who excelled in philosophy, even what they need for necessary food unless they were altogether bad in character, and would not give abundance even of unnecessary things to men of more licentious character unless they were better than the former; from which the absurdity of the conclusion is plain to everyone.

Having set out these things from the second book too, let us go on to the third, to look at what concerns the celebrated Brahmans. There the incredible tales of what lies beyond Thule, and any other marvel ever invented by tellers of fables, will appear very credible and most true in comparison with these. They deserve attention because of the arrogance of the Lover of Truth, who fastens credulity and a light character on us, and on himself and those like him an accurate, firm and intelligent judgment. See, then, in what marvels he takes pride when he prefers Philostratus to our divine evangelists, as one who not only reached the highest point of education but also cared for the truth. First, on Apollonius's journey to the Brahmans, a woman is introduced

whose colour from the head to the waist is perfectly white, and the other part of the body black. Then, as they go on along the road to the Brahmans, there are mountains planted with pepper, with apes as its farmers, and serpents of marvellous size, from whose heads torches of fire are thrown, and if one killed them, he says, one would find in their heads marvellous stones like that of Gyges in Plato. So much before the hill of the Brahmans. When they came to it, they saw there a well of red water of marvellous kind, and near it a crater of fire from which a leaden flame was sent up, and two jars of black stone, one of rains and the other of winds, from which the Brahmans supply whatever part of the country they are well disposed to. And there were statues among them of Athena Polias, Pythian Apollo, Dionysus of the Marshes, and some other Greek gods; and Iarchas was called the teacher over all. He saw him seated, far from in a philosopher's manner, but rather in a satrap's, on a very high throne. It was of black bronze and adorned with golden figures, as though the philosophers, like common craftsmen, laboured with fire and iron to make such things, or else, like wonder-workers, produced the work automatically. The thrones of the other teachers after him were of bronze, he says, but plain and less high. For surely the teacher of divine philosophy had to be honoured in the manner of a tyrant with the privilege of figures and gold! He says that Iarchas, on first seeing Apollonius, addressed him by name in the Greek tongue, and asked for the letter