Against Hierocles 386–401

which he was bringing from Phraotes, having already grasped this by foreknowledge, and showed the divine character of his foreknowledge by saying beforehand that the letter lacked one letter, a delta; and that, tastelessly, from their very first conversation, like a nouveau riche, he showed off the advantage of foreknowledge, listing Apollonius's father and mother, his family, upbringing and education, his journeys at various times, his journey to them, and what he had done and said on it. Then this wonderful writer himself says that the Brahmans, together with Apollonius, anointed themselves with an amber-coloured drug and bathed, and standing round as in a chorus struck the earth with their rods; and the earth, arching up, sent them two cubits into the air, and they stood aloft in the air itself for some interval of time; and they drew fire from the sun, when they wished, of its own accord. To this the teller of marvels adds a wonder: four Pythian tripods rolled out moving of themselves; he compares them to Homer's, and besides these sets four cupbearers made of bronze. He adds that the earth too spread grass under them of its own accord. Two of the tripods, he says, flowed with wine, and of the other two, one supplied a mixture of hot water, the other of cold; and the bronze cupbearers drew of the wine and the water in due measure and carried the cups round in a circle, as at drinking parties. These things seem true and credible, after much examination, to Hierocles, who has been entrusted with the highest courts and those over all; and our credulity and levity

he has condemned as very great; but he himself, believing such things from Philostratus, boasts, in his very words: “Let us consider how much better and more intelligently we take such things, and what opinion we hold of virtuous men.” At such a banquet, according to the same Philostratus, a king who ruled among the Indians is introduced drinking with the philosophers. He relates that this king insulted and behaved drunkenly toward philosophy, got drunk among them, set himself up against the Sun and boasted; and again that Apollonius learned what he said through an interpreter and again conversed with him with Iarchas interpreting. And is it not a wonder how it was fitting that one so insolent and absurd should behave drunkenly and get drunk among men of such stature, when he did not deserve to be present at a table of philosophers, let alone of men equal to gods? But why should I call them equal to gods and insult the men's dignity, when, as Apollonius asked whom they considered themselves to be, Iarchas said, “Gods”? He, as a god, began for the drinking companions, not at all like a philosopher, far from it, nor rather, as he said, worthily of a god, by stooping over the bowl; and the bowl, says the writer, gave all of them enough to drink and kept supplying it, like secret springs to those who draw from them. After this there were common conversations and serious discussions of the philosophers: Iarchas teaching that his soul had once been in the body of another man, a king, and had done such and such things, and Apollonius that he had once been the pilot of an Egyptian ship and had done such things; questions and answers whose wisdom it is worth not

to omit from memory. He says that Apollonius asked whether they had golden water (what a wise and wonderful question!), and asked about men living under the earth, about Pygmies and Shadow-feet, and whether there was among them a four-footed animal called the martichoras, whose head is like a man's and its size like a lion's, and whose tail puts out hairs a cubit long and thorny, which it shoots like arrows at those who hunt it. Such were the questions of Apollonius; and Iarchas taught him that the Pygmies live underground, dwelling beyond the river Ganges, but that the other creatures do not exist. Besides this, Philostratus records that wool grows for them from the earth as material for clothing; so presumably the philosophers went to the loom and toiled at spinning to make their clothing (for no womankind had been admitted among them), unless he would say that this too, marvellously, turns of itself into holy clothing for them. Each of them, he says, carries a staff and a ring having a secret power. Then come the wonders of the Brahman: how he recalled a man possessed by a demon by a letter, how he cured a lame man by stroking his hip, how he gave sight to a blind man and a sound hand to a man whose hand was disabled. Many thanks to the writer for freeing us from trouble! For it is clear that these too are true, when he had related beforehand thunder and winds in jars, tripods of stone moving of themselves, and cupbearers of bronze carrying the cups round in a circle; for by narrating these as true he exposed and refuted the fable of all the

rest. Philostratus says that Damis said that Apollonius studied philosophy with Iarchas without him, and received from him seven rings named after the stars, which he wore one at a time according to the names of the days. Having said this now, the man thought by the Lover of Truth to honour the truth, later in his writing, as though condemning the sorcery of the Brahmans and taking care to set Apollonius free of it, adds, word for word: “When he saw among the Indians the tripods and the cupbearers and all that they said moved of itself, he did not ask how they contrived them, nor did he wish to learn, but he praised them without thinking it right to imitate them.” How, sir, did he not think it right, he who was eager to study philosophy with them without Damis, and thought it necessary that his only companion should not know what he was doing? How did he not think it right to imitate, he who accepted the rings named after the stars and made it a rule to wear them all his life according to the names of the days, though, as you say yourself, they had a secret power? And even if it be granted that he did not think it right to imitate them, as not doing well, he obviously did not imitate them; how then did he praise what he did not think right to imitate? And if he praised them as acting divinely, why did he not imitate what was worthy of praise? After his stay among them, he says, he returned with his companions and came to the land of the Oreitae, where the rocks are of bronze, the sand of bronze, and the rivers carry bronze dust. So much for the third book.

Let us now go on to what follows. He says that when Apollonius returned from India to Greece he was proclaimed by the gods themselves a partner of the gods, so that they sent the sick to him for healing; and so, having brought him to us as something marvellous and divine from the Arabs, the Magi and the Indians, he begins from here his marvellous narratives. Yet one might reasonably say that if he was of a nature more divine than man's, he should have begun his wonders long before, not now, before he received anything from others; and the learning he eagerly sought from the Arabs, the Magi and the Indians was superfluous, if he really was what was assumed. But according to the truth-loving writer he now comes forward, after so many teachers, to show his wisdom. First, as one setting out from the Arabs and their augury, he interprets to those present what the sparrow meant in calling the others to food; then, having perceived beforehand a plague at Ephesus, he foretells it to the citizens. He himself gives the cause of this in his defence before Domitian: when the emperor asked him from what he had foretold it, he said, “Using a lighter diet, O king, I was the first to perceive the danger.” He relates a third wonder of his, that he averted the plague. Even though the writer did not put this among the charges against him at the end, because, it seems, he could not clear himself of the charge by a defence, let us nevertheless put the story in plain view ourselves and hold it too to account. For if it were not clear to anyone that the fiction is great and

deceitful and truly full of sorcery, the very manner of the story refutes it. For he supposes that the plague was seen in the form of an old man begging and clothed in rags; that when Apollonius ordered him to be stoned, he first darted fire from his eyes, and then, when struck with stones, appeared as a dog crushed and spitting foam like mad dogs. And he writes that Apollonius spoke of this in his defence before the emperor Domitian: “For the form of the plague was like a poor old man, and I saw it, and seeing it I seized it, not stopping a disease but rooting it out.” Who then will not laugh loudly at this wonder-worker's marvel, hearing that the nature of a plague is a creature that falls under the eyes, is crushed by stones thrown by men, and spits foam? A plague is nothing other than the corruption and damage of the air, the surrounding air being turned toward disease by evil and noxious exhalations, as medical science teaches. The apparition may be held to account in another way too: the account says the plague fell upon the city of the Ephesians alone, and not upon their neighbours; but how could this have happened if the surrounding air had been damaged? The disease would not have been shut up and lain in wait for the air about Ephesus alone. His fourth marvel was the soul of Achilles, appearing at his own tomb first in a cloak five cubits tall, then twelve cubits in size, accusing the Thessalians of not performing the offerings to him as was customary, still angry with the Trojans for their offences against him, and bidding Apollonius

ask five questions, whichever he himself wished and the Fates permitted. Then the man who knew everything and boasted of foreknowledge of the future still does not know whether Achilles had a tomb, and whether the Muses and the Nereids lamented him, and asks him about these things and inquires whether Polyxena was slain on his tomb and whether Helen came to Troy: solemn and pressing questions, indeed, for the hero's philosophic life, and worthy of serious effort! Besides these he wonders whether so many heroes arose among the Greeks at one time, and whether Palamedes came to Troy. That the companion of gods seen and unseen should not know such things and should ask about such matters, what disgrace would that not be! Perhaps, since he is introduced conversing with the dead, the writer makes the questions more frigid so as to remove the suspicion that he seemed to meddle beyond what was fitting; for he also describes him defending himself, that the way the apparition appeared to him was not by necromancy: “For I came to converse with Achilles,” he said, “not by digging a trench like Odysseus, nor by summoning souls with the blood of lambs, but by praying all the prayers which the Indians say one must pray to the heroes.” And this the man now boasts of to his companion, the man whom the writer testified learned nothing from the Indians nor imitated their wisdom! Why then, sir, if it was not some malicious meddling, did you not make even your one genuine and only companion Damis a partner of this wonderful sight and converse? Why could you not do this by day too, but only at an unseasonable hour of the night? And why

did the crowing of cocks drive away the hero's soul? “For he departed,” he says, “with a moderate flash of lightning, since the cocks were already beginning their song.” To wicked spirits, perhaps, that time of night might be suitable for meddlesome conversations, but not to the soul of a hero, which, freed from the gross matter of the body, must be good and wholly virtuous. Yet the spirit brought in here is depicted as malicious and envious in character, irascible and mean in disposition. Was not he such, who kept Antisthenes, a serious youth, from following Apollonius as a philosopher? For he bids him not to make him a fellow traveller in his philosophy, giving the reason: “For he is a descendant of Priam enough, and never stops praising Hector.” And how was he not irascible and mean, being angry with the Thessalians because they did not sacrifice to him, and not reconciled with the Trojans for offences against him countless years before, though they sacrificed and poured libations to him continually, but even ordering him to restore the tomb of Palamedes with its statue lying neglected? The fifth and sixth wonders would need no long discussion to show the writer's credulity; for he drives out demons, one, as they say, by another: one from a licentious youth, another feigning to take a woman's form; this demon the most wise man calls by the very names of empusa and lamia. The girl in the city of the Romans afterwards, whom he brought back to a second life after death, seemed most incredible even to Philostratus himself and must be set aside. For

he is in doubt and hesitates whether perhaps some spark of soul remained in the girl unnoticed by those attending her. For he says it was said “that it was drizzling, and steam rose from her face.” And indeed, if he had really done such a thing in Rome itself, it would not have escaped the emperor first, and all the prefects after him, and especially the philosopher Euphrates, who was living in the country at that time and staying at Rome, who is recorded to have later brought the charge against him as against a sorcerer. For surely this too, if it had happened, would have been listed by the accuser with the other charges against him. So many, then, are the particular deeds he did. He writes that he foretold and predicted countless other things by foreknowledge; and that at Athens, when he wished to be initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, the priest there kept him out, saying that he would never initiate a sorcerer, nor open the Eleusinian rites to a man impure in things divine. And the most philosophic man ordered his companions to give a fee to one who was shamelessly collecting money at Rome and going through the songs of Nero with a lyre for pay, because of their fear of Nero. With these things the fourth book is concluded. In the fifth book of his writing about him, after saying some things about his foreknowledge and admiring it, the writer adds this, word for word: “That he foretold such things by a divine impulse, and that the account of those who think the man a sorcerer is unsound, is shown by what has been said. But let us consider this too. Sorcerers, whom I consider the most wretched of men,

some going to the torturing of images, others to barbarous sacrifices, others to charms or anointings, claim to change what is fated; but he followed the decrees of the Fates and foretold that they must come to pass, and foretold not by sorcery but from what the gods revealed. When he saw among the Indians the tripods and the cupbearers and all that they said moved of itself, he did not ask how they contrived them, nor did he wish to learn, but he praised them without thinking it right to imitate them.” In saying this he clearly declares the famous philosophers of the Indians to be sorcerers. For when discussing sorcerers he mentions them too, saying that they contrived their marvels, and supposes the man under discussion to be a stranger to such sophistry, as though it were not refined. If, then, Apollonius appears calling these men gods and naming them as his teachers, it is time to bring him too under the charges against his teachers. He is introduced among those he calls the Naked Ones of the Egyptians, saying in so many words: “I think it no wonder that I was overcome by a philosophy well adorned, which the Indians dress suitably and wheel out on a lofty and divine machine. Since I was rightly delighted, and rightly consider them wise and blessed, it is time to learn.” And shortly after he says: “For these are gods, and are adorned as the Pythia is.” And he is introduced saying to Domitian: “And what war have you with Iarchas or with Phraotes the Indians, whom alone of men I consider gods and worthy of this name?” And elsewhere likewise the account names the men as gods and as his teachers, and admits that he received from them the rings mentioned;

now, slandering the disciple along with his teachers, he does not notice it. Further on in the writing he introduces a flute player, and relates how Apollonius very seriously expounded in long discourses the modes of flute playing, as if it were some very great and most wise science. He records that the emperor Vespasian prayed to him as to a god, and that Vespasian said by way of prayer, “Make me king,” and he answered, “I have made you.” Who would not rightly hate the voice of this boasting, which falls nothing short of madness, when the former pilot of an Egyptian ship now gives himself airs as a god and a maker of kings? For Apollonius himself declared to us a little earlier, in his conversations with the Indian, that his soul had been this. When the same emperor asked him to make known to him those of the philosophers whom he himself approved as counsellors in affairs, he says, word for word: “These men too are good counsellors in these matters,” pointing to Dio and Euphrates, who had not yet come to a quarrel with him. And again: “O king,” he said, “Euphrates and Dio, long known to you, are at the doors, not unconcerned for your affairs. Call them too into the common discussion, for the two men are wise.” To which Vespasian said, “I keep doors unshut to wise men.” Bravo for the hero's foreknowledge! Euphrates is now good and wise, since he had not yet come into a quarrel with him; but if he should come into one (and that will be very soon), see what the same man writes about him to Domitian: “And indeed what happens to a philosopher who flatters the powerful is shown by the case of

Euphrates. For from this source he has, what shall I say, money? No, fountains of wealth; and he now holds his discussions at the bankers' tables, a huckster, a petty huckster, a tax-collector, a money-weigher, becoming everything that is sold and sells. He is ever imprinted on the doors of the powerful and stands at them longer than the doorkeepers; he has often been shut out by the doorkeepers, like greedy dogs. He who never gave even a drachma to a philosopher now fortifies his wealth against others, feeding with money this Egyptian here and sharpening against me a tongue that deserves to be cut out. Euphrates I leave to you; for if you do not praise flatterers, you will find the man worse than I describe.” So the man who bore witness to the father, Vespasian, that Euphrates was wise and good, in relating these things about him to the son, is plainly both praising and blaming the same man. Did, then, the one who had grasped knowledge of the future not know what Euphrates's character was and would be? For not now for the first time, but already under Vespasian himself, he wishes to slander him as of a most wicked character. How then did he commend such a man to the emperor, so that the gates of the palace stood open unshut to him because of his recommendation? Even a blind man, as they say, can see that the man is falsely credited with foreknowledge by the writer, though he may otherwise have been generous, earlier, before experience, freely sharing his access to the palace with his companions and with Euphrates too, and later, because of the quarrel, saying such things about him. My argument does not yet wish to slander the man as slandering Euphrates, who became the most renowned of the philosophers of his time,

so that he is celebrated to this day by those who share in philosophy; in which one might find, if one wished, the greatest example of the slander against Apollonius. For if it is agreed among them that Euphrates excelled in all philosophy, it is time to accuse him of hatred of wickedness, in proceeding against what was done absurdly by this man, and to clothe the one accused by him with a bad reputation, because he did not follow the life pleasing to a philosopher. Again in the sixth book the teller of tales, telling marvels, leads him with his companions, riding on a camel, to those he calls the Naked philosophers of the Egyptians; there, at the bidding of the naked one, an elm, he says, the tree, addresses Apollonius in an articulate and female voice. And the Lover of Truth expects us to believe this! Then he records Pygmy men beyond their land, cannibals and Shadow-feet, and a satyr made drunk by Apollonius. From there he returns again to Greece, and conversations and predictions are again shared with Titus; and he frees from his misfortune a youth bitten by a mad dog, whose soul he even divined to be that of Amasis, once king of Egypt, extending his kindness even to the dog. These, then, are what he did before the accusation. But it is worth noting throughout the whole work that, even if the writer is granted to be telling the truth about the marvels, it is clearly shown that each of them was done with the cooperation of a demon. To perceive the plague beforehand would perhaps not seem meddlesome, if, as

he himself said, he had grasped it by a very light and pure diet. But perhaps this too was told him beforehand through converse with a demon. And as for the rest that he is introduced as having grasped and foretold by foreknowledge, though it could be held to account with countless refutations from the very writing of Philostratus, still, granting that this too is true, I would say that he learned some of the future by a meddlesome contrivance from an attendant demon. For he did not grasp everything. This is made clear by his not keeping his foreknowledge throughout and about all things, but being at a loss in very many things and asking questions through ignorance, which he would not have suffered if he had shared in divine virtue. As for his stopping the plague, what kind of drama it was, that it was an apparition and nothing more, has been shown already. And why would the soul of Achilles linger at his tomb, leaving, as one might say, its life in the Islands of the Blessed, unless this too was the presence of a demon's appearance? And the licentious youth clearly had a demon dwelling in him; and the one he called an empusa and lamia, which played the drunken fool with Menippus, he perhaps drove out by a greater demon. Likewise he changed both the youth whose mind was deranged by the mad dog and the possessed dog itself by the same method. See, then, as I said, how all his marvel-working was accomplished through demonic service. As for the girl who came back to life, if she still breathed and bore, according to the writer, a spark of soul and moisture on her face, she must be removed from the wonders; for, as I said before, so great a thing would not have been passed over in silence if it had happened in Rome itself in the presence of the emperor.

Countless other things could be gathered from the same books, and what in them is easy to refute, incoherent, fabulous and monstrous could be held to account. But since the man's affairs need no great seriousness, as his memory survives with some people today not among the divine and marvellous and wonderful, but not even among the philosophers, let us be content with what has been said and pass on to the seventh book about him. The man is accused of sorcery. Then, not obeying Demetrius the philosopher, who tried to turn him from going to Rome, he says some offensive and vulgar things about himself, roughly thus: “I know more than other men, since I know everything; and of what I know, I know some things as the good know, others as the wise …” Boasting that he knows everything, he is convicted by the account, as it goes on, of ignorance of some things. Then Damis, out of fear of death, changes his appearance for him, hiding the philosopher. Hear what the writer says of him in his defence: “This was the reason for the dress,” for he says it was not out of cowardice that he put it off, “nor from repentance, but approving a device which he adopted …” … [He] sets out four charges which he thought easy to answer, chosen from very many …: one, … ; another, why men thought him a god; the third, how he foretold the plague to the Ephesians; …

that he wrote the defence. Earlier he records that he was handed over to fetters and worked a marvel there: to Damis, who was in great distress at his teacher's misfortune, he showed his leg freed of itself from the fetter, then, having relieved him of his grief, put his foot back in its former position. After this he writes that he was tried before the emperor Domitian and acquitted of the charges; and after the acquittal, unseasonably, it seems to me, he cried out these very words in the court: “Give me too a place, if you will; if not, send someone to take my body, for my soul you cannot. Or rather, you will not take even my body: ‘for you shall not kill me, since I am not fated to die.’” And with this celebrated saying he ends the drama with his disappearance.

The writer, then, concerning the wonder in the prison, which was apparently seen in fantasy by Damis through the attendant demon, 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 and fitted his leg into it again …” I could never condemn the slowness of the disciple, if, having lived with him all his life and through certain meddlesome arts