Against Hierocles 402–413

seeing him perform his marvels, he thought him in no way different from mortal nature, but even now, after so much wonder-working, does not know his condition, and naturally is anxious and afraid for him as for a man, lest he suffer something against his will. But if he now understands for the first time, after so long a time together, that he was divine and of a nature better than man's, it is worth seeing the reason, which the writer himself shows when he says: “without sacrificing anything, without praying, without saying any secret words,” he saw him do the marvel. So his earlier deeds were accomplished by the man through a meddlesome contrivance; for this reason Damis was not astonished at them nor wondered, but naturally now felt this for the first time, as at something strange done by him contrary to his custom. Against the apparition of the fetter and the departure from the court I would set the words of Apollonius himself to Domitian. When the emperor ordered him to be handed over to fetters, Apollonius reasoned quite consistently somewhat as follows: “If you consider me a sorcerer, how will you bind me? And if you bind me, how will you say I am a sorcerer?” One may retort on him, starting from this, somewhat thus: if you are not a sorcerer, how has your leg been freed? And if it has been freed, how are you not a sorcerer? And if by enduring the fetter you are not a sorcerer, then by not enduring it, by your own reckoning, you are admittedly a sorcerer. And again, if by enduring the court you are not a sorcerer, then by escaping from it and from those about the emperor, I mean the guards standing round, you are plainly shown to be a sorcerer. Being aware of this, it seems to me, the account tries to remedy what happened, as though without sacrifices

and incantations, the marvel appeared by some ineffable power above man. But before long the proof of his nature will appear again. For at once, when someone came to him and said, “The emperor releases you, Apollonius, from these fetters and allows you to live in the open prison,” the man better than a man and foreknower of the future, falling, it seems, from his foreknowledge through excessive joy, asks, “Who, then, will move me from here?” and the other said, “I; follow me.” Then the most divine man very carefully composes a speech of defence, not knowing that the writing will be laboured in vain. For he thinks the emperor will hear him defending himself, and as though he would hear it he prepares the defence very persuasively; but the emperor did not wait for it and made his effort useless. Hear, then, what the refutation says about this too: “Since a speech was also composed by him, as one who would deliver his defence by the water-clock, but the tyrant confined him to the questions I have mentioned, let the speech too be recorded.” See how the all-divine man, being very far from knowing the future, was eager, with the greatest care, to make his defence by the water-clock. But we must also go through the defence that was composed in vain, in which, addressing Domitian, he behaves arrogantly, saying that Vespasian “made you king, but was made king by me.” Oh, the boasting,

which not just anyone, but not even someone who was truly a philosopher and rose above human nature, would have uttered so monstrously without paying the penalty for folly among sensible men! Then, clearing himself of the suspicion against him, he says this about sorcerers: “But I call sorcerers false sages; for with them things that are not exist, and things that exist are not to be believed.” One may learn, then, from the whole work and from what has been shown in detail, whether he should be ranked among the divine and the philosophers or among sorcerers, by attending both to what he himself has said about sorcerers and false sages and to what the history about him has shown. Oaks and elms speaking in an articulate and female voice, tripods moving of themselves, bronze servants waiting at table, jars of rains and winds, red water and whatever else of the kind is brought in among those whom he considered gods and did not hesitate to name as his teachers: of whom would these be evidence, if not of those who show “that things that are not exist, and things that exist are not to be believed,” whom he himself, calling them sorcerers, declares to be false sages? Either, then, on these grounds the divine, virtuous man, dear to the gods, crowned with the prize of wisdom, would be judged truly more divine and far happier than Pythagoras himself and those after him; or, conversely, convicted of false wisdom, he will carry off the first prize of the most wretched.

Again, in the writing he says that he philosophized in Ionia about the power of the Fates, teaching that what they spin is so unchangeable that if they had voted the kingship to another man who already held it, no one could kill him so as to take it from him by

those who seemed good to the Fates. And to this he adds in his very syllables: “The one who is fated to become a carpenter will be a carpenter even if his hands are cut off; and the one fated to win the foot-race at Olympia will not miss the victory even if he is lamed in the leg; and the one to whom the Fates have granted mastery in archery will not miss the mark even if he loses his sight.” With these words he means the ruler, looking, surely, to the Acrisiuses and the Laiuses, Astyages the Mede, and many others who thought they were arranging such things well, who, thinking to kill children or grandsons, were deprived of their kingship by them, as they grew up against them out of obscurity together with what was fated … [And in the defence:] “… you were shut in by Vitellius, and the temple of Zeus on the brow of the city was burning, while he said his affairs would go well; … that you should not escape him, though you were a mere youth and he was not yet such; but nevertheless, since the Fates thought otherwise, he perished by his own counsels, and you now hold what was his. But since I am vexed by the harmony of flattery, let this string, if you please, be cut for me, and think that I have had no thought about your affairs.” Through these words the account of the truth exposes at once the philosopher. For after saying so much earlier against Domitian, the noble man now flatters him and pretends that nothing was said against him, or rather nothing for him, of

what he had stirred up in Ionia about the Fates and necessity. Take up the history again, writer, and, sobering up from your drunkenness, go through what you wrote before in a clear and truth-loving voice, holding nothing back: how, while staying at Ephesus, “he turned the men away from Domitian and encouraged them for the safety of all; and thinking conversations by letter unsafe for them, he took aside now one, now another of the most prudent of his companions and said, ‘I make you a minister of a splendid secret: you must go to Rome to so-and-so and so-and-so and speak with him’”; and how “he discoursed about the Fates and necessity and went through the argument that not even tyrants can force what the Fates decree”; and how, “when a bronze statue of Domitian had been set up beside the Meles, turning the attention of those present to it, he said, ‘Foolish man, how greatly you mistake the Fates and necessity! For the one who is fated to be tyrant after you, even if you kill him, will come back to life.’” Then the man who after such words flatters the tyrant and pretends ironically that none of them was said by him against him, how would he not be judged guilty of all wickedness and servility? Unless one should consider those who have handed these things down to memory as false witnesses and accusers of the man, and not true writers. And where are the Lover of Truth's “writers who reached the highest point of education and honoured the truth, Damis the philosopher, who lived with him, and Philostratus of Athens,” from whom he takes these things, whom the light of truth has proved, contradicting themselves so plainly, truly boastful and siding with contradictions, to be clearly liars, unedu-

cated and sorcerers? After all this he relates that Apollonius, released from the court, wishing at Lebadea to go down into the cave of Trophonius, was not allowed by the inhabitants, who considered him a sorcerer. Yet it is worth raising a difficulty, setting beside this the words of Philostratus at the beginning, in which, puzzled that men took him for a sorcerer, he wonders at this very thing, saying that Empedocles, Pythagoras and Democritus, who associated with the same magi, were never brought under that art, and that Plato, who received much from the priests and prophets in Egypt and mixed it into his own discourses, never seemed to anyone to practise magic; but that this man is not yet recognized among men as setting out from true wisdom, but was thought a magician long ago and still now because he associated with the Babylonian magi, the Brahmans of India and the Naked Ones of Egypt. What, then, shall be said to him? Sir, what was this man attempting, that he alone has been thought a sorcerer long ago and still now, in comparison with such great men, who, having tried, as you say, the same teachers, were distinguished in the times when they were known and have left to those after them the renowned virtue of their philosophy, unless, by attempting things beyond what is fitting, he had become evident to sensible men? Indeed there are some today who say they have come upon meddlesome devices dedicated under the man's name. But I do not care to attend to them. Moreover, in composing the account of the man's death consistently with what went before, he showed that he knew nothing true. Some,

he says, report that he died at Ephesus, others at Lindus, having gone into the temple of Athena, others in Crete; and after scattering such ignorance about his end, he will have it that he went to heaven in his body. For he says that when he ran into a temple, the gates were shut, and an unexpected song of maidens burst out, and the song was: “Go, go to heaven, go.” He says that he never came upon a tomb or cenotaph of the man, though he went over most of the earth, as much of it as there is. And his mind wishes that death did not touch the man at all; for first, in doubt about the manner in which he died, he says “if he did die,” but later he states expressly that he went to heaven. Therefore, as being such, both in the preface of the writing and throughout it, he says he came to philosophy more divinely than Pythagoras and Empedocles.

Since the account is coming to an end, come, let us discuss briefly the Fates and destiny, examining what the account means throughout its whole subject, abolishing what is in our power and introducing necessity, destiny and the Fates; for in this way the man's false opinion in doctrines too will be fully called to account. If, then, according to the account of true philosophy, every soul is immortal (for what is ever-moving is immortal, while what moves another and is moved by another, having a cessation of motion, has a cessation of life), and “the blame is the chooser's; God is blameless,” what argument proves that the ever-moving nature is led unwillingly and not by choice, like a soulless body moved from outside from somewhere and as it were pulled by strings this way

and that, acting in nothing at all from its own impulse and motion, nor referring to itself the cause of what is done, and so being neither praiseworthy when it practises philosophy nor blameworthy when full of vice and wickedness? Why then, my good man, do you revile and blame Euphrates, if, giving himself up to gain not of himself but by destiny, as you think, he neglected philosophy? Why do you insult sorcerers, calling them false sages, when, as you think, they are dragged by the Fates to their wretched life? Why do you speak of vice at all? And why is any man judged wicked by you, and not justly, when he fulfils the limit fated by necessity? And conversely, by what reason do you solemnly name Pythagoras as your wonderful teacher, and never stop praising the plaything of the Fates, not a lover of philosophy? And why have Phraotes and Iarchas, the philosophers of the Indians, carried off with you the glory of gods, though they earned no fame of their own for education or virtue? And why do you not likewise attach to the Fates and necessity the licentious insolence of Nero and Domitian, freeing the men from all blame and every charge? Indeed, if it is fated, as you say, for a runner, an archer or a carpenter, so too, if it is fated for a man of the character of a sorcerer to appear a magician, murderous, wicked and licentious, surely he will turn out such of necessity. Why then do you go about proclaiming virtue to those who cannot be corrected? Or why do you blame those who are most absurd by fate and not by choice? And why, if it was fated for you, being divine in nature, to rise above the glory of kings, did you go to

teachers and philosophers, and busy yourself with the Arabs, the magi of the Babylonians and the wise men of the Indians? For surely without sharing with these too you would have reached it. Why do you throw honey-cakes and frankincense to the gods in vain, and, putting on a show of piety, urge your companions to turn to prayers? And when you pray, what do you ask of the gods, when you admit that destiny rules even them? You ought rather to pass by the other gods and sacrifice only to Necessity and the Fates, and honour destiny above Zeus himself. So for you there would be no more gods, and rightly, since they could not even … [save] men … citizens … from plague. Why do you legislate the opposite and strike against destiny? Or rather, how did you rise above Fate, raising a trophy as it were against it? … [You will not say that] … the spindle with the thread … life-giving to it … not at all deservedly, far from it, you who say you were, before your coming into this body, one of those who spend their lives on the sea and the waves … So you were not wonderful by your first birth and nurture, nor by your general education, nor by your temperate conduct in your prime, nor by your training in philosophy; it was some necessity of the Fates that drove you to the Babylonians, and pushed you, as it were, to the Naked Ones; not choice, nor longing for philosophy.

It was Fate that led him by the throat to Gades and … to wander about. If anyone says that he gained some wisdom from these, Fate is the cause of this too, … the philosophy furnished to him by necessity. … [Pytha]goras himself and some monstrous and cast-off slave, Socrates himself dying for philosophy and those who indicted him as worthy of death, Diogenes and the youths of Athens; and in a word the wisest would not differ from the most foolish, nor the most unjust from the most just, nor the most licentious from the most temperate, nor the most cowardly from the bravest, all these having been shown to be playthings of destiny and the Fates.

But to this the herald of truth will cry out, saying: O men, mortal and perishable race, where are you being carried, having drunk the unmixed wine of ignorance? Stop at last, sober up from your drunkenness, and with the straight eyes of the mind look at the solemn face of truth. It is not right for truth to war with itself and fight, nor for one and the same cause to underlie two things most contrary. While the providence of God rules all things, the universe is ordered by divine laws; and the limit of the soul of men makes each man ruler and judge, leader and lord of himself, teaching this by natural laws and by the doctrines of philosophers,

in choice and action, which by nature are free, unhindered, unimpeded; while the things not in our power are weak, servile, hindered, alien, namely those concerning the body and external things, which are soulless and irrational and have an existence wholly foreign to the proper nature of a rational living being. Of the things in our power, each has in his own choice the impulse to one side or the other, to virtue or to vice; and that which masters and governs the universe goes straight on its way according to nature, while justice always follows it as avenger of those who fall short of the divine law; and of the impulses toward actions neither the Fates, nor destiny, nor necessity is the cause: “the blame is the chooser's; God is blameless.” If anyone should be so bold as to war against what is in our power, let him not veil himself, but proclaim his atheism openly, confessing neither providence, nor God, nor anything else but the Fates and necessity; and let him with bare head add the consequences of these: that there is no wise man, no fool, no just man, no unjust, no virtuous, no wicked, no sorcerer, nothing divine arising in human nature, no philosophy, no education, no art at all, no science; let him call no one good or bad by nature, but say that all things together are whirled about by Necessity and the spindles of the Fates. Let such a man be enrolled as godless and impious in the court of the pious and of philosophers. But if, veiling himself, he tries to hold other opinions, and proclaims providence and gods, and besides these Fate and destiny, siding with conflicting and contrary doctrines, let him be enrolled among the senseless, paying the penalty for folly. So much for this. If, after this, among the schools of philosophers

some should still think it right to count the man, it will be said that if they purged him of the defilement from outside, and of the trappings brought in upon him from this writing, all envy would be removed from them. But if anyone, going beyond the limits of truth, should try to deify him above the philosophers, he would fail to notice that he was simply rubbing into him the charge of sorcery; for these writings, sophistically fabricated, contain, it seems to me, nothing but a refutation and terrible slander of the man in the eyes of those who have sense.