Against Hierocles

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

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

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.