The following text represents a synopsis of Mario Meunier's Foreword to his book Apollonius of Tyana or the Sojourn of a God Among Men. His book is written in the French language and is here translated into English. Not included is the complete translation from the Greek original by Philostratus into the French language which is verbatim with very few comments. Meunier's Bibliography is included at the end of this article.

Compilation & Translation of the French Text by Polo Delsalles, Montréal.

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The history of the life, journeys and exploits of Apollonius of Tyana are mostly known to us by the eight-book narration of Philostratus. Born at Lemnos, this biographer lived until the middle of the 3rd century A.D. He started with teaching rhetoric in Athens; he then came to Rome, where his qualities as a conversationalist, a man of the world and a writer made him part of the circle of literates, physicians, learned men and jurisconsults that the Empress Julia Domna, Syrian daughter of a Sun-Priest and second wife of Septimius Severus, united around her.

In spite of the imposing number of documents and sources which Philostratus used, most discriminating minds cannot, while reading his work, but ask whether this Life of Apollonius is a fanciful novel or an historic narration? It is at the same time one and the other; because, to accommodate itself to the religious requirements and policies of the time, the life of a wise man or a saint was then more or less romanticized.

However, "it is incontestable," writes Jean Réville, "that there was a Pythagorian philosopher by the name of Apollonius in the First Century of our era, that this philosopher was born at Tyana in Cappadocia, and that he left a deep impression on the populace by his lifestyle, his sometimes superhuman actions and by a religious teaching, both popular and elevated. Tradition is formal in this regard; there is no possible history if we do not agree to recognize in him a certain foundation. This philosopher probably traveled in the Orient and perhaps in India. He composed several works, among others a Life of Pythagoras, a treatise On Sacrifices and another On Astrological Predictions, Epistles, and a Will. He dedicated himself to the evangelism of his contemporaries, and was probably very much aware of the harassments of the Emperor Domitian. And so it seems that these many positive facts, the most demanding critique can admit as established."

This is, we believe, the canvas on which Philostratus spread out all flowers of his sophist imagination, developed all the graces of a mind that aspired to please the mystical soul of an empress, and drew a complex embroidery of marvelous pictures, thaumaturgic scenes, fantastic animals and more or less exotic landscapes. The Apollonius of Philostratus, idealized and transfigured, is not therefore the real Apollonius.

Conforming to the tastes of the times and perfectly adapted to the needs of initiatic marvels and edifying mysticism that captivated the men of this time, the Life of Apollonius seems to have been composed to embody in a man, who was predisposed to this choice, an ardent piety, a rigorous asceticism, rare gifts of clairvoyance, healing and divination, the absolute ideal that was that of a Pythagorean. Indeed, Philostratus represented the wise man of Tyana as the heir of that doctrine, of the rule of life and of the thaumaturgic and mystical science of the divine Pythagoras.

Like Pythagoras, Apollonius made long and laborious journeys to become the wise man of all wisdoms. However, the religious syncretism that raged during the times of Philostratus demanded also that the devout man be a disciple of all cults, the illuminated worshipper of all gods of the world and the initiate of all the Secret Mysteries. That India, as much as Egypt, attracted minds, we have the proof in the fact that Plotinus, excited by the praises that his master Ammonius Saccas so often lavished on the Brahmans of India, was not going to linger in trying, although without ever arriving there, to get close to them, to follow the Emperor Gordian in his expedition against the Persians and the Celsians, wrote in his True Discourse : "All the most venerable nations by their antiquity agree with one another with the fundamental dogmas. Egyptians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Hindus, Odrysians, Persians, Samothracians and Greeks have more or less similar traditions. It is with these peoples, and not elsewhere, that it is necessary to look for the source of true wisdom that has spread itself in one thousand separate streams. Their wise men, their legislators, Linus, Orpheus, Muse, Zoroaster and others, are the most authentic founders and interpreters of these traditions and the patrons of all culture. The Pythagorean Numenius of Apamea, immediate precursor of the school of Plotinus, thus defined his method of alliance and fusion between philosophy and the religions of his time : 'It is necessary,' he said, 'to combine Pythagoras and Plato, and to add to them the mysteries and beliefs of the people, notably, the doctrines of the Brahmans, the Jews, the Magi, the Egyptians.'

"In spite of all his shortcomings, the philosophical novel or, to be more precise, the romanticized Life of Apollonius of Tyana written by Philostratus, throws the brightest light on the mores, the ideas and beliefs of an interesting century; it constitutes a first-order document of the people's ideal of the wise man and the saint at the beginning of the Third Century of our era, the souls and circles that were waiting for their deliverance through a purified heathenism, of a spiritual regeneration of the Pythagorean traditions and a more philosophical and clearer understanding of the doctrines, myths and rituals of the religions of the past."

"By raising a literary monument to the wise Apollonius," writes Jean Réville, "Julia Domna and Philostratus wanted to present a religious ideal to the pagan society, and not only an abstract ideal, but an achieved ideal embodied in the person of a divine man. To this effect, they accumulated on their hero everything that could contribute to heighten his glory toward their contemporaries; they conferred upon him supreme wisdom and perfect holiness, an immutable goodness that encompasses the whole of humanity in his effort to raise consciousness, and a large enough piety to give his protection to all religions of the cosmopolitan empire. ... Man and god, philosopher and popular preacher, rationalistic and thaumaturgistic, he had to capture the favors of the educated men and superstitious crowd. In him was embodied the reformed heathenism, the religious syncretism capable of satisfying everybody, legitimizing all local traditions, nevertheless offering to the needy souls a moral religion, the purest and most elevated teachings, leading to, in the last analysis, to the supremacy of the Neo-Pythagorean philosophy professed by the learned minds of the imperial circle and to the apology of the cult of the Sun, to which the family of the Empress had been presiding for a very long time in one of the oldest sanctuaries of the Orient."

Because of Philostratus and Julia Domna, the Life of Apollonius gave to the legend of the wise man of Tyana the literary glorification and the so-called official consecration that he still did not have. Suddenly, the name of Apollonius enjoyed a universal reverence, and the renown of his powers, holiness, asceticism and humanity traveled beyond the cities that had been edified witnesses. Considered by some to be a second Pythagoras and by others as a more divine disciple that the Master, the Tyanaean, while still living, had been considered as a wise man, and was, after his death, revered like a saint. The Emperor Caracalla at his own expense raised a sanctuary in Tyana to his glory. Lampridus tells us that Alexander Severus "had a chapel in his palace, where, every morning after rising he came to pray, when he had not lain down with the Empress; and that there, among the images of his ancestors, he had placed those of the best emperors, the most famous good and learned people, people who had a reputation for holiness and that, in this number, were portraits of Apollonius, Christ, Abraham, Orpheus and others that he revered as gods." Aurelian, when he was going to order the sack of Tyana, saw Apollonius present himself to him.

Recognizing the wise man by his physiognomy, the emperor honored his memory by sparing his native city. The historian Vopiscus, who narrates this fact, finished his narration thus : "Never among men," he writes, "had we seen anyone so holy, more respectable, more sacred and more divine that that being. He gave life back to the dead."

In spite of the incredible popularity and astonishing renown of Apollonius, his legend and his name would probably not have come down to us other than by maintaining himself in the strict limits of these hagiographies, more or less forgotten, of which the Lives of Pythagoras by Jamblicus and Porphyry offer us the most typical models, if a governor of Bithynia, then of Lower-Egypt, known under the name of Sossianus Hierocles, had not decided to use for the profit of the pagan reaction the vivid prestige of the wise man of Tyana. It was under the reign of Diocletian, nearly one century after the publishing of the Life of Apollonius. Anxious to assist the emperor in the struggle that he undertook to paralyze the extension of Christianity in the Empire, Hierocles, who was a sophist, addressed himself directly to the Christians. In an opuscule that he titled Discourse : Friend Of The Truth, this governor of Bithynia, says Lactancia, "tried to weaken the importance of Christ's miracles without however denying them, and wanted to show that Apollonius had performed some of equal importance and even more important ones." To refute such allegations, Eusebius of Caesarea answered with a small treatise that he wrote Against The Thesis Of Hierocles on Apollonius of Tyana. Following book by book Philostratus' narration, Eusebius recognized without difficulty that Apollonius was a wise man worthy of admiration; he admitted everything that was told about his holiness, his teachings, his austerity; but he rejected the marvelous prodigies that were assigned to him, dismissing them in doubt or assigning them either to magic or to the intervening of demons.

Maintained by Arnobius, Eusebius' point of view was modified a little by the presumed author of Questions And Answers To The Address Of The Orthodox. This writer, without absolutely denying the reality of the prodigies that the wise man of Tyana accomplished, tried to explain them by the knowledge of the natural that Apollonius had, by his magic science of the laws of sympathy and antipathy that govern the active forces of Nature, and not, as in Christ's case, by the virtue of a supernatural and divine strength. This last attitude was adopted by most apologists of the evangelical doctrine. However, some among them continued to assign them to artifices of the devil and treacherous lies of the Tempter.

So through Hierocles and Eusebius, this is how the personality, life and legend of the thaumaturgist of Tyana were called to play an unexpected role in the struggles that opposed, since the middle of the Third Century, Pagans and Christians. Since then, Apollonius has entered into the history of the Church and into the arena of a bitter controversy. He had to pay for the ransom of his glory, and the one that most Pagans considered a wise man, honored like a saint and venerated as a divine being, was more often considered by the violence of the Christian apologist an an impostor, a blasphemer, a forger, a wizard, an impiety, a supporter of Satan and a Monkey of Christ. What must we think about so many holy angers and injurious labels?

Our goal here is not to sketch the posthumous life of the wise man of Tyana. However, a problem presents itself. Should we believe, as many critics have thought, that while writing his Life of Apollonius, Philostratus had the intention of composing a lampoon of Christ's gospel, to knowingly oppose Apollonius to Christ and to substitute a Pagan Christ for the Evangelical Christ? Historians that lend to Philostratus such intentions raise in support of their thesis the multiple analogies that they discover between the history of Apollonius and the one of the Savior.

However, as Jean Réville says, "if the signalled analogies are not false, it is necessary to recognize that they are somewhat exaggerated. Without searching too much, we would find some similar ones relating to all the Goethes that then shared the favor of men. Jesus was not the only one who had evangelized the people; miraculous recoveries, extrusions of demons and supernatural apparitions were quite common in this world in which reigned passion for the marvelous. The malevolent accusations, of which Jesus and Apollonius are equally victims, are usual between different school of philosophers, various religious adepts and especially among adepts of rival magic. Nowhere in Philotratus' book can one see the least allusion to Christianity. ... We cannot believe, in a book intended to supplant Jesus Christ, that this same Jesus is never mentioned, nor a character that represents him, nor the religious society that claims to be of him."

What should we conclude by this prudent silence, this clever reserve? The wisest thing to do, since we have nothing surer, is to be of Jean Réville's opinion, who, while admitting a possible influence of the evangelical books on Philostratus, interprets it according to the syncretic ideas of the circle of the learned for whom the Life of Apollonius was to be written.

The book of Philostratus, explains Réville, is not a controversial work; the author does not take aim at Christianity in any particular manner; it is, on the one hand, a literary work destined to charm and, on the other hand, an edification work intended to convert, a work to which Christianity contributed as much as the other religions or philosophies of the empire.

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BIBLIOGRAPHIE SOMMAIRE

Textes et Traductions

PHILOSTRATORUM, Omnia quae supersunt; éd. G. Olearius, Lipsiae, 1709.
FLAVII PIIILOSTRATI, Quæ supersunt; ed. Kayser, Teubner, 1870.
PHILOSTRATE, Vie d'Apollonius de Tyane, texte grec, éd. Westermann, Didot, 1850.
PHILOSTRATE, Vie d'Apollonius de Tyane, traduction française de B. de Vigenère, revue et exactement corrigée sur l'original grec par Fed. Morel, et enrichie d'amples commentaires par Artus Thomas, Paris, 1610.
PHILOSTRATE, Vie d'Apollonius de Tyane, avec les commentaires donnés en anglais par Charles Blount, traduction française de Castilhon, Amsterdam, 1779.
PHILOSTRATE, Apollonius de Tyane, sa vie et ses voyages, traduction française avec introduction, notes et éclaircissements par A. Chassang, Paris, 1862.
PHILOSTRATOS, Life and Times of Apollonius of Tyana, rendered in to English from the Greek, by C. P. Eells,Stanford University, California, 1923.
PHILOSTRATOS, Apollonius von Tyana, aus dem Griechischen des Philostratus ubersetzt und erläutert von Eduard Baltzer, Rudolstadt, 1883.

Monographies

P. J. B. LEGRAND D'AUSSY, Vie d'Apollonius de Tyane, 2 vol. Paris, 1807.
HERZOG, Philosophia practica Apollonii Tyanei, 1709
KLOSE, Dissertationes III de Apollonio Tyanensi, 1723.
CHAUFFEPIÉ, Dissertation sur Apollonius de Tyane, 1808.
ED. MULLER, De Philostrati in componenda memoria Apollanii Tyanensis aide, 1860.
MEAD, Apollonius de Tyane (avec bibliographie anglaise) traduit de l'anglais en français, 1906.
MAURICE MAGRE, Magiciens et illuminés, Apollonius de Tyane, p. 19-48, Paris, 1930.

Sur Apollonius et le Christ

EUSÈBE, Contra Hieroclem, qui ex Philostrati historia comparavit Apollonius Tyanensis Salvatori Nostro Jesu-Christo éd. Fed Morel 1508; Kayser, Contra Hieroclem, 1870.
EUSÈBE, Discours d'Eusèbe de Césarée touchant les miracles attribués par les Payens à Apollonius de Tyane, traduction du président Louis Cousin, Paris, 1684.
L. ELLIES DUPIN, L'histoire d'Apollonius de Tyane convaincue de fausseté et d'imposture, Paris, 1705.
ED. BALTZER, Op. cit., p. 387-396.
ED. NORDEN, Agnostos Theos, Leipzig, 1915.
F.-C. BAUR, Apollonius von Tyana und Christus, oder des Verhoeltniss des Pythagoreismus zum Christenthum, Tubingue, 1832.
J. RESILLE, La Religion à Rome sous les Sévères, 1886, p. 211 sq.
B. AUBÉ, Histoire des persécutions de l'Église, la polémique païenne à la fin du IIe siècle, p. 426-512.
J. GUIRAUD, Un essai de réforme païenne au IIIe siècle, la vie d'Apollonius de Tyane, Montauban, 1886.
P. DE LABRIOLLE, La réaction païenne, Paris, 1934, p. 175-189.

Etudes et Articles Divers

J. DENIS, Histoire des théories et des idées morales dans l'antiquité, Paris, 1856, tome II, p. 265-282.
A. RÉVILLE, Le Christ Païen du IIIe siècle, Revue des Deux Mondes, t. 59, 1865, p. 620-654.
E. DE FAYE, Origène, t. II, chap. XIV, p. 193-207, Paris, 1927.
CHARLY CLERC, Les théories relatives au culte des images, Paris, 1915, p. 224-249.
J. MESK, Die Damisquelle des Philostratos in der Biographie des Apollonios von Tyana, Wiener Studien, 1919, p. 121-128.
ED. MEYER, Apollonios von Tyana und die Biographie des Philostratos, Hermès, 1917, p. 377-424.
J. JESSEN, Apollonios von Tyana und sein Biograph Philostratos, Hambourg, 1885.
J. MILLER, Die Beziehungen der cita Apollonii des Philostratos zur Pythagorassage, Philologus, 51, 1892, p. 137-145.
A. DUMÉRIL, Apollonius de Tyane, Annales de la Faculté des Lettres de Bordeaux, 1884, p. 133-167.
A. et M. CROISET, Histoire de la littérature grecque, t. V, p. 413 et 762-767.
E. ZELLER, Philosophie des Grecs, t. V, p. 148-153.
J. MILLER, art. Apollonius, dans la Real.-Enc. de Pauly-Wissowa, II, 146.
P. BAYLE, art. Apollonius, dans le Dictionnaire historique et critique.
A. FRANK, art. Apollonius, dans le Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques.
G. MÉAUTIS, Recherches sur le Pythagorisme, Neuchatel, 1922, p. 89, 91.
J. LÉVY, La légende de Pythagore, passim. A consulter sur l'utilisation des légendes relatives à la vie de Pythagore dans la vie d'Apollonius, Paris, 1927.
ÉLIPPAS LÉVI, Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, t. I, p. 230-235, 253; t. II, p. 385 sq.
G. NAUDÉ, Apologie pour les grands personnages accusés de Magie, La Haye, 1553, chap. XII.
A. DUMAS. Dans Isaac Laquedem, Alexandre Dumas mêle les aventures d'Apollonius à celles du Juif errant.
G. FLAUBERT, La Tentation de Saint Antoine.