Occultists and Mystics of All Ages
9781465541215
418 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The difficulty of treating of such a subject as the life and activities of the Philosopher of Tyana lies in the fact that the story of Apollonius’s career has been overlaid with legends of the miraculous on the one hand, and distorted by religious prejudices on the other; while the only authoritative account of this great religious reformer is marred by the glaring deficiencies of the writer for the task which he had in hand, and his inability to appreciate the life-work of the subject of his biography. Indeed he fills many pages with literary padding of the worst kind, while he fails to give us over and over again the very facts which it is of value and importance for us to know. Philostratus, the author of this life, was one of the literary coterie that gathered round the presiding genius of the Empress Julia Domna, the wife of Septimus Severus and mother of Caracalla. Julia Domna was a generous patroness of art and literature, and her husband Severus was devoted to the study of occult science. Gibbon, in his usual sceptical vein, observes that “he was passionately addicted to the vain studies of magic and divination, deeply versed in the interpretation of dreams and omens, and perfectly acquainted with the science of judicial astrology.” The Empress, who was a daughter of the Priest of the Sun at Emesa in Syria, was an enthusiastic bibliophile and had collected, among her other literary treasures, the note-books of Damis, the companion and fellow traveller of Apollonius. These note-books or tablets contained the records of his journeys and other details concerning the life of Apollonius, who was as great a hero to Damis as ever Johnson was to Boswell. If these notes were as full of detail as Philostratus asserts, one can only regret that the biographer did not turn them to more useful account. Damis was a native of Ninus or Nineveh, and Philostratus speaks somewhat contemptuously of his defective Greek style. But it is probable that with all their grammatical errors the note-books of Damis would have given us a truer portrait of the great philosopher than the more finished phrases and elaborate oratorical devices of Philostratus. The biographer had also access to a book written by Maximus of Ægæ, containing a record of Apollonius’s doings at that place. It requires an acute critic to gauge how much of Philostratus’s narrative is literary embellishment and interpolated matter, and how much is actually derived from the original records. Even the Gospels of the Evangelists hardly present a more difficult task to the critic anxious to discriminate between the original and the glosses with which it is overlaid. The other difficulty from which the record of Apollonius’s life and teachings has suffered is due to the religious disputes which arose through the rapid growth of Christianity and its conflict with the previously existing religions of the Roman world. We may argue legitimately enough that the power of working miracles is no proof of the truth of the doctrines expounded by any religious teacher. But the fact remains that in proselytising for Christianity the fullest use was made of the miracles recorded as accomplished by Jesus in the Gospels, in support of the contention in favour of the Divine origin of their worker, and of his work. Illogical though this argument may appear to the philosophic mind, it is not surprising that it should have carried great weight, and indeed it must be admitted that it does so even at the present day.
