Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

210 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMone hundred and twenty years. The work of Damis,which Philostratus states not to have been known whenit was thus presented to the Empress Julia, is onlyknown to us now by the reference to it throughoutthis work of Philostratus. The work of Maerageneshas perished, but we learn from Origen that he heldApollonius to be a magician, and stated that certainphilosophers were deceived by him through this art ofhis. What we know of Apollonius from other sourcesthan Philostratus is that he lived in the first centuryand died in old age in Nerva's reign. Origen callshim both magician and philosopher. Lucian classeshim with Alexander of Abonoteichos, his model of anunprincipled impostor. ] )io Cassius terms him a skilfulwizard and magician. With reference to the remainingcircumstances of his life there is silence. Thuslearned men, considering that there is no guaranteewhatever for the incidents assigned by Philostratus toApollonius, are unanimously agreed that this pretendedlife is a romance. Taking up the person of a manwho had really lived in the first century with thereputation of a Pythagorean philosopher and a magician,it puts together, four generations after his death,an ideal picture of one who should carry out what thewriter meant to be taken for the ancient philosophyof Pythagoras, and what was really the Neopythagoreanphilosophy as it had been constructed by a certainschool in his own time. Thus of the real Apolloniushardly anything is known ; little notice was taken ofhim in his day. The representation of him by Philostratushas no claim whatever to historic truth. Ifreal facts are mentioned in it, no one can distinguishthem from the fictions with which they are surrounded,so that in nothing can it be trusted. The whole interest