Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

2l6 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMhe converted to him people who were strangers to allknowledge." 1Such in brief is the birth, education, and mannerof life which Philostratus assigns to Apollonius, whomhe has thus conducted to the age of full manhood.He is in all this represented as the pure offspring ofthe Greek mind, having shown qualities such as Em-pedocles, Democritus, Plato, and Anaxagoras had shownin ages long past, but especially he is as it were aresurrection of Pythagoras. In short, he is one whoseculture and wisdom, as his language, are eminentlyand indigenously Hellenic, while he has the advantageof living exactly at the opening of the Christian era ;for it is curious that his birth coincides as nearly aspossible in time with that of Christ. " At this point ofhis life," says Philostratus, " Apollonius determined thata young man should travel, and go beyond the boundariesof his own land. The object which he set beforehimself was to visit the Indian wise men called Brah-mans, and on his way to see likewise the Magians whoinhabited Babylon and Susa. This he proposed to hisseven companions, but when they attempted to diverthim from his purpose, he told them, ' I have consultedthe gods and declared to you their will, to make triayour courage, whether you have strength for whaI undertake. Now since you have not the resolution tgo, I bid you farewell and desire you to study phsophy. I must go where wisdom and my good geniuslead me.' And so saving */ O he set out from Antiochwith two servants of his family, one remarkable for thepeed, the other for the beauty, of his writingm^fto through the Syrian city of Ninus he met with1 I have drawn the preceding account from the "Life of Philostratus,"Book i. 1-16.