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THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 265simple and direct imitation, but a heathen renderingof his features. Apollonius is to be to the heathenwhat Christ is to the Christian, with a view to showthat the religion which produced Apollonius was atleast equal to the religion set up by Christ. The factof a tacit reference to Christ throughout the supposedcharacter of Apollonius would not be overthrown, nay,would not be impaired in force, by showing that theprinciples from which the two characters spring, aswell as the results in which they terminate, are quitedifferent. Kather the imitation and the contrast illus-trateeach other.In all the points above mentioned the doctrinewhich Philostratus was exhibiting under the form ofa biography was about the same time put forth in theschools of Alexandria in a system of philosophic teaching.They agreed in the complete union of philosophyand religion, in acknowledging the need of revelationin order to attain that truth which is the object of both,in claiming the power to work miracles as a result ofpiety and in order # to accredit teaching, in maintainingthe absolute unity of the Godhead, and the relationshipof the human soul to it, and consequently in proposingunion with that Godhead as the end of man's life, andfurther in the close alliance of this religious philosophy,notwithstanding its tenet of the divine unity, with theexisting polytheistic worship. Arnmonius Sakkas, thereputed founder of the Neoplatonic school, was indeedthe exact " contemporary of Philostratus, as the lives ofboth ran from about A.D. 180 to 250. Porphyriusdeclares that Ammoniusl was of Christian parents,and brought up a Christian; but asserts that when hebegan to think and philosophise, he changed to the1 Quoted by Eusebius, Hist. vi. 19.