XXXIX

IN the same book we are told that he had reasoned  in Ionia about the power of the Fates, and had taught that the threads they spin are so immutable that, if they decree a kingdom to another which already belongs to some one, then, even if that other were slain by the possessor for fear lest he should ever have it taken away by him, the latter would yet be raised from the dead and live again in fulfilment of the decrees of the Fates ; and he continues in these very words: "He who is destined to become a carpenter, will become one, even though his hands have been cut off; and he who has been predestined to carry off the prize for running in the Olympic games, will never fail to win, even though he break his leg; and the man to whom the Fates have decreed that he shall be an eminent archer, will not miss the mark, even though he lose his eyesight." And then by way of flattering the sovereign he adds the following : " And in drawing my examples from royalty, I had reference, I admit, to  the Acrisii and to the house of Laius, and to Astyages, the Mede, and to many other monarchs who thought that their power was well established, and of whom some were supposed to have slain their own children and others their descendants, yet were deprived by them of their thrones, when they grew up and issued forth against them out of obscurity in accordance with destiny. Well, if I were inclined to flattery I should have said that I had your own history in my mind, when you were blockaded by Vitellius, and the temple of Jupiter was burnt on the brow of the hill, overlooking the city. And Vitellius declared that his own fortune was assured, so long as you did not escape him, although you were at the time quite a stripling, and not the man you are now. And yet because the Fates had decreed otherwise, he perished with all his counsels, while you are now in possession of his throne. However, since I abhor the forced concords of flattery, for it seems to me that they are everything that is out of time and out of tune, let me at once cut this string out of my lyre, and request you to consider that on that occasion I had not your fortunes in my mind." In this passage, a treatise written ostensibly in the interest of truth draws a picture of a man who was at once a flatterer and a liar, and anything rather than a philosopher; for after inveighing so bitterly on the earlier occasion against Domitian, he now flatters him, generous fellow that he is, and pretends that the doctrines he mooted in Ionia about the Fates and Necessity, so far from being directed against him rather told in his favour.

Take then your history, my author, and regaining your sobriety after, your fit of drunkenness, read out loud and in a truth-loving tone the passages you wrote on a former occasion, without concealing anything; read how when he was staying in Ephesus he did his best "to alienate his friends from Domitian, and encouraged them to espouse the cause of the safety of all, and as it occurred to him that intercourse with them by letter was dangerous to them, he would take now one and now another of the most discreet of his own companions aside and say to them : ' I have a most important secret business to entrust to yourselves, so you must betake yourself to Rome to such and such persons, and converse with them !' " And of how " he delivered a discourse on the subject of the Fates and Necessity. and argued that not even tyrants can overpower the decrees of the Fates." And how "directing the attention of his audience to a brazen statue of Domitian which stood close by that of the Meles, he said : ' Thou fool, how much art thou mistaken in thy views of Necessity and of the Fates. For even if thou shouldst slay the man who is fated to be despot after thyself, he shall corne to life again.' " The man then who, after holding such language as this, proceeds to flatter the tyrant, and cynically pretends that none of this language was directed against him, how can we judge him other than capable of all villainy and meanness ; unless indeed you assume that the authors who have handed down to us these details of him were lying fellows who meant to accuse their hero and not true historians ? But in that case what becomes, to use the language of the Lover of Truth, of those who " were historians at once most highly educated and respectful of the  truth, namely Damis the philosopher who even lived with the man in question and Philostratus the Athenian?" For these are the authors who lay these facts before us, and they are clearly convicted by the light of truth, since they thus contradict themselves, of being vapouring braggarts and nothing else, convicted by their inconsistencies of being downright liars, men devoid of education and charlatans.