XXVII

SUCH are the contents of the fourth book, and in  the fifth book of his history, after a few remarks about his gift of prescience, our author is so lost in admiration as to add the following remark, which I repeat textually. " That then he was enabled to make such forecasts by some divine impulse, and that it is no sound inference to suppose, as some people do, that Apollonius was a wizard, is clear from what I have said. But let us consider the following facts : wizards, whom for my part I reckon to be the most unfortunate of mankind, claim to alter the course of destiny, either by tormenting the ghosts whom they encounter, or by means of barbaric sacrifices, or by means of certain incantations or anointings. But Apollonius himself submitted to the decrees of the Fates, and foretold that they must needs come to pass ; and his foreknowledge was not due to wizardry, but derived from what the gods revealed to him. And when among the Indians he beheld their tripods, and their dumb waiters and other automata which I described as entering the room of their own accord, he neither asked how they were contrived, nor wished to learn. He only praised them, but did not aspire to imitate them." Such a passage as the above clearly exhibits in the light of wizards the famous philosophers of India. For notice that when he is arguing about wizards, he  mentions them too and says that their marvels were cleverly contrived indeed, but that his hero held himself carefully aloof from such their contrivances, on the ground that they were not moral. If therefore we find Apollonius calling these Indians gods, and enrolling himself as their disciple, we have no alternative but to bring him also under the imputation under which his teachers lay. And accordingly he is introduced as saying among the so-called Naked sages of the Egyptians, the following, -- I quote his very words: " It is then not unreasonable on my part, I think, to have yielded myself to a philosophy so highly elaborated, to a philosophy which, if I may use a metaphor from the stage, the Indians mount, as it deserved to be mounted, upon a lofty and divine mechanism before they wheel it out upon the stage. And that I was right to admire them, and that I am right in considering them wise and blessed, it is now time to learn." And after a little he says : " For they are not only gods, but are adorned with all the gifts of the Pythian prophetess." And he is introduced to Domitian with these words on his lips : " What war have you with Iarchas or with Phraotes, both of them Indians, whom I consider to be the only men that are really gods and that deserve this ... appellation? " And there are other passages also in which this history of Philostratus recognises the persons above mentioned as gods and teachers of the sage, and admits him to have accepted rings from them, but now he forgets all about it, and does not see that in maligning the teachers, he maligns the disciple.