IX

WELL, we will not grudge him his natural and self-taught gift of understanding all languages. But if he possessed it, why was he taken to a school-master, and if he had never learnt any language whatever, why does his historian malign him and declare that, not by nature, but by dint of close study and application, he acquired the Attic dialect ? For he tells us outright " that as he advanced in youth he displayed a knowledge of letters and great power of memory, and force of application, and that he spoke the Attic dialect." We also learn that "when he reached his fourteenth year his father took him to Tarsus, to Euthydemus of Phoenicia, who was a good rhetor, and gave him his education, while. Apollonius clung to his teacher." We further learn that " he had as fellow-students members of the school of Plato and of Chrysippus and members of the Peripatetic set. That he also diligently listened to the doctrines of Epicurus, because he did not despise even them, though he grasped the teachings of Pythagoras with a certain indescribable wisdom." So varied was the education of one who had never learnt any language, and who by his divine power anticipated " the thoughts of men even when they are silent."