APOLLONIO di TIANA. — Everything concerning this figure is the product of the reaction that Eastern-Hellenistic religious syncretism opposed to the advent and spread of Christianity. This opposition took concrete form in the strange figure of A., in the sense that, through this fantastic transformation of a historical A., an attempt was made to create a figure who could rival the historical figure of Christ, either by equality or, worse still, by surpassing him.
What we know about A. derives from a purported biography that Filostrato wrote about him at the invitation of Giulia Domna, the second wife of Settimio Severo: in this biography Filostrato refers especially to the testimony of a Damide, allegedly a follower of A., as well as to letters supposedly written by him. Filostrato’s work makes the purpose of that opposition to Christ evident, especially because it attributes to A. certain miracles that the Gospel affirms of Christ, such as the healing of a blind man and of a paralytic, the resurrection of a dead man, and similar deeds.
According to Filostrato, A. was born a few years before the Christian era at Tiana, a city of Cappadocia situated at the foot of the Taurus; he is said to have suffered persecutions under Nero and later under Domitian, whose death he allegedly prophesied. He is said to have travelled extensively from East to West, in Greece and in Italy; to have been connected with Vespasiano and Tito; and to have appeared to Aureliano, as related in the life of that emperor written by Vopisco in an openly anti-Christian spirit. A. received cult, altars, and temples through the efforts of Caracalla and Aureliano; Alessandro Severo placed A. in his Lararium, the place reserved for domestic worship, alongside Abramo, Orfeo, Alessandro Magno, and Cristo.
The legend of A. di Tiana, fashioned from disparate elements but with precise aims, thus became established over time, especially because of its anti-Christian significance, although it did not lack some favorable interpretations among Christian writers. We know, for example, that the work of Filostrato was brought forward by Ierocle, proconsul of Bithynia in the time of Diocleziano—that is, in the last decades of the third century—to demonstrate that miracles are by no means an element exclusive to Christianity.
It is possible that the novel woven around A. was not Filostrato’s exclusive invention. The «Suda» lexicon, written around the year 1000, speaks of an A. who lived historically as the author of philosophical-religious works. From Porfirio and Giamblico, the Neoplatonists, we have information about a life of Pitagora written by an A.; this author may therefore have been the historical personality around whom Filostrato’s biography was subsequently woven. Indeed, Pythagorean elements can be traced in it among the many fantastic elements, as can also be inferred from the fact that the biography explicitly states that A., only after embracing Pythagoreanism, devoted himself to silence and meditation in order to purify himself.
Paolo Rotta
His semi-legendary figure, which ultimately belongs more to the fictional literature of the period and above all seeks to exalt Neopythagoreanism, was willingly set by the pagan reaction of the third and fourth centuries in opposition to that of Christ; but it was so greatly inferior and so overloaded with magical and paganizing elements that, after the victory of Christianity, his «Vita» fell completely into the oblivion from which the Renaissance rescued it, together with so many other works of antiquity. Moreover, even in antiquity A.’s fame derived chiefly from Eusebio’s polemic against Ierocle, who is reproached for having set A. in opposition to Christ: a polemic that drew the attention of such Christian writers as Lattanzio, Girolamo, Agostino, and Cirillo, whereas A. receives no particular prominence from his contemporary Neoplatonists.
Today the name of A. has once again gained a certain standing among theosophists and students of the occult sciences, always in an anti-Christian spirit, as can be seen in the work of Mead.