APOLLONIUS of Tyana. — What is related about this figure is the result of the reaction that the Oriental-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, as a fantastic transformation of a historical A., it was intended to create a figure that could rival or, worse still, surpass the historical figure of Christ.
What we know about A. comes from a purported biography written by Philostratus at the invitation of Julia Domna, the second wife of Septimius Severus. In this biography, Philostratus relies especially on the testimony of a certain Damis, alleged follower of A., as well as on letters likewise alleged to be his. From Philostratus’ work, the purpose of that opposition to Christ of which we have spoken is clearly evident, especially because it includes miracles attributed to A. that the Gospel attributes to Christ, such as the healing of a blind man, a paralytic, the resurrection of a dead man, and similar deeds.
According to Philostratus, A. was born a few years before the common era in Tyana, a city of Cappadocia at the foot of Mount Taurus. He is said to have suffered persecution under Nero and later under Domitian, of whose death he is said to have prophesied. He is said to have traveled extensively from the East to the West, in Greece and Italy; to have been in contact with Vespasian and Titus; and to have appeared to Aurelian, as is read in the life of that emperor written by Vopiscus in an openly anti-Christian sense. A. received worship, altars, and temples through the efforts of Caracalla and Aurelian; Alexander Severus placed A. in his lararium, the place reserved for domestic worship, alongside Abraham, Orpheus, Alexander the Great, and Christ.
The legend of A. of Tyana, fashioned from disparate elements but with precise intent, thus took hold over time, especially because of its anti-Christian significance, though it did not lack some favorable interpretations among Christian writers. We know, for example, that Philostratus’ work was used by Hierocles, proconsul of Bithynia in the time of Diocletian—that is, in the last decades of the 3rd century—to argue that miracles are by no means an exclusive element of Christianity.
It is possible that the romance woven around A. was not entirely the invention of Philostratus. The “Suda” lexicon, written around the year 1000, speaks of an A. who lived historically as the author of philosophical-religious works. From Porphyry and Iamblichus, Neoplatonists, we have accounts of a life of Pythagoras written by an A.; it is possible, therefore, that this author was the historical figure around whom Philostratus later wove his biography. Indeed, in this work, Pythagorean elements can be traced amid so many fantastic elements, as can also be seen from the fact that the biography explicitly states that A., only after embracing Pythagoreanism, devoted himself to silence and meditation to purify himself.
Paolo Rotta
His semi-legendary figure, which in the end belongs more to the romance literature of the time and was meant above all as an exaltation of Neopythagoreanism, was willingly set against that of Christ by the pagan reaction of the 3rd and 4th centuries. Yet it was so inferior and so overloaded with magical and paganizing elements that, after the victory of Christianity, his “Life” fell completely into oblivion, from which the Renaissance rescued it along with so many other works of antiquity. Moreover, even in antiquity A.’s fame derived especially from Eusebius’ controversy with Hierocles, who is reproached for having set A. against Christ; this controversy drew the attention of Christian writers such as Lactantius, Jerome, Augustine, and Cyril, while receiving no particular notice from contemporary Neoplatonists.
Today the name of A. has regained a certain honor among theosophists and students of occult sciences, always with an anti-Christian spirit, as can be seen in the work of Mead.