APOLLONIUS FROM TYANE

Apollonius was born into a respected and wealthy Greek family. His main biographer, Philostratus the Elder (c. 170 - c. 247), places him around 3 BC - c. 97. However, the Roman historian Cassius Dio (c. 155 - c. 235) writes that Apollonius was in his 40s or 50s in the 90s.

He spent the first years of his life in Tyana. At the age of 14 he went to Tarsus in Cilicia and after two years to Aigai in Cilicia. At the age of about 20 he began the five-year silence of the Pythagoreans and at the age of 25 or 26 he arrived in Antioch. He was a fervent follower of Pythagorean philosophy, which he not only studied with Euxenos of Heraclea as his teacher, but also never stopped following its principles throughout his long life. He is considered an enigmatic figure, as it is reported by his biographer, Philostratus, that he performed miracles and prophecies.

He was ascetic, with a strong will, he denied sexuality, meat-eating and wine-drinking, while he prevented his disciples from cultic acts with bloody sacrifices and indicated silence and mental prayer. His followers from the most popular strata believed that he also had supernatural properties that gave him the ability to understand the language of animals, speak languages ​​that he had not learned, to divine many and important things, expel demons, heal the sick, resurrect the dead and break his bonds, as in the case of his imprisonment by the emperor Domitian in Rome. They also believed that after his death he had ascended to heaven and even that he appeared, after his death, in various places.

Around 62 or 63 he decided to go to Rome, even though Nero disliked philosophers. He died in Pozzuoli in 98.

He belonged to the Neopythagorean philosophers, who appeared in the 1st century BC and proposed in his sermons the life of Pythagoras as an ideal way of life.

As a rhetorician and philosopher who lived around the time of Jesus Christ, he was compared to Jesus by Christians in the 4th century and by other writers in modern times.