APOLLONIUS, a Pythagorean philosopher, born at
Tyana in Cappadocia, about the beginning of the first
century. At 16 years of age he became a strict ob-
server of Pythagoras's rules, renouncing wine, women,
and all sorts of flesh; not wearing shoes, letting his
hair grow, and wearing nothing but linen. He soon
after set up for a reformer of mankind, and chose his
habitation in a temple of Æsculapius, where he is said
to have performed many wonderful cures. Philostratus
has wrote the life of Apollonius, in which there
are numberless fabulous stories recounted of him. We
are told that he went five years without speaking; and
yet, during this time, that he stopped many seditions
in Cilicia and Pamphylia: that he travelled, and set
up for a legislator; and that he gave out he under-
stood all languages, without having ever learned them:
that he could tell the thoughts of men, and understood
the oracles which birds gave by their singing. The
Heathens were fond of opposing the pretended miracles
of this man to those of our Saviour; and by a treat-
ise which Eusebius wrote against one Hierocles, we
find that the drift of the latter, in the treatise which
Eusebius refutes, seems to have been to draw a paral-
lel betwixt Jesus Christ and Apollonius, in which he
gives the preference to this philosopher. M. du Pin
has wrote a confutation of Philostratus's life of Apol-
lonius.
Apollonius wrote some works, viz. four books of Ju-
dicial Astrology; a treatise upon the Sacrifices, showing
what was proper to be offered to each deity; and a great
number of letters; all of which are now lost.