a Pythagorean philosopher, born at Tyana in Cappadocia, about the beginning of the first century. At 16 years of age he became a strict observer 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 understood all languages, without having ever learned them: that he could tell the thoughts of men, and understood the oracles which birds gave by their fingering. The Heathens were fond of opposing the pretended miracles of this man to those of our Saviour; and by a treatise 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 parallel between 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 Apollonius.

Apollonius wrote some works, viz. four books of judicial 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.