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22 Plato, he left for India, intending there, amongst the Brahmins, to drink deeply of the pre-eminently pure and divine science. Passing through Babylon, he visited the Magians. It was during this voyage that he was joined by a disciple from Nineveh, named Damis, and that he was enabled, besides the knowledge he possessed of all human languages (which, by the way, he had never been obliged to learn), to understand the language used by animals amongst themselves. Delighted to entertain such a guest, the King of Babylon kept him under his roof and listened to his teaching with the most profound attention for a period of eight months.

At last Apollonius proceeded on his travels to India, and crossed "the Caucasus," says Philostratus with all gravity, whose geographical ignorance, even as compared with that of the ancients, is marvellous. It is quite true that he is only repeating, with exemplary faithfulness, the statement of the historian Damis, whose imagination is of the liveliest. It is recorded of Damis, by himself, that as he