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Rh There, again, he witnessed innumerable wonders; amongst others, the phenomenon of the tides, which he accounts for (in a very learned dissertation) by the action of submarine winds, which blow from caverns situated on each side of the ocean, and which form, as it were, its breathing apparatus. It is easy, in this, to trace the foundation on which the natural philosophy of the ancients rested, according to which it was held that the world was endued with life, and was, in point of fact, an animated creature. In the course of that voyage his heart rejoiced at the news that Vindex had raised the standard of revolt in Gaul. Further than this, his biographer would have us believe that Apollonius himself had prepared the movement, in concert with the Governor of Bactica. In Sicily he hears of the flight and death of Nero, and foretells the short reign of his three immediate successors. He reappears in Greece, visits Chios and Rhodes, still in the character of a reformer, and lands at Alexandria, having long wished to study Egyptian science, which was so much spoken of at that time, in the very land of