Page:Apollonius of Tyana - the pagan Christ of the third century.pdf/59

54

It is a noticeable circumstance that before the time of Philostratus, Apollonius had been but little heard of, whereas, both during his lifetime and after it, the sage of Tyana could count many and warm admirers. A temple was erected to his honour by Caracalla; Alexander Severus placed him by the side of Christ, and Abraham, and Orpheus, amongst his household gods. At Ephesus he was worshipped under the title of Hercules, the warder off of evil. The Emperor Aurelian spares the city of Tyana, which he had sworn to destroy, out of regard for Apollonius, who appears to him the day before the one on which he had determined to massacre the inhabitants. The historians Dion Cassius and Vopiscus, the former a contemporary of Philostratus, and the latter one of the writers of the Augustan history, hold him in the same veneration. His reputation as a holy man is so well established that Sidonius Apollinaris and Cassiodorus, both Christians, speak loudly and eloquently in his praise.