Page:Apollonius of Tyana - the pagan Christ of the third century.pdf/71

66 combats of gladiators, or to believe in such absurd fables as were imagined by the poets. Who knows but that there may be a bright light thrown upon the question of the divinity of Christ in that answer of Apollouius to Domitian, when he is questioning him after the manner of Caiaphas, "Why art thou called God?" To which the philosopher replies, "Because the name of God is the title due to every man who is believed to be virtuous."

We must bear in mind now that at the time when Philostratus wrote, Christianity and the Church had outlived the period during which the brutal outrages of the populace in certain large cities only contrasted with the contemptuous indifference with which they were treated elsewhere. The scornful disdain of a Tacitus or a Pliny was a thing of the past. Celsus had aimed the sharp-pointed weapons of his acute reasoning at the Gospel, Lucian had attacked it with his biting sarcasms. Numbers of the followers of Plato had been baptised. The Christians of Rome and their bishop had been in high favour at the court of Commodus. Many