Page:Apollonius of Tyana - the pagan Christ of the third century.pdf/85

80 a sufficient number of well-authenticated facts to prove that the worship of this paragon of inspired wisdom had lasted longer than is usually thought by those who look upon his biography as an amusing romance, we cannot admit that the scheme of reform which was incarnated in himself produced any lasting impression upon the intellects or the institutions of the period.

One great stumbling-block was thrown across the path of this work of reformation by the circumstance that the great Pagan philosophers of Alexandria, Porphyry and Iamblichus, who were equally anxious to purify the Paganism of mythology, refused to recognise the reformer introduced to them by Philostratus, although his authority would have been so eminently adapted to conform their theurgic and ecstatic doctrines. The sentiments of the biographer on the subject of the wisdom of Egypt may have led to this determination of the Alexandrian philosophers. Who knows but that Philostratus acted the part of a wise