D. W. Thompson, Glossary of * II, 14.

Greek Birds, 106-107. He adds: "I, 22. Pliny, NH, VIII, 17,
"Modern naturalists accept the repeats a slightly different popular
story of the singing swans, assert- notion that the lioness tears her
ing that though the common swan womb with her claws and so can
cannot sing, yet the Whooper or bear but once ; against this view
whistling swan does so. It is cer- he cites Aristotle's statement that
tain that the Whooper sings, for the lioness bears five times, as
many ornithologists state the fact, described above, but I do not think that it can sing ' III, 2.
very well ; at the very best, dant
of animals.
256 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
alone was permitted to hunt the animal and to drink from the horn. When Damis asked Apollonius if he credited this story, the sage ironically replied that he would believe it if he found the king of the country to be immortal. Either, however, the scepticism of Apollonius, as was the case with so many other ancients and medieval men, was sporadic and inconsistent, or it came to be overlaid with the credulity of Damis and Philostratus, as the following ex- ample suggests. larchas told Damis and Apollonius flatly that the races described by Scylax of men with long heads or huge feet with which they were said to shade themselves did not exist in India or anywhere else; yet in a later book Philostratus states that the shadow- footed people are a tribe in Ethiopia.^ Anecdotes At any rate the marvels of India are more frequently
credited than criticized in the Life by Philostratus, and the same holds true of the extraordinary conduct and well-nigh human intelligence attributed to animals. Especially delight- ful reading are six chapters on the remarkable sagacity of elephants and their love for mankind.^ On this point, as by Pliny, use is made of the work of Juba. We read again of sick lions eating apes, of the lioness's love affair with the panther, of the fondness of leopards for the fragrant gum of a certain tree and of goats for the cinnamon tree ; of apes who are made to collect pepper for men by appealing to their instinct towards mimicry ; ^ and of the tiger, whose loins alone are eaten by the Indians. "For they decline to eat the other parts of this animal, because they say that as soon as it is born it lifts up its front paws to the rising sun." * In the river Hyphasis is a creature like a white worm which yields when melted down a fat or oil that once set afire can- not be extinguished and which the king uses to burn walls
'III, 47; VI, 25. Scylax was a sius, Periplus Scylacis Caryan-
Persian admiral under Darius densis, 1639), but some date it as
who traveled to India and wrote early as the fourth century B.C.
an account of his voyages. The ^11, 11-16.
work extant under his name is of * II, 2; III, 4.
doubtful authorship (Isaac Vos- * II, 28.
viii APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 257
and capture cities.^ In India are griffins who quarry gold with their powerful beaks, and the luminous phoenix with its nest of spices and swan-like funeral song.^
Especially remarkable are the snakes or dragons with Dragons which all India is filled and which often are of enormous ° " *^ size, thirty or even seventy cubits long.^ Those found in the marshes are sluggish and have no crests ; but those on the hills and ridges move faster than the swiftest rivers and have both beards and crests.* Those in the plain engage in combats with elephants which terminate fatally for both parties as we have already learned from Pliny.^ The moun- tain dragons have bushy beards, fiery crests, golden scales, and a ferocious glance.® They burrow into the earth, mak- ing a noise like clashing brass, or go hissing down to the shore and swim far out to sea. Terrifying as they are, the Indians charm them by showing them golden characters em- broidered on a cloak of scarlet and by incantations of a se- cret wisdom. They eat the dragon's heart and liver in order to be able to understand the language and thoughts of ani- mals.''^
The dragons, however, are prized more for the precious Occult
stones in their heads, which the Indians quickly cut off as virtues of
. ^ , ■' gems,
soon as they have bewitched them. The pupils of the eyes ,,,
of the hill dragons are a fiery stone possessing irresistible virtue for many occult purposes,^ while in the heads of the mountain dragons are many brilliant stones of flashing colors which exert occult virtue if set in a ring, "and they say that Gyges had such a ring." ^ But there are many mar- velous stones outside the heads of dragons. "Who does not know the habits of birds," says Apollonius to Damis in one of his disquisitions upon natural phenomena,^" "and that eagles and storks will not build their nests without placing in them, the one the stone aetites, and the other the lychnites.
"■III, I. Greek fire?
"Ill, a
*III, 48-9.
'III, 9.
mi, 6; II, 17.
*in, 7.
Mil, 7.
'Ill, 8.
= NH, VIII, II.
"11, 14.
258 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
as aids in hatching and to drive snakes away?'' On parting from the Indian king Phraotes, Apollonius as usual refused to accept money presents but picked up one of the gems that were offered him with the exclamation, "O rare stone, how opportunely and providentially have I found you !" ^ Phi- lostratus supposes that he detected some occult and divine power in this particular stone. The Brahmans had gems so huge that from one of them a goblet could be carved large enough to slake the thirst of four men in midsummer, but in this case nothing is said of occult virtue.^ The Brahman larchas felt sure that he was the reincarnation of the hero Ganges, son of the river Ganges, because as a mere child he knew where to dig for the seven swords of adamant which Ganges had fixed in the earth. ^ Presumably these were magic swords and their virtue in part due to the stone ada- mant of which they were made. Less is said in the Life of the virtues of herbs than of gems, but the Indians made a nup- tial ointment or love-charm from balm distilled from trees,^ and drugs and poisons are mentioned more than once, man- dragora being described as a soporific drug rather than a deadly poison.^ Absence Considering that Apollonius was a Pythagorean, there is
of number surprisingly little said concerning perfect numbers and their mystic significance. Aside from the seven rings and seven swords already mentioned, about the only instance is the question asked by Apollonius whether eighteen, the number of the Brahman sages at the time of his visit, had any espe- cial importance.^ He remarked that eighteen was not a square, nor a number usually held in esteem and honor like ten, twelve, and sixteen. The Brahmans agreed that there was no particular significance in eighteen, and further in- formed him that they maintained no fixed number of mem- bers but had varied from only one to as many as seventy according to the available supply of worthy men,
^11, 40. 'in, I.
"111,27. » VIII, 7.
'111,21. "111,30.
VIII APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 259
If Philostratus denies that Apollonius was a magician, Mantike he does depict him as endowed with prophetic gifts, with art*of power over demons, and with "secret wisdom." He rather divination, likes to give the impression that the sage foretold things by innate prophetic gift or divine inspiration, but even navTLKT] or the art of divination is not condemned as yorjTela or witchcraft was. larchas the Brahman says that those who delight in mantike become divine thereby and contribute to the safety of mankind.^ Apollonius himself, when condemn- ing wizards as pseudo-wise, made the reservation that man- tike, if true in its predictions, was not a pseudo-science, al- though he professed ignorance whether it could be called an art or not.^ He denied that he practiced it, when he was ex- amined by Tigellinus, the favorite of Nero, who was perse- cuting philosophers on the ground that they were addicted to mantike.^ His accusers before Domitian again adduced his alleged practice of divination as evidence that he was a wizard.^
If Apollonius practiced neither wizardry nor mantike. Divining the question arises how he was able to foretell the future, of^pol- In his trial before Domitian he did not attempt to deny that lon»us. he had predicted the plague at Ephesus, but attributed his "sense of the coming disaster" to his abstemious diet, which kept his senses clear and enabled him to see as in an un- clouded mirror "all that is happening or about to occur." ^ For he was credited with knowledge of distant events the moment they occurred as well as with foreknowledge of the future. Thus at Ephesus he was aware of the assassination of Domitian at Rome ; and at Tarsus, although he arrived af- ter the incident had occurred, he was able to describe and to find the mad dog by whom a boy had been bitten.^ larchas told Apollonius that health and purity were requisite for
* III, 42. porary of Philostratus, also states
"VIII, 7. that Apollonius announced the
' IV, 44. assassination of Domitian and
*VIII, 7. even named the assassin in Ephe-
'VIII, 7. sus on the very day that the event
*_VIII, 26; VI, 43. The his- occurred at Rome. His account
torian, Dio Cassius, a contem- differs too much from that by
26o
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Dreams.
Interpreta- tion of omens.
divination; ^ and Apollonius in turn, in recounting his life story to the naked sages of Egypt, represented the Pythago- rean philosophy as appearing before him and promising, "And when you are pure, I will grant you the faculty of foreknowledge." ^
Apollonius often was warned by dreams. When he dreamt of fish who were cast gasping upon dry land and who appealed for succour to a dolphin swimming by, he knew that he ought to visit and restore the graves and assist the descendants of the Eretrians whom Darius had taken captive to the Persian kingdom over five centuries before.^ Another dream he interpreted as a command to visit Crete.* In defending his linen apparel before Domitian he declared, "It is a pure substance under which to sleep at night, for to those who live as I do dreams bring the truest of their reve- lations." ^ He was not the only dreamer of the time, how- ever, and when some of his followers were afraid to accom- pany him to Rome in Nero's reign, they made warning dreams their excuse for deserting him.^
It has been seen that Apollonius not only had prophetic dreams but was skilful in interpreting them. He was equally adept in explaining the meaning of omens. The dead lion with her eight unborn whelps he took as a sign that Damis and he would remain a year and eight months in that land.' When Damis objected that Homer interpreted the sparrow and her eight nestlings whom the snake devoured as nine years' duration of the Trojan war, Apollonius retorted that the birds had been hatched but that the whelps, being yet unborn, could not signify complete years. On another occa- sion he interpreted the birth of a three-headed child as a sign of the year of the three emperors.^
Philostratus to have been copied 'VI, ii.
from it. He concludes it with * I, 23.
the positive assertion, "This is * IV, 34.
really what took place, though 'VIII, 7.
there should be ten thousand " IV, 37.
doubters." (LXVII, 18.) 'I, 22.
'Ill, 42. "V, 13.
VIII APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 261
Such interpretation of dreams and omens suggests an Animals
lation.
art or arts of divination rather than foreknowledge by di- ^^^mc
rect divine inspiration. So does the passage in which Apol- lonius informs Domitian, when accused before him of having divined the future by sacrificing a boy, that human entrails are inferior to those of animals for purposes of divination, since the beasts are less perturbed by knowledge of their approaching death. ^ Apollonius himself would not sacrifice even animal victims, but he enlarged his powers of divina- tion during his sojourn among the Arab tribes by learning to understand the language of animals and to listen to the birds as these predict the future.^ The Arabs acquire this power by eating, some say the heart, others the liver, of dragons, — a fact which gave the church historian Eusebius an opportunity to charge Apollonius with having broken his taboo of animal flesh.
Although he did not sacrifice animals and divine from Divination their entrails, Apollonius appears to have employed prac- ^ tices akin to those of the art of pyromancy when he threw a handful of frankincense into the sacrificial fire with a prayer to the sun, "and watched to see how the smoke of it curled upwards, and how it grew turbid, and in how many points it shot up; and in a manner he caught the meaning of the fire, and observed how it appeared of good omen and pure." ^ Again he visited an Egyptian temple and sacrificed an image of a bull made of frankincense and told the priest that if he really understood the science of divination by fire (kfiirvpov ao(j)ias), he would see many things revealed in the circle of the rising sun.'*
It should be added that only a very ardent admirer of Other Apollonius or an equally ardent seeker after prophecies so-called would see anything prophetic in some of the apparently tions. chance remarks of the sage which have been perverted into predictions. At Ephesus he did not actually predict the plague, which had already begun to spread judging from the
'VIII, 7. "I, 31.
'I, 20. "V, 25.
■ 262 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
account of Philostratus, but rather warned the heedless pop- ulation to take measures to prevent its becoming general.^ When visiting the isthmus of Corinth he began to say that it w^ould be cut through, an idea which had doubtless oc- curred again and again to many ; but then said that it would not be cut through.^ This sane, if somewhat vacillating, state of mind received confirmation soon afterwards when Nero attempted an Isthmian canal but left it uncompleted. Another similarly ambiguous utterance was elicited from Apollonius by an eclipse of the sun accompanied by thunder : "There shall be some great event and there shall not be." ^ This was believed to receive miraculous fulfillment three days later when a thunderbolt dashed the cup out of which Nero was drinking from his hands but left him unharmed. Once Apollonius saved his life by changing from a ship which sank soon afterwards to another vessel.* An instance of more specific prophecy is the case of the consul Aelian, who testified that when he was but a tribune under Vespa- sian, Apollonius took him aside and told him his name and country and parentage, "and you foretold to me that I should hold this high office which is accounted by the multi- tude the highest of all." ^ But Aelian may have exagger- ated the accuracy of Apollonius's prediction, or the latter may have made a shrewd guess that Aelian was likely to rise to high office. Apollonius The divining faculty of Apollonius enabled him to de- and the ^^^^ ^^le presence and influence of demons, phantoms, and goblins, whose ways he understood as well as the language of the birds. At Ephesus he detected the true cause of the plague in a ragged old beggar whom he ordered the people to stone to death. ^ At this command the blinking eyes of the aged mendicant suddenly shot forth malevolent and fiery gleams and revealed his demon character. Afterwards, when the people removed the stones, they found underneath, pounded to a pulp, an enormous hound still vomiting foam
'IV, 4. "V, 18.
MV, 24. 'VII, 18.
'IV, 43. 'IV, 10.
VIII APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 263
as mad dogs do. Later, when accused of magic before Domitian, Apollonius requested that the emperor question him in private about the causes of this pestilence at Ephesus, which he said were too deep to be discussed pubHcly.^ And earher in the reign of Nero, when asked by TigelHnus how he got the better of demons and phantasms, he evaded the question by a saucy retort.^ On one. occasion, however, we are told that he got rid of a ghostly apparition by heaping abuse upon it ; ^ and a satyr, who remained invisible but cre- ated annoyance by running amuck through the camp, he dis- posed of by the expedient of filling a trough with wine and letting the spirit get drunk on it. When the wine had all dis- appeared, Apollonius led his companions to the cave of the nymphs where the satyr was now visible in a drunken sleep.* He also reformed the character of a licentious youth by ex- pelling a demon from him,^ and at Corinth exposed a lamia who, under the disguise of a dainty and wealthy lady, was fattening up a beautiful youth named Menippus with the intention of eventually devouring his blood.^ On his return by sea from India Apollonius passed a sacred island where lived a sea nymph or female demon who was as destructive to mariners as Scylla or the Sirens were of old.
But the word "demon" is not always employed by Phi- Not all lostratus in the sense of an evil spirit. The annunciation ot ^re evil the birth of Apollonius was made to his mother by Proteus in the form of an Egyptian demon."^ Damis looked upon Apollonius himself as a demon and worshiped him as such, when he heard him say that he comprehended not only all human languages but also those things concerning which men maintain silence.^ In a letter to Euphrates ^ Apollonius affirms that the all-wise Pythagoras should be classed among demons. But when Domitian, on first meeting Apollonius
*VIII, 7. "IV, 25.
•n, 4. ^' 4-
* VI, 27. * I, 19-
"IV, 20. "Epist. 50.
264
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Philo-
stratus's faith in demons.
The
ghost of Achilles.
Healing the sick and rais- ing the dead.
said that he looked like a demon, the sage replied that the emperor was confusing demons and human beings.-^
Philostratus adds his own bit of personal testimony to the existence of demons, although it cannot be said to be very convincing. After telling the satyr story he warns his readers not to be incredulous as to the existence of satyrs or to doubt that they make love. For they should not mistrust what is supported by experience and by Philostratus's own word. For he knew in Lemnos a youth of his own age whose mother was said to be visited by a satyr, and such he probably was, since he wore a fawn skin tied around his neck by the two front paws.^
Apollonius had an interview with the ghost of Achilles which strongly suggests necromancy. He sent his compan- ions on board ship and passed the night alone at the hero's tomb. Nor did he allude to what had happened until ques- tioned by the curious Damis. He then averred that his method of invoking the dead had not been that of Odysseus, but that he had prayed to Achilles much as the Indians do to their heroes. A slight earthquake then occurred and Achilles appeared. At first he was five cubits tall but grad- ually increased to some twelve cubits in height. At cock- crow he vanished in a flash of summer lightning.^
Apollonius, as well as the Brahmans, wrought some cures. One was of a boy who had been bitten by a mad dog and consequently "behaved exactly like a dog, for he barked and howled and went on all fours." * Apollonius first found and quieted the dog, and then made it lick the wound, a homeopathic treatment which cured the boy. It now only remained to cure the dog, too, and this the philoso- pher effected by praying to the river which was near by and then making the dog swim across it. "For," concludes Phi- lostratus, "a drink of water will cure a mad dog if he only can be induced to take it." The modern reader will suspect that the dog was not mad to begin with and that Apollonius
'VII, 32. "VI, 27.
MV, II, 1S-16. *VI, 43.
VIII APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 265
cleverly cured the boy's complaint by the same force that had induced it — suggestion. Apollonius once revived a maiden who was being borne to the grave by touching her and saying something to her, but Philostratus honestly ad- mits that he is not sure whether he restored her to life or detected signs of life in the body which had escaped the notice of everyone else.^
When Apollonius was brought before Tigellinus, the Other scroll on which the charges against him had been written was ^^^"^^ ^' found to have become quite blank when Tigellinus unrolled it.^ Upon that occasion and again before Domitian he in- timated that his body could not be bound or slain against his will.^ The former contention he proved to the satisfac- tion of Damis, who visited him in prison, by suddenly re- moving his leg from the fetters and then inserting it again.* Damis regarded this exhibition as a divine miracle, since Apollonius performed it without magical ceremony or in- cantations. He is also represented as escaping from his bonds at about midnight when imprisoned later in life in Crete.^ Philostratus, too, implies that he vanished miracu- lously from the courtroom of Domitian and that he some- times passed from one place to another in an incredibly short time, and is somewhat doubtful whether he ever died. But we have seen that even on the testimony of Damis and Philostratus themselves many of the marvels and predic- tions of Apollonius were not "artless" but involved a knowl- edge of contemporary natural science and medicine, or of arts of divination, or the employment, in a way not unlike the procedure of magic, of forces and materials outside him- self, namely, the occult virtues of things in nature or incan- tations, rites, and ceremonies.
So much for Apollonius and his magic, but the Life con- Golden
tains some interesting allusions to the 1^7^ or wryneck, ^"(["the
which throw light upon the use of that bird in Greek magic, »"»•«■•
but which have seldom been noted and then not correctly
* IV. 45. * VII, 38.
' IV, 44- • VIII, 30.
•VIII, 8.
266 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
interpreted.-^ The wryneck was so much employed in Greek magic, as references to it from Pindar to Theocritus show, that the word iunx was sometimes used as a synonym or figurative expression for spells or charms in general. Phi- lostratus, too, employs it in this sense, representing the Gym- nosophists as accusing the Brahmans of "appealing to the crowd with varied enchantments (or iunges)."^ But in other passages he makes it clear that the wryneck is still em- ployed as a magic bird. Describing the royal palace at Babylon ^ he states that the Magi have hung four golden wrynecks, which they themselves attune and which they call the tongues of the gods, from the ceiling of the judgment hall to remind the king of divine judgment and not to set himself above mankind. Golden wrynecks were also sus- pended in the Pythian temple at Delphi, and in this connec- tion they are said to possess some of the virtue of the Sirens,^ or, as Mr. Cook translates it, "to echo the persuasive note of siren voices." These two passages seem to point clearly to the employment of mechanical metal birds which sang and moved as if by magic. The Greek mathematician Hero in his explanation of mechanical devices employed in temples tells how to make a bird turn itself about and whistle by turning a wheel. ^ Why Now this is precisely what the wryneck does in its "won-
named derful way of writhing its head and neck" and emitting hiss- ing sounds. The bird's "unmistakable note" is "que, que,
* The passages are not listed in birds. But the iunx is found as a
Liddell and Scott, nor mentioned bird on several Greek vases of
by Professor Bury in his note on the latest period ; see British
"The tvy^ in Greek Magic," Museum Catalogue of Vases, vol.
Journal of Hellenic Studies IV, figs. 94, 98, 342, 163, 331b;
(1886), pp. 157-60. Hubert's magic wheels are also represented
article on "Magia" in Daremberg- on the vases, but are not described
Saglio cites only one passage and as iunges in the catalogue ; see
seems to regard the iunx solely vol. IV, figs. 33 la, 272>, 385, 399f
as a magic wheel. D'Arcy W. 409, 436, 450, 458, and vol. Ill,
Thompson, A Glossary of Greek E 774, F 223, F 279.
Birds, Oxford, 1895, also cites but ^ VI, 10; see also VIII, 7.
one passage from Philostratus. ^ I, 25.
A. B. Cook, Zeus, Cambridge, *VI, 11.
1914, I, 253-65, notes both main " Cited by Cook, Zeus, I, 266,
passages but tries to interpret the who, however, fails to connect it
iunges as solar wheels rather than with the iunx.
lunxi
VIII APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 267
que, repeated many times in succession, at first rapidly, but gradually slowing and in a continually falling key." ^ I would therefore suggest that as the English name for the bird is derived from its writhing its neck, so the Greek name comes from its cry, for "que" and the root 1^7, if repeated rapidly many times in succession, sound much alike. ^
The name, Apollonius, continued to be associated with ApoIIonius magic in the middle ages, when the Golden Flozvers of middle Apollonius, a work on the notory art or theurgy,^ is found ^ses. in the manuscripts. And we shall find Cecco d'Ascoli * in the early fourteenth century citing a "book of magic art" by Apollonius and also a treatise on spirits, De angelica fac- tione. In 1412 Amplonius listed in the catalogue of his manuscripts a "book of Apollonius the magician or philoso- pher which is called Elizinus." ^ Works on the causes and properties of things are also ascribed to Apollonius in medieval manuscripts,^ and a Balenus or Belenus to whom works on astrological images and seals are ascribed in the manuscripts ^ is perhaps a corruption for Apollonius.^
^ Newton's Dictionary of Birds; Elizinus.
a reference supplied me by the *BN 13951, 12th century, Liber
kindness of my colleague, Pro- Apollonii de principalibus rerum
fessor F. H. Herrick. causis. Vienna 3124, 15th century,
' Professor Bury's theory that fols. 57v-s8v, "Verba de pro-
"the bird was called Xvy^ from prietatibus rerum quomodo virtus
its call which sounded like icb unius frangitur per aliuni. Ada-
ico; and it was used in lunar mas nee ferro nee igne domatur
enchantments because it was sup- .../... cito medetur."
posed to be calling on lo, the ' Royal 12-C-XVIII, Baleni de
moon": and that "Ivyi, originally imaginibus ; Sloane 3826, fols.
meant a moon-song independently loov-ioi, Beleemus de imaginibus;
of the wryneck," which came to Sloane 3848, fols. 52-8, Liber
be employed in magic moon- Balamini sapientis de sigillis
worship on account of its cry, has planetarum, fols. 59-62, liber sapi-
already been refuted by Pro- entis Baleym de ymaginibus sep-
fessor Thompson, who pointed tern planetarum. But these forms
out that "the bird does not cry might suggest Balaam. We also
lw„ i
vation of its name and sanctity of Belenus.
from such a cry cannot hold." * M. Steinschneider, "Apollonius
'See Chapter 49 for a fuller von Thyana (oder Balinas) bei
account of it. den Arabern," in Zeitschrift der
* See Chapter 71. Deutschen M orgenl'dndischcn Ge-
'Math. 54, Liber Appollonii j^//.yc/za/f, XLV (1891), 439-46. magi vel philosophi qui dicitur