Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt:...born in Tyana, a town in Cappadocia. Previous to his birth, says Philostratus, the god Proteus appeared to his mother and told her that the child soon to see the light was the God himself. This happened in a meadow, where, after gathering flowers, she had fallen asleep, while swans gathered round her and intoned their song. When the child was grown up he became a strict observer of the Pythagorean rule of life, abstaining from fleshmeat and wine, and wearing linen garments. His abode was a temple sacred to Aesculapius, god of healing. Unworthy offerers of gifts to the god he drove out, and healed such of the sick as repented of their transgressions. He rejected the Grecian mythology as fabulous, preferring far to it the fables of Esop, and his only prayer was addressed to the sun. He refused to take possession of an estate inherited from his father, and imposed on himself a silence of several years' duration. During his extensive travels he always lodged in temples, corrected abuses in the conduct of the divine service, couched his teachings in brief sentences, gathered around him disciples, of whom one was false and a traitor; sided with the persecuted and righted the wrongs of the oppressed. Everywhere he understood the languages of the natives without learning them, and even read the thoughts of men; but the language of the beasts he learned from the Arabs of Mesopotamia. On entering that country the publican asked him whether he had with him anything subject to toll. The answer of Apollonius was that he carried about righteousness, temperance, a manly soul and a patient spirit--and many another virtue named he. The sullen taxman, who had no mind for anything that lay outside his own duties, took the names of virtues for names of...