It is, then, in this atmosphere of charity and tolerance that we would ask the reader to approach the consideration of Apollonius and his doings, and not only the life and deeds of an Apollonius, but also of all those who have striven to help their fellows the world over. SECTION IV. THE APOLLONIUS OF EARLY OPINION. Apollonius of Tyana[2] was the most famous philosopher of the Græco-Roman world of the first century, and devoted the major part of his long life to the purification of the many cults of the Empire and to the instruction of the ministers and priests of its religions. With the exception of the Christ no more interesting personage appears upon the stage of Western history in these early years. Many and various and ofttimes mutually contradictory are the opinions which have been held about Apollonius, for the account of his life which has come down to us is in the guise of a romantic story rather than in the form of a plain history. And this is perhaps to some extent to be expected, for Apollonius, besides his public teaching, had a life apart, a life into which even his favourite disciple does not enter. He journeys into the most distant lands, and is lost to the world for years; he enters the shrines of the most sacred temples and the inner circles of the most exclusive communities, and what he says or does therein remains a mystery, or serves only as an opportunity for the weaving of some fantastic story by those who did not understand. The following study will be simply an attempt to put before the reader a brief sketch of the problem which the records and traditions of the life of the famous Tyanean present; but before we deal with the Life of Apollonius, written by Flavius Philostratus at the beginning of the third century, we must give the reader a brief account of the references to Apollonius among the classical writers and the Church Fathers, and a short sketch of the literature of the subject in more recent times, and of the varying fortunes of the war of opinion concerning his life in the last four centuries. First, then, with regard to the references in classical and patristic authors. Lucian, the witty writer of the first half of the second century, makes the subject of one of his satires the pupil of a disciple of Apollonius, of one of those who were acquainted with “all the tragedy”[3] of his life. And Appuleius, a contemporary of Lucian, classes Apollonius with Moses and Zoroaster, and other famous Magi of antiquity.[4] About the same period, in a work entitled Quæstiones et Responsiones ad Orthodoxos, formerly attributed to Justin Martyr, who flourished in the second quarter of the second century, we find the following interesting statement: