Apollonius was born[75] at Tyana, a city in the south of Cappadocia, somewhen in the early years of the Christian era. His parents were of ancient family and considerable fortune (i. 4). At an early age he gave signs of a very powerful memory and studious disposition, and was remarkable for his beauty. At the age of fourteen he was sent to Tarsus, a famous centre of learning of the time, to complete his studies. But mere rhetoric and style and the life of the “schools” were little suited to his serious disposition, and he speedily left for Ægæ, a town on the sea-coast east of Tarsus. Here he found surroundings more suitable to his needs, and plunged with ardour into the study of philosophy. He became intimate with the priests of the temple of Æsculapius, where cures were still wrought, and enjoyed the society and instruction of pupils and teachers of the Platonic, Stoic, Peripatetic, and Epicurean schools of philosophy; but though he studied all these systems of thought with attention, it was the lessons of the Pythagorean school upon which he seized with an extraordinary depth of comprehension,[76] and that, too, although his teacher, Euxenus, was but a parrot of the doctrines and not a practiser of the discipline. But such parrotting was not enough for the eager spirit of Apollonius; his extraordinary “memory,” which infused life into the dull utterances of his tutor, urged him on, and at the age of sixteen “he soared into the Pythagorean life, winged by some greater one.”[77] Nevertheless he retained his affection for the man who had told him of the way, and rewarded him handsomely (i. 7). When Euxenus asked him how he would begin his new mode of life he replied: “As doctors purge their patients.” Hence he refused to touch anything that had animal life in it, on the ground that it densified the mind and rendered it impure. He considered that the only pure form of food was what the earth produced, fruits and vegetables. He also abstained from wine, for though it was made from fruit, “it rendered turbid the æther[78] in the soul” and “destroyed the composure of the mind.” Moreover, he went barefoot, let his hair grow long, and wore nothing but linen. He now lived in the temple, to the admiration of the priests and with the express approval of Æsculapius,[79] and he rapidly became so famous for his asceticism and pious life, that a saying[80] of the Cilicians about him became a proverb (i. 8).