After spending two years in the latter country in his usual philosophical disputations, he passed into Ionia. According to his biographer's chronology, he was now approaching the completion of his hundredth year. We may easily understand, therefore, that when invited to Rome by Nerva, who had just succeeded to the Empire, he declined the proposed honour with an intimation that their meeting must be deferred to another state of being.[315] His death took place shortly after; and Ephesus, Rhodes, and Crete are variously mentioned as the spot at which it occurred.[316] A temple was dedicated to him at Tyana,[317] which was in consequence accounted one of the sacred cities, and permitted the privilege of electing its own Magistrates.[318] He is said to have written[319] a treatise upon Judicial Astrology, a work on Sacrifices, another on Oracles, a Life of Pythagoras, and an account of the answers which he received from Trophonius, besides the memoranda noticed in the opening of our memoir. A collection of Letters ascribed to him is still extant.[320] 3. It may be regretted that so elaborate a history, as that which we have abridged, should not contain more authentic and valuable matter. Both the secular transactions of the times and the history of Christianity might have been illustrated by the life of one, who, while he was an instrument of the partisans of Vindex, Vespasian, and Nerva, was a contemporary and in some respects a rival of the Apostles; and who, probably, was with St. Paul at Ephesus and Rome.[321] As far as his personal character is concerned, there is nothing to be lamented in these omissions. There is nothing very winning, or very commanding, either in his biographer's picture of him, or in his own letters. His virtues, as we have already seen, were temperance and a disregard of wealth; and that he really had these, and such as these, may be safely concluded from the fact of the popularity which he enjoyed. The great object of his ambition seems to have been to emulate the fame of his master; and his efforts had their reward in the general admiration he attracted, the honours paid him by the Oracles, and the attentions shown him by men in power.