"He was conversing," says Philostratus, "among the groves attached to the porticoes, about noon, that is, just at the time when the event was occurring in the imperial palace; and first he dropped his voice, as if in terror; then, with a faltering unusual to him, he described [an action], as if he beheld something external, as his words proceeded. Then he was silent, stopping abruptly; and looking with agitation on the ground, and advancing up three or four of the steps, 'Strike the tyrant, strike!' he cried out, not as drawing a mere image of the truth from some mirror, but as seeing the thing itself, and seeming to realize what was doing; and, to the consternation of all Ephesus, for it was thronging around while he was conversing, after an interval of suspense, such as happens when spectators are following some undecided action up to its issue, he said, 'Courage, my men, for the tyrant is slaughtered this day--nay, now, now.'"[337] Only an eye-witness is warranted to write thus pictorially; Philostratus was born 86 years after Apollonius's death. 5. 2. But it is almost superfluous to speak either of the general character of his extraordinary acts, or of the tone and manner in which they are narrated, when, in truth, neither Apollonius nor his biographer had any notion or any intention of maintaining that, in our sense of the word "miracle," these acts were miracles at all, or were to be referred to the immediate agency of the Supreme Being. Apollonius neither claimed for himself, nor did Philostratus claim for him, any direct mission from on high; nor did he in consequence submit the exercise of his preternatural powers to such severe tests as may fairly be applied to the miracles of Christianity.