Of many men who have led a deeply spiritual life and sacrificed everything for the sake of the pursuit of a spiritual ideal, it is recorded that they were wild and profligate in youth. Such was the case with St Francis of Assisi, and Apollonius’s contemporary, the zealous Saul of Tarsus, led a changed life from the moment of his conversion. Indeed it has been said, referring doubtless to such instances, that “the greater the sinner the greater the saint.” This saying, however, is by no means applicable to Apollonius. From his earliest days his choice was made clear. He came of a family which was at once wealthy and well-connected, and in addition to this he was endowed by nature with exceptional abilities and a remarkable memory, while the beauty of his person excited universal admiration. Every temptation, therefore, which fortune could offer, might, one would have thought, have led him to choose the path of worldly success. From the age of fourteen, however, he abandoned all idea of the pursuit of pleasure and devoted himself to discovering among the numerous Greek philosophies of the day some school of thought which would enable him to live up to his own ideals. Finally he adopted the system of Pythagoras, but was not content to receive it in the sense of accepting its doctrines and not living the life, after the manner of his teacher, Euxenus. Accordingly when Euxenus asked him how he would begin his new mode of life, he replied, “As doctors purge their patients.” “Hence” (says G. R. S. Mead, in his Biography), “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 ether in the soul, and destroyed the composure of the mind.” In addition to this, he went barefoot, let his hair grow long, and wore nothing but linen. On the death of his father, when he was twenty years of age, he inherited a considerable fortune, which was left to him to share with his elder brother, a dissolute young man of three-and-twenty. When his brother had run through his share of the patrimony, he endeavoured (successfully as it appears) to rescue him from his vicious life, and made over to him half his own share of the inheritance. Having distributed the major part of the remainder among his relatives, he merely retained for himself a bare pittance.