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An Overlooked Story About Apollonius of Tyana in Anastasius Sinaita

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2017

Robert J. Penella
Robert J. Penella*
Affiliation:
Fordham University
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Extract

In his Quaestiones et responsiones (PG 89.524d–525b) Anastasius Sinaita tells a story about three magi, Apollonius of Tyana, Julianus, and Apuleius, a story which he says is found ἐν τοῖς τῶν ἐϱχαιοτέϱων ἐνδϱῶν διηγήμασι. When Rome was suffering from a plague, the emperor Domitian summoned the three magi to the city and asked for their help. Apuleius told the emperor that he could put an end to the plague in a third of the city within fifteen days. Apollonius claimed that he could perform the same feat in another third of the city within only ten days. But Julianus, objecting that the plague would destroy the city before fifteen days could pass, put an end to it immediately in the remaining third of the city. Domitian then asked Julianus to free the other two-thirds of Rome from the plague, and he quickly did so.

Type
Miscellany
Information
Traditio , Volume 34 , 1978 , pp. 414 - 415
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 New York, Fordham University Press 

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References

1 ‘Zum Bild des Apollonios von Tyana bei Heiden und Christen,’ Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 17 (1974) 61–62.Google Scholar

2 Speyer, W., ‘Die literarische Fälschung im heidnischen und christlichen Altertum,’ Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft 1.2 (1971) 71–73.Google Scholar

3 Cf. Meyer, E., Hermes 52 (1917) 404, though I do not accept the chronology that he proposes for Apollonius; Stein, A., Prosopographia Imperii Romani saeculi I, II, III 2 D 93; Momigliano, A., Journal of Roman Studies 41 (1951) 152; Bowersock, G. W. in Jones, C. P. (trans.), Philostratus, Life of Apollonius (Harmondsworth 1970) 19. Grosso, F., Acme 7 (1954) 399ff., 523–25, has far more trust in the historical value of the Vita Apollonii than most scholars do.Google Scholar

4 Vita Apoll. 5.27 : Ἀπολλώνιος δὲ παϱαπλησίως μὲν Εὐφϱάτη καὶ Δίωνι πεϱὶ τούτων ἔχαιϱε, μελέτην αὐτὰ οὐκ ἐποιεῖτο ἐς πάντας, ῥητοϱικωτέϱαν ἡγούμενος τὴν τοιάνδε ἰδέαν τοῦ λόγου. When Dio speaks to Vespasian at Vita Apoll. 5.34, he reveals his attachment to the kind of rhetorical exercise rejected by Apollonius : ἡμῖν ἀφοϱμὰς παϱαδώσεις λόγων, αῖς οὕτε Ἁϱμόδιοε οὕτε Ἀϱιστγείτων παϱαβεβλήσεταί τις Google Scholar