Apollonius of Tyana
Apollonius of Tyana
Apollonius of Tyana, sometimes also called Apollonios of Tyana, was a Greek Neopythagorean philosopher from the town of Tyana in the Roman province of Cappadocia in Anatolia. Being a 1st-century orator and philosopher around the time of Jesus, he was compared with Jesus of Nazareth by Christians in the 4th century and by other writers in modern times...
NationalityGreek
ProfessionPhilosopher
creates masters money plato principle rejoice
Plato said that virtue has no master. If a person does not honor this principle and rejoice in it, but is purchasable for money, he creates many masters for himself.
cares cause festivals increase lighten since
Festivals cause diseases, since they lighten cares but increase gluttony.
anyone send sorts
The gods, as they are beneficent, if they find anyone who is healthy and whole and unscarred by vice, will send him away, surely, after crowning him, not with golden crowns, but with all sorts of blessings.
account fear hail left man shall superior
If any man has left us for fear of Nero, I shall not account him a coward; but I shall hail as a philosopher any man who has been superior to this fear, and I shall teach him all I know.
asked business people
I asked questions when I was a stripling, and it is not my business to ask questions now, but to teach people what I have discovered.
action anger fault himself impulse laziness love man odious render understand vices wise yields
A man must fortify himself and understand that a wise man who yields to laziness or anger or passion or love of drink, or who commits any other action prompted by impulse and inopportune, will probably find his fault condoned; but if he stoops to greed, he will not be pardoned, but render himself odious as a combination of all vices at once.
bad earth far good hear men nor pleasure send thou
O thou Sun, send me as far over the earth as is my pleasure and thine, and may I make the acquaintance of good men, but never hear anything of bad ones, nor they of me.
courage dying flee neither nor seek soldiers tactics time
As soldiers need not only courage but tactics also, so does a philosopher need not only courage and philosophy but discernment also, to tell what his right time of dying is - so that he neither seek it nor flee it.
deliver persuaded truth whose
It is the duty of the law-giver to deliver to the many the instructions of whose truth he has persuaded himself.
complete crossed neither nor
When I review Xerxes' achievements, I praise him, not for having yoked the Hellespont, but for having crossed it. But I can see that Nero will neither sail through the Isthmus nor complete his digging.
deserve learning nature thanks virtue
Virtue comes by nature, learning, and practice, and thanks to virtue, all of the aforesaid may deserve approval.
birth appearance seeming
There is no death of anyone, save in appearance, just as there is no birth of any, save only in seeming.
art healing long
Pythagoras said that the most divine art was that of healing. And if the healing art is most divine, it must occupy itself with the soul as well as with the body; for no creature can be sound so long as the higher part in it is sickly.
prayer men giving
The only prayer which a well-meaning man can pray is, O ye gods, give me whatever is fitting unto me!