Page:Apollonius of Tyana - the pagan Christ of the third century.pdf/62

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APOLLONIUS OF TYANA.
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of them doubtless surprised to see the light of day once more. Even then, however, there was something suspicious about this resuscitated Apollonius, so much so that the learned Aldus Manutius hesitated for a time before he granted the publicity of the press to the work of Philostratus. At last he resolved to do so, but took care to publish at the same time the reply of Eusebius to Hierocles, and thus to give, as he expressed it himself, the bane with the antidote. Subsequently, Pico della Mirandola in the fifteenth century, and Jean Bodin and Baronius in the sixteenth, denounced Apollonius as a vile and detestable magician. Without entirely reversing so sweeping a verdict, the seventeenth century seemed to think that the biography of the philosopher of Tyana was something more than a record of sorcery, and accordingly Daniel Huet, the famous Bishop of Avranches, expressed an opinion on the subject which ever since that time has had great weight with all thoughtful minds. "Philostratus," he says, "seems to have made it his chief aim to depreciate both the Christian faith and Christian