bout thirty years brings us to the date of the Diocletian
persecution, A.D. 303; during the progress of which another noted attack
was made. It was by Hierocles, then president of Bithynia, and afterwards
praefect of Alexandria, himself one of the instigators of the persecution
and an agent in effecting it.(214) His line of argument was more specific
than those previously named, being directed against the evidence which was
derived by Christians for the truth of their religion from the character
and miraculous works of Christ; and his aim accordingly was to develope
the character of Apollonius of Tyana,(215) as a rival to our Saviour in
piety and miraculous power.

Apollonius was a Pythagorean philosopher, born in Cappadocia about four
years before the Christian era. After being early educated in the circle
of philosophy, and in the practice of the ascetic discipline of his
predecessor Pythagoras, he imitated that philosopher in spending the next
portion of his life in travel. Attracted by his mysticism to the farthest
East as the source of knowledge, he set out for Persia and India; and in
Nineveh on his route met Damis, the future chronicler of his actions.
Returning from the East instructed in Brahminic lore, he travelled over
the Roman world. The remainder of his days was spent in Asia Minor.
Statues and temples were erected to his honour. He obtained vast
influence, and died with the reputation of sanctity late in the century.
Such is the outline of his life, if we omit the numerous legends and
prodigies which attach themselves to his name. He was partly a
philosopher, partly a magician; half mystic, half impostor.(216) At the
distance of a century and a quarter from his death, in the reign of
Septimius Severus, at the request of the wife of that emperor, the second
of the three Philostrati dressed up Damis's narrative of his life, in a
work still remaining, and paved a way for the general reception of the
story among the cultivated classes of Rome and Greece.(217) It has been
thought that Philostratus had a polemical aim against the Christian
faith,(218) as the memoir of Apollonius is in so many points a parody on
the life of Christ. The annunciation of his birth to his mother, the
chorus of swans which sang for joy on occasion of it, the casting out
devils, the raising the dead, the healing the sick, the sudden
disappearance and reappearance of Apollonius, the sacred voice which
called him at his death, and his cl