ABSTRACT
In addition to presenting an ideal of interpretation as an internal process of mimēsis, both Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana and Heroicus imagine possibilities of transcending the normal conditions of interpretation. The Heroicus is concerned in large part with the prospect of bypassing the representations of heroes through a direct communion with the still active heroic presence, and both texts imagine a clearer state of the soul, purified from the supposed contamination by the body. While Apollonius is able to achieve such purity through his asceticism, the Heroicus calls upon the entirely disembodied Protesilaus, whose perspective is more correct by the very fact of disembodiment.
