ABSTRACT
We have left the Lives of the Sophists with Philostratus' treatment of the epitaph of Herodes. It is instructive to compare his remarks on the burial of his other hero, and the subject of his other major biography, Apollonius of Tyana. In the final chapter we are told that Philostratus never saw any tomb of this sage in all his travels over most of the earth, though Apollonius' shrine at Tyana had been deemed worthy of a royal guard. But these remarks are preceded by accounts of Apollonius' mysterious disappearance and even apotheosis, and of a sceptical disciple's encounter with the sage after the latter's departure from this world. The disciple duly becomes possessed by the holy man and acts as a medium for six lines of verse on the immortality of the soul. We are now in a different world of sagecraft and sainthood, but with the same sophist, Philostratus, as our guide.
