ABSTRACT
The Life of Apollonius presents one curious synthesis between literature, history and religion; the Heroicus presents another. 1 Even if the question of authorship is still finally unsolved, this work is an invaluable gloss on the Life. If it does not betray the same author, it certainly reveals the same mental outlook and literary technique, and has the same elusive relationship to the real world of the second and third centuries. At the same time it offers a characteristic sophistic treatment of a characteristic subject. If the Lives are a chronicle of sophistic activities, this is a manifesto for the mythology that surrounds them.
