ABSTRACT
The article suggests a probable context for the clash between the gymnosophists and the Ethiopian king Hydaspes in the Aethiopica of Heliodorus. The model for this stand-off is of course the famous encounter between Alexander III of Macedon and the ascetic sages of India, who were initially likened to the Hellenistic Cynics. In the third century of the Roman Empire, the holy man Apollonius of Tyana, who had ostentatiously opposed the autocratic Roman Emperor Domitian, had also met these philosophers during his travels to the East. However, Philostratus’ account of the meeting between Apollonius and the gymnosophists bears little similarity to the events related in the Aethiopica. Instead it is the contentious and highly personal exchanges between the Roman emperor Julian and the Cynics he confronted at Constantinople on his accession to the throne in 361 that prove to be more revealing.
