The Gymnosophists of Upper Egypt
We
now come to Apollonius’ visit to the “Gymnosophists” in “Ethopia,”
which, though the artistic and literary goal of Apollonius’ journey in
Egypt as elaborated by Philostratus, is only a single incident in the
real history of the unrecorded life of our mysterious philosopher in
that ancient land.Had Philostratus devoted a chapter or two to the
nature of the practices, discipline, and doctrines of the innumerable
ascetic and mystic communities that honeycombed Egypt and adjacent lands
in those days,he would have earned the boundless gratitude of students
of the origins. But of all this he has no word;and yet he would have us
believe that Damis’ reminiscences were an orderly series of notes of
what actually happened. But in all things it is very apparent that Damis
was rather a compagnon de voyage than an initiated pupil.Who
then were these mysterious “Gymnosophists,” as they are usually called,
and whence their name?Damis calls them simply the “Naked” (γυμvοι), and
it is very clear that the term is not to be understood as merely
physically naked; indeed, neither to the Indians nor to these ascetics
of uppermost Egypt can the term be applied with appropriateness in its
purely physical meaning, as is apparent from the descriptions of Damis
and Philostratus. A chance sentence that falls from the lips of one of
these ascetics, in giving the story of his life, affords us a clue to
the real meaning of the term. “At the age of fourteen,” he tells
Apollonius, “I resigned my patrimony to those who desired such things,
and naked I sought the Naked”(vi 16). [The word γυμνος (naked), however,
usually means lightly clad, as, for instance, when a man is said to
plough “naked,” that is with only one garment, and this is evident from
the comparison made between the costume of the Gymnosophists and that of
people in the hot weather at Athens (vi 6).This is the very same
diction that Philo uses about the Therapeut communities, which he
declares were very numerous in every province of Egypt and scattered in
all lands. We are not, however, to suppose that these communities were
all of the same nature. It is true that Philo tries to make out that the
most pious and the chief of all of them was his particular community on
the southern shore of Lake Moeris,which was strongly Semitic if not
orthodoxly Jewish; and for Philo any community with a Jewish atmosphere
must naturally have been the best. The peculiarity and main interest of
our community, which was at the other end of the land above the
cataracts, was that it had had some remote connection with India.
The
community is called a φροντιστηριον , in the sense of a place for
meditation, a term used by ecclesiastical writers for a monastery, but
best known to classical students from the humorous use made
of it by Aristophanes, who in The Clouds calls the school of Socrates, a phrontistêrion or “thinking shop.”
The
collection of monasteria (ιερα), presumably caves, shrines, or cells,
[For they had neither huts nor houses, but lived in the open air.] was
situated on a hill or rising ground not far from the Nile. They were all
separated from one another, dotted about the hill, and ingeniously
arranged. There was hardly a tree in the place, with the exception of a
single group of palms, under whose shade they held their general
meetings (vi 6).It is difficult to gather from the set speeches, put
into the mouths of the head of the community and Apollonius (vi 10-13,
18-22), any precise details as to the mode of life of these ascetics,
beyond the general indications of an existence of great toil and
physical hardship, which they considered the only means of gaining
wisdom.What the nature of their cult was, if they had one, we are not
told, except that at midday the Naked retired to their monasteria (vi
14).The whole tendency of Apollonius’ arguments, however, is to remind
the community of its Eastern origin and its former connection with
India, which it seems to have forgotten. The communities of this
particular kind in southern Egypt and northern Ethiopia dated back
presumably some centuries, and some of them may have been remotely
Buddhist, for one of the younger members of our community who left it to
follow Apollonius, says that he came to join it from the enthusiastic
account of the wisdom of the Indians brought back by his father, who has
been certain of a vessel trading to the East. It was his father who
told him that these “Ethiopians” were from India, and so he had joined
them instead of making the long and perilous journey to the Indus itself
(vi 16). If there be any truth in this story it follows that the
founders of this way of life had been Indian ascetics,and if so they
must have belonged to the only propagandising form of Indian religion,
namely, the Buddhist.After the impulse had been given, the communities,
which were presumably recruited from generations of Egyptians,
Arabs, and Ethiopians, were probably left entirely to themselves, and
so in course of time forgot their origin, and even perhaps their
original rule. Such speculations are permissible, owing to the repeated
assertion of the original connection between these Gymnosophists and
India. The whole burden of the story is that they were Indians who had
forgotten their origin and fallen away from the wisdom.The last incident
that Philostratus records with regard to Apollonius among the shrines
and temples is a visit to the famous and very ancient oracle of
Trophonius, near Lebadea, in Boeotia. Apollonius is said to have spent
seven days alone in this mysterious “cave,” and to have returned with a
book full of questions and answers on the subject of “philosophy” (viii
19). This book was still, in the time of Philostratus, in the palace of
Hadrian at Antium, together with a number of letters of Apollonius, and
many people used to visit Antium for the special purpose of seeing it
(viii 19, 29).In the hay-bundle of legendary rigmarole solemnly set down
by Philostratus concerning the cave of Trophonius, a small needle of
truth may perhaps be discovered. The “cave” seems to have been a very
ancient temple or shrine, cut in the heart of a hill, to which a number
of underground passages of considerable length led. It had probably been
in ancient times one of the most holy centres of the archaic cult of
Hellas, perhaps even a relic of that Greece of thousands of years B.C.,
the only tradition of which, as Plato tell us, was obtained by Solon
from the priests of Saïs. Or it may have been a subterranean shrine of
the same nature as the famous Dictæan cave in Crete which only last year
(1901 or so) was brought back to light by the indefatigable labours of
Messrs, Evans and Hogarth.
As in the case of the
travels of Apollonious, so with regard to the temples and communities
which he visited, Philostratus is a most disappointing cicerone.But
perhaps he is not to be blamed on this account,for the most important
and most interesting part of Apollonius’ work was of so intimate a
nature,prosecuted as it was among associations of such jealously-guarded
secrecy, that no one outside their ranks could know anything of it, and
those who shared in their initiation would say nothing.It is,
therefore, only when Apollonius comes forward to do some public act that
we can get any precise historical trace of him; in every other case he
passes into the sanctuary of a temple or enters the privacy of a
community and is lost to view.It may perhaps surprise us that Apollonius
after sacrificing his private fortune, could nevertheless undertake
such long and expensive travels, but it would seem that he was
occasionally supplied with the necessary monies from the treasuries of
the temples (cf viii 17), and that everywhere he was freely offered the
hospitality of the temple or community in the place where he happened to
be staying.In conclusion of the present part of our subject, we may
mention the good service done by Apollonius in driving away certain
Chaldæan and Egyptian charlatans who were making capital out of the
fears of the cities on the left shores of the Hellespont. These cities
had suffered severely from shocks of earthquake,and in their panic
placed large sums of money in the hands of these adventurers (who
“trafficked in the misfortune of others”), in order that they perform
propitiatory rites (vi 41). This taking money for the giving instruction
in the sacred science or for the performance of sacred rites was the
most detestable of crimes to all the true philosophers.
Apollonius of Tyana
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- Apollonius Of Tyana Introduction
- The Religious Associations and Communities of the ...
- India and Greece
- The Apollonius of Early Opinion
- Texts, Translations, and Literature
- The Biographer of Apollonius
- Apollonius of Tyana Early Life
- The Travels of Apollonius
- In the Shrines of the Temples and the Retreats of ...
- The Gymnosophists of Upper Egypt
- Apollonius and the Rulers of the Empire
- Apollonius The Prophet and Wonder-Worker
- Apollonius of Tyana Mode of Life
- Himself and His Circle
- Apollonius Of Tyana Sayings and Sermons
- From His Letters
- The Writings of Apollonius
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