ng himself, under the idea that by his prompt
appearance he might remove the Emperor's jealousy, and save Nerva and
others whose political interests he had been promoting. On arriving at
Rome he was brought before Domitian; and when, very inconsistently with
his wish to shield his friends from suspicion, he launched out into
praise of Nerva, he was forced away into prison to the company of the
worst criminals, his hair and beard were cut short, and his limbs loaded
with chains. After some days he was brought to trial; the charges
against him being the singularity of his dress and appearance, his being
called a god, his foretelling a pestilence at Ephesus, and his
sacrificing a child with Nerva for the purpose of augury.[310]
Philostratus supplies us with an ample defence, which, it seems, he was
to have delivered,[311] had he not in the course of the proceedings
suddenly vanished from the Court, and transported himself to Puteoli,
whither he had before sent on Damis.

This is the only miraculous occurrence which forces itself into the
history as a component part of the narrative; the rest being of easy
omission without any detriment to its entireness.[312] And strictly
speaking, even here, it is only his vanishing which is of a miraculous
nature, and his vanishing is not really necessary for the continuity of
events. His "liberation" and "transportation" are sufficient for that
continuity; and to be set free from prison and sent out of Rome are
occurrences which might happen without a divine interposition. And in
fact they seem very clearly to have taken place in the regular course of
business. Philostratus allows that just before the philosopher's
pretended disappearance, Domitian had publicly acquitted him, and that
after the miracle he proceeded to hear the cause next in order, as if
nothing had happened;[313] and tells us, moreover, that Apollonius on
his return to Greece gave out that he had pleaded his own cause and so
escaped, no allusion being made to a miraculous preservation.[314]

After spending two years in the latter country in his usual
philosophical disputations, he passed into Ionia. According to his
biographer's chronology, he was now approaching the completion of his
hundredth year. We may easily understand, therefore, that when invited
to Rome by Nerva, who had just succeeded to the Empire, he declined the
proposed honour with an intimation that their meeting must be deferred
to another state of bein