Apollonius Tyanaeus, a Pythagorean philosopher, born at Tyana, Cappadocia, about 4 B. C. He travelled for many years through Asia Minor and the East, disputing everywhere concerning the mysteries of nature and religion. From Babylon he journeyed to India, where he disputed with the Brahmins on the comparative merits of the Alexandrine and oriental philosophers. He laid claim to supernatural power, and is said to have received from priests and people divine honors. At Athens he was denied admission to the Eleusinian mysteries, because he was regarded as a magician. It was only by force that he obtained an entrance into the cave of Trophonius, where he is said to have found the theological books of Pythagoras. At Rome he was arrested and brought to trial as a practiser of the black art, but acquitted. After visiting Spain, Africa, and Greece a second time, he bent his course to Alexandria. Vespasian was then in Egypt preparing to strike a blow for the imperial purple, and hearing of Apollonius's arrival, he determined to turn to account the influence which the philosopher possessed with the people as a prophet and thaumaturgist. Accordingly, when Vespasian, on his entrance into the city, was met by the magistrates and philosophers, he inquired with affected anxiety whether the Tyanaean was present.

Being answered in the negative, he at once proceeded to the place where he was, and entreated Apollonius to make him emperor. The Pythagorean rejoined that he had already done it in praying to the gods for a just and venerable sovereign. At a council of philosophers presently held in Alexandria to consider the claims of Vespasian, Apollonius warmly advocated the cause of his new patron. Having, after the death of Titus (81), been accused of attempting to excite the Greek cities of Asia against the tyrant Domitian, he voluntarily surrendered himself, and was cast into prison at Rome loaded with chains. His biographer, Philostratus, says that he freed himself from captivity by the exercise of his supernatural powers. Apollonius himself, at a subsequent period, publicly stated in Greece that he owed his liberty to the clemency of the emperor. Several cities contended for the honor of having been the last residence of Apollonius, but it seems most probable that his old age was spent at Ephesus. Tyana, the place of his birth, was raised to the rank of a sacred city, and invested with peculiar privileges, and here during the supremacy of paganism a temple existed in which the Pythagorean was worshipped.

He used no animal food, wore no woollen garment, suffered his hair to grow, and abjured the society of women. As a philosopher he labored to reconcile the oriental and Greek systems with the symbolism of his master. As a religious reformer he sought to restore the rites of paganism to their pristine purity. He held that all sensible objects were material and corruptible; that all sacrifice was impure in the sight of the gods; and that even prayer itself became polluted when it passed the lips of the supplicant. Except some letters and a reply against a complaint of the philosopher Euphrates, all his works have perished.