This is the sixth part of an article in nine pieces.
 

Damis of Nineveh

This sounds quite plausible, but many modern scholars think the memoirs of the Assyrian disciple are a literary fiction, comparable to the fictitious source of Cervantes' Don Quixote, 'the truthful chronicle of Cide Hamete Benengeli'. And neo-Pythagoreans were quite capable of fabricating 'old' texts. But the possibility that 'Damis' is a fabrication, does not mean that is a fraud. We can overestimate the extent of Philostratus' creativity.

Philostratus writes that Apollonius met his disciple in a town called Ninus, which is the usual Greek name for the ancient city that once had been the capital of the legendary Assyrian empire, Nineveh [note 7]. The author of the LoA maintains that Damis remained with his master until the end of his life on earth (LoA 1.19 and 8.28). However, he is only present in Philostratus' narrative during Apollonius' voyages to India, Egypt and Spain, and during the second visit to Rome. Damis is conspicuously absent from the stories about the first trip to Rome and Apollonius' travels in Greece and Asia Minor. This suggests that Philostratus interpreted his orders to rewrite the memoirs of Damis in a rather broad sense, adding stories he had heard in the Greek mainland and in towns like Ephesus, Tyana, Aegae and Antioch. It does not prove, however, that the memoirs of Damis did not exist.

There are very strong indications that the Scraps from the manger contained information that Philostratus found embarrassing. For example, Damis mentions that Apollonius wrote a book On astrology; as we have seen above, Philostratus was skeptical about its existence, because he did not like magic (LoA 3.41). Related is the example of Apollonius' predictions of the year of the three emperors, which causes Philostratus to write

That he was enabled to make such forecasts by some divine impulse, and that it is no sound inference to infer (as some people do) that our hero was a wizard, is clear from what I have already said. But let us consider these facts also: wizards, whom for my part I reckon to be the most unfortunate of mankind, claim to alter the course of destiny by having recourse either to the torture of lost spirits or to barbaric sacrifices, or to certain incantations or anointings; and many of them when accused of such practices have admitted that they were adepts in such practices. But Apollonius submitted himself to the decrees of the Fates, and only foretold that things must come to pass; and his foreknowledge was gained not by wizardry, but from what the gods revealed to him. (LoA 5.12)

There are three additional arguments for the existence of the Damis source. (a) As we already noticed, there are chronological inconsistencies with the parts of the LoA derived from Maximus of Aegae: the latter dates Apollonius' youth in the first quarter of the first century, which is hardly compatible with Damis' account of Apollonius assumption into heaven after the accession of the emperor Nerva in 96 CE. (b) Damis contains reliable information about India and the sea route to the subcontinent. A sophist like Philostratus would never have included new information, since this was not in line with the classical standards. (c) In the Indian episode of the LoA, which is derived from Damis, a new notion of the relationship between kings and philosophers is introduced, which is something we would not expect from an unphilosophical man like Philostratus, but can be expected in texts of a Pythagorean character.

A final remark about the reality of Damis is the existence of an old Indian text, the Agamasâstra, a commentary on the Mandukya Upanisad by the great Hindu teacher Gaudapâda (c.500 CE). It mentions Apalûnya, Damîça, Ayârcya and Prâvrti (i.e., Apollonius, Damis, Iarchas and Phraotes - the main characters of Philostratus' Indian account). It can, however, not be excluded that this account derives from the LoA.

When we accept the existence of Damis, we are not forced to believe that the real Apollonius traveled all the way to India, Nubia and Spain. It merely proves that there was a second century pseudo-biography that claimed that the Tyanean had made these voyages.

We can understand why these fantasies were added: they must have served as a weapon in the intellectual discourse of the second century. The gymnosophists of Nubia represent the Cynics, a popular school of Greek philosophy, and the Indian brahmans represent the Pythagoreans; since Apollonius is presented as correcting the gymnosophists, the message of the Scraps from the manger must have been that neo-Pythagoreanism was superior to Cynicism. Another polemic in the memoirs of Damis can be found in the story of the hostility between Apollonius and Euphrates: neo-Pythagoreanism defeats Stoicism.

It should be noted that the fact that the Scraps from the manger were given to Philostratus by the empress Julia Domna is significant too. She was born in a Syrian town named Emesa, which was famous for its cult for a sun god, 'Elâ-gabâl ('the lord of the mountain'). Its rituals were very remarkable, because they were derived from the Babylonian Akitu festival. Now it is very remarkable that the neo-Pythagorean sage who is described by Damis, worships the Sun. This element is almost absent from earlier pythagorean works but can be explained when we accept that 'Damis' was written in Emesa.