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These and many similar incidents are given by Maximus of Aegae in his treatise, a writer whose reputation won him a position in the emperor's Secretariat.
13. Now when he heard that his father was dead, he hurried to Tyana, and with his own hands buried him hard by his mother's sepulchre, for she too had died not long before; and he divided the property, which was very ample, with his brother, who was an incorrigibly bad character and given to drink.
Now the latter had reached his twenty-third year; Apollonius, on the other hand, was only twenty, and the law subjected him to guardians. He therefore spent afresh some time in Aegae, and turned the temple into a Lyceum and Academy, for it resounded with all sorts of philosophical discussions.
After that he returned to Tyana, by this time grown to manhood and his own master. Someone said to him that it was his duty to correct his brother and convert him from his evil ways; whereupon he answered: "This would seem a desperate enterprise; for how can I who am the younger one correct and render wise an older man? But so far as I can do anything, I will heal him of these bad passions."
Accordingly he gave to him the half of his own share of the property, on the pretence that he required more than he had, while he himself needed little; and then he pressed him and cleverly persuaded him to submit to the counsels of wisdom, and said: "Our father has departed this life, who educated us both and corrected us, so that you are all that I have left, and I imagine, I am all that you have left. If therefore I do anything wrong, please advise me and cure me of my faults; and in turn if you yourself do anything wrong, suffer me to teach you better."
And so he reduced his brother to a reasonable state of mind, just as we break in skittish and unruly horses by stroking and patting them; and he reformed him from his faults, numerous as they were, for he was the slave of play and of wine, and he serenaded courtesans and was vain of his hair, which he dressed up and dyed, strutting about like an arrogant dandy.
So when all was well between him and his brother, he at once turned his attention to his other relatives, and conciliated such of them as were in want by bestowing on them the rest of his property, leaving only a trifle to himself; for he said that Anaxagoras of Clazomenae kept his philosophy for cattle rather than for men when he abandoned his fields to flocks and goats, and that Crates of Thebes, when he threw his money into the sea benefited neither man nor beast.
And as Pythagoras was commended for his saying that "a man should have no intercourse except with his own wife," he declared that this was intended by Pythagoras for others than himself, for that he was resolved never to wed nor have any connexion whatever with women. In laying such restraint on himself he surpassed Sophocles, who only said that in reaching old age he had escaped from a mad and cruel master; but Apollonius by dint of virtue and temperance never even in his youth was so overcome. While still a mere stripling, in full enjoyment of his bodily vigour, he mastered and gained control of the maddening passion.
And yet there are those who accuse him falsely of an addiction to venery, alleging that he fell a victim of such sins and spent a whole year in their indulgence among the Scythians, the facts being that he never once visited Scythia nor was ever carried away by such passions. Not even Euphrates ever accused the sage of venery, though he traduced him otherwise and composed lying treatises against him, as we shall show when we come to speak of him below. And his quarrel with Apollonius was that the latter rallied him for doing anything for money and tried to wean him of his love of filthy lucre and of huckstering his wisdom. But these matters I must defer to the times to which they belong.
14. On one occasion, Euxenus asked Apollonius why so noble a thinker as he and one who was master of a diction so fine and nervous did not write a book. He replied: "I have not yet kept silence".
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