"The Buried Classic" from Ancient Greece, and the roots of the Western World .... The Life of Apollonius of Tyana Philostratus {220 AD} On the Caucasus High Mountain Passes ...
Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia in the Southern Spring of 1995

On the Caucasus High Mountain Passes ...

"Tell me," he said, "where we were yesterday."

And he replied: "On the plain."

"And to-day, O Damis, where are we?"

"In the Caucasus," said he, "if I mistake not."

"Then when were you lower down than you are now?" he asked again, and Damis replied: "That's a question hardly worth asking. For yesterday we were travelling through the valley below, while to-day we are close up to heaven."

"Then you think," said the other, "O Damis, that our road yesterday lay low down, whereas our road to-day lies high up?"

"Yes, by Zeus," he replied, "unless at least I'm mad."

"In what respect then," said Apollonius, "do you suppose that our roads differ from one another, and what advantage has to-days's path for you over that of yesterday?"

"Because," said Damis, "yesterday I was walking along where a great many people go, but to-day, where are very few."

"Well," said the other, "O Damis, can you not also in a city turn out of the main street and walk where you will find very few people?"

"I did not say that," replied Damis, "but that yesterday we were passing through villages and populations, whereas to-day we are ascending through an untrodden and divine region: for you heard our guide say that the barbarians declare this tract to be the home of the gods." And with that he glanced up to the summit of the mountain.

But Apollonius recalled his attention to the original question by saying:

"Can you tell me then, O Damis, what understanding of divine mystery you get by walking so near the heavens?"

"None whatever," he replied.

"And yet you ought," said Apollonius. "When your feet are placed on a platform so divine and vast as this, you ought at one to utther thoughts of the clearest kind about the heaven and about the sun and moon, which you probably think you could touch from a vantage ground so close to heaven."

"Whatever," said he, "I knew about God's nature yesterday," I equally know to-day, and so far no fresh idea has occurred to me concerning him."

"So then," replied the other, "you are, O Damis, still below, and have won nothing from being high up, and you are as far from heaven as you were yesterday. And my question which I asked you to begin with was a fair one, although you thought that I asked it in order to make fun of you."

"The truth is," replied Damis, ''that I thought I should anyhow go down from the mountain wiser than I came up it, because I had heard, O Apollonius, that Anaxagoras of Clazomenae observed the heavenly bodies from the mountain Mimas in Ionia, and Thales of Miletus from Mycale which was close by his home; and some are said to have used as their observation mount Pangaeus and others Athos. But I have come up a greater height than any of these, and yet shall go down again no wiser than I was before."

"For neither did they," replied Apollonius: "and such stargazings show you indeed a bluer heaven and bigger stars and the sun rising out of the night; but all these phenomena were manifest long ago to sheperds and goatherds, but neither Athos will reveal to those who climb up it, nor Olympus, so much extolled by the poets, in what way God cares for the human race and how he delights to be worshipped by them, nor reveal the nature of virtue and of justice and temperance , unless the soul scan these matters narrowly, and the soul, I should say, if it engages on the task pure and undefiled, will sour much higher than this summit of Caucasus."

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"The Buried Classic" from Ancient Greece, and the roots of the Western World .... The Life of Apollonius of Tyana Philostratus {220 AD} On the Caucasus High Mountain Passes ...
Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia in the Southern Spring of 1995