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

Of Alexander the Great - and the Ancient Sages of India ...

"Those were the Oxydrakae," he said, "but this race has always been independent and well equipped for war; and they say that they attempted, yet never acquired any real knowledge of wisdom.

But the genuine sages live between the Hyphasis and the Ganges, in a country which Alexander never reached; not I imagine because he was afraid of what was in it, but, I think, because the omens warned him against it. But if he had crossed the Hyphasis, and had been able to take the surrounding country, he could certainly hever have taken possession of their castle in which they live, not even if he had had ten thousand like Achilles, and thirty thousand like Ajax behind him; for they do not do battle with those who approach them, but they repulse them with prodigies and thunderbolts which they send forth, for they are holy men and beloved of the gods.

It is related, anyhow, that Hercules of Egypt and Dionysus after they had overrun the Indian people with their arms, at last attached them in company, and that they constructed engines of war, and tried to take the place by assault; but the sages, instead of taking the field against them, lay quiet and passive, as it seemed to the enemy; but as soon as the latter approached they were driven off by rockets of fire and thunderbolts which were hurled obliquely from above and fell upon their armour."

It was on that occasion, they say, that Hercules lost his golden shield, and the sages dedicated it as an offering, partly out of respect for Hercules' reputation, and partly because of the reliefs upon the shield. For in these Hercules is represented fixing the frontier of the world at Gadira, and turning the mountains into pillars, and confining the ocean within its bounds.

Thence it is clear that it was not the Theban Hercules, but the Egyptian one, that came to Gadira, and fixed the limits of the world."

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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} Of Alexander and the Sages ...
Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia in the Southern Spring of 1995