Hagiographic geography: travel and allegory in the<i>Life of Apollonius of Tyana</i>

Abstract

In this paper I shall explore the motif of travel in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana , composed by Philostratus in the first half of the third century AD and published after 217. This text, apart from its novelistic, hagiographic and apologetic features, is an exemplary portrait of an ideal life. One aspect of its appeal (rather ignored in modern scholars' keenness to assess its veracity and the extent of Philostratus' elaboration) is the metaphorical nature of much of the work's content—designed to create an ideal literary image of the Greek philosopher in the Roman empire. I examine the theme of travel (with its deep debts to ancient ethnography, pilgrimage writing and the novel) as a masterly rhetorical device on the part of Philostratus by which to establish and demonstrate the superiority of Apollonius.