Apollonius of Tyana lived in the first century of the Christian era, born about 1 CE and perhaps reaching the age of 100. He was a Neo-Pythagorean philosopher and teacher of Greek origin. His teaching influenced both scientific thought and occultism for centuries after his death. He is best known through the medium of the writer Philostratus, in whose biography some have seen an attempt to construct a rival to Jesus Christ. Apollonius was a vegetarian, and a disciple of Pythagoras. He is quoted as having said "For I discerned a certain sublimity in the discipline of Pythagoras, and how a certain secret wisdom enabled him to know, not only who he was himself, but also who he had been; and I saw that he approached the altars in purity, and suffered not his belly to be polluted by partaking of the flesh of animals; and that he kept his body pure of all garments woven of dead animal refuse; and that he was the first of mankind to restrain his tongue, inventing a discipline of silence described in the proverbial phrase, "An ox sits upon it." I also saw that his philosophical system was in other respects oracular and true. So I ran to embrace his teachings..."

This is The Prayer of Apollonius of Tyana, circa 23 AD: "Oh, Thou Sun, send me as far around the world as is my pleasure and thine; and may I make the acquaintance of good men but never hear anything of bad ones, nor they of me."

He was born in the city of Tyana, in the Roman Empire province of Cappadocia in Asia Minor, at the beginning of the Christian era. He was educated in the nearby city of Tarsus and in the temple of Asclepius at Aegae, where he devoted himself to the doctrines of Pythagoras and adopted the ascetic habit of life in its fullest sense.

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