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

Of the Soul, the teachings of Pythagoras and of Culture

"That," replied the other, "which Pythagoras imparted to you, and which we imparted to the Egyptians."

"Would you then say," said Apollonius, "that as Pythagoras declared himself to be Euphorbus, so you yourself, before you entered your present body, were one of the Trojans or Achaeans or someone else? "

And the Indian replied: "Those Achaean sailors were the ruin of Troy, and your talking so much about it is the ruin of you Greeks. For you imagine that the campaigners against Troy were the only heroes that ever were, and you forget other heroes both more numerous and more divine, whom your own country and that of the Egyptians and that of the Indians have produced. Since then you have asked me about my earlier incarnation, tell me, whom you regard as the most remarkable of the assailants or defenders of Troy."

"I," replied Apollonius, "regarid Achilles, the son of Peleus and Thetis, as such, for he and no other is celebrated by Homer as excelling all the Achaeans in personal beauty and size, and he knows of mighty deeds of his. And he also rates very highly such men as Ajax and Nireus, who were only second to him in beauty and courage, and are celebrated as such in his poems."

"With him," said the other, "O Apollonius, I would have you compare my own ancestor, or rather my ancestral body, for that was the light in which Pythagoras regarded Euphorbus.

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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 the Soul, of Pythagoras and of Culture
Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia in the Southern Spring of 1995