SOURCE: Francis, James A. “Truthful Fiction: New Questions to Old Answers on Philostratus's Life of Apollonius.” American Journal of Philology 19, no. 3 (1998): 419-41.

In the following essay, Francis critiques the assumptions and methods of scholarship often applied to Apollonius of Tyana, theorizing that new ideas about the nature of history and ancient fiction have opened up unexplored avenues for research into the text.

Within the past twenty years four extensive works have appeared treating Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana (VA) from various literary, historical, and cultural perspectives. These include E. L. Bowie's “Apollonius of Tyana: Tradition and Reality,” Maria Dzielska's Apollonius of Tyana in Legend and History, Graham Anderson's Philostratus: Biography and Belles Lettres in the Third Century A.D., and my own lengthy chapter in Subversive Virtue: Asceticism and Authority in the Second-Century Pagan World.¹ The popularity of what has often been considered an “offbeat” text is...