INTRODUCTION

garment made from the skin of dead animals to touch the body. Before long, he set himself up as a reformer and, going to the town of Aegae, he took up residence in the temple of Aesculapius, where he rapidly acquired such a reputation for holiness that sick people flocked to him, asking him to heal them. Upon reaching maturity at the death of his father and mother, he gave up the greater part of his inheritance to his elder brother, and what was left to his poor relatives. He then spent five years in complete silence, traveling throughout Asia Minor in all directions, but never opening his lips. The more-than-Trappist The Trappist order is known for its strict vow of silence. vow of silence that he thus enforced upon himself seems to have further enhanced his reputation for holiness, and his mere appearance on the scene was enough to hush the noise of warring factions in the cities of Cilicia and Pamphylia. If we may believe his biographer, he professed to know all languages without ever having learned them, to know the inmost thoughts of men, to understand the language of birds and animals, and to have the power of predicting the future. He also remembered his former incarnation, for he shared the Pythagorean belief in the migration of human souls from body to body, both of animals and human beings. He preached