[1] The earliest and by far the most detailed source is the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, a lengthy, novelistic biography written by the sophist Philostratus at the request of empress Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus.

[12] Philostratus describes Apollonius as a wandering teacher of philosophy and miracle-worker who was mainly active in Greece and Asia Minor but also traveled to Italy, Spain, and North Africa, and even to Mesopotamia, India, and Ethiopia.

[13] How much of this can be accepted as historical truth depends largely on the extent to which modern scholars trust Philostratus, and in particular on whether they believe in the reality of Damis.

Some of these scholars contend that Apollonius never came to Western Europe and was virtually unknown there until the 3rd century AD, when Empress Julia Domna, who was herself from the province of Syria, decided to popularize him and his teachings in Rome.

[14] For that purpose, so these same scholars believe, she commissioned Philostratus to write the biography, in which Apollonius is exalted as a fearless sage with supernatural powers, even greater than Pythagoras.

This view of Julia Domna's role in the making of the Apollonius legend gets some support from the fact that her son Caracalla worshipped him,[15] and her grandnephew emperor Severus Alexander may have done so as well.

However, Miroslav Marcovich translates part of the text as: "Sure enough, Apollonius was born in Tyana, but the full truth is that he was a heaven-sent sage and healer, a new Pythagoras.

"[19] As James Francis put it, "the most that can be said ... is that Apollonius appears to have been a wandering ascetic/philosopher/wonderworker of a type common to the eastern part of the early empire.

[21] A minimalist view is that he spent his entire life in the cities of his native Asia Minor (Turkey) and of northern Syria, in particular his home town of Tyana, Ephesus, Aegae and Antioch,[22] though the letters suggest wider travels, and there seems no reason to deny that, like many wandering philosophers, he at least visited Rome.

[26] According to Philostratus' Life, en route to the Far East, Apollonius reached Hierapolis Bambyce (Manbij) in Syria (not Nineveh, as some scholars believed), where he met Damis, a native of that city who became his lifelong companion.

As some details in Philostratus' account of the Indian adventure seem incompatible with known facts, modern scholars are inclined to dismiss the whole story as a fanciful fabrication, but not all of them rule out the possibility that the Tyanean actually did visit India.

[30] Some have believed that these Indian sources derived their information from a Sanskrit translation of Philostratus' work (which would have been a most uncommon and amazing occurrence), or even considered the possibility that it was really an independent confirmation of the historicity of the journey to India.

In the late 3rd century Porphyry, an anti-Christian Neoplatonic philosopher, claimed in his treatise Against the Christians that the miracles of Jesus were not unique, and mentioned Apollonius as a non-Christian who had accomplished similar achievements.

This attempt to make Apollonius a hero of the anti-Christian movement provoked sharp replies from bishop Eusebius of Caesarea and from Lactantius.

[36] Eusebius wrote an extant reply to the pamphlet of Hierocles (Contra Hieroclem), where he claimed that Philostratus was a fabulist and that Apollonius was a sorcerer in league with demons.

[37] Several advocates of Enlightenment, deism and anti-Church positions saw him as an early forerunner of their own ethical and religious ideas, a proponent of a universal, non-denominational religion compatible with reason.

[43] However, Erkki Koskenniemi has stated that Apollonius of Tyana is not a representative of a Hellenistic divine man and that there is no evidence that Christians constructed their paradigm of Jesus based on traditions associated with him.

Although he related various miraculous feats of Apollonius, he emphasized at the same time that his hero was not a magician but a serious philosopher and a champion of traditional Greek values.

The Book of Wisdom may also have survived in the Latin and Arabic traditions as having been published and distributed as a series of short separate tracts or chapters under a variety of different titles.

In the Arabic tradition, Apollonius of Tyana is called the "Master of the Talismans" (Sahib at-tilasmat) and known as Balinus (or, Balinas, Belenus, or Abuluniyus).

The ninth-century Book of Balinas the Wise: On the Causes, or, the Book of the Secret of Creation (Kitab Balaniyus al-Hakim fi'l- 'llal, Kitab Sirr al-khaliqa wa-san 'at al-tabi'a) expounds upon the origins of the cosmos and its causes in six chapters and narrates the story of how Apollonius entered the crypt of Hermes Trismegistus to discover the Emerald Tablet (Tabula Smaragdina) which became a foundational text of alchemy.

[54] Eliphas Levi made three attempts to raise the shade of Apollonius of Tyana by occult ritual, as described in his textbook on magic Dogme de la magie (1854).

[55] The Tablet of Wisdom, written by Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Baháʼí Faith, names "Balinus" (Apollonius) as a great philosopher, who "surpassed everyone else in the diffusion of arts and sciences and soared unto the loftiest heights of humility and supplication.

[57] Edward Bulwer-Lytton refers to Apollonius in The Last Days of Pompeii and Zanoni as a great master of occult power and wisdom.

Apollonius of Tyana is a major character in Steven Saylor's historical novel Empire, which depicts his confrontation with the harsh Emperor Domitian.

There he dwells in eternal repose, in company with the Biblical Enoch, the Chinese King Wen and Lao Tze, the 19th-century Briton Bathurst, and various other sages of the past and future, some of them Martians.