Apollonius

Apollonius (d. 183), Roman martyr. He was mentioned by Jerome and Eusebius; his name is in early liturgical books; more light has been shed on him by the discovery of Acts in Greek and Armenian. This Roman senator was denounced as a Christian to the authorities by his own slave; he made an impressive verbal and written apologia to the senate. This comprised a criticism of paganism as futile because its idols are human artefacts without life, autonomy, reason, or virtue: hence they should be rejected. Christianity is superior by its concepts of death and life: death is a natural necessity which has nothing frightening about it, while the true life is the life of the soul. Above all, Christianity surpasses paganism through the work of Christ, the revealing Word of God and teacher of moral life, who became man to destroy sin by his death. This last, predicted both by Scripture and by Plato, can be compared to the death of the prophets and of Socrates. In short, Christianity is the ‘best bet’ for his time, and if anyone is martyred, he then becomes the seed of new Christians.

Harnack and others agree that this was one of the best of early Christian apologists, but the near-contemporary sources disagree on the details of the legal process. It seems certain that Apollonius was beheaded on 21 April: his feast was kept in the Martyrology of Jerome on 18 April, but at Constantinople on 23 July.

Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.

• Eusebius, H.E., v. 21, 1–5; H. Delehaye, Les passions des martyres et les genres littéraires (1966), pp. 92–9; H.S.S.C., ii. 71–3

1. Apollonius Rhōdius (c.295–215 BC), Hellenistic Greek poet from Alexandria who spent the later part of his life in Rhodes. He was tutor to Ptolemy III Euergetēs and at some point head of the Alexandrian Library. Apollonius' main work, which survives, is the Argonautica, an epic on the story of Jason and the Argonauts, narrating in four books the voyage of the Argo to Colchis by way of the Propontis and the Black Sea (books 1–2), the winning with Medea's aid of the Golden Fleece (book 3), and the return (to Iolcus in Thessaly) by the Danube, Po, Rhone, Mediterranean, and North Africa (book 4). This was the only epic before Virgil's Aeneid that could be compared with Homer in subject and extent, and the first epic to give a prominent place to love—Medea's for Jason. For the effect this had in subsequent writing the Argonautica holds a significant place in the history of European literature. Apollonius in true Hellenistic literary style combines poetry with scholarship and erudition, but he also excels in delicate psychological portrayal, and in this lies the perennial charm of book 3. The structure of the work as a whole has frequently been criticized, perhaps undeservedly, but there are many individual scenes which are brilliantly contrived. A late and probably unreliable tradition tells of a quarrel between the poets Apollonius and Callimachus which it represents as the consequence of a bitter controversy between writers of long traditional epics and writers of short and highly polished poems. Callimachus was said to have been victorious and Apollonius to have retired to Rhodes in consequence, but it was the long epic that continued in popularity. Apollonius was much admired in late antiquity and is one of the few Hellenistic poets whose work survived in medieval manuscripts.

2. Apollonius of Pergē in Pamphylia (active second half of the third century BC), mathematician, who founded the branch of geometry known as ‘conics’, the study of cones, and whose terminology and methods were accepted by all students of the subject. His work on conics largely survives (four books in Greek, three in Arabic, and one lost), though much on other topics has disappeared. Hypatia wrote a (lost) commentary on the ‘Conics’. In theoretical astronomy too Apollonius did work of fundamental importance, and among mathematicians in antiquity he ranks second only to Archimedēs.

3. Apollonius of Tyana, in Cappadocia (b. c.4 BC), a wandering Pythagorean philosopher and mystic who attained so great a fame by his wonder-working powers that divine honours were paid to him. He wrote a life of Pythagoras and other works, of which hardly anything has survived. His own life was written by Philostratus.

4. Apollonius Dyscolus (‘bad-tempered’) (second century AD), the author of several treatises which first placed Greek grammar on a scientific basis. He lived in poverty at Alexandria and wrote numerous works, only four of which survive, on the pronoun, conjunction, adverb, and syntax. His writings were much used by Priscian. He was father of Aelius Herodianus, who wrote on Greek accents.

5. Apollonius of Tyre, see NOVEL 2.