Note 302 — APOLLONIUS OF TYANA.
Reading edition
Tacitus relates, that when Vespasian was going to the Serapeum, ut super rebus imperii consuleret, Basilides, an Egyptian, who was at the time eighty miles distant, suddenly appeared to him; from his name the emperor drew an omen that the god sanctioned his assumption of the Imperial power.—Hist. iv. 82. This sufficiently agrees in substance with the narrative of Philostratus to give the latter some probability. It was on this occasion that the famous cures are said to have been wrought.