Apollonius of Tyana was a Greek Pythagorean philosopher and teacher. He hailed from the town of Tyana in the Roman province of Cappadocia in Asia Minor. He was roughly a contemporary of Jesus. At the age of 20 Apollonius began a five year silence, after the completion of this term of silence he traveled to Mesopotamia and Iran. After his death his name remained famous among philosophers and occultists. To the student of the origins of Christianity there is naturally no period of Western history of greater interest and importance than the first century of our era; and yet how little comparatively is known about it of a really definite and reliable nature. If it be a subject of lasting regret that no non-Christian writer of the first century had sufficient intuition of the future to record even a line of information concerning the birth and growth of what was to be the religion of the Western world, equally disappointing is it to find so little definite information of the general social and religious conditions of the time.