Bart Ehrman likes to begin lectures by talking about a prophesied miracle-worker who was put on trial by the Romans and ascended to heaven, then revealing he’s talking about this man. For 10 points each:
[10m] Name this Pythagorean philosopher who travels with his companion Damis in a biography by Philostratus. He hailed from the city of Tyana.
ANSWER: Apollonius of Tyana
[10e] In the Life, Apollonius gets in trouble with Tigellinus after interpreting one of these events as a sign of Nero’s impending death. Thales predicted one of these events that interrupted a battle between the Lydians and Medes.
ANSWER: solar eclipses [prompt on transits or occultations]
[10h] Apollonius saw the traces that soldiers in this war left while storming a rocky citadel held by thunderbolt-wielding sages with magic invisibility clouds. This war against King Deriades is the subject of the longest surviving poem of classical antiquity.
ANSWER: Dionysus’s invasion of India [accept answers mentioning conquest, expedition, or synonyms in place of “invasion” prompt on invasion of India by asking “by whom?”; prompt on Dionysus’s invasion by asking “of where?”] (The invasion is the subject of Nonnus’s poem Dionysiaca.)
<AK/JB, Mythology>