© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden,  | doi:./X-bja Mnemosyne () - brill.com/mnem Bodies of Knowledge in Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius Edward Kelting University of California, San Diego ekelting@ucsd.edu Received January 2021 | Accepted July 2021 Abstract Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius uses the transmigration of the soul to tie the present to the past through corporal metaphors of cultural preservation. These metaphors are laced throughout Apollonius’ visits to Indian Brahmans and Ethiopian naked sages (Gymnoi), two wisdom groups who respectively celebrate and deny the embodied knowledge of the past that reincarnation allows. This somatic line of thinking culmi- nates in a debate over the Gymnoi’s eponymous nudity, which Apollonius critiques on two counts: it wrongly suggests that the Gymnoi can divest themselves of their past and creates a false dichotomy between clothes and body, ornament and essence. Keywords Philostratus – Life of Apollonius – Second Sophistic – Brahmans – ekphrasis – style Across his body of work, Philostratus meditates on the threads that connect the present to the past. In the Life of Apollonius (VA), the semi-fictionalized account of the Pythagorean wonder-worker Apollonius of Tyana, metempsy- chosis directly links the present day and the distant past through a great chain of reincarnation. The philosophical preeminence that the narrative affords 1 The VA (cf. Boter 2015 for title) is framed as Philostratus’ compilation and redaction of vari- ous sources, the most important of which is Damis’ historically nebulous notebooks (on which see principally Anderson 1986, 155-173;, Flinterman 1995, 67-88; and Whitmarsh 2004, MNEM_advance_2997_Kelting.indd 1 MNEM_advance_2997_Kelting.indd 1 08/18/2022 3:25:50 PM 08/18/2022 3:25:50 PM