Damis

Who is Damis?

Damis was a student and lifelong companion of Apollonius of Tyana, the famous Neopythagorean philosopher and teacher who lived in the early 1st up to the early 2nd century CE.

All that we know about Damis comes from Apollonius' biographer Philostratus who wrote his Life of Apollonius of Tyana between 217 and 238. Some scholars believe the notebooks of Damis are an invention of Philostratus, others think it was a real book forged by someone else and used by Philostratus. And some scholars think that Damis never existed at all. F.C. Conybeare, however, points out the extreme and unnecessary sceptism of this theory.

E. Rabinovitch even advocates a high probability of the real existence of Damis' notebooks. It is possible that Philostratus did use a biography of Apollonius by Damis, who was however, not trustworthy