RETURN OF THE CLEVER STUDENTS

While searching the Web for Christ myth theory, I found another translation of Apollonius legend, in which the student, "the young man" I have compared with Nietzsche, Leibniz, Napoleon, Queen Christina, and me... was referred to as: "of youthful appeareance, but mature judgment". Remember the Latin original: aspectu adulescens, sed, quantum ingenio, senex.


 I also found documents from a certain Naumburg boarding school, describing a young Friedrich Nietzsche as sensible and clever beyond his years. Fritz was, obviously, abused by roommates and classmates, giving him grounds to doubt the existence of God. When he had to pursue superior studies, he followed his heart, even though it meant to rebel against his mother herself: Frau Nietzsche wanted him to study Theology at Bonn and become a vicar like his late father, but Fritz was already hell-bent on a Classics degree at Leipzig.
Think of this as a turning point. If Fritz had studied at Bonn and become a vicar, he would never have met his best friend Richard Wagner, a born Leipziger, nor had access to so much secular literature. Friedrich Nietzsche has now become as connected to Leipzig University as Leibniz, Goethe, and Schiller, among many others.

Returning to our nameless young Ephesian, who would surely have been a Leipziger were he born in the early modern era, a recent essay (published last year!) explains that "prodigious wisdom in ancient literature is often described by means of the puer-senex character". He is merely called "discipulus" (the student) and "iuvenis" (the young man) in the Latin original, Machaon (physician) in the Viennese German translation, and Pandecta (compilation) in the Leipzig translation. His name would be either Gottfried or Fritz in the early modern AU (as a tribute to Leibniz or to Nietzsche).