Alexander

Lucian of Samosata

Lucian, Vol. 4. Harmon, A. M., editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925.

“What were his discoveries, then?” perhaps you will ask. Listen, therefore, in order to be able to show up such impostors. The first, my dear Celsus, was a well-known method; heating a needle, he removed the seal by melting through the wax underneath it, and after reading the contents he warmed the wax once more with the needle, both that which was under the thread and that which contained the seal, and so stuck it together without difficulty. Another method was by using what they call plaster; this is a compound of Bruttian pitch, asphalt, pulverized gypsum, wax, and gum Arabic. Making his plaster out of all these materials and warming it over the fire, he applied it to the seal, which he had previously wetted with saliva, and took a mould of the impression. Then, since the plaster hardened at once, after easily opening and reading the scrolls, he applied the wax and made an impression upon it precisely like the original, just as one would with a gem. Let me tell you a third

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method, in addition to these. Putting marble-dust into the glue with which they glue books and making a paste of it, he applied that to the seal while it was still soft, and then, as it grows hard at once, more solid than horn or even iron, he removed it and used it for the impression. There are many other devices to this end, but they need not all be mentioned, for fear that we might seem to be wanting in taste, especially in view of the fact that in the book which you wrote against the sorcerers, a very good and useful treatise, capable of preserving common-sense in its readers, you cited instances enough, and indeed a great many more than I have.[*](S. Hippolytus (Refut. omn. Haeres. IV. 28-42) contains a highly interesting section “against sorcerers,” including (34) a treatment of this subject. It is very evidently not his own work ; and K. F. Hermann thought it derived from the treatise by Celsus. Ganschinietz, in Harnack’s Texte wnd Untersuchungen 39, 2, has disputed this, but upon grounds that are not convincing. His commentary, however, is valuable. )

Well, as I say, Alexander made predictions and gave oracles, employing great shrewdness in it and combining guesswork with his trickery. He gave responses that were sometimes obscure and ambiguous, sometimes downright unintelligible, for this seemed to him in the oracular manner. Some people he dissuaded or encouraged as seemed best to him at a guess. To others he prescribed medical treatments and diets, knowing, as I said in the beginning, many useful remedies. His “cytmides” were in highest favour with him—a name which he had coined for a restorative ointment compounded of bear’s grease.[*](It is a nice question whether this reading or that of the other group of MSS., “goat’s grease,” is to be preferred. Galen in his treatment of these ointments (Kuhn xiii, p. 1008) does not mention bear’s grease. But he considers goat’s grease only moderately good ; and every Yankee knows that in America bear’s grease only gave place to goose grease (also mentioned by Galen) when bears became scarce. ) Expectations, however, and

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advancements and successions to estates he always put off to another day, adding: “It shall all come about when I will, and when Alexander, my prophet, asks it of me and prays for you.”

A price had been fixed for each oracle, a drachma and two obols.[*](Alexander’s price was high. Amphilochus got but two obols (one-fourth as much) at Mallus. According to Lucian (Timon 6; 12; Epist. Saturn. 21) the a of a day-labourer at this time was but four obols. ) Do not think that it was low, my friend, or that the revenue from this source was scanty! He gleaned as much as seventy or eighty thousand[*](Drachmas. ) a year, since men were so greedy as to send in ten and fifteen questions each. What he received he did not use for himself alone nor treasure up to make himself rich, but since he had many men about him by this time as assistants, servants, collectors of information, writers of oracles, custodians of oracles, clerks, sealers, and expounders, he divided with all, giving each one what was proportionate to his worth.

By now he was even sending men abroad to create rumours in the different nations in regard to the oracle and to say that he made predictions, discovered fugitive slaves, detected thieves and robbers, caused treasures to be dug up, healed the sick, and in some cases had actually raised the dead. So there was a hustling and a bustling from every side, with sacrifices and votive offerings—and twice as much for the prophet and disciple of the god. For this oracle also had come out:

Honour I bid you to give my faithful servant, the prophet ;
No great store do I set upon riches, but much on the prophet.

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When at last many sensible men, recovering, as it were, from profound intoxication, combined against him, especially all the followers of Epicurus, and when in the cities they began gradually to detect all the trickery and buncombe of the show, he issued a promulgation designed to scare them, saying that Pontus was full of atheists and Christians who had the hardihood to utter the vilest abuse of him; these he bade them drive away with stones if they wanted to have the god gracious. About Epicurus, moreover, he delivered himself of an oracle after this sort; when someone asked him how Epicurus was doing in Hades, he replied :

With leaden fetters on his feet in filthy mire he sitteth.

Do you wonder, then, that the shrine waxed great, now that you see that the questions of its visitors were intelligent and refined?

In general, the war that he waged upon Epicurus was without truce or parley, naturally enough. Upon whom else would a quack who loved humbug and bitterly hated truth more fittingly make war than upon Epicurus, who discerned the nature of things and alone knew the truth in them? The followers of Plato and Chrysippus and Pythagoras were his friends, and there was profound peace with them; but “the impervious Epicurus ’—for that is what he called him—was rightly his bitter enemy, since he considered all that sort of thing a laughingmatter and a joke. So Alexander hated Amastris most of all the cities in Pontus because he knew that

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the followers of Lepidus[*](An inscription from Amastris (C.I.G. 4149) honours "Tiberius Claudius Lepidus, Chief Priest of Pontus and President of the Metropolis of Pontus” (i.e. Amastris). This can be no other than the Lepidus of Lucian. The priesthood1 was that of Augustus. Amastris is almost due of Angora, on the Black Sea, W. of Abonoteichus. ) and others like them were numerous in the city; and he would never deliver an oracle to an Amastrian. Once when he did venture to make a prediction for a senator’s brother, he acquitted himself ridiculously, since he could neither compose a clever response himself nor find anyone else who could do it in time. The man complained of colic, and Alexander, wishing to direct him to eat a pig’s foot cooked with mallow, said :

Mallow with cummin digest in a sacred pipkin of piglets.

Again and again, as I said before, he exhibited the serpent to all who requested it, not in its entirety, but exposing chiefly the tail and the rest of the body and keeping the head out of sight under his arm. But as he wished to astonish the crowd still more, he promised to produce the god talking—delivering oracles in person without a prophet. It was no difficult matter for him to fasten cranes’ windpipes together and pass them through the head, which he had so fashioned as to be lifelike. Then he answered the questions through someone else, who spoke into the tube from the outside, so that the voice issued from his canvas Asclepius.[*](S. Hippolytus (l.c., 28) mentions a tube made of windpipes of cranes, storks, or swans, and used in a similar way. Du Soul has a note in the Hemsterhuys-Reitz Lucian (ii, p. 234), telling of a wooden head constructed by Thomas Irson and exhibited to Charles I, which answered questions in any language and produced a great effect until a confederate was detected using a speaking-tube in the next room. Du Soul had the story from Irson himself. )

These oracles were called autophones, and were not given to everybody promiscuously, but only to

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those who were noble, rich, and free-handed.

For example, the oracle given to Severianus in regard to his invasion of Armenia was one of the autophones. Alexander encouraged him to the invasion by saying :

Under your charging spear shall fall Armenians and Parthi;
Then you shall fare to Rome and the glorious waters of Tiber
Wearing upon your brow the chaplet studded with sunbeams.[*](The corona radiata, worn by Augustus, Nero, and the emperors after Caracalla. This passage seems to point to its use (in addition to the laurel wreath?) as one of the triumphal insignia. )

Then when that silly Celt, being convinced, made the invasion and ended by getting himself and his army cut to bits by Osroes, Alexander expunged this oracle from his records and inserted another in its place :

Better for you that your forces against Armenia march not,
Lest some man, like a woman bedight, despatch from his bowstring
Grim death, cutting you off from life and enjoyment of sunlight.[*](The Parthians had been interfering with the succession to the throne in Armenia. Severianus, Roman governor of Cappadocia, entered Armenia with a small force in 161, and was disastrously defeated at Elegeia by Chosroes. Accordin to Dio Cassius (71, 2) the entire force was surrounded an wiped out. See also Lucian, de Hist. Conscrib, 21, 24, 25. )

That was one of his devices, and a very clever one—belated oracles to make amends for those in which he had made bad predictions and missed the mark. Often he would promise good health to sick

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men before their demise, and when they died another oracle would be ready with a recantation :

Seek no more for assistance against thy bitter affliction ;
Death now standeth in view ; ’tis beyond thy power to’scape him.

As he was aware that the priests at Clarus and Didymi and Mallus were themselves in high repute for the same sort of divination, he made them his friends by sending many of his visitors to them, saying:

Now unto Clarus begone, to the voice of my father[*](Apollo. ) to hearken.”

and at another time,

Visit the fane of the Branchids and hear what the oracle sayeth,

and again,

Make thy way unto Mallus and let Amphilochus answer.

So far, we have been concerned with his doings near the frontier, extending over Ionia, Cilicia, Paphlagonia, and Galatia. But when the renown of his prophetic shrine spread to Italy and invaded the city of Rome, everybody without exception, each on the other’s heels, made haste, some to go in person, some to send; this was the case particularly with those who had the greatest power and the highest rank in the city. The first and foremost of these was Rutilianus,[*](P. Mummius Sisenna Rutilianus. What office he then held (see below) is uncertain. He eventually went through the whole cursus honorum, including the consulship (probably suffect) and the governorship of Upper Moesia, and ending, about a.D. 170, with the proconsulship of the province of Asia. ) who, though a man of birth and

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breeding, put to the proof in many Roman offices, nevertheless in all that concerned the gods was very infirm and held strange beliefs about them. If he but saw anywhere a stone smeared with holy oil or adorned with a wreath,[*](For the Greek worship of stones, see Frazer’s Pausanias, vol. iv, 154 sq.; v, 314 sq., 354. In the note last cited he quotes Arnobius adv. Nationes 1, 39: si quando conspexeram lubricatam lapidem et exolivi unguine sordidatam, tamquam inesset vis praesens adulabar adfabar, beneficia poscebam nihil sentiente de trunco. Add Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 7, 4, 26: πᾶν ξύλον καὶ πάντα λίθον τὸ δὴ λεγόμενον λιπαρὸν προσκυνοῦντες. ) he would fall on his face forthwith, kiss his hand, and stand beside it for a long time making vows and craving blessings from it.

When this man heard the tales about the oracle, he very nearly abandoned the office which had been committed to him and took wing to Abonoteichus. Anyhow, he sent one set of messengers after another, and his emissaries, mere illiterate serving-people, were easily deluded, so when they came back, they told not only what they had seen but what they had heard as if they had seen it, and threw in something more for good measure, so as to gain favour with their master. Consequently, they inflamed the poor old man and made him absolutely crazy.

Having many powerful friends, he went about not only telling what he had heard from his messengers but adding still more on his own account. So he flooded and convulsed the city, and agitated most of the court, who themselves at once hastened to go and hear something that concerned them.

To all who came, Alexander gave a very cordial reception, made them think well of him by lavish entertainment and expensive presents, and sent

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them back not merely to report the answers to their questions, but to sing the praises of the god and to tell portentous lies about the oracle on their own account.

At the same time, however, the plaguy scoundrel devised a trick which was really clever and not what one would expect of your ordinary swindler. In opening and reading the forwarded scrolls, if he found anything dangerous and venturesome in the questions, he would keep them himself and not send them back, in order to hold the senders in subjection and all but in slavery because of their fear, since they remembered what it was that they had asked. You understand what questions are likely to be put by men who are rich and very powerful. So he used to derive much gain from those men, who knew that he had them in his net.

I should like to tell you some of the responses that were given to Rutilianus. Asking about his son by a former marriage, who was then in the full bloom of youth, he enquired who should be appointed his tutor in his studies, The reply was:

Be it Pythagoras ; aye, and the good bard, master of warfare.

Then after a few days the boy died, and Alexander was at his wit’s end, with nothing to say to his critics, as the oracle had been shown up so obviously. But Rutilianus himself, good soul, made haste to defend the oracle by saying that the god had predicted precisely this outcome, and on account of it had bidden him to select as his tutor nobody then alive, but rather Pythagoras and Homer, who died long ago, with whom, no doubt, the lad was then studying

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in Hades. What fault, then, should we find with Alexander if he thought fit to amuse himself at the expense of such homunculi ?

At another time, when Rutilianus enquired whose soul he had inherited, the reply was :

Peleus’ son wert thou at the first ; thereafter Menander,
Then what thou seemest now, and hereafter shalt turn to a sunbeam.
Four score seasons of life shall be given thee over a hundred.

But as a matter of fact he died insane at seventy without awaiting the fulfilment of the god’s promise !

This oracle too was one of the autophones. When one time he enquired about getting married, Alexander said explicitly :

Take Alexander’s daughter to wife, who was born of Selene.

He had long before given out a story to the effect that his daughter was by Selene; for Selene had fallen in love with him on seeing him asleep once upon a time—it is a habit of hers, you know, to adore handsome lads in their sleep!+ Without any hesitation that prince of sages Rutilianus sent for the girl at once, celebrated his nuptials as a sexagenarian bridegroom, and took her to wife, propitiating his mother-in-law, the moon, with whole hecatombs and imagining that he himself had become one of the Celestials !

No sooner did Alexander get Italy in hand than he began to devise projects that were ever greater and greater, and sent oracle-mongers everywhere in

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the Roman Empire, warning the cities to be on their guard against plagues and conflagrations and earthquakes ; he promised that he would himself afford them infallible aid so that none of these calamities should befall them. There was one oracle, also an autophone, which he despatched to all the nations during the pestilence[*](The terrible plague which swept the whole Empire about A.D. 165. ); it was but a single verse :

Phoebus, the god unshorn, keepeth off plague’s nebulous onset.

This verse was to be seen everywhere written over doorways as a charm against the plague; but in most cases it had the contrary result. By some chance it was particularly the houses on which the verse was inscribed that were depopulated! Do not suppose me to mean that they were stricken on account of the verse—by some chance or other it turned out that way, and perhaps, too, people neglected precautions because of their confidence in the line and lived too carelessly, giving the oracle no assistance against the disease because they were going to have the syllables to defend them and “unshorn Phoebus” to drive away the plague with his arrows!

Moreover, Alexander posted a great number of his fellow-conspirators in Rome itself as his agents, who reported everyone’s views to him and gave him advance information about the questions and the especial wishes of those who consulted him, so that the messengers might find him ready to answer even before they arrived !

He made these preparations to meet the situation in Italy, and also made notable preparations at home.

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He established a celebration of mysteries, with torchlight ceremonies and priestly offices, which was to be held annyally, for three days in succession, in perpetuity. On the first day, as at Athens,[*](The reference is to the proclamation that preceded the Eleusinian mysteries. Its entire content is unknown, but it reqnuired that the celebrants be clean of hand, pure of heart, and Greek in speech. Barbarians, homicides, and traitors were excluded; and there was some sort of restriction in regard to previous diet. ) there was a proclamation, worded as follows: “If any atheist or Christian or Epicurean has come to spy upon the rites, let him be off, and let those who believe in the god perform the mysteries, under the blessing of Heaven.” Then, at the very outset, there was an “expulsion,” in which he took the lead, saying: “Out with the Christians,” and the whole multitude chanted in response, “Out with the Epicureans!” Then there was the child-bed of Leto, the birth of Apollo, his marriage to Coronis, and the birth of Asclepius. On the second day came the manifestation of Glycon, including the birth of the god.

On the third day there was the union of Podaleirius and the mother of Alexander—it was called the Day of Torches, and torches were burned. In conclusion there was the amour of Selene and Alexander, and the birth of Rutilianus’ wife. The torch-bearer and hierophant was our Endymion, Alexander. While he lay in full view, pretending to be asleep, there came down to him from the roof, as if from heaven, not Selene but Rutilia, a very pretty woman, married to one of the Emperor’s stewards. She was genuinely in love with Alexander and he with her ; and before the eyes of her worthless husband there were kisses and embraces in public. If the torches

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had not been numerous, perhaps the thing would have been carried even further. After a short time Alexander entered again, robed as a priest, amid profound silence, and said in a loud voice, over and over again, “Hail, Glycon,” while, following in his train, a number of would-be Eumolpids and Ceryces[*](Hereditary priesthoods in the Eleusinian mysteries. ) from Paphlagonia, with brogans on their feet and breaths that reeked of garlic, shouted in response, “Hail, Alexander!”

Often in the course of the torchlight ceremonies and the gambols of the mysteries his thigh was bared purposely and showed golden. No doubt gilded leather had been put about it, which gleamed in the light of the cressets. There was once a discussion between two of our learned idiots in regard to him, whether he had the soul of Pythagoras, on account of the golden thigh, or some other soul akin to it.[*](As Pythagoras had a golden thigh (Plutarch, Numa, 65 ; Aelian, Var. Hist., 2, 26), a believer in metempsychosis might think that Alexander was a reincarnation of Pythagoras, ) They referred this question to Alexander himself, and King Glycon resolved their doubt with an oracle :

Nay, Pythagoras’ soul now waneth and other times waxeth ;
His, with prophecy gifted, from God’s mind taketh its issue, ;
Sent by the Father to aid good men in the stress of the conflict ;
Then it to God will return, by God’s own thunderbolt smitten.