Alexander

No doubt, my dear Celsus,[*](The scholiast thinks this Celsus the writer of the True Word, an attack upon Christianity, to which Origen replied in his eight books contra Celsum. He is certainly identical with the man whom Origen himself believed to be the author of that work, who, he says, was an Epicurean living under Hadrian and the Antonines, author also of a treatise against sorcery (vide c. 21 and note). And the True Word itself, a large part of which is preserved in Origen, seems to have been written about a.d. 180. But as Origen is not sure who wrote it, and as it is considered Platonic rather than Epicurean in character, the prevailing opinion is that its author is not the Celsus of Lucian, but an otherwise unknown Platonist of the same name and date. ) you think it a slight and trivial matter to bid me set down in a book and send you the history of Alexander, the impostor of Abonoteichus, including all his clever schemes, bold emprises, and sleights of hand; but in point of fact, if one should aim to examine each detail closely, it would be no less a task than to record the exploits of Philip’s son Alexander. The one was as great in ' villainy as the other in heroism. Nevertheless, if it should be your intention to overlook faults as you read, and to fill out for yourself the gaps in my tale, I will undertake the task for you and will essay to clean up that Augean stable, if not wholly, yet to the extent of my ability, fetching out some few basketsful, so that from them you may judge how great, how inexpressible, was the entire quantity

I blush for both of us, I confess, both for you and for myself—for you because you want a consummate rascal perpetuated in memory and in writing, and for myself because I am devoting my energy to such an end, to the exploits of a man who does not deserve to have polite people read about him, but rather to have the motley crowd in a vast amphitheatre see him being torn to pieces by foxes or apes. Yet if anyone brings this reproach against us, we shall be able to refer to an apt precedent. Arrian, the disciple of Epictetus, a Roman of the highest distinction, and a life-long devotee of letters, laid himself open to the same charge, and so can plead our cause as well as his own; he thought fit, you know, to record the life of Tillorobus, the brigand.[*](There is no life of Tillorobus among the extant writings of Arrian, and we know nothing of him from any other source. His name is given in the y group of MSS. as Tilliborus, but compare C.I.L. vi, 15295. ) In our own case, however, we shall commemorate a far more savage brigand, since our hero plied his trade not in forests and mountains, but in cities, and instead of infesting just Mysia and Mount Ida and harrying a few of the more deserted districts of Asia, he filled the whole Roman Empire, I may say, with his brigandage.

First I shall draw you a word-picture of the man himself, making as close a likeness as I can, although I am not particularly good at drawing. As regards his person—in order that I may exhibit this also to ou—he was tall and handsome in appearance, and really godlike ; his skin was fair, his beard not very

Such, then, was his outward appearance ; but his soul and his mind—O Heracles Forfender ! O Zeus, Averter of Mischief! O Twin Brethren, our Saviours ! may it be the fortune of our enemies and ill-wishers to encounter and have to do with the like of him! In understanding, quick-wittedness, and penetration he was far beyond everyone else; and activity of mind, readiness to learn, retentiveness, natural aptitude for studies—all these qualities were his, in every case to the full. But he made the worst possible use of them, and with these noble instruments at his service soon became the most perfect rascal of all those who have been notorious far and wide for villainy, surpassing the Cercopes, surpassing Eurybatus, or Phrynondas, or Aristodemus, or Sostratus.[*](The Cercopes were two impish pests who crossed the ath of Heracles to their disadvantage. For the little that is known about the other typical rascals, see the Index. )_ He himself, writing to his son-in-law Rutilianus once upon a time and speaking of himself with the greatest reserve, claimed to be like Pythagoras; but— with all due respect to Pythagoras, a wise man of more than human intelligence—if he had been this man’s contemporary, he would have seemed a child, I am very sure, beside him In the name of the Graces, do not imagine that I say this to insult Pythagoras, or in the endeavour to bring

While he was still a mere boy, and a very handsome one, as could be inferred from the sere and yellow leaf of him, and could also be learned by hearsay from those who recounted his story, he trafficked freely in his attractiveness and sold his company to those who sought it. Among others, he had an admirer who was a quack, one of those who advertise enchantments, miraculous incantations, charms for your love-affairs, “sendings”[*](The word is borrowed from Kipling. A “sending” is a “visitation,” seen from a different point of view. ) for your enemies, disclosures of buried treasure, and successions to estates. As this man saw that he was an apt lad, more than ready to assist him in his affairs, and

1. Many a drug that was good in a compound, and many a bad one,

Alexander was just getting his beard when the death of the Tyanean put him in a bad way, since it coincided with the passing of his beauty, by which he might have supported himself. So he abandoned petty projects for ever. He formed a partnership with a Byzantine writer of choral songs, one of those who enter the public competitions, far more abominable than himself by nature—Cocconas,[*](Cocconas comes from κόκκων (modern Greek κουκουνάρι), pine-kernel, seed, nut. Cf. Anth. Pal, 12, 222. ) I think, was his nickname,—and they went about the country practising quackery and sorcery, and “trimming the fatheads”—for so they style the public in the traditional patter of magicians. Well, among these they hit upon a rich Macedonian woman, past her prime but still eager to be charming, and not only lined their purses fairly well at her expense, but went with her from Bithynia to Macedon. She

There they saw great serpents, quite tame and gentle, so that they were kept by women, slept with children, let themselves be stepped upon, were not angry when they were stroked, and took milk from the breast just like babies. There are many such in the country, and that, probably, is what gave currency in former days to the story about Olympias ; no doubt a serpent of that sort slept with her when she was carrying Alexander.[*](The story was that Alexander was the son of Zeus, who had visited Olympias in the form of a serpent. ) So they bought one of the reptiles, the finest, for a few coppers;

and, in the words of Thucydides: ‘Here beginneth the war!”[*](Thucydides ii, 1. )

As you might have expected of two consummate rascals, greatly daring, fully prepared for mischief, who had put their heads together, they readily discerned that human life is swayed by two great tyrants, hope and fear, and that a man who could use both of these to advantage would speedily enrich himself. For they perceived that both to one who fears and to one who hopes, foreknowledge is very essential and very keenly coveted, and that long ago not only Delphi, but Delos and Clarus and Branchidae, had become rich and famous because, thanks to the tyrants just mentioned, hope and fear, men continually visited their sanctuaries and sought to learn the future in advance, and to that end sacrificed hecatombs and dedicated ingots of gold. By turning all this round and round in conference .with one

Then they began planning, first about the place, and next, what should be the commencement and the character of the venture. Cocconas thought Chalcedon a suitable and convenient place, close to Thrace and Bithynia, and not far, too, from Asia[*](Asia here and elsewhere in this piece refers to the Roman province of Asia—western Asia Minor. ) and Galatia and all the peoples of the interior. Alexander, on the other hand, preferred his own home, saying—and it was true—that to commence such a venture they needed “fat-heads”’ and simpletons to be their victims, and such, he said, were the Paphlagonians who lived up above Abonoteichus, who were for the most part superstitious and rich; whenever a man but turned up with someone at his heels to play the flute or the tambourine or the cymbals, telling fortunes with a sieve, as the phrase goes,[*](Proverbial for cheap trickery. Artemidorus (Drean-book 1, 69) says that “if you dream of Pythagoreans, physiognomonics, astragalomants, tyromants, gyromants, coscinomants, morphoscopes, chiroscopes, lecanomants, or necyomants, you must consider all that they say false and unreliable; for their trades are such. They do not know even a little bit about prophecy, but fleece their patrons by charlatanism and fraud.” Oneiromants may of course be trusted !The few allusions to coscinomancy in the ancients give no clue to the method used. As practised in the sixteenth—seventeenth century, to detect thieves, disclose one’s future wife, etc., the sieve was either suspended by a string or more commonly balanced on the top of a pair of tongs set astride the joined middle fingers of the two hands (or of two persons) ; then, after an incantation, a list of names was repeated, and the one upon which the sieve stirred was the one indicated by fate. Or the sieve, when suspended, might be set spinning ; and then the name it stopped on was designated. See, in particular, Johannes Praetorius, de Coscinomantia, Oder vom Sieb-Lauffe, etc., Curiae Variscorum, 1677.)

There was no slight difference of opinion between them on that score, but in the end Alexander won, and going to Chalcedon, since after all that city seemed to them to have some usefulness, in the temple of Apollo, which is the most ancient in Chalcedon, they buried bronze tablets which said that very soon Asclepius, with his father Apollo, would move to Pontus and take up his residence at Abonoteichus. The opportune discovery of these tablets caused this story to spread quickly to all Bithynia and Pontus, and to Abonoteichus sooner than anywhere else. Indeed, the people of that city immediately voted to build a temple and began at once to dig for the foundations. Then Cocconas was left behind in Chalcedon, composing equivocal, ambiguous, obscure oracles, and died before long, bitten, I think, by a viper.

It was Alexander who was sent in first; he now wore his hair long, had falling ringlets, dressed in a parti-coloured tunic of white and purple, with a white cloak over it, and carried a falchion like that of Perseus, from whom he claimed descent on his mother’s side. And although those miserable Paphlagonians knew that both his parents were obscure, humble folk, they believed the oracle when it said: “Here in your sight is a scion of Perseus, dear unto Phoebus ; This is divine Alexander, who shareth the blood of the Healer!”

1. On the shores of the Euxine sea, in the neighbourhood of Sinope,
2. There shall be born, by a Tower, in the days of the Romans, a prophet ;
3. After the foremost unit and three times ten, he will shew forth
4. Five more units besides, and a score told three times over,
5. Matching, with places four, the name of a valiant defender  is αλεξ (alex). Alexander seems to have been a little afraid that some rival might steal his thunder if he were not more specific: at all events the first two words of the last line give, in the Greek, the entire name (andros-alex). )

Well, upon invading his native land with all this pomp and circumstance after a long absence, Alexander was a man of mark and note, affecting as he did to have occasional fits of madness and causing his mouth to fill with foam. This he easily managed by chewing the root of soapwort, the plant that dyers use; but to his fellow-countrymen even the foam seemed supernatural and awe-inspiring. Then, too, they had long ago prepared and fitted up a serpent’s head of linen, which had something

When at length it was time to begin, he contrived an ingenious ruse. Going at night to the foundations of the temple which were just being excavated, where a pool of water had gathered which either issued from springs somewhere in the foundations themselves or had fallen from the sky, he secreted there a goose-egg, previously blown, which contained a snake just born ; and after burying it deep in the mud, he went back again. In the morning he ran out into the market-place naked, wearing a loin-cloth-(this too was gilded),[*](Why “this too”? The hilt of the falchion may have been gilt, but Lucian has not said so. Perhaps Lucian is thinking of Alexander’s golden thigh (c. 40), and forgets that he has not yet told us of it. ) carrying his falchion, and tossing his unconfined mane like a devotee of the Great Mother in the frenzy. Addressing the people from a high altar upon which he had climbed, he congratulated the city because it was at once to receive the god in visible presence. The assembly—for almost the whole city, including women, old men, and boys, had come running— marvelled, prayed and made obeisance. Uttering a few meaningless words like Hebrew or Phoenician, he dazed the creatures, who did not know what he

Then he ran at full speed to the future temple, went to the excavation and the previously improvised fountain-head of the oracle, entered the water, sang hymns in honour of Asclepius and Apollo at the top of his voice, and besought the god, under the blessing of Heaven, to come to the city. Then he asked for a libationsaucer, and when somebody handed him one, deftly slipped it underneath and brought up, along with water and mud, that egg in which he had immured the god; the joint about the plug had been closed with wax and white lead. Taking it in his hands, he asserted that at that moment he held Asclepius! They gazed unwaveringly to see what in the world was going to happen; indeed, they had already marvelled at the discovery of the egg in the water. But when he broke it and received the tiny snake into his hollowed hand, and the crowd saw it moving and twisting about his fingers, they at once raised a shout, welcomed the god, congratulated their city, and began each of them to sate himself greedily with prayers, craving treasures, riches, health, and every other blessing from him. But Alexander went home again at full speed, taking with him the new-born Asclepius, “born twice, when other men are born but once,”[*](Cf. Odyssey, 12, 22: “Men of two deaths, when other men die but once.” ) whose mother was not Coronis,[*]("Some say that the mother of Asclepius was not Arsinoe, daughter of Leucippus, but Coronis, daughter of Phlegyas” (Apollodorus, 3, 10, 3). ) by Zeus, nor yet a crow, but a goose! And the whole population followed, all full of religious fervour and crazed with expectations.

For some days he remained at home, expecting what actually happened—that as the news spread, crowds of Paphlagonians would come running in. When the city had become over-full of people, all of them already bereft of their brains and sense, and not in the least like bread-eating humans, but different from beasts of the field only in their looks, he seated himself on a couch in a certain chamber, clothed in apparel well suited to a god, and took into his bosom his Asclepius from Pella, who, as I have said, was of uncommon size and beauty.[*](There was special significance in this performance. “Anyhow, ‘God in the bosom’ is a countersign of the mysteries of Sabazius to the adepts. This is a snake, passed through the bosom of the initiates” Clement of Alexandria, Protrept, 1, 2, 16, )_ Coiling him about his neck, and letting the tail, which was long, stream over his lap and drag part of its length on the floor, he concealed only the head by holding it under his arm—the creature would submit to anything—and showed the linen head at one side of his own beard, as if it certainly belonged to the creature that was in view.

Now then, please imagine a little room, not very bright and not admitting any too much daylight ; also, a crowd of heterogeneous humanity, excited, wonder-struck in advance, agog with hopes. When they went in, the thing, of course, seemed to them a miracle, that the formerly tiny snake within a few days had turned into so great a serpent, with a human face, moreover, and tame! They were immediately crowded towards the exit, and before they could look closely were forced out by those who kept coming in, for another dovr

In that matter, dear Celsus, to tell the truth, we must excuse those men of Paphlagonia and Pontus, thick-witted, uneducated fellows that they were, for being deluded when they touched the serpent— Alexander let anyone do so who wished—and besides saw in a dim light what purported to be its head opening and shutting its mouth. Really the trick stood in need of a Democritus, or even Epicurus himself or Metrodorus, or someone else with a mind as firm as adamant toward such matters, so as to disbelieve and guess the truth-— one who, if he could not discover how it went, would at all events be convinced beforehand that though the method of the fraud escaped him, it was nevertheless all sham and could not possibly happen.

Little by little, Bithynia, Galatia, and Thrace came pouring in, for everyone who carried the news very likely said that he not only had seen the god born but had subsequently touched him, after he had grown very great in a short time and had a face that looked like a man’s. Next came paintings and statues and cult-images, some made of bronze, some of silver, and naturally a name was bestowed

1. Glycon am I, the grandson of Zeus, bright beacon to mortals!

When it was time to carry out the purpose for which the whole scheme had been concocted—that is to say, to make predictions and give oracles to those who sought them—taking his cue from Amphilochus in Cilicia, who, as you know, after the death and disappearance of his father Amphiaraus at Thebes,[*](In speaking of the “death and disappearance” of Amphiaraus, Lucian is rationalizing the myth, according to which Zeus clove the earth with a thunderbolt and it swallowed him up alive (Pindar, Nem. 9, 57). ) was exiled from his own country, went to Cilicia, and got on very well by foretelling the future, like his father, for the Cilicians and getting two obols for each prediction—taking, as I say, his cue from him, Alexander announced to all comers that the god would make prophecies, and named a date for it in advance. He directed everyone to write down in a scroll whatever he wanted and what he especially wished to learn, to tie it up, and to seal it with wax or clay or something else of that sort. Then he himself, after taking the scrolls and entering the inner sanctuary—for by that time the temple had been erected and the stage set—proposed to summon in order, with herald and priest, those who had submitted them, and after the god told him about each case, to give back the scroll with the seal upon it, just as it was, and the reply to it endorsed upon it; for the god would reply explicitly to any question that anyone should put.

As a matter of fact, this trick, to a man like you, and if it is not out of place to say so, like myself also, was obvious and easy to see through, but to those drivelling idiots it was miraculous and almost as good as incredible. Having discovered various ways of undoing the seals, he would read all the questions and answer them as he thought best. Then he would roll up the scrolls again, seal them, and give them back, to the great astonishment of the recipients, among whom the comment was frequent: “Why, how did he learn the questions which I gave him very securely sealed with impressions hard to counterfeit, unless there was really some god that knew everything?”