Christianity
Lucian on Christians and other Charlatans
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Monday, December 10, 2001
Christians and Charlatans
Christians want to know nothing about the origins of their church except what they are allowed to know. Digging about at the roots of Christianity, they think, will uproot and kill the plant. Not much faith in a strong plant there, you might conclude. Instead of expressing this fear honestly, they make affirmative statements about things they do not know, such as “the church was a new ideal” sent to “deliver humanity from the poison of Paganism.” They have nothing other than faith as grounds for saying this and faith is not evidence. Without evidence to support such statements they are simply lies! Most Christians know nothing about Paganism, and determine that they will know nothing about it, yet they will pronounce on it in fervent ignorance.
Christians find it hard to read anything that is critical of their superstition, even the work of writers of the later classical age like Celsus and Lucian, who were writing about the exploitative superstitions of their age, and included Christianity almost incidentally as one of many. They will attentatively read the Church fathers without having much clue about what they were talking about. More enlightened men, even some Christians, urge that the nature of the society in which Christianity took its first steps cannot be properly understood only from Christian sources.
Christianity grew in a Pagan world in which the common people that Christians aimed to convert were boundlessly superstitious and ignorant, and charlatans, conjurers and mountebanks filled their endless desire for the supernatural with trickery and illusion. No Christians, however they might be devoted to their modern faith, should make any mistake that what started it was considerably different from the faith they now have. Most professional Christians of whatever denomination are themselves scared to know the history of their religion, and, if they know it, are determined that their sheep will be given an utterly false picture of it or not be told at all.
Unless the brain with its appendages that supply it with data is deemed an organ added by the devil to God’s image in mankind, they should accept that it must reflect some similar characteristic of God Himself. The human brain, in short, is what God intended His reflexions to have. Anyone who refuses to use it on the grounds that it offers the devil access to the soul is insulting their own Creator, is accepting what is likely to be devilish propaganda to keep them from the truth, and cannot expect to be saved.
The early Christians appealed to the ignorant to believe and not to reason, while their Pagan critics said God could only be understood by the use of the brain. It is the failure of Christians to use the best organ that God has given them, throughout Christian history, that has left them open to the devil, and led them to harass and murder innocent people, whether believers as heretics, or unbelievers as Pagans, leaving the Christians pages of the Book of Life stained with blood and human ashes. By turning to the critics of Christianity and not only reading controversy from one side only, they might—just might—get an inkling that smug and self-deluding belief is not sufficient for decent people in life even if they think they will be saved after it.
Apollonius
Quacks and conjurers pretending to have some special access to the spirit world have always been with us, and are even met in the New Testament, although Christians deny that they are among them because they actually do have access to the spirit world! In the early days of Christianity, believers believed that their rivals were also in touch with supernatural entities—not God and his angels, but “daimones,” the old gods of the Pagans whom Christians said had once had power but this had been suppressed by the Son.
Certainly common people in the first few centuries AD seem to have been ready to believe any wonders at all, and the biblical Simon Magus was supposed to have been a favourite in Nero’s court. Celsus says that magicians and conjurers entertained people in every market place and some scarcely bothered to pretend thay were sincere, yet crowds flocked to see them and believe! The chief breeding ground was Asia Minor where Persian and Greek traditions met the Semites leaving Babylonia and the Levant, yielding a preponderance of of magic, mysticism and eschatology couched in philosophical terms. Apollonius of Tyana was the best known of them. Froude writes, “Unfortunately, his life has been written by believers in his pretensions,” as if to remind Christians.
Philostratus says Apollonius was appointed from heaven to teach a pure and reformed religion, and to prove it, he went about healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out devils and accurately prophesying future events. Though he was a contemporary of Jesus, Christians say he was copying their own hero. The evidence is that both were described in terms of a common type of market place performer, more common then than buskers are today, though few were good enough to be remembered. Apollonius was so good, he was extensively recognized in his lifetime, something Jesus was not, and which, unlike Jesus’s, was a long one.
He was born in 4 BC, the date favoured by many for the birth of Jesus, in Tyana, a city in Cappadocia, north west of Syria in what is now modern Turkey. He was educated in Tarsus, the nearest metropolis and “no mean city” according to Paul the apostle “to the gentiles” who was born there, and must have been a near contemporary there of Apollonius.
The wealth and luxury of Tarsus did not suit Apollonius. He rejected wine and meat for water and vegetables, and sought enlightenment at the temple of Æsculapius at Ægae. The god, Æsculapius was the model of all healing magicians including Jesus who took several of his titles. He was popular as the god of healing, was noted for miraculous recoveries and was often seen ministering in person at the bedside of desperately sick people who often thereby did miraculously recover.
Temples to Æsculapius were in effect what we would call community medical centers or hospitals, where people sought treatment, and those who were attached to them as novice priests were taught medicine. Apollonius was effectively trained there as a doctor. When his father died, Apollonius gave away his inheritance to the poor, and, after five years of reflexion, he took off to India, where he learned from the Brahmins and returned with complementary skills like juggling with which he could attract a crowd in the forum.
He was said to have been in Rome during Nero’s reign so was a contemporary there of Peter, Paul and Simon Magus. Some people say Apollonius was Simon Magus, although Paul has the better claim, if any of them are to be identified. Peter is supposed to have matched his power against Simon Magus, succeeding because God was stronger than the devil, a story which sounds like a legendary explanation of the rivalry between Paul and Peter offered at a time before Paul was accepted widely in the church.
When Nero was murdered, Apollonius supported Vespasian in Egypt, and Vespasian became his patron. Vespasian was himself accredited with healing power, and it is tempting to imagine that Apollonius taught him some useful medical tips. Apollonius became the spiritual adviser to the Vespasian family, even though he was, by then, an old man in his seventies.
The savagery of Domitian however shocked him and he obviously offended the emperor, being accused of plotting with his rival, Nerva. Worse, he was charged with sacrificing a child to the gods in Nerva’s favour, and with claiming to be a god himself. Summoned to court to face the charges, he simply disappeared in the middle of the proceedings, reappearing hundreds of miles away in Ephesus, where he died shortly afterwards aged about 100. At Ephesus in these last few days, he must have been a contemprary of that John who supposedly wrote a gospel, some letters and a mystical book called Revelation.
Soon after a temple was raised to Apollonius at Tyana, which became a privileged city, and thereafter he was honoured widely. He was obviously a remarkable man with genuine medical skills, a powerful personal charisma, and a variety of conjuring tricks up his sleeve, but most obviously he had a philosophic wisdom and the gravitas to put it over with conviction.
Apollonius of Tyana, among many others, was looked upon through a large part of the Roman empire as an emanation of the divine nature. Such periods are the opportunities of false prophets. Mankind, when they grow enthusiastic, mistake their hopes and imaginations for evidence of truth, and run like sheep after every new pretender who professes to hold the key of the mystery which they are so passionately anxious to penetrate.J A Froude
Froude’s comments, as they often do, can be taken as applying equally to the earliest Christians. Apollonius had his disciples too, one of whom was said to have been Alexander of Abonotichus, who was exposed as a fraud by Lucian of Samosata, just as he exposed Peregrinus.
Lucian
Lucian is often painted as the Satan among Pagan critics of Christianity. It is true that Lucian had a poor view of Christianity, but the only reference to it considered genuine among his works is that he speaks of Christians as a simple-minded sect whose individual credulity made them easy dupes of quacks and charlatans. Perhaps that is enough for Christians to hate him, but otherwise what is anti-Christian he did not write, being works spuriously attached to him even though they might be none the less true. The reason is that Christianity was one of thousands of sects arising in late Hellenism. Lucian therefore did not spend his time primarily attacking Christians, but false religions of any kind. Because there were so many he concentrated on the most popular ones or the most blatant.
Curiously, by dint of Christian exclusiveness, Christians and the skeptical critics of religion, like Lucian, were mainly on the same side, but for quite different reasons, and neither would have sought the other as an ally. When skeptics did consider Christianity, as Celsus did in True Word, they saw it in the same category as other bogus religions, and the obsession of Christians with the “hidden world” led to them classifying skeptics as atheists, even though many had a notion of God far nobler than the Hebrew butcher.
Lucian mocked folly and imposture, and the bishops recognized that their own “beliefs” fell into that category. They could not be expected to thank him for it. To Christians, the Pagan cults were the worship of devils, while to Lucian they were dishonest scams. Christians had labelled all of the Pagan deities as evil agents of the devil, so, their perfectly honourable name, “daimones,” became to the Christians a word equal to a devil, and now all nasty little imps are demons. But the Christian religion was based on the same supernatural ideas as Paganism. All believed in an immortal soul and spirits of various kinds, but the rationalists like the Epicureans, could not accept that the gods turned to trickery to convince their servants.
Lucian refused to believe that anything false could be uplifting or salvific, so anything shown to be false was not. He was devoted to truth above illusion, and reason above unquestioning belief, equivalent to persuading people to sell what was not their own. Magic and thaumaturgy was widely popular among the ignorant masses, and magicians could even fool emperors, but Christians will refuse to see a role for magic in the beginning of Christianity. Yet Origen in the third century believed in it and proved that Yehouah was the true god because spells cast in His name worked but cast in the name of the other gods, they did not!
Lucian was born at Samosata on the Euphrates about 120 AD, and was a friend and admirer of Celsus. Both considered Apollonius a fraud, and Celsus wrote a major work to expose eastern magicians like him. Lucian was appointed by Marcus Aurelius to an important post in Egypt even though he was already elderly, and he served there and died at an old age. Professor J A Froude opines that his writings will be read with delight as long as human nature survives unchanged. Most Christians would rather not.
Lucian, they should know, mercilously criticizes Pagan sects from a rational viewpoint. Perhaps that is what dismays them. Had they asked him to consider the Christian claims that a Galilean builder had been born of a virgin, worked miracles, been crucified, descended to Hades, returned to life and ascended to heaven, he would have yawned and said, “Not another barmy sect?” He could have cited a hundred other sects with parallel or comparable beliefs. Already there were more than he could hope to expose, and new ones arose year by year.
Begin with 2000 sects at year 1 and eliminate one sect a year for 2000 years, until only one remains. It is called Christianity, and its believers claim it survived by God’s will. Yet one of them was bound to survive, and its followers could always claim whatever survived was God’s will. If it is true, then God multiples His reputation as a murderer because all of the incinerated heretics and witches have to be laid at God’s feet, and not at the feet of the fates.
Real history was simpler. After the Christians became the official religion of the Roman empire in the fourth century, its bishops set about banning all other religions. It succeeded in doing this and then set about abolishing all variants of itself that the main bunch of bishops decided they did not like. Though the church was largely successful at this, it never fully succeeded and eventually schism after schism spallated the church into the myriads of rival cults we have today, though only a few have large numbers of members.
None of this would have given Lucian any confidence that Christianity was the faith of the God of All, the rational god that he preferred. The Epicurean god was the Logos, or god of reason. The Christians took the word to apply to their Christ, but abandoned all thoughts of reason in favour of a typical religion of nostalgia and unfounded hope. Good men did not need to speculate on the detailed nature of God. Whatever He was, He was above all rational, and He expected good people to use their heads and be reasonable too. Irrationality is therefore wicked. Human purpose had to be to do good not evil. Reason helped people be good.
Peregrinus
Lucian exposed Peregrinus, who was, for part of his life at least, a prominent Christian. He was born at Parium near Lampsacus in Armenia and Lucian said he murdered his father. Having fled to a town in distant Palestine, he sought and was granted sanctuary among Christians who had a policy of recruiting sinners, which many of the ignorant bishops thought meant criminals.
How else could it be?—In a trice he made them all look like children, for he was a prophet, a cult leader, head of the synagogue and everything, all by himself!
After some time, Peregrinus became a professor of exegetical theology. He interpreted and revised some sacred texts, and wrote new ones and found himself their patron and a bishop…
…next after that other, to be sure, whom they still worship, the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced this new cult into the world.
In the periodic persecutions of Christians which arose, the bishops, being the leaders were often the main targets and he was thrown into prison on one such occasion. Christians came from the cities of Asia sent “at their common expense to succour and defend and encourage the hero.” His fellow Christians having bribed the jailor were able to provide for the imprisoned Peregrinus in some style until he was released. They took him elaborate meals and read aloud to him their sacred books. They even called him a new Socrates. “Much money” was raised by subscription for Peregrinus and “came to him by reason of his imprisonment, and he procured not a little revenue from it”
The poor wretches have convinced themselves first and foremost that they are going to be immortal, and live for all time, in consequence of which they despise death… Their first lawgiver persuaded them they are all brothers of one another after they have transgressed once and for all by denying the Greek gods and by worshipping that crucified sophist himself and living under his laws. Therefore they despise things indiscriminately and consider them common property, receiving such doctrines traditionally without any definite evidence. So, if any charlatan and trickster, able to profit by occasions, comes among them, he quickly acquires sudden wealth by imposing on simple folk.
Lucian says he returned home but found he was not forgotten as a murderer and “purchased the goodwill of his countrymen by giving all his property for public use.” It seems it was not sufficient and he had to leave again:
…to roam about, possessing an ample source of funds in the Christians, through whose ministrations he lived in unalloyed prosperity.
Shortly thereafter, though, he offended the Christian community he shared in, Lucian says by eating forbidden food, perhaps already a euphemism for scandal or heresy, and they expelled him. He took the journey to Rome where he earned a reputation with the mob for publicly insulting the emperor, Marcus Aurelius, who simply humoured the man, showing a tolerance that was disputed by Christians. Peregrinus lost favour with the mob, the novelty of his cynical jibes wearing off when the emperor did not rise to the bate, and whether in depression or desperation to attract fresh attention, he declared he would immolate himself at the next Olympiad (165 AD). Lucian implies that Peregrinus thought people would persuade him otherwise, but they took him at his word and waited eagerly to see what would happen.
Well, Peregrinus showed himself to be the stuff of martyrs because he had the pyre built and when it was good and hot leapt into the center of it and was incinerated. Lucian was present at the horrific event and waylaid by a latecomer eager to know the details, he described the incident adding that when Peregrinus disppeared into the flames, an eagle appeared and soared into the heavens. This story, which Lucian says he himself invented, passed into popular belief, and he says another man swore to him that he had seen it himself!
Alexander of Abonotichus
To please Celsus, Lucian undertook to find out about the career of Alexander of Abonotichus, and wrote it down in a work which still survives, doubtless because Alexander was not a Christian! Lucian is utterly contemptuous of Alexander from the beginning, saying his exploits would fill volumes but only a few basketfuls could be selected from the dungheap as examples. He ought to have been torn apart by apes in the arena, but instead had been able, through his wiles, to rob the whole Roman empire, and, if highwaymen could have popular biographies written about them, then a bigger rogue should have too.
Abonotichus was a small town on the Black Sea on the north shore of Asia Minor. a few miles west of Sinope. Alexander’s parents were low class and poor but the boy was unusually beautiful. He was apprenticed to a doctor who in Apollonius’s tradition of medicine. The old doctor could cure a stomache ache and a headache, and could set a broken limb, but he also—as they did—dealt in love potions, spells, divining by rod to discover treasure, lost wills and deeds, and could, for a large fee, mix an effective poison.
When Alexander was only twenty, the master died and Alexander inherited the practice, but the young man had ambition and confidence and departed to the west to Byzantium, to seek his fortune. There Alexander met a gambler and racing tipster called Cocconas who had many rich young gambling acquaintances. Cocconas introduced Aalexander to them, and the beautiful youth entered Byzantine society. He charmed a rich Macedonian woman from Pella—birthplace of Alexander the Great—while she was in the metropolis for the season, and, when she returned, she took Alexander and Cocconas with her to Pella.
Macedonia at the time was noted for a species of venomless snake that were so encouraged to keep down vermin that they almost became household pets. Children would play with them, and they would even seek the warmth of a bed without offending the householders. The miraculous birth of Alexander the Great by Zeus Amon in the form of a serpent, is perhaps based on this peculiarity. The two young men were impressed by these tame snakes, bought a large specimen and departed from Pella.
Earning a living by tipping winners and telling fortunes, they quickly realised that people were ready to pay out money for prophecies. They decided that they could be more successful at this if they set up an oracle like the old ones at Delphi and Delos. These had had a temporary resurgence in popularity around the beginning of the era, but the cryptic nature of the oracles was too abstract for most people who wanted their oracles generally in simple language.
Ordinary people were also dissatified with the state religions which were merely state spectacle and pomp, pleasing enough in themselves, but not supernaturally satisfying. The mystery religions insisted upon people of good character, mainly therefore from the upper classes, to initiate into their fraternities and sororities, while the philosophic views that intellectuals had as religions—like Epicureanism and Stoicism—were too abstract and lacking in supernatural content for the masses. Common people wanted the supernatural! Clever men therefore gave them it at a price. The clever men who supplied this demand could even feel they were doing it for the spiritual benefit of humanity.
If the Epicureans said there were no gods then the magicians would prove them wrong by offering simple folk just that—a god who would prophesy and amaze them, but that they could believe because they had seen it with their own eyes, and could not explain it. The conjurers would silence the atheistic intelligentsia, and those whose god was pure reason, by conjuring gods—and making good money in the bargain.
Æsculapius Incarnate
Cocconas wanted them to conduct the scam in a large place where there were plenty of customers, opting for Chalcedon, a thriving city of merchants and manufacturers, already a center of Christianity. Alexander demurred on the grounds that merchants were too smart and might be too skeptical, being worldly. He felt a country town like his own would be a better place at least to start because the country people were less quick-witted and more gullible, and theire was therefore a better chance of getting the scam off the ground and building themselvesd a following and a reputation that would then be less easy to question. He proposed somewhere in Phrygia, Bithynia, Cappadocia or Galatia, the place where Paul built his reputation.
Alexander gave the experience of his own small town, Abonotichus, where a man only had to appear with a fife and a drum, and clashing together cymbals, and the population would fall on their knees before him—just the accusation that Celsus placed at the door of the Christians. Alexander won out, and the pair decided to start at Abonotichus, since Alexander knew it well. They decided the god to be made flesh should be the popular god, Æsculapius. They did agree however to ensure a successful announcement of the appearance by tricking the people of Chalcedon first.
They contrived to secret some brass plates engraved with a declaration that Apollo and Æsculapius would visit Pontus (the north shore of Asia Minor), and Æsculapius would appear bodily at Abonotichus. They arranged for the plates to be accidentally discovered, and they became the talk of the agoras, while merchants spread the story more widely in Anatolia.
The people of Abonotichus were so flattered that they instituted a public collection to build the god a temple to receive him, and were so successful that they were able to start work immediately. At this point Cocconas died, apparently of snakebite, and Alexander was left to complete the scam himself. He returned to his hometown looking wild, but tall, handsome, majestic, with his blond hair long and flowing, fair of complexion, and with a beard that was partly false, but well matched in colour. He had large lustrous eyes, and had a reassuring and sweet voice.
Lucian adds that he was cunning, eager to learn, dextrous and had an extraordinary memory. He wore a purple tunic and a white cloak. He carried a falchion like that used by Perseus to slay Medusa. He chanted poems playing on anagrams of his own name, rolled his eyes and claimed that Perseus was his mother’s ancestor, and that an oracle had foretold a great future for him. He chewed soap wort to make him foam at the mouth as if possessed, and his former neighbours were astonished. They had known him and his parents without knowing his mother’s illustrious ancestry, but the prophecy of the oracle of a great future for the son of the town had to be true.
The snake throughout the east stood for healing because of its connotations of wisdom and immortality. Alexander had trained his tame snake to trust him so much that it would cling to his body motionless. He made for it a mask of linen, painted with the appearance of a human face, mouth agape which allowed the snake’s tongue to dart out. A horse hair device allowed him to subtly move the gape of the mouth to imitate the motions necessary for speech. The snake had been allowed to get accustomed to the mask and now wore it without distress.
Alexander had also blown out the contents of a goose egg, and put within it the embryo of a snake. He sealed the hole with wax and painted it with white lead. At the site of the temple to Æsculapius, recent rain had filled the footings with water. Alexander concealed the goose egg in one of these muddy trenches. In the morning Alexander appeared almost naked except for a gold scarfe around his midriff, raging and foaming at the mouth, brandishing his falchion and crying out incomprehendingly in the forum. When he had his audience he declared:
Blessed is the town of Abonotichus, and blessed are its inhabitants, for, this day, the prophecy is fulfilled. God will take his place among us!
Alexander then continued to speak in an unknown tongue, said to have been Hebrew or Phœncian (both being dialects of the the same language, in fact), but he took care to allow the names of Apollo and Æsculapius to be heard, among his raving. He concluded his performance with the well known psalm to the sun god, and with the crowd singing it behind him, he led them to the temple. There with the crowd agog, he stepped into the muddy trenches, looking a little confused until he uttered a prayer to Æsculapius, whereupon, he took a bowl and scooped in the mud, quickly emerging with the egg which he held out before him for the crowd to see. Then he took the egg into his hands, still holding it out so that they could see it, and declared dramatically, “Æsculapius is here!” The crowd gasped while he took the egg and theatrically broke it revealing the snake embryo, which he manipulated in his fingers to make it seem as if it were writhing in life. “It moves! It lives!” they first murmured in astonishment, and then turned it into a roar of triumph and ecstasy.
They cheered and rejoiced, singing the praises of the god and the wealth and health he would bring the town. Alexander stepped out of the footings and departed from the temple grounds with the embryo held protectively to his breast, and walked purposefully to his own house where he withdrew with the crowds still thronging. He kept himself concealed there for several days, while he gave out instructions for the construction of a wooden shed in the shape of a tunnel with a door at each end. Meanwhile the word of the astonishing birth of a god at Abonotichus spread all over the region, and myriads began to throng there. Lucian writes:
They had the forms of men, but they were as sheep in all besides, heads and hearts empty alike.
In his booth, Alexander had set up a rail, to hold back the crowds as they passed down the passage, and behind it he sat on a couch in the half-light. His tame snake was draped around him with its long tail stretching out on the floor, and its head mainly hidden by his arm, but as the crowd shuffled through the booth he would lift his arm from time to time and reveal the head with its human-like mask, and its snake tongue darting from the gape which Alexander kept opening and closing with his horse hair strings. The snake of the garden of Eden is depicted in just this way, with a human face, in paintings of the Fall of Man.
The great size of the snake only a few days after its birth proved it was divine, for the gulled believers who passed through. The crowds were enormous, and had to keep moving while Alexander spoke to them softly, and the light was dim. The visitors had only moments to take all this in while trying to concentrate on Alexander’s soft words and to see in the dim light. What they saw was enough, and once outside they convinced each other.
Before long the phenomenon had become so well known that even the wealthy became curious, and those who gave liberally were allowed to touch the god and peer at its face as they passed through the booth, albeit still in the dim light. They emerged able to confirm that the god was no illusion, and thereby strengthened belief. There were gods! The philosophers were wrong! They came to earth and moved among mankind, as they had promised. Lucian says that even Epicurus himself would have been fooled. A god had been born in Abonotichus, with the body of a snake and a human head.
It had not yet spoken though, and Alexander eventually had it put about that the god had spoken and said:
I am Glycon, the Sweet One, the third in descent from Zeus, and the light of the world.
The Oracle of Æsculapius
The new temple was completed, and Alexander and his tame snake moved in. Once there, it was announced that the god would answer any question put to it for a suitable donation, set at 8 obils, about a worker’s week’s pay, an expensive rate compared with other oracles, because the god himself was answering. Questioners had to book ahead, and write their questions on paper or parchments, and seal them as they wished The packets were returned in a day or two, seal unbroken, with the answer. Thousands came and those seeking miracles were not disappointed. Most questions to a god of health were about illness, and Alexander’s practice as a doctor plainly helped him give often good answers. When he received them, he was able to assess the physical state of the questioner, and perhaps ask them directly some pertinent questions, as if by way of small talk.
Since the questions were submitted in advance, difficult ones offered him the chance of doing some research by sending his servants and slaves to make discrete inquiries of the questioner. The emerging pilgrims would often be quizzed by placed men acting as curious pilgrims eager to know what had happened but really Alexander’s accomplices. Difficult cases would be couched in vague terms like the sun-signs of modern astrologers, but successful ones, whether by the prophet’s medical skill, or more likely by information received, gave the miracle hunters a hit—a miracle was notched up. As today, one remarkable success was remembered when a thousand banalities were merely binned.
In other cases, he recommended his own quack medicines. Questions about the future from ambitious politicians, lovers or heirs, he often did not answer, just writing that the fates were not yet decided, and it depended on the will of the god, but that the god would seek to mediate on the petitioner’s behalf, adding to the devotion, just as it does today in Christianity in respect of the saints and the compulsion of the after-life. The most difficult cases of all were answered cryptically, like the Delphic oracles. The worst cases of all would be answered in an unknown tongue. Answers in foreign tongues when questions were written in a foreign tongue, or when a spy had found out it was appropriate, added to the awe of the oracle, but it also offered the chance of effectively not replying at all.
All this success immediately meant that there was too much work for one man to handle. He trained armies of disciples, all well paid because rich customers often asked many questions, each of which was separately paid for, and many of which generated additional income, or donations to the god in the hope of favours. Some were servants, some spies and mock pilgrims, some manufacturers of potions and lotions, some interpreters for the ones who asked questions in foreign languages, some secreataries, some publicity agents.
Some of the latter had the duty of setting up bureaus across the empire to spread the word of the oracle, and to seek questions about missing slaves, lost wills and missing treasures, or even undetected murders as some psychic “detectives” do today. The shrine was like an ancient Lourdes, being its direct ancestor. Sick people came to be cured and some were! Even the dead were said to have been returned to life. Miracles were in the air, but were they true? People believed it was. So it was! Isn’t that the same as Christianity.
Money poured in but the god announced that it meant nothing to him. It was his servant, the prophet, who should be honoured with it.
The Christians had declared all the gods except Yehouah and His Son to be demons, so they declared Alexander as the devil’s missionary. Skeptics like Lucian and rivals like the Christians set traps for him. He could not avoid them all, but like modern day magicians exposed by stage magicians like Randi, the believers never ceased to believe. Even some Platonists, Stoics and Pythagoreans were willing to do so, just as modern spiritualists are able to take in scientists of a gullible bent. Alexander saw this and flattered the philosophic schools, making Pythagoras a saint in his calendar. He even claimed eventually that he was Pythagoras reincarnated. The Pythagoreans were the philosophical school behind the Orphic religion, and Professor Froude says of them:
By their mystical theories, they were the natural victims of illusion. Opinions adopted out of superstition or emotion cannot be countered by reason. They are like epidemic diseases which seize and subdue the mental constitution.
Froude could again have had the Christians in mind when he wrote this, and some believe that Christianity is essentially a shoot off Orphism. But Alexander, feeling now that he had some respectable support among the philosophic schools, launched into an attack on the Christians and atheists who had been tormenting him.
When at last many sensible men, recovering, as it were, from a 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 bunkum of the show, he issued a proclamation designed to scare them, saying that Pontus was full of atheists and Christians who had the hardihood to utter the vilest abuse of him. Those he bade them drive away with stones, if they wanted to have the god gracious.
They were blasphemers, he said. Æculapius was annoyed that he had come among the people of Pontus to be blasphemed and insulted by those who should be stoned out of the province. Answering a question about Epicurus that Alexander had arranged to be submitted, Æsculapius proclaimed that he was in Hades, lying in filth, bound by chains of lead. The Pythagoreans were pleased. The Epicureans were Alexander’s worst enemies, having the scientific, critical outlook that was likely to expose him, and they were also influential at the top.
Lepidus, Proprætor of Amestris, the regional capital not far from Abonotichus, was a man iof sense and culture who did not look favourably on Alexander’s scam. Questions from Amestris had exposed Alexander several time, and he refused to accept any more enquiries from the city. To recover some prestige, he decided to allow the god to be heard speaking. A tube was arranged behind the head of the snake in the gloom to an accomplice behind a curtain who would hiss whispered answers down it. Only the most gullible, the most highly favoured and best paying cistomers were admitted to this performance. Needless to say, it worked, and the pilgrims dispersed to relate the even more astonishing miracle. Secretaries took down the whispered oracles and published them to the world, but only after a suitable time delay that allowed them to be corrected, if wrong.
An example was the Roman general, Severian, sent against the Armenians where he lost the battle, his army and his life.. On route, he sought the oracle of Æsculapius who prophesied that he would subdue the Armenians and return in glory to Rome with a wreath of bay at his temples, and the circlet of Apollo. The published oracle was rather the opposite:
Go not against the Armenians where death and disaster await thee.
Alexander’s disciples claimed that the general had brought disaster on to himself by defying the oracle. Alexander’s cunning extended to publicising rival oracles when he had no answer to a question. He would simply reply that Æsculapius had no message but the supplicant would get satisfaction at the oracle of such-and-such.
Rutilian, A Prominent Disciple
His fame reached Rome, and it became fashionable to seek the prophet’s advice. Even scheming politicians were stupid enough to ask about the fortune of their plans. Alexander simply did not reply but kept the evidence, thus putting powerful people at court at his mercy.
A noble but gullible senator called Rutilian, a sixty year old widower, made private enquiries about Alexander then fell completely for his dupe. Since he was a friend of Lucian, the Epicurean knew all about the story, and it was probably partly the reason why he undertook to investigate the prophet of Abonotichus. He asked the prophet who his young son’s teachers would be, and the answer was Homer and Pythagoras, implying that the boy would be taught by their spirits in heaven. The boy died and the Senator was as trapped in his own emotional web by the trickster as was bishop Pike. Since Rutilian was a favourite of the emperor, Alexander had an ally at the very top of the state hierarchy.
Such a striking and charismatic man as Alexander could never lack for female admirers. One young woman, he claimed was his daughter from a union with Selene who had seen him asleep one night like Endymion and had descended to embrace him. Alexander told the elderly widower, Rutilian, that Selene and Æsculapius had selected him to be her husband, and the old senator was delighted to be so honoured. Alexander had already told Rutilian that when he died he would become an immortal sunbeam, and Rutilian thought the marriage approved by the two deities must have been an acceptance into heaven.
Abonotichus had now become a place of pilgrimage from all over the empire. Alexander had the highest connexions and acceptability. He decided to introduce spectacles like the Eleusinian mysteries to provide the pilgrims with a bit of grandeur. He decided on a three day festival. On the first day, Alexander led the torchbearers chanting that the profane shopuld remain aloof but believers should join the holy mysteries, picking specifically on his favourite hates, the Epicureans and the Christians:
“If any atheist or Christian or Epicurean has come to spy on 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!”
Those who sought the initiation were examined by Alexander, and those who seemed doubtful were excluded. The ceremonial was a series of tableaux of the birth of Apollo, the marriage of Apollo and Coronis, and the birth of Æsculapius. On the second day was re-enacted the discovery of the Chalcedon plates, the discovery of the egg and the birth of the snake. The third day had the prophet lying like Endymion under the moon played by an attractive young woman who descended upon him and covered him in kisses, much to the delight of her husband who was supremely honoured that his wife had been chosen to play Selene. He did not know she was Alexander’s mistress. In a final scene Alexander was dressed as a priest and he conducted a call and response hymn to the god, ending in a mystic dance in the form of a circle with the prophet at the center. The miraculous birth of Alexander was tactfully omitted, but was understood.
In the field of prophesy, Alexander continued to make errors, but devotion to him did not cease. In one case, the servants of a wealthy young man returned from Egypt saying the youth had disappeared, presumed drowned on the Nile. The father of the youth put the question to the oracle which declared that the servants had murdered the youth. The consequrnce was that the servants were fed to the beasts, but the youth turned up from a spontaneous trip to India with some merchants. The father sent a man to protest to Alexander but the prophet arranged for the mob to stone him.
More seriously, he predicted a great victory for Marcus Aurelius against the Dacians if he sacrificed two lians in the Danube, but the battle was lost. Alexander claimed that the oracle had simply said that there would be a victory, but not that it would be by the Romans.
Lepidus kept trying to put the spot on Alexander, but AEsculapius demanded that all strangers to the town should be examined and, if found suspicious, be evicted. Lepidus decided to try a priest where laymen had failed. Unfortunately priests probably have a disposition to believe and Alexander managed to impress this one so much that he converted, even though the oracle declared he would be a camel in his next incarnation. Lucian says he saw the words of the interview and conversion set up in gold at Tiam.
Lucian’s Attempts at Exposing Alexander
Rutilian, badgered by Lucian not to accept the fraud, told the skeptic to go to see for himself. So, he did. Rutilian arranged that Alexander would receive his friend, and Lucian writes that Alexander received him with great charm and courtesy. He admits that the prophet had a striking character. Trying to get evidence by trick questions, he asked Æsculapius whether the prophet wore false hair. He sealed the envelope so well that it could not be opened. The reply came back in an unknown language.
Lucian’s servant told his master that accomplices of Alexander had been quizzing him about the purpose of his visit. Lucian told him to say he had a pain in the side. Then he wrote twice the question, “What was the birthplace of Homer?” He sealed them separately, as before, then told his servant to say one was a question about the pain and the other about the best way to return to Italy. The replies were to use Alexander’s remedy, and that the journey might be dangerous.
That convinced Lucian, but he wanted to convince the poodle-like Rutilian. He wrote another question: “When will the villanies of Alexander be exposed?” He sealed it as before, and wrote on the parcel that it had eight questions that needed answering and had been paid for. Eight questions he paid for, and submitted the parcel. He received his eight replies, all in unknown languages!
No evidence can destroy belief. Lucian returned to Rutilian and explained what had happened showing him the answers and the sealed questions. Rutilian used an answer that is commonly still given today by bogus supernaturalists. He said that impiety in the heart of Lucian stopped the god from working miracles. Skepticism destroys the miraculous, so only believers can experience it. Meanwhile, Alexander wrote to Rutilian warning him of Lucian, and the senator dropped his friend rather than believe the prophet was a fake.
It made Lucian even more determined, but ultimately nothing was to come of his endeavours. He went to the governor and asked for an escort of soldiers to allow him to expose the fraud. Granted the guard, Lucian went to Abonotichus and found Alexander holding an open audition. With no preliminaries, Lucian presented himself to the prophet, but though the audience was scandalized, Alexander remained unruffled. He offered Lucian his hand to be kissed, but Lucian savagely bit it causing a general outrage, necessitating the intervention of the guard, but he was taken aback that Alexander barely flinched at the bite. Instead, he stood up before his supporters saying he had had to tame ruder spirits than this one and had succeeded with god’s help. Then he bade them to depart and leave him alone with his assailant.
Alone with Lucian, he calmly asked why he was so determined to be his enemy. Lucian was impressed by Alexander’s composure but adopted an equally courteous air, hoping to hear some truth about the fraudster. It was these experiences that led Lucian to declare that Alexander would have charmed Epicurus himself.
He seemed open and frank with Lucian, well-informed and clever, so Lucian decided to accept an offer to be his guest, doubtless still hoping for some evidence but being slowly won over. After a prolonged visit, the impression Lucian gives is that he had decided he must have been wrong, and agreed when Alexander offered to provide him with a ship to the Bosphorus on the way home. Alexander loaded the ship with presents and bade his former foe goodbye.
Lucian was not the greatest brain in the empire, no doubt, but was quick-witted and skeptical, but had been charmed by Alexander and was ready to return with his tail between his legs. However after a while at sea, he saw the crew arguing with the pilot, and eventually the pilot approached him and apologetically said that he had a wife and children and was an old man who wanted to retire with a clear conscience. The crew had been paid to throw Lucian overboard, but he had persuaded them to let him put him ashore at the mext port, if Lucian agreed. He was not going to dissent.
He was half way between Pomtus and Byzantium, in Bithynia, but Lucian was a Roman nobleman and a personal friend of Marcus Aurelius, with a lot of influence at court. He told the local governor his story. The governor however felt that Alexander had too much power for him to do anything himself. He could not arrest him.
Lucian realized that nothing was to be done. Alexander remained in power, and even the name of Abonotichus was changed. Coins were struck with the picture of Alexander on one side and Æsculapius as Glycon on the other. Such coins still exist. Emperors honoured the prophet and he lived to a ripe old age. Doubtless the original snake was replaced but no one knows.
The oracle continued after Alexander’s death, with his disciples typically maneouvring to take over the top spot. Rutilian, declared that no successor was needed because Alexander would be watching over the proceedings from an elevated position.
God is so near for the believer that he sees His action in everything, and the more spectacularly miraculous it seems, the better for belief. The hagiology of the early church is more replete with fantasy than the Greek myths. All of this occurred in Asia Minor, the part of the world where Paul and Barnabas evangelized and were supposedly taken themselves for the gods Mercury and Zeus respectively.
Christianity was built among the people who were taken in by Alexander, and though Christianity and the followers of Alexander are shown here in conflict, they were equally credulous. Christians had already committed themselves to another scam. That they opposed the prophet of Æsculapius with the Epicureans is no tribute to their acuity in detecting falseness. They believed that Alexander was a disciple of the devil, and believed as much as his followers in his miracles, contesting only who was behind them. Doubtless some converted to the new prophet, as the tension between them suggests, but their dogma that all gods other than Yehouah and His Son were false had already taken a firm root among the Christian believers, and they survived. Alexander made the mistake of not converting to Christianity. He would then have been a saint.
