before the public; he affected madness, and frequently foamed at the
mouth--a manifestation easily produced by chewing the herb soap-wort,
used by dyers; but it brought him reverence and awe. The two had long ago
manufactured and fitted up a serpent's head of linen; they had given it a
more or less human expression, and painted it very like the real article;
by a contrivance of horsehair, the mouth could be opened and shut, and a
forked black serpent tongue protruded, working on the same system. The
serpent from Pella was also kept ready in the house, to be produced at
the right moment and take its part in the drama--the leading part,
indeed.
In the fullness of time, his plan took shape. He went one night to the
temple foundations, still in process of digging, and with standing water
in them which had collected from the rainfall or otherwise; here he
deposited a goose egg, into which, after blowing it, he had inserted some
new-born reptile. He made a resting-place deep down in the mud for this,
and departed. Early next morning he rushed into the market-place, naked
except for a gold-spangled loin-cloth; with nothing but this and his
scimetar, and shaking his long loose hair, like the fanatics who collect
money in the name of Cybele, he climbed on to a lofty altar and delivered
a harangue, felicitating the city upon the advent of the God now to bless
them with his presence. In a few minutes nearly the whole population was
on the spot, women, old men, and children included; all was awe, prayer,
and adoration. He uttered some unintelligible sounds, which might have
been Hebrew or Phoenician, but completed his victory over his audience,
who could make nothing of what he said, beyond the constant repetition of
the names Apollo and Asclepius.
He then set off at a run for the future temple. Arrived at the excavation
and the already completed sacred fount, he got down into the water,
chanted in a loud voice hymns to Asclepius and Apollo, and invited the
God to come, a welcome guest, to the city. He next demanded a bowl, and
when this was handed to him, had no difficulty in putting it down at the
right place and scooping up, besides water and mud, the egg in which the
God had been enclosed; the edges of the aperture had been joined with wax
and white lead. He took the egg in his hand and announced that here he
held Asclepius. The people, who had been sufficiently astonished by the
discovery of the egg in the water, were now all eyes for what was to
come. He broke it, and received in his hollowed palm the hardly developed
reptile; the crowd could see it stirring and winding about his fingers;
they raised a shout, hailed the God, blessed the city, and every mouth
was full of prayers--for treasure and wealth and health and all the other
good things that he might give. Our hero now departed homewards, still
running, with the new-born Asclepius in his hands--the twice-born, too,
whereas ordinary men can be born but once, and born moreover not of
Coronis [Footnote: Coronis was the mother of Asclepius; 'corone' is Greek
for a crow.] nor even of her namesake the crow, but of a goose! After him
streamed the whole people, in all the madness of fanatic hopes.
He now kept the house for some days, in hopes that the Paphlagonians
would soon be drawn in crowds by the news. He was not disappointed; the
city was filled to overflowing with persons who had neither brains nor
individuality, who bore no resemblance to men that live by bread, and had
only their outward shape to distinguish them from sheep. In a small room
he took his seat, very imposingly attired, upon a couch. He took into his
bosom our Asclepius of Pella (a very fine and large one, as I observed),
wound its body round his neck, and let its tail hang down; there was
enough of this not only to fill his lap, but to trail on the ground also;
the patient creature's head he kept hidden in his armpit, showing the
linen head on one side of his beard exactly as if it belonged to the
visible body.
Picture to yourself a little chamber into which no very brilliant light
was admitted, with a crowd of people from all quarters, excited,
carefully worked up, all a-flutter with expectation. As they came in,
they might naturally find a miracle in the development of that little
crawling thing of a few days ago into this great, tame, human-looking
serpent. Then they had to get on at once towards the exit, being pressed
forward by the new arrivals before they could have a good look. An exit
had been specially made just opposite the entrance, for all the world
like the Macedonian device at Babylon when Alexander was ill; he was
_in extremis_, you remember, and the crowd round the palace were
eager to take their last look and give their last greeting. Our
scoundrel's exhibition, though, is said to have been given not once, but
many times, especially for the benefit of any wealthy new-comers.
And at this point, my dear Celsus, we may, if we will be candid, make
some allowance for these Paphlagonians and Pontics; the poor uneducated
'fat-heads' might well be taken in when they handled the serpent--a
privilege conceded to all who choose--and saw in that dim light its head
with the mouth that opened and shut. It was an occasion for a Democritus,
nay, for an Epicurus or a Metrodorus, perhaps, a man whose intelligence
was steeled against such assaults by scepticism and insight, one who, if
he could not detect the precise imposture, would at any rate have been
perfectly certain that, though this escaped him, the whole thing was a
lie and an impossibility.
By degrees Bithynia, Galatia, Thrace, came flocking in, every one who had
been present doubtless reporting that he had beheld the birth of the God,
and had touched him after his marvellous development in size and in
expression. Next came pictures and models, bronze or silver images, and
the God acquired a name. By divine command, metrically expressed, he was
to be known as Glycon. For Alexander had delivered the line:
Glycon my name, man's light, son's son to Zeus.
And now at last the object to which all this had led up, the giving of
oracular answers to all applicants, could be attained. The cue was taken
from Amphilochus in Cilicia. After the death and disappearance at Thebes
of his father Amphiaraus, Amphilochus, driven from his home, made his way
to Cilicia, and there did not at all badly by prophesying to the
Cilicians at the rate of threepence an oracle. After this precedent,
Alexander proclaimed that on a stated day the God would give answers to
all comers. Each person was to write down his wish and the object of his
curiosity, fasten the packet with thread, and seal it with wax, clay, or
other such substance. He would receive these, and enter the holy place
(by this time the temple was complete, and the scene all ready), whither
the givers should be summoned in order by a herald and an acolyte; he
would learn the God's mind upon each, and return the packets with their
seals intact and the answers attached, the God being ready to give a
definite answer to any question that might be put.
The trick here was one which would be seen through easily enough by a
person of your intelligence (or, if I may say so without violating
modesty, of my own), but which to the ordinary imbecile would have the
persuasiveness of what is marvellous and incredible. He contrived various
methods of undoing the seals, read the questions, answered them as seemed
good, and then folded, sealed, and returned them, to the great
astonishment of the recipients. And then it was, 'How could he possibly
know what I gave him carefully secured under a seal that defies
imitation, unless he were a true God, with a God's omniscience?'
Perhaps you will ask what these contrivances were; well, then--the
information may be useful another time. One of them was this. He would
heat a needle, melt with it the under part of the wax, lift the seal off,
and after reading warm the wax once more with the needle--both that below
the thread and that which formed the actual seal--and re-unite the two
without difficulty. Another method employed the substance called
collyrium; this is a preparation of Bruttian pitch, bitumen, pounded
glass, wax, and mastich. He kneaded the whole into collyrium, heated it,
placed it on the seal, previously moistened with his tongue, and so took
a mould. This soon hardened; he simply opened, read, replaced the wax,
and reproduced an excellent imitation of the original seal as from an
engraved stone. One more I will give you. Adding some gypsum to the glue
used in book-binding he produced a sort of wax, which was applied still
wet to the seal, and on being taken off solidified at once and provided a
matrix harder than horn, or even iron. There are plenty of other devices
for the purpose, to rehearse which would seem like airing one's
knowledge. Moreover, in your excellent pamphlets against the magians
(most useful and instructive reading they are) you have yourself
collected enough of them--many more than those I have mentioned.
So oracles and divine utterances were the order of the day, and much
shrewdness he displayed, eking out mechanical ingenuity with obscurity,
his answers to some being crabbed and ambiguous, and to others absolutely
unintelligible. He did however distribute warning and encouragement
according to his lights, and recommend treatments and diets; for he had,
as I originally stated, a wide and serviceable acquaintance with drugs;
he was particularly given to prescribing 'cytmides,' which were a salve
prepared from goat's fat, the name being of his own invention. For the
realization of ambitions, advancement, or successions, he took care never
to assign early dates; the formula was, 'All this shall come to pass when
it is my will, and when my prophet Alexander shall make prayer and
entreaty on your behalf.'
There was a fixed charge of a shilling the oracle. And, my friend, do not
suppose that this would not come to much; he made something like L3,000
_per annum_; people were insatiable--would take from ten to fifteen
oracles at a time. What he got he did not keep to himself, nor put it by
for the future; what with accomplices, attendants, inquiry agents, oracle
writers and keepers, amanuenses, seal-forgers, and interpreters, he had
now a host of claimants to satisfy.
He had begun sending emissaries abroad to make the shrine known in
foreign lands; his prophecies, discovery of runaways, conviction of
thieves and robbers, revelations of hidden treasure, cures of the sick,
restoration of the dead to life--all these were to be advertised. This
brought them running and crowding from all points of the compass; victims
bled, gifts were presented, and the prophet and disciple came off better
than the God; for had not the oracle spoken?--
Give what ye give to my attendant priest;
My care is not for gifts, but for my priest.
A time came when a number of sensible people began to shake off their
intoxication and combine against him, chief among them the numerous
Epicureans; in the cities, the imposture with all its theatrical
accessories began to be seen through. It was now that he resorted to a
measure of intimidation; he proclaimed that Pontus was overrun with
atheists and Christians, who presumed to spread the most scandalous
reports concerning him; he exhorted Pontus, as it valued the God's
favour, to stone these men. Touching Epicurus, he gave the following
response. An inquirer had asked how Epicurus fared in Hades, and was
told:
Of slime is his bed,
And his fetters of lead.
The prosperity of the oracle is perhaps not so wonderful, when one learns
what sensible, intelligent questions were in fashion with its votaries.
Well, it was war to the knife between him and Epicurus, and no wonder.
What fitter enemy for a charlatan who patronized miracles and hated
truth, than the thinker who had grasped the nature of things and was in
solitary possession of that truth? As for the Platonists, Stoics,
Pythagoreans, they were his good friends; he had no quarrel with them.
But the unmitigated Epicurus, as he used to call him, could not but be
hateful to him, treating all such pretensions as absurd and puerile.
Alexander consequently loathed Amastris beyond all the cities of Pontus,
knowing what a number of Lepidus's friends and others like-minded it
contained. He would not give oracles to Amastrians; when he once did, to
a senator's brother, he made himself ridiculous, neither hitting upon a
presentable oracle for himself, nor finding a deputy equal to the
occasion. The man had complained of colic, and what he meant to prescribe
was pig's foot dressed with mallow. The shape it took was:
In basin hallowed
Be pigments mallowed.
I have mentioned that the serpent was often exhibited by request; he was
not completely visible, but the tail and body were exposed, while the
head was concealed under the prophet's dress. By way of impressing the
people still more, he announced that he would induce the God to speak,
and give his responses without an intermediary. His simple device to this
end was a tube of cranes' windpipes, which he passed, with due regard to
its matching, through the artificial head, and, having an assistant
speaking into the end outside, whose voice issued through the linen
Asclepius, thus answered questions. These oracles were called
_autophones_, and were not vouchsafed casually to any one, but reserved
for officials, the rich, and the lavish.
It was an autophone which was given to Severian regarding the invasion of
Armenia. He encouraged him with these lines:
Armenia, Parthia, cowed by thy fierce spear,
To Rome, and Tiber's shining waves, thou com'st,
Thy brow with leaves and radiant gold encircled.
Then when the foolish Gaul took his advice and invaded, to the total
destruction of himself and his army by Othryades, the adviser expunged
that oracle from his archives and substituted the following:
Vex not th' Armenian land; it shall not thrive;
One in soft raiment clad shall from his bow
Launch death, and cut thee off from life and light.
For it was one of his happy thoughts to issue prophecies after the event
as antidotes to those premature utterances which had not gone right.
Frequently he promised recovery to a sick man before his death, and after
it was at no loss for second thoughts:
No longer seek to arrest thy fell disease;
Thy fate is manifest, inevitable.
Knowing the fame of Clarus, Didymus, and Mallus for sooth-saying much
like his own, he struck up an alliance with them, sending on many of his
clients to those places. So
Hie thee to Clarus now, and hear my sire.
And again,
Draw near to Branchidae and counsel take.
Or
Seek Mallus; be Amphilochus thy counsellor.
So things went within the borders of Ionia, Cilicia, Paphlagonia, and
Galatia. When the fame of the oracle travelled to Italy and entered Rome,
the only question was, who should be first; those who did not come in
person sent messages, the powerful and respected being the keenest of
all. First and foremost among these was Rutilianus; he was in most
respects an excellent person, and had filled many high offices in Rome;
but he suffered from religious mania, holding the most extraordinary
beliefs on that matter; show him a bit of stone smeared with unguents or
crowned with flowers, and he would incontinently fall down and worship,
and linger about it praying and asking for blessings. The reports about
our oracle nearly induced him to throw up the appointment he then held,
and fly to Abonutichus; he actually did send messenger upon messenger.
His envoys were ignorant servants, easily taken in. They came back having
really seen certain things, relating others which they probably thought
they had seen and heard, and yet others which they deliberately invented
to curry favour with their master. So they inflamed the poor old man and
drove him into confirmed madness.
He had a wide circle of influential friends, to whom he communicated the
news brought by his successive messengers, not without additional touches
of his own. All Rome was full of his tales; there was quite a commotion,
the gentlemen of the Court being much fluttered, and at once taking
measures to learn something of their own fate. The prophet gave all who
came a hearty welcome, gained their goodwill by hospitality and costly
gifts, and sent them off ready not merely to report his answers, but to
sing the praises of the God and invent miraculous tales of the shrine and
its guardian.
This triple rogue now hit upon an idea which would have been too clever
for the ordinary robber. Opening and reading the packets which reached
him, whenever he came upon an equivocal, compromising question, he
omitted to return the packet; the sender was to be under his thumb, bound
to his service by the terrifying recollection of the question he had
written down. You know the sort of things that wealthy and powerful
personages would be likely to ask. This blackmail brought him in a good
income.
I should like to quote you one or two of the answers given to Rutilianus.
He had a son by a former wife, just old enough for advanced teaching. The
father asked who should be his tutor, and was told,
Pythagoras, and the mighty battle-bard.
When the child died a few days after, the prophet was abashed, and quite
unable to account for this summary confutation. However, dear good
Rutilianus very soon restored the oracle's credit by discovering that
this was the very thing the God had foreshown; he had not directed him to
choose a living teacher; Pythagoras and Homer were long dead, and
doubtless the boy was now enjoying their instructions in Hades. Small
blame to Alexander if he had a taste for dealings with such specimens of
humanity as this.
Another of Rutilianus's questions was, Whose soul he had succeeded to,
and the answer:
First thou wast Peleus' son, and next Menander;
Then thine own self; next, a sunbeam shalt be;
And nine score annual rounds thy life shall measure.
At seventy, he died of melancholy, not waiting for the God to pay in
full.
That was an autophone too. Another time Rutilianus consulted the oracle
on the choice of a wife. The answer was express:
Wed Alexander's daughter and Selene's.
He had long ago spread the report that the daughter he had had was by
Selene: she had once seen him asleep, and fallen in love, as is her way
with handsome sleepers. The sensible Rutilianus lost no time, but sent
for the maiden at once, celebrated the nuptials, a sexagenarian
bridegroom, and lived with her, propitiating his divine mother-in-law
with whole hecatombs, and reckoning himself now one of the heavenly
company.
His finger once in the Italian pie, Alexander devoted himself to getting
further. Sacred envoys were sent all over the Roman Empire, warning the
various cities to be on their guard against pestilence and
conflagrations, with the prophet's offers of security against them. One
oracle in particular, an autophone again, he distributed broadcast at a
time of pestilence. It was a single line:
Phoebus long-tressed the plague-cloud shall dispel.
This was everywhere to be seen written up on doors as a prophylactic. Its
effect was generally disappointing; for it somehow happened that the
protected houses were just the ones to be desolated. Not that I would
suggest for a moment that the line was their destruction; but,
accidentally no doubt, it did so fall out. Possibly common people put too
much confidence in the verse, and lived carelessly without troubling to
help the oracle against its foe; were there not the words fighting their
battle, and long-tressed Phoebus discharging his arrows at the pestilence?
In Rome itself he established an intelligence bureau well manned with his
accomplices. They sent him people's characters, forecasts of their
questions, and hints of their ambitions, so that he had his answers ready
before the messengers reached him.
It was with his eye on this Italian propaganda, too, that he took a
further step. This was the institution of mysteries, with hierophants and
torch-bearers complete. The ceremonies occupied three successive days. On
the first, proclamation was made on the Athenian model to this effect:
'If there be any atheist or Christian or Epicurean here spying upon our
rites, let him depart in haste; and let all such as have faith in the God
be initiated and all blessing attend them.' He led the litany with,
'Christians, avaunt!' and the crowd responded, 'Epicureans, avaunt!' Then
was presented the child-bed of Leto and birth of Apollo, the bridal of
Coronis, Asclepius born. The second day, the epiphany and nativity of the
God Glycon.
On the third came the wedding of Podalirius and Alexander's mother; this
was called Torch-day, and torches were used. The finale was the loves of
Selene and Alexander, and the birth of Rutilianus's wife. The torch-
bearer and hierophant was Endymion-Alexander. He was discovered lying
asleep; to him from heaven, represented by the ceiling, enter as Selene
one Rutilia, a great beauty, and wife of one of the Imperial procurators.
She and Alexander were lovers off the stage too, and the wretched husband
had to look on at their public kissing and embracing; if there had not
been a good supply of torches, things might possibly have gone even
further. Shortly after, he reappeared amidst a profound hush, attired as
hierophant; in a loud voice he called, 'Hail, Glycon!', whereto the
Eumolpidae and Ceryces of Paphlagonia, with their clod-hopping shoes and
their garlic breath, made sonorous response, 'Hail, Alexander!'
The torch ceremony with its ritual skippings often enabled him to bestow
a glimpse of his thigh, which was thus discovered to be of gold; it was
presumably enveloped in cloth of gold, which glittered in the lamp-light.
This gave rise to a debate between two wiseacres, whether the golden
thigh meant that he had inherited Pythagoras's soul, or merely that their
two souls were alike; the question was referred to Alexander himself, and
King Glycon relieved their perplexity with an oracle:
Waxes and wanes Pythagoras' soul: the seer's
Is from the mind of Zeus an emanation.
His Father sent him, virtuous men to aid,
And with his bolt one day shall call him home.
I will now give you a conversation between Glycon and one Sacerdos of
Tius; the intelligence of the latter you may gauge from his questions. I
read it inscribed in golden letters in Sacerdos's house at Tius. 'Tell
me, lord Glycon,' said he, 'who you are.' 'The new Asclepius.' 'Another,
different from the former one? Is that the meaning?' 'That it is not
lawful for you to learn.' 'And how many years will you sojourn and
prophesy among us?' 'A thousand and three.' 'And after that, whither will
you go?' 'To Bactria; for the barbarians too must be blessed with my
presence.' 'The other oracles, at Didymus and Clarus and Delphi, have
they still the spirit of your grandsire Apollo, or are the answers that
now come from them forgeries?' 'That, too, desire not to know; it is not
lawful.' 'What shall I be after this life?' 'A camel; then a horse; then
a wise man, no less a prophet than Alexander.' Such was the conversation.
There was added to it an oracle in verse, inspired by the fact that
Sacerdos was an associate of Lepidus:
Shun Lepidus; an evil fate awaits him.
As I have said, Alexander was much afraid of Epicurus, and the solvent
action of his logic on imposture.
On one occasion, indeed, an Epicurean got himself into great trouble by
daring to expose him before a great gathering. He came up and addressed
him in a loud voice. 'Alexander, it was you who induced So-and-so the
Paphlagonian to bring his slaves before the governor of Galatia, charged
with the murder of his son who was being educated in Alexandria. Well,
the young man is alive, and has come back, to find that the slaves had
been cast to the beasts by your machinations.' What had happened was
this. The lad had sailed up the Nile, gone on to a Red Sea port, found a
vessel starting for India, and been persuaded to make the voyage. He
being long overdue, the unfortunate slaves supposed that he had either
perished in the Nile or fallen a victim to some of the pirates who
infested it at that time; so they came home to report his disappearance.
Then followed the oracle, the sentence, and finally the young man's
return with the story of his absence.