Lucian of Samosata’s Tale Of Harassment By Followers Of A Snake Cult

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During the reign of Emperor Antoninus Pius (r. 138-161), an intriguing cult was founded at Abonoteichus (or Abonuteichos), in the northern Anatolian region of Paphlagonia, which is adjacent to the Black Sea. There, a religious leader named Alexander established a cult that worshipped a serpent figure with human hair. This serpentine creature was named Glycon and Alexander insinuated that the snake was a new incarnation of the healer-god, Asclepius. Alexander positioned himself as a priest and interpreter of this Glycon-Asclepius entity, and his religious activities mainly consisted of teachings, ceremonial rites, and prophecies (for which, payment was expected). Alexander and his cult of Glycon gained imperial recognition and favor during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (r. 161-180), who renamed the cult’s hometown as Ionopolis. As ancient cults and cultic leaders go, Alexander and his cult of Glycon were extremely successful. The Black Sea region, as well as the Balkans, fell heavily under Alexander’s sway, and Roman governors—such as Servianus (of Cappadocia) and Rutilianus (of Moesia and Asia)—were close associates and allies to the worshippers of Glycon. The latter governor, Rutilianus, even offered his daughter’s hand in marriage to Alexander and became the cult leader’s father-in-law. Success aside, Alexander had his detractors—he was hostile to Christians and Epicureans, so, they, too, were hostile to him, and the new self-proclaimed prophet and his bizarre snake entity naturally drew the suspicion of other doubters and skeptics. One of the most vicious of these critics was the prominent satirist, Lucian of Samosata (c. 120-180+), whose feud with the cult allegedly almost became fatally violent.

According to Lucian, the height of his conflict with the snake cult came around the time when Alexander was becoming engaged to Rutilianus’ daughter. Lucian, who believed Alexander was a fraud, publicly voiced opposition to the match and he supposedly tried to dissuade Rutilianus from allowing the marriage to go forward. Additionally, the satirist had also allegedly been playing tricks and deceptions on Alexander’s prophecy business around that time, gathering evidence that the vague oracular statements attributed to the snake entity, Glycon, were not relevant, reliable, or useful. Lucian had couriers deliver scrolls with questions and accompanying payments to Alexander’s organization, and he tested his target with simple schemes, such as having the messenger and the scroll present conflicting questions. Lucian concluded that Alexander and Glycon often ignored the actual true requests on the scroll, and instead would answer the fake question presented by the messenger. Similarly, Lucian had fake and fictional questions about non-existent issues submitted to Alexander, and the cult would send back a reply to the falsified queries as if they were true. In short, the supposed prophet often could not discern a prank query from a genuine question. Other times, Alexander and Glycon did pay closer attention to questions, but Lucian claimed their responses to difficult, controversial, or embarrassing questions were frequently just mystical gibberish. This prying by the satirist, combined with the meddling in the marriage arrangement, supposedly made Lucian enemy number one in Alexander’s eyes, and the cult leader reportedly pushed his followers into a state of hostility against the literary figure.

Lucian was extremely opinionated about the cult, but due to Alexander’s influence and imperial support, he did not write a proper literary work on the subject until after Alexander (d. 170s) and Marcus Aurelius (d. 180) had died. Following their deaths, Lucian published a long essay titled Alexander or The False Prophet, which was one of the most hostile and personal essays that the satirist wrote in his career. On the start of the feud between himself and Alexander, Lucian wrote: “Indeed I myself set him many traps like these…He discovered all this later on, and also that I was dissuading Rutilianus from the marriage and from relying so heavily on his hopes raised by the shrine, and this naturally caused him to hate me and regard me as a bitter enemy” (Lucian, Alexander or The False Prophet, section 54). At the height of this conflict, there was evidently concern for Lucian’s safety. Tension was so bad that the satirist allegedly had to have armed guards with him when he traveled through lands where Alexander’s supporters were prevalent. In his text about the situation, Lucian described a time when he and his guards allegedly had an encounter with Alexander and a crowd of his supporters. Lucian wrote:

“When he found out that I had come to the city and learnt that I was the Lucian—I’d also brought with me two soldiers with pike and spear, lent to me by my friend at that time, the governor of Cappadocia, to escort me as far as the sea—he straightaway sent for me courteously and with every mark of friendship. I went along and found a lot of people with him, but by good fortune I took my soldiers with me. He offered me his right hand to kiss, as he did to most people, and I grasped it as if to kiss it, but gave him a hearty bite instead…Even before that the bystanders had been indignant that I had called him ‘Alexander’ and not ‘Prophet’, and now they set upon me for sacrilege, strangling me and beating me. But he controlled himself very nobly and made them desist, promising that he would easily tame me and prove Glycon’s power, who could turn the harshest of enemies into friends” (Lucian, Alexander or The False Prophet, section 55).

After that odd encounter, Alexander supposedly held a private meeting with Lucian. During that parley, the cult leader allegedly attempted to buy off the satirist with promises of favorable influence and networking in the Roman Empire if Lucian would stop criticizing Alexander’s marriage to Rutilianus’ daughter. Lucian played along with the quid pro quo, if only to leave the region safely, and accepted an offer from Alexander to cover his travel expenses for the journey home. Yet, according to the satirist, the offering of the ship was not a benevolent gesture. Lucian wrote:

“Later, when I decided to set sail—and I happened to have only Xenophon with me on my visit, having sent my father and my family ahead to Amastris—he supplied me with many gifts and keepsakes, and promised that he himself would provide a boat and crew to escort me. I thought this a decent and kindly offer, but halfway through the voyage I noticed the skipper in tears and arguing with the sailors, and I thought my future prospects were not hopeful. They had had instructions from Alexander to seize and fling us into the sea, which would have ended his war with me then and there. But the skipper in tears persuaded the crew not to commit any terrible crime against us…Then he revealed why he had taken us on board, and the orders Alexander had given. He put us ashore at Aegiali (which is mentioned by noble Homer) and then returned home” (Lucian, Alexander or The False Prophet, sections 56-57).

Stranded at Aegiali, Lucian was allegedly saved by a ship carrying envoys from King Tiberius Julius Eupator of the Bosporan Kingdom (r. 154/155-170s). These kind diplomats brought Lucian aboard and carried him to his original destination of Amastris. According to Lucian, once he was back in safety, he began seriously pressing for legal prosecution against Alexander for conspiracy to commit murder or other such charges that were applicable for the incident that had occurred on the cult leader’s ship. Lucian wrote, “So I set out to prosecute him, in which I was joined by many others, especially the followers of Timocrates, the philosopher from Heraclea. But I was restrained by Avitus, the then governor of Bithynia and Pontus, who practically begged and besought me to lay off, because out of goodwill to Rutilianus he could not punish Alexander, however clearly his guilt was proved” (Alexander or The False Prophet, sections 57). So ended Lucian’s alleged personal run-in with Alexander and the cult of Glycon.

Readers likely have noticed the abundant use of “alleged,” “supposed,” “claimed,” and “according to” in describing Lucian’s story. This is important, as Lucian was a literary figure known for comedy and satire, not history. His account should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt. Nevertheless, Lucian often referenced real people and actual events in his writings, and much of what he wrote about these historical subjects can be considered true, albeit embellished and shaped for his comedic or satirical purposes. His satirical and imaginative tales usually contained grains of truth. As for Alexander of Abonoteichus, he was a real historical figure, and his cult of Glycon was also an organization that existed in history. The cult outlived Alexander, who died in the 170s, and Glycon continued to be worshipped until the cult of the snake entity petered out around the late 3rd or early 4th century. Lucian, amusingly, had the last laugh, for, besides archeological findings on the cult, the vast majority of information about Alexander and Glycon comes from Lucian’s unflattering descriptions in his text, Alexander or The False Prophet. As a result, a majority of authors follow Lucian’s lead in labeling Alexander and Glycon as fraudulent.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Romanian Stamp (dated 1974) featuring a photographed sculpture of Glycon. On each side of the stamp is the front and back of a coin from Abonuteichos depicting Antoninus Pius and Glycon, all [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and Picryl).

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