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!”

 

Podaleirius, the Healer, it would appear, was so
passionate and amorous that his ardour carried him
all the way from Tricca to Paphlagonia in quest of
Alexander’s mother! Podaleirius and his brother Machaon, the Homeric healers (Iliad 11, 833), were sons of Asclepius and lived in Tricca (now Trikkala), Thessaly. According to the Sack of Ilium (Evelyn-White, Hesiod, p. 524) Machaon specialized in surgery, Podaleirius in diagnosis and general practice. 
An oracle by now had turned up which purported
to be a prior prediction by the Sibyl:

 On the shores of the Euxine sea, in the neighbourhood of Sinope, There shall be born, by a Tower, in the days of the Romans, a prophet; After the foremost unit and three times ten, he will shew forth Five more units besides, and a score told three times over, Matching, with places four, the name of a valiant defender! Since in the Greek notation numbers are designated by letters, this combination (1, 30, 5, 60) 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



 

of a human look, was all painted up, and appeared very
lifelike. It would open and close its mouth by
means of horsehairs, and a forked black tongue like
a snake’s, also controlled by horsehairs, would dart
out. Besides, the serpent from Pella was ready in
advance and was being cared for at home, destined
in due time to manifest himself to them and to take
a part in their show—in fact, to be cast for the
leading role.
 

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


 

was saying save only that he everywhere brought
in Apollo and Asclepius.
 
 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.