“What were his discoveries, then?” perhaps you
will ask. Listen, therefore, in order to be able to
show up such impostors. The first, my dear Celsus,
was a well-known method; heating a needle, he
removed the seal by melting through the wax
underneath it, and after reading the contents he
warmed the wax once more with the needle, both
that which was under the thread and that which
contained the seal, and so stuck it together without
difficulty. Another method was by using what they
call plaster; this is a compound of Bruttian pitch,
asphalt, pulverized gypsum, wax, and gum Arabic.
Making his plaster out of all these materials and
warming it over the fire, he applied it to the seal,
which he had previously wetted with saliva, and
took a mould of the impression. Then, since the
plaster hardened at once, after easily opening and
reading the scrolls, he applied the wax and made an
impression upon it precisely like the original, just as
one would with a gem. Let me tell you a third

 

method, in addition to these. Putting marble-dust
into the glue with which they glue books and
making a paste of it, he applied that to the seal
while it was still soft, and then, as it grows hard at
once, more solid than horn or even iron, he removed
it and used it for the impression. There are many
other devices to this end, but they need not all
be mentioned, for fear that we might seem to be
wanting in taste, especially in view of the fact that
in the book which you wrote against the sorcerers, a
very good and useful treatise, capable of preserving
common-sense in its readers, you cited instances
enough, and indeed a great many more than I
have. S. Hippolytus (Refut. omn. Haeres. IV. 28-42) contains a highly interesting section “against sorcerers,” including (34) a treatment of this subject. It is very evidently not his own work; and K. F. Hermann thought it derived from the treatise by Celsus. Ganschinietz, in Harnack’s Texte wnd Untersuchungen 39, 2, has disputed this, but upon grounds that are not convincing. His commentary, however, is valuable. 
 
Well, as I say, Alexander made predictions and
gave oracles, employing great shrewdness in it and
combining guesswork with his trickery. He gave
responses that were sometimes obscure and ambiguous, sometimes downright unintelligible, for
this seemed to him in the oracular manner. Some
people he dissuaded or encouraged as seemed best
to him at a guess. To others he prescribed medical
treatments and diets, knowing, as I said in the
beginning, many useful remedies. His “cytmides”
were in highest favour with him—a name which he
had coined for a restorative ointment compounded
of bear’s grease. It is a nice question whether this reading or that of the other group of MSS., “goat’s grease,” is to be preferred. Galen in his treatment of these ointments (Kuhn xiii, p. 1008) does not mention bear’s grease. But he considers goat’s grease only moderately good; and every Yankee knows that in America bear’s grease only gave place to goose grease (also mentioned by Galen) when bears became scarce. Expectations, however, and




 

advancements and successions to estates he always
put off to another day, adding: “It shall all come
about when I will, and when Alexander, my prophet,
asks it of me and prays for you.”
 
A price had been fixed for each oracle, a drachma
and two obols. Alexander’s price was high. Amphilochus got but two obols (one-fourth as much) at Mallus. According to Lucian (Timon 6; 12; Epist. Saturn. 21) the a of a day-labourer at this time was but four obols. Do not think that it was low, my
friend, or that the revenue from this source was
scanty! He gleaned as much as seventy or eighty
thousand Drachmas. a year, since men were so greedy as to
send in ten and fifteen questions each. What he
received he did not use for himself alone nor
treasure up to make himself rich, but since he had
many men about him by this time as assistants,
servants, collectors of information, writers of oracles,
custodians of oracles, clerks, sealers, and expounders,
he divided with all, giving each one what was
proportionate to his worth.
 
By now he was even sending men abroad to
create rumours in the different nations in regard to
the oracle and to say that he made predictions,
discovered fugitive slaves, detected thieves and
robbers, caused treasures to be dug up, healed the
sick, and in some cases had actually raised the dead.
So there was a hustling and a bustling from every
side, with sacrifices and votive offerings—and twice as
much for the prophet and disciple of the god.
For this oracle also had come out:
 Honour I bid you to give my faithful servant, the prophet; No great store do I set upon riches, but much on the prophet. 




 
 
When at last many sensible men, recovering, as it
were, from 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 buncombe of the show,
he issued a promulgation designed to scare them,
saying that Pontus was full of atheists and Christians
who had the hardihood to utter the vilest abuse
of him; these he bade them drive away with
stones if they wanted to have the god gracious.
About Epicurus, moreover, he delivered himself of
an oracle after this sort; when someone asked him
how Epicurus was doing in Hades, he replied:

 With leaden fetters on his feet in filthy mire he
sitteth. 


Do you wonder, then, that the shrine waxed great,
now that you see that the questions of its visitors
were intelligent and refined? 
In general, the war that he waged upon Epicurus
was without truce or parley, naturally enough.
Upon whom else would a quack who loved humbug
and bitterly hated truth more fittingly make war
than upon Epicurus, who discerned the nature of
things and alone knew the truth in them? The
followers of Plato and Chrysippus and Pythagoras
were his friends, and there was profound peace with
them; but “the impervious Epicurus ’—for that is
what he called him—was rightly his bitter enemy,
since he considered all that sort of thing a laughingmatter and a joke. So Alexander hated Amastris
most of all the cities in Pontus because he knew that

 

the followers of Lepidus An inscription from Amastris (C.I.G. 4149) honours "Tiberius Claudius Lepidus, Chief Priest of Pontus and President of the Metropolis of Pontus” (i.e. Amastris). This can be no other than the Lepidus of Lucian. The priesthood1 was that of Augustus. Amastris is almost due of Angora, on the Black Sea, W. of Abonoteichus. and others like them were
numerous in the city; and he would never deliver
an oracle to an Amastrian. Once when he did
venture to make a prediction for a senator’s brother,
he acquitted himself ridiculously, since he could
neither compose a clever response himself nor find
anyone else who could do it in time. The man complained of colic, and Alexander, wishing to direct him
to eat a pig’s foot cooked with mallow, said:

 Mallow with cummin digest in a sacred pipkin of
piglets.