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.