Having
many powerful friends, he went about not only
telling what he had heard from his messengers but
adding still more on his own account. So he flooded
and convulsed the city, and agitated most of the
court, who themselves at once hastened to go and
hear something that concerned them. 
To all who came, Alexander gave a very cordial
reception, made them think well of him by lavish
entertainment and expensive presents, and sent


 

them back not merely to report the answers to their
questions, but to sing the praises of the god and to
tell portentous lies about the oracle on their own
account.

 
At the same time, however, the plaguy
scoundrel devised a trick which was really clever
and not what one would expect of your ordinary
swindler. In opening and reading the forwarded
scrolls, if he found anything dangerous and venturesome in the questions, he would keep them himself
and not send them back, in order to hold the
senders in subjection and all but in slavery because
of their fear, since they remembered what it was
that they had asked. You understand what
questions are likely to be put by men who are rich
and very powerful. So he used to derive much gain
from those men, who knew that he had them in his
net.

 

I should like to tell you some of the responses
that were given to Rutilianus. Asking about his
son by a former marriage, who was then in the full
bloom of youth, he enquired who should be appointed
his tutor in his studies, The reply was:

 Be it Pythagoras; aye, and the good bard, master
of warfare. 

Then after a few days the boy died, and Alexander
was at his wit’s end, with nothing to say to his critics,
as the oracle had been shown up so obviously. But
Rutilianus himself, good soul, made haste to defend
the oracle by saying that the god had predicted precisely this outcome, and on account of it had bidden
him to select as his tutor nobody then alive, but
rather Pythagoras and Homer, who died long ago,
with whom, no doubt, the lad was then studying

 

in Hades. What fault, then, should we find with
Alexander if he thought fit to amuse himself at the
expense of such homunculi?
 
At another time, when Rutilianus enquired whose
soul he had inherited, the reply was:

 Peleus’ son wert thou at the first; thereafter Menander, Then what thou seemest now, and hereafter shalt turn to a sunbeam. Four score seasons of life shall be given thee over a hundred. 





But as a matter of fact he died insane at seventy
without awaiting the fulfilment of the god’s promise!
 
This oracle too was one of the autophones.
When one time he enquired about getting
married, Alexander said explicitly:

 Take Alexander’s daughter to wife, who was born
of Selene. 



He had long before given out a story to the
effect that his daughter was by Selene; for Selene
had fallen in love with him on seeing him asleep
once upon a time—it is a habit of hers, you
know, to adore handsome lads in their sleep!+
Without any hesitation that prince of sages Rutilianus sent for the girl at once, celebrated his nuptials
as a sexagenarian bridegroom, and took her to wife,
propitiating his mother-in-law, the moon, with whole
hecatombs and imagining that he himself had
become one of the Celestials!