Then, when I decided to sail—it chanced that
I was accompanied only by Xenophon Probably a slave or afreedman. He is not mentioned elsewhere in Lucian. during my
visit, as I had previously sent my father and my
family on to Amastris—he sent me many remembrances and presents, and promised too that he
himself would furnish a boat and a crew to transport
me. I considered this a sincere and polite offer;
but when I was in mid-passage, I saw the master
in tears, disputing with the sailors, and began to be
very doubtful about the prospects. It was a fact
that they had received orders from Alexander to
throw us bodily into the sea. If that had been
done, his quarrel with me would have been settled
without ado; but by his tears the master prevailed
upon his crew to do us no harm. “For sixty years,
as you see,” said he to me, “I have led a blameless
and God-fearing life, and I should not wish, at this
age and with a wife and children, to stain my hands


 

with murder;” and he explained for what purpose
he had taken us aboard, and what orders had been
given by Alexander.
 He set us ashore at Aegiali
(which noble Homer mentions Iliad, 2, 855. ), and then they went
back again. 
There I found some men from the Bosporus who
were voyaging along the coast. They were going
as ambassadors from King Eupator to Bithynia, to
bring the yearly contribution. Tiberius Julius Eupator succeeded Rhoemetalces as King of the (Cimmerian) Bosporus, on the Tauric Chersonese; its capital was Panticapaeum (Kertch). The period of his reign is about a.d. 154-171. At this time the kingdom seems to have been paying tribute to the Scythians annually as well as to the Empire (Toxaris, 44). I told them of the
peril in which we had been, found them courteous, was
taken aboard their vessel, and won safely through
to Amastris, after coming so close to losing my life. 
Thereupon I myself began to prepare for battle
with him, and to employ every resource in my desire
to pay him back. Even before his attempt upon
me, I detested him and held him in bitter enmity
on account of the vileness of his character. So I
undertook to prosecute him, and had many associates, particularly the followers of Timocrates, the
philosopher from Heraclea. But the then governor
of Bithynia and Pontus, Avitus, L. Lollianus Avitus, consul a.d. 144, proconsul Africae ca. 156, praeses Bithyniae 165. checked me, all
but beseeching and imploring me to leave off, because out of good will to Rutilianus he could not,
he said, punish Alexander even if he should find
him clearly guilty of crime. In that way my effort
was thwarted, and I left off exhibiting misplaced
zeal before a judge who was in that state of mind. Of course Lucian’s case, as it stood, was weak, as Avitus tactfully hinted. But this does not excuse Avitus. The chances of securing enough evidence to convict Alexander in a Roman court were distinctly good, and fear of Alexander’s influence is the only reasonable explanation of the failure to proceed, 





 
 
Was it not also a great piece of impudence on the
part of Alexander that he should petition the
Emperor to change the name of Abonoteichus and
call it Ionopolis, and to strike a new coin bearing
on one side the likeness of Glycon and on the other
that of Alexander, wearing the fillets of his grandfather Asclepius and holding the falchion of his
maternal ancestor Perseus? 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 the representation of a snake with human head to the middle of the third cent (Head, Hist. Numm., 432, Cumont J.c., p. 42). The modern name Inéboli is a corruption of onopolis. 
 
In spite of his prediction in an oracle that he was
fated to live a hundred and fifty years and then die
by a stroke of lightning, he met a most wretched
end before reaching the age of seventy, in a manner
that befitted a son of Podaleirius; As son of Podaleirius, it was fitting, thinks Lucian, that his leg (poda-) should be affected. for his leg
became mortified quite to the groin and was infested
with maggots. It was then that his baldness was
detected when because of the pain he let the doctors
foment his head, which they could not have done
unless his wig had been removed.
 
Such was the conclusion of Alexander’s spectacular
career, and such the dénouement of the whole play;
being as it was, it resembled an act of Providence,
although it came about by chance. It was inevitable,
too, that he should have funeral games worthy of
his career—that a contest for the shrine should
arise. The foremost of his fellow-conspirators and .
impostors referred it to Rutilianus to decide which
of them should be given the preference, should
suceeed to the shrine, and should be crowned with




 

the fillet of priest and prophet. Paetus was one of
them, a physician by profession, a greybeard, who
conducted himself in a way that befitted neither a
physician nor a greybeard. But Rutilianus, the
umpire, sent them off unfilleted, keeping the post
of prophet for the master after his departure from
this life.