worthy, if he had only employed his fine talents and delicate wit in exposing the vices of the pretended philosophers, and ridiculing the follies they delivered with so much gravity; but nothing was sacred to him, neither morals nor religion; he has sown obscenities in his works, blasphemed Christianity, and even attacked the principles of natural religion. Fond of raillery, it was enough for him to have the laugh on his side; excellent at ridicule, and incapable of any thing that was serious, truth and falsehood, honesty and dishonesty, were to him perfectly indifferent. His Dialogues of the Dead, and some other of his writings, may be read by youth with advantage. In general, the reading of this author requires stayed heads, and fixed good principles. He was the scourge of the impostors of his time. From him I have given the life and death of Peregrinus; I will likewise give the reader his account concerning the tricks of Alexander, a pretended soothsayer, after I have done with the characters of the men of distinguished genius in the reign of Aurelius.

ters of dife

Philosophy was not the only science cultivated Other wriin this reign; it produced likewise writers of different ferent kinds, the most famous of whom, and most kinds. to be esteemed beyond all comparison, is Galen, Galen. the second father of medicine, who was honoured with Aurelius's confidence, and survived him. It was he who prepared the treacle, which this emperor used continually, and which he considered as the great preservative of his health.

Pausanias has left us a journey through Greece, Pausanias. whereby he describes what is remarkable in every country and city, as to public edifices, temples, theatres, races, statues, or pictures. It is a valuable treasure for the admirers of antiquity.

Aulus Gellius was a grammarian, of whom we Aulus Gelhave a collection of different observations, not to be lius. despised; but he was a mere gram narian, of little

taste, without genius, an idolizer of antiquity, and who, full of quotations from Ennius, Cato the censor, Claudius Quadrigarius, does not once name Horace, Titus Livius, or Tacitus.

Polyenus of Macedon dedicated to the emperors Aurelius and L. Verus, whilst they were engaged in the Parthian war, a collection of strata. gems.

Hermogenes the rhetorician is best known from the sad catastrophe of his understanding: master of eloquence at fifteen years old, and worthy, by his discourses and lectures, of the attention of Aurelius, he lost his memory at twenty-four, and led a long time an obscure life-a man in his childhood, and an infant in his old age*.

There remains nothing more concerning the reign of Aurelius but to set before the reader the farce which was acted by Alexander the famous impostor. He was, indeed, a very singular man in his way, and it may be useful to see, from a noted and very circumstantial example, how far imposture may be carried on one hand, and credulity on the other.

Alexander was born at Abonotica, a small city of Paphlagonia, and by the subtilty of his wit, the most acute that ever was, he strangely belied the climate which gave him birth, and which generally produced only men of dull and low capacities, and formed to be dupes. Alexander, on the contrary, had received from nature all the talents which form great cheats. Born to take advantage of the simplicity of the vulgar, he possessed, in an eminent degree, a readiness to devise, a boldness to undertake, a popular and dazzling eloquence, and withal a refined hypocrisy to conceal vice under the most deceitful appearances. Add to this the advantage of stature, a fine presence, an enchanting air, eyes

full

* Ἐν παῖσι μὲν γέρων, ἐν δὲ γέρεσι παῖς. Philostr. Soph. II. 7.

full of fire, a loud voice, with every thing that can impose. Born to no fortune, his first resource was debauchery, or rather the ignominy of ministering to the debauchery of others: among those from whom he received an infamous salary, there was a countryman and disciple of Apollonius Tyaneus, a physician by profession, but, under the mask of this honourable title, exercising the infamous trade of an impostor and magician, of a revealer of secrets, skilled in procuring success in the affairs of love, revenge, estates, hidden treasures. Alexander greedily swallowed the instructions of a master in an art so agreeable to his inclination; and the master, on his part, had a pleasure in forming a scholar in whom he found the happiest dispositions for making a complete impostor.

The physician being dead, Alexander, heir to his knowledge, began to practise his lessons; and having associated a proper companion, named Cocconas, they together went through the provinces, living at the expense of fools and dupes, who paid them amply for their impudent lies; among others, they made a conquest of a rich Macedonian woman, who, though upon the decline, wanted still to be admired; they so infatuated her, that she maintained them, and they followed her from Bithynia, where they first met with her, into Macedon, and to Pella, the ancient capital of the Macedonian kings.

There they made an excellent discovery in regard to the views they had formed. The country about Pella abounds with serpents of a prodigious size, and surprisingly tame; they are familiar with men, who feed them in their houses, and put them to sleep by their children; if they are trod upon, they bear it, if they are bruised, they are not angry; and they suck the women who will permit them: it was undoubtedly one of these serpents which, being found in the bed of Olympias, gave occasion to the fable of the miraculous birth of the conqueror of

Asia and the Indies. Our two impostors bought, for a small matter, one of the most beautiful of these serpents, and with this purchase they framed a system of imposture of the first class; they determined to establish an oracle, which should at tract crowds of those who, from hope and fear, the two tyrannical springs of human actions, were eager after the knowledge of futurity, and susceptible of delusion.

The only point was, where to fix the scene; Cocconas inclined for Chalcedon, a city of great resort, and from whence their reputation might spread, on the one hand into Thrace, and on the other into Bithynia, Galatia, and the neighbouring regions; but Alexander judged rightly, that for the enterprise they intended, a country was to be chosen whose gross inhabitants should be disposed easily to fall into the snare; now he knew that such were his countrymen of Paphlagonia, a plain rustic people, who, if they only saw an impostor of a village with a fiddle, were sure to hear him with transport as a deity; he believed, however, he should be able to form a party at Chalcedon, just to put the affair barely in motion; and going to that city with Cocconas, they by concert hid in the ancient temple of Apollo tablets of brass, on which was written, that immediately Æsculapius, with his father Apollo, would come to Pontus, and take up their residence at Abonotica; these tablets were discovered by accomplices in the plot, and the imposture succeeded so well, that immediately the inhabitants of Abonotica began to lay the foundations of a temple to Esculapius, who was coming to honour them with his presence. Cocconas remained at Chalcedon, where he died soon after.

As for Alexander, as he saw his imposture succeed, he pursued his scheme, aud caused himself to be declared, by a pretended oracle, a descendant of the hero Perseus, and son of Podalirius; and his

ignorant

ignorant fellow-citizens, who had known his father and mother, who were the very dregs of the people, believed this magnificent genealogy. In order to appear with an equipage becoming his high dignity, Alexander put on a rich dress, a tunic of white and purple, with a white cloak, and carrying a scimitar in his hand, as a symbol of his descent from Perseus, with his hair flowing in ringlets, he entered Abonotica.

He was in no haste to execute his project at once, but prepared the people, and kept them in suspence and admiration, feigning from time to time fits of prophetic fury, wherein he foamed at the mouth, by means of an herb he had taken care to chew, and which has the quality of producing that effect*. Meantime, he kept his serpent carefully concealed in his house, and proposed to fit a human head to it, made of linen; on the fore part of this head were painted, in their natural colours, all the parts and features of a face; it had a mouth which opened itself, and a tongue like a serpent's, which darted out by the help of horse-hairs gently touched; every thing being thus ready, Esculapius was to make his appearance, for which the impostor used this device.

He went in the night, and hid in the water ga thered about the foundations of the temple which was actually in building, a goose's egg, which he had emptied, and in which he put a young serpent; the water, by diluting the earth, formed a mud, which served as a safe receptacle for the egg: the day after this operation, Alexander, naked, having only about his loins a scarf of gold stuff, with his scimitar in his hand, and shaking his locks, which waved in the wind, runs to the market-place, mounts the altar, and from thence haranguing the multitude,

* This herb is called in Latin struthium, or radicula. It is known with us under the name of the fuller's herb.