Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/183

 self-interest. The other speaker explains that he is thinking only of objectless falsehoods, and adds:—

"Indulgence, or, in some cases, commendation, may be granted to ruses practised on an enemy, or to people who tell an untruth to save themselves in peril—as Ulysses often did, 'guarding his own life, and his comrades' return.'"

Lucian may well have been thinking of his feigned reconciliation with Alexander, by which alone, as it seemed, he could save himself and the companions of his journey. He relates that, shortly after this reconciliation, Alexander plotted to have him drowned at sea, and that he escaped only by a change of purpose in the captain of the vessel, who had been bribed to do the murder, but at the last moment recoiled from such a villainy.

The portrait of this Alexander, which Lucian has drawn with so much detail, is interesting for the vivid light which it casts on the condition of declining paganism. The extreme crudeness of the charlatan's methods did not prevent his having an immense and prolonged success. His dupes were not found only among ignorant rustics, but also among people of good education, and even in the high places of the empire. We may be sure, too, that this Alexander was no solitary phenomenon, but a type. Apollonius of Tyana, in the first century, was doubtless a man of different calibre from the prophet of Abonoteichos; but the state of mind to which he appealed was much the same, and his claims were of a kindred order. The normal forces of the old polytheism were well-nigh spent. It was