Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/196

 It appears, then, that in the large regions of Asia Minor over which this Alexander operated, Christians and Epicureans were the two sects to which the charge of atheism—i.e., of rejecting the pagan gods—could be attached with most popular effect. We see also that the Christians must then have been numerous in those regions, as we know, on Lucian's own testimony, that the Epicureans were. Some sixty or seventy years had then elapsed since the younger Pliny, as propraetor in the Asiatic province of Pontica, had consulted Trajan about Christianity—that new superstition which he described as having spread not only through cities, but through villages and country districts also. Pliny thought, however, that the taint could still be arrested and cured, while Trajan's brief reply indicates that he regarded the matter as of small importance. Lucian's words suggest—what, indeed, we know to be the fact—that the Christian community in Asia Minor, besides having increased numerically, had now more of corporate influence. But it is in another piece of Lucian's that we find by far the most important of his references to Christianity. This is the treatise on the death of Peregrinus, a native of Parium on the Hellespont, a charlatan who, after playing so many parts as well to justify his assumption of the name Proteus, finally succeeded in making a sensation by publicly burning himself to death at Olympia. The insane passion for notoriety which prompted his last act was the ruling motive in every phase of his career. At one time Peregrinus was