ALEXANDER THE PAPHLAGONIAN, a celebrated impostor and worker of false oracles, was born at Abonouteichos (see INEBOLI) in Paphlagonia in the early part of the end century A.D. The vivid narrative of his career given by Lucian might be taken as fictitious but for the corroboration of certain coins of the emperors Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius (J. H. Eckhel, Doctrina Nummorurn Veterum, p. 383, 384) and of a statue of Alexander, said by Athenagoras (Apology, c. 26) to have stood in the forum of Parium. Alexander succeeded in establishing an oracle of Aesculapius at his native town. Having circulated a prophecy that the son of Apollo was to be born again, he contrived that there should be found in the foundations of the temple to Aesculapius, then in course of construction at Abonouteichos, an egg in which a small live snake had been placed. Alexander had little difficulty in convincing the Paphlagonians of the second com ing of the god under the name of Glycon. A large tame snake with a false human head, wound round Alexander's body as he sat in a shrine in the temple, gave "autophones" or oracles un asked, but the usual methods practised were those of the numerous oracle-mongers of the time, of which Lucian gives a detailed account, the opening of sealed enquiries by heated needles, a neat plan of forging broken seals, and the giving of vague or meaning less replies to difficult questions. The reputation of the oracle spread, and Alexander set up an "intelligence bureau" in Rome, instituted mysteries like those of Eleusis, from which the Christ ians and Epicureans were alike excluded as "profane," and cele brated a mystic marriage between himself and the moon. Lucian's own close investigations into Alexander's methods of fraud led to a serious attempt on his life. The whole account gives a graphic description of the inner working of one among the many new oracles that were springing up at this period. Alexander lived to be seventy and amassed great sums of money.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. See Lucian, 'AXe hvtpcs ikeulbµavrts, F. Greg rovius,Bibliography. See Lucian, 'AXe hvtpcs ikeulbµavrts, F. Greg rovius, The Emperor Hadrian, translated by M. E. Robinson (1898) ; and Samuel Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus (1904) •