Lucian and His Alexander, a.k.a. <i>Fake Prophet</i>: Fake News and Invective Mirrored

Abstract Lucian the sophist wrote an epistolary essay that condemns the spiritualist Alexander of Abonuteichos for criminal fraud, social and sexual self-aggrandizement, and sexual mischief, first among his native Paphlagonians and then far beyond in second-century Roman Anatolia. Both men prospered by their verbal agility and daring performances. Both succeeded remarkably in the imperial oikoumene. They competed for attention with contrasting worldviews. Alexander's strategies of persuasion began with divine miracles and prophecies but extended to a campaign of disinformation about and invective against his foes (Epicureans, Christians, and Lucian, among others). Lucian, in the name of philosophical truth, employs similar tropes, exposing a snake with a puppet's humanoid head, the prophet's lavish lifestyle and dubious murder plot against the fearless Lucian, and feckless belief among his followers. Both men present themselves as devoted expounders of differing realities. We must find Alexander, however, almost entirely through this bemused Lucian, whose invective only sees positives in Alexander when they serve to convict him of superior hoodwinking.