A good example of the merciless, and not altogether scrupulous fashion in which the Cynics were handled by contemporaries is to be found in Lucian’s piece on the death of Peregrinus.(1875) Peregrinus was a native of Parium on the Propontis, and a man of fortune. He loved to call himself Proteus, and, indeed, the strange vicissitudes of his career justified his assumption of the name.(1876) On reaching manhood, he wandered from land to land, and in Palestine he joined a Christian brotherhood, in which he rose to a commanding influence, which drew down the suspicion of the government, and he was thrown for a time into prison.(1877) His persecution called forth, as Lucian ungrudgingly admits, all the fearless love and charity of the worshippers of “the crucified Sophist.” Released by a philosophic governor of the type of Gallio, he gave up the remnant of his paternal property, amounting to fifteen talents, to his native city.(1878) Peregrinus had already assumed the peculiar dress of the Cynic, and set out on fresh wanderings, having, from some difference on a point of ritual, severed his connection with the Christian brotherhood. He then came under the influence of an Egyptian ascetic and of the mysticism of the East. In a visit to Italy he acquired celebrity by his fierce invectives, which did not spare even the blameless and gentle Antoninus Pius.(1879) The Emperor himself paid little heed to him, but the prefect of the city thought that Rome could well spare such a philosopher, and Peregrinus was obliged to return to the East. Henceforth Greece, and especially Elis, was the scene of his labours. He abated none of his energy, dealing out his denunciations impartially, and not sparing even the philosophic millionaire Herodes Atticus for providing the visitors to Olympia with the luxury of pure water.(1880) He even tried to stir up Greece to armed revolt. His fame and power among the Cynic brotherhood were at their height, or perhaps beginning to wane, when he conceived the idea of electrifying the world and giving a demonstration of the triumph of philosophy even over death by a self-immolation at Olympia. There, before the eyes of men gathered from all quarters, like Heracles, the great Cynic exemplar, on Mount Oeta, he resolved to depart in the blaze and glory of the funeral pyre kindled by his own hand. And perhaps some rare lettered Cynic brother set afloat a Sibylline verse, such as abounded in those days, bidding men prepare to revere another hero, soon to be enthroned along with Heracles in the broad Olympus.