After these speeches, Lucian was on hand when the pyre was kindled at Harpina near Olympia shortly after midnight. As an eye-witness he saw the pyre in a pit six feet deep, Peregrinus in the dress of a Cynic bearing a torch, men lighting the fire, how then Peregrinus stripped to his old shirt and after crying: “Spirits of my mother and my father, receive me with goodwill,” leaped into the flames to be seen no more. Even when the other Cynics stood about the pyre in silent grief, Lucian felt no sympathy, but taunted them brutally, and actually got into a broil with them before he departed to meditate on how strange the love of fame is. Lucian had to tell the story of Peregrinus’ death over and over until to amuse himself, he invented a vulture that he saw flying from the flames to heaven, crying: “I have left the earth, I am going to Olympus.” And this invention of his became part of the growing myth about the hero.
“So ended (wrote Lucian) that poor wretch Proteus, a man who (to put it briefly) never fixed his gaze on the verities, but always did and said everything with a view to glory and the praise of the multitude, even to the extent of leaping into fire, when he was sure not to enjoy the praise because he could not hear it.”[303]
Lucian concludes with anecdotes about Peregrinus sea-sick, in a fever, having eye-trouble and trying to cure fever and correct vision as though Aeacus in the lower world would care about either ailment. He was simply furnishing Democritus with more cause for laughter. This heartless ridicule of the Cynic’s action takes no account of the psychology of fanaticism or the hysteria of martyrdom. Croiset points out that Lucian’s insensitivity to all mysticism must be viewed with the knowledge that the satirist believed Peregrinus was a sham and that he was unveiling an impostor. Lucian’s consistent worship of veracity and frankness then explain his derisive attitude towards the apotheosis of a pretender.[304]
The savagery used in exposing a false philosopher was turned by Lucian upon a religious fraud, Alexander of Abonoteichus. The piece is a letter to a friend, Celsus, written after A.D. 180, ten years after Alexander’s death. Lucian’s account gives almost all we know of this Alexander although his existence and influence are attested by gems, coins and inscriptions. The letter, however, as Croiset points out, contains more satire than history, for it does not attempt to distinguish scrupulously between the false and the true; rather it presents in lively anecdotes and personal reminiscences a satiric portrait of an historical prophet.[305] Cumont has commented on the unique features of Abonoteichus’ version of the worship of Aesculapius: the giving a serpent a human head and calling it the god incarnate; the issuing of oracles and advice instead of using incubation or dealing particularly with healing.[306]