Not much is known about the early life of Alexander. According to Lucian's account, he was of lowly Paphlagonian origin, and it is implicit he was from Abonoteichos itself or the surrounding Pontic area. As a youth, Lucian says Alexander worked as a male prostitute, until he entered a romantic and commercial relation with one of his clients, a magician who boasted to be a disciple of
Apollonius of Tyana. Alexander then accompanied his lover in his travels and learned his craft; Lucian observes that, despite being a charlatan, Alexander's master had actually taught him some pharmaceutical lore, which in the future would be helpful as a means to gain credibility. After the death of his lover, lacking in means to provide for himself, since he was already too old to gain money from prostitution (it's understood he was in his late teens), Alexander went to
Byzantium, where he formed a society with one Cocconas, who's described as a poet (poetry was an integral part of incantatory practices in Classical Antiquity). Alexander and Cocconas, after some time working as travelling magicians, decided to establish a new oracle in Alexander's hometown
Abonoteichus (
femin.: Ἀβωνότειχος
Abōnóteichos; later
Ionopolis), on the
Euxine, where he gained riches and great prestige by professing to heal the sick and reveal the future. Sometime before 160 CE Alexander formed a cult around the worship of a new snake-god, Glycon, and headquartered it in Abonoteichus. 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 Abonoteichus, an egg in which a small live
snake had been placed. In an age of superstition no people had so great a reputation for credulity as the Paphlagonians, and Alexander had little difficulty in convincing them of the second coming 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 unasked. During the
plague of 166 a verse from the oracle was used as an
amulet and was inscribed over the doors of houses as a protection and an oracle was sent, at
Marcus Aurelius' request, by Alexander to the Roman army on the
Danube during the war with the
Marcomanni, declaring that victory would follow on the throwing of two lions alive into the river. The result was a great disaster and Alexander had recourse to the old quibble of the
Delphic oracle to
Croesus for an explanation. Lucian's account of Alexander represents the Christians—along with the Epicureans—as the special enemies and as the principal objects of his hate: Epicureans had too little religion or superstition to give in to a religious pretender; and the Christian faith was too deep-rooted to dream of any communion with Alexander. 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 had remarkable beauty and the striking personality of the successful charlatan, and must have been a man of considerable intellectual abilities and power of organization. His usual methods were those of the numerous oracle-mongers of the time, of which Lucian gives a detailed account: the opening of sealed inquiries by heated needles, a neat plan of forging broken seals, and the giving of vague or meaningless replies to difficult questions, coupled with a lucrative blackmailing of those whose inquiries were compromising. Alexander died of
gangrene of the leg complicated by
myiasis in his seventieth year. == Modern scholarship ==