Lucian exposes all Alexander’s shams and corruptions. He describes his handsome appearance and education, his cleverness in purchasing a tame serpent and in selecting the site of Abonoteichus for his oracle. He describes the installation of the serpent, the invention of the human head for it, the exhibition of it, the methods of giving oracles, the prices, the publicity, the “autophones,” cunningly contrived to issue from the serpent’s mouth, the spread of his fame even to Italy. Lucian pictures too the perils that menaced any critics of the oracle, the burning of the sayings of Epicurus, the personal danger to himself. Lucian was advised by the governor of Bithynia and Pontus not to prosecute Alexander for his attempted murder so after the prophet’s death he wrote this account to honor Epicurus and to present the truth to thinking minds. Personal revenge then as well as horror at religious fraud motivated this biography. Lucian, who derided Epicureans in _Philosophies for Sale_, chooses now to revere their founder! One of Lucian’s greatest works bears the title _Parasites for Pay_. It was written and undoubtedly read to the public in the last part of his life before he went to Egypt. It is not only very distinguished as a satire,[307] but in it as Gildersleeve points out[308] “his sensitiveness for Greek honor, for the honor of the people as well as for the honor of the literary class, manifests itself in a way to do infinite credit to Lucian’s heart.” Harmon calls it “a Hogarthian sketch of the life led by educated Greeks who attached themselves to the households of great Roman lords—and ladies.”[309] The satire is in the form of a letter addressed to a friend Timocles who is thinking of taking such a post. The case, says Lucian, is the same for philosophers, grammarians, rhetoricians, and musicians. The motives which apparently led men to accept such positions are poverty and pleasure, but their recompense is small and they have no share in the luxury that dazzled them. They overwork; their expenses in clothing and tips eat up their stipends. Moreover their humiliations are incessant. The first dinner given in their honor brings the strain of observing proper etiquette. Next morning the conference about salary disappoints all hopes by the pittance offered. But a man sells himself and never afterwards can feel free or noble: he is a monkey with a chain around his neck. For he was not engaged to discourse on Homer, Demosthenes, Plato, but because it looks well to have a distinguished Greek philosopher with a long beard and a flowing robe in his master’s suite. The day’s routine of service is exhausting and humiliating, and the philosopher’s rivals for his lord’s favor are a gigolo, a dancing master, an Alexandrian dwarf who recites erotic verses. The night’s sleep is shattered by meditations on lost freedom and present servitude.