Fights, insurgencies, epidemic, starvation and demise, are never the impact of those natural causes, which we encounter. Wonders, omens, prophets, judgements, very dark the couple of natural occasions, that are intermixed with them. Be that as it may, as the former develop more slender each page, in extent as we progress closer the edified ages.

We soon realize, that there is not all that much or supernatural in the case, yet that all returns from the typical penchant of humankind towards the heavenly, and that, however this slant may at interims get a check from sense and learning, it can never be completely extirpated from human nature.

It is abnormal, a sensible peruser is able to state, upon the scrutiny of these superb historians, that such colossal occasions never occur in our days. Yet, it is not all that much, I trust, that men should lie in all ages. You should unquestionably have seen occasions enough of that fragility. You have yourself heard numerous such radiant relations began, which, being treated with disdain by all the savvy and wise, have finally been relinquished even by the obscene.

Be guaranteed that those eminent falsehoods which have spread and thrived to such a huge stature, emerged from like beginnings, however being sown in a more legitimate soil, shot up finally into wonders relatively equivalent to those which they relate. It was an astute approach in that false prophet, Alexander, who however now overlooked, was once so celebrated, to lay the first scene of his impostures in Paphlagonia, where, as Lucian lets us know, the general population were to a great degree oblivious and dumb, and prepared to swallow even the grossest hallucination.

Individuals at a distance, who are sufficiently frail to think the issue at all worth request, have no chance of accepting better data. The stories come amplified to them by a hundred conditions. Dolts are enterprising in proliferating the imposture, while the shrewd and scholarly are satisfied, in general, to criticize its preposterousness, without illuminating themselves of the specific realities, by which it might be unmistakably disproved.

Subsequently the impostor previously mentioned was empowered to continue, from his oblivious Paphlagonians, to the enrolling of votaries, even among the Grecian philosophers, and men of the most prominent rank and refinement in Rome.

The advantages are so extraordinary, of beginning an imposture among an insensible people, that, despite the fact that the dream ought to be excessively gross, making it impossible to force on the generality of them it has a vastly improved possibility for prevailing in remote nations, than if the first scene had been laid in a city eminent for arts and knowledge. The most uninformed and brutal of these savages convey the report abroad.

None of their countrymen have an extensive correspondence, or adequate credit and authority to negate and beat down the dream. Men's slant to the brilliant has full chance to show itself. Also, in this manner a story, which is all around detonated in where it was first begun, should go for sure at a thousand miles distance.

Had Alexander settled his living arrangement at Athens, the philosophers of that eminent store of learning had quickly spread, all through the entire Roman empire, their feeling of the issue which being upheld by so extraordinary authority, and showed by all the power of reason and expressiveness, had completely opened the eyes of humanity. It is valid, Lucian, going by chance through Paphlagonia, had a chance of playing out this good office. In any case, however much to be wished, it doesn't generally happen, that each Alexander meets with a Lucian, prepared to uncover and identify his impostures.

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References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_of_Abonoteichus
http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/lucian/lucian_alexander.htm