33
I should like to tell you some of the responses that were given to Rutilianus. Asking about his son by a former marriage, who was then in the full bloom of youth, he enquired who should be appointed his tutor in his studies, The reply was: Be it Pythagoras; aye, and the good bard, master of warfare. Then after a few days the boy died, and Alexander was at his wit’s end, with nothing to say to his critics, as the oracle had been shown up so obviously. But Rutilianus himself, good soul, made haste to defend the oracle by saying that the god had predicted precisely this outcome, and on account of it had bidden him to select as his tutor nobody then alive, but rather Pythagoras and Homer, who died long ago, with whom, no doubt, the lad was then studying in Hades. What fault, then, should we find with Alexander if he thought fit to amuse himself at the expense of such homunculi?
34
At another time, when Rutilianus enquired whose soul he had inherited, the reply was: Peleus’ son wert thou at the first; thereafter Menander, Then what thou seemest now, and hereafter shalt turn to a sunbeam. Four score seasons of life shall be given thee over a hundred. But as a matter of fact he died insane at seventy without awaiting the fulfilment of the god’s promise!
35
This oracle too was one of the autophones. When one time he enquired about getting married, Alexander said explicitly: Take Alexander’s daughter to wife, who was born of Selene. He had long before given out a story to the effect that his daughter was by Selene; for Selene had fallen in love with him on seeing him asleep once upon a time—it is a habit of hers, you know, to adore handsome lads in their sleep!+ Without any hesitation that prince of sages Rutilianus sent for the girl at once, celebrated his nuptials as a sexagenarian bridegroom, and took her to wife, propitiating his mother-in-law, the moon, with whole hecatombs and imagining that he himself had become one of the Celestials!
