26
There are people who say that he has even changed his mind, and is telling certain dreams, to the effect that Zeus does not permit pollution of a holy place.See above, p. 25, and n. 3. But let him be assured on that score; I would take my oath to it that no one of the gods would be angry if Peregrinus should die a rogue’s death. Moreover, it is not easy for him to withdraw now; for his Cynic associates are urging him on and pushing him into the fire and inflaming his resolution; they will not let him shirk it. If he should pull a couple of them into the fire along with him when he jumps in, that would be the only nice thing about his performance.
27
“Thave heard that he no longer deigns to be called Proteus but has changed his name to Phoenix, because the phoenix, the Indian bird, is said to mount a pyre when it is very far advanced in age. Indeed, he even manufactures myths and repeats certain oracles, ancient, of course, to the purport that he is to become a guardian spirit of the night; it is plain, too, that he already covets altars and expects to be imaged in gold.
28
“By Zeus, it would be nothing unnatural if, among all the dolts that there are, some should be found to assert that they were relieved of quartan fevers by him, and that in the dark they had encountered the guardian spirit of the night! Then too these accursed disciples of his will make an oracular shrine, I suppose, with a holy of holies, at the site of the pyre, because the famous Proteus, son of Zeus, the progenitor of his name, was given to soothsaying.Athenagoras reports that Parium, where Peregrinus was born, cherished a statue of him from which oracles were derived (Leg. de Christ., 26). I pledge m word, too, that priests of his will be appointed, wit whips or branding-irons or some such flummy-diddle, or even that a nocturnal mystery will be got up in his honour, including a torch festival at the site of the pye.
