setting him free. He afterwards travelled, supported, according to apostolic precedent, by his fellow-believers; but being detected in some profanation (apparently) of the Eucharist,[1] he threw off his profession, and returned to his old profligate life. Expelled from Rome by the authorities for his scandalous conduct there, he endeavoured without success to excite the people of Elis to revolt against the Roman Government; and at length, finding his popularity and influence on the wane, sought to restore it by giving out publicly that he would burn himself solemnly at the forthcoming Olympic games. This intention, strange to say, he actually carried into execution; whether from an insane desire for posthumous notoriety, or whether, hoping to be rescued at the last moment by his friends, he had gone too far to recede, is not at all clear from any version of the story.
Lucian was an eyewitness of this very remarkable spectacle, of which he gives an account in the shape of a letter to a friend, prefacing it with a short biographical sketch, touched in very dark colours, of a man whom he considers to have been, both in his life and death, a consummate impostor. These are the passages in which he speaks of the Christians:—
"About this time, Peregrinus became a disciple of that extraordinary philosophy of the Christians, having met with some of their priests and scribes in Palestine. He soon convinced them that they were all mere chil-
- ↑ Lucian's words are, "I believe it was eating certain food forbidden among them." This may have reference to the "meats offered to idols:" or he may very probably here, as elsewhere, confound Christians with Jews.
