The Hoax Religion With a Puppet as Its Deity

The cult of Glycon, a human-headed snake, lasted more than a century

Coin with Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius and snake god Glycon (Source: Classical Numismatic Group, Inc.)

Throughout history, humans worshiped hundreds of deities. The cult of Glycon, a human-headed snake, arose in second-century Asia Minor. Founded by Alexander of Abonoteichus around 160 CE, the religion worshiped Glycon for a century or more after Alexander’s death. It was all a fraud. Glycon’s human head was a sock puppet.

All we know of Alexander comes from Lucian of Samosata, a Syrian writer. At the request of a friend, Lucian told Alexander’s story in a letter around 180 CE, about ten years after Alexander’s death. The letter makes clear Lucian’s contempt for Alexander, calling him “a man who does not deserve to have polite people read about him, but rather to have the motley crowd in a vast amphitheater see him being torn to pieces by foxes or apes.” Physical evidence, though, confirms the existence of Glycon’s cult.

Alexander was born around 105 CE in Abonoteichus (now İnebolu, Turkey), a Black Sea port. Lucian claims Alexander was a child prostitute. He was part of a traveling medicine show as a young man, “practicing quackery and sorcery, and ‘trimming the fatheads,’” according to Lucian. He and another man went to a part of Macedonia with many large, “tame and gentle” snakes. They bought one of the…