Urban Landscapes and Religious Shifts in Lucian's Alexander

Lucian's Alexander or The False Prophet, while satirising the expansion of the historically attested Glycon cult and its purported founder, offers insights into narratives of religious conversion. This paper discusses the text from the perspective of urban religion and traces the elements that present the emergence of a new religion within a distinct polis setting. It further analyses Lucian's work as a narrative of religious expansion, exploring its ramifications in the context of the literary production of its time.