Glycon

Glycon
Late 2nd-century statue of Glycon. (National History and Archeology Museum, Constanţa, Romania)
Abode	Abonutichus

Glycon (Ancient Greek: Γλύκων, gen: Γλύκωνος) was a snake god, according to the satirist Lucian, who provides the primary literary reference to the deity. Lucian claimed Glycon was created in the mid-2nd century by the Greek prophet Alexander of Abonutichus. (In 20 BC Glycon is referred to by the Roman poet Horace, in his Epistle 1 to Maecenas in his First Book of Epistles; "... you despair of the muscles of the invincible Glycon...") Lucian was ill-disposed toward the cult, calling Alexander a false-prophet and accusing the whole enterprise of being a hoax: Glycon himself was supposedly a hand puppet.

The cult possibly originated in Macedonia, where similar snake cults had existed for centuries. The Macedonians believed snakes had magical powers relating to fertility and had a rich mythology on this subject, for example the story of Olympias's impregnation by Zeus disguised as a serpent.

At least initially, the cult did not worship an abstraction or a spirit of a snake but an actual, physical serpent that was said to embody the god. According to the cult's mythology, the snake appeared after Alexander had foretold the coming of a new incarnation of Asclepius. When the people gathered in the marketplace of Abonutichus at noon, when the incarnation was supposed to occur, Alexander produced a goose egg and sliced it open, revealing the god within. Within a week it grew to the size of a man with the features of a man on its face, including long blond hair. At this point the figure resembling this description was apparently a puppet that appeared in the temple. In some references Glycon was a trained snake with a puppet head.

As with previous Macedonian snake cults, the focus of worship at the temple was on fertility. Barren women would bring offerings to Glycon in hopes of becoming pregnant. According to Lucian, Alexander had less magical ways of causing pregnancy among his flock as well. The god was also believed to offer protection against the plague.