Lucian’s satires on Peregrinus of Parium and Alexander of Abonoteichos illustrate the growing importance of religion in contests over cultural authority in the second century CE. Prophecy in particular plays a central role in the establishment of Peregrinus’s and Alexander’s authority, and in the satirist’s reframing of these men as charlatans. In fabricating his own prophecies, and thus competing with these would-be holy men at their own game (however satirically), Lucian threatens to reveal himself as just another fame-seeker within the agonistic display culture of the high Roman empire.