Zeus cross-examined, a
dialogue
satirizing religion.
Lucian
FOWLER
IN FOUR VOLUMES
What work nobler than transplanting foreign thought into the barren
domestic soil? except indeed planting thought of your own, which the
fewest are privileged to do. --_Sarlor Resartus_.
At each flaw, be this your first thought: the author doubtless said
something quite different, and much more to the point. And then you
may hiss _me_ off, if you will. --LUCIAN, _Nigrinus, 9_.
(LUCIAN) The last great master of Attic eloquence and Attic wit. --
_Lord Macaulay_.
VOLUME I
PREFACE
The text followed in this translation is that of Jacobitz, Teubner,
1901, all deviations from which are noted.
In the following list of omissions, italics denote that the piece is
marked as spurious both by Dindorf and by Jacobitz. The other
omissions are mainly by way of expurgation. In a very few other
passages some isolated words and phrases have been excised; but it has
not been thought necessary to mark these in the texts by asterisks.
_Halcyon_; Deorum Dialogi, iv, v, ix, x, xvii, xxii, xxiii;
Dialogi Marini, xiii; Vera Historia, I. 22, II. 19; Alexander, 41,42;
Eunuchus; _De Astrologia_; _Amores_; _Lucius_ sive _Asinus_;
Rhetorum Preceptor, 23; _Hippias_; Adversus Indoctum, 23;
Pseudologista; _Longaevi_; Dialogi Meretricii, v, vi, x; De Syria
Dea; _Philopatris; Charidemus; Nero_; Tragodopodagra; Ocypus;
Epigrammata.
A word may be said about four pieces that seem to stand apart from the
rest. Of these, the _Trial in the Court of Vowels_ and _A Slip of the
Tongue_ will be interesting only to those who are familiar with Greek.
The _Lexiphanes_ and _A Purist Purized_, satirizing the pedants and
euphuists of Lucian's day, almost defy translation, and they must be
accepted at best as an effort to give the general effect of the
original.
The _Notes explanatory_ at the end of vol. iv will be used by the
reader at his discretion. Reference is made to them at the foot of the
page only when it is not obvious what name should be consulted.
The translators take this opportunity of offering their heartiest
thanks to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press for undertaking this
work; and, in particular, to the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University,
Dr. Merry, who has been good enough to read the proofs, and to give
much valuable advice both on the difficult subject of excision and on
details of style and rendering. In this connexion, however, it should
be added that for the retention of many modern phrases, which may
offend some readers as anachronistic, responsibility rests with the
translators alone.
CONTENTS of VOL. 1
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
THE VISION
A LITERARY PROMETHEUS
NIGRINUS
TRIAL IN THE COURT OF VOWELS
TIMON THE MISANTHROPE
PROMETHEUS ON CAUCASUS
DIALOGUES OF THE GODS
i, ii, iii, vi, vii, viii, xi, xii, xiii, xiv, xv, xvi, xviii, xix,
xx, xxi, xxiv, xxv, xxvi.
DIALOGUES OF THE SEA-GODS
i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi, vii, viii, ix, x, xi, xii, xiv, xv.
DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD
I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI,
XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII,
XXVIII, XXIX, XXX.
MENIPPUS
CHARON
OF SACRIFICE
SALE OF CREEDS
THE FISHER
VOYAGE TO THE LOWER WORLD
INTRODUCTION
1. LIFE.
2. PROBABLE ORDER OF WRITINGS.
3. CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE TIME.
4. LUCIAN AS A WRITER.
It is not to be understood that all statements here made are either
ascertained facts or universally admitted conjectures. The
introduction is intended merely to put those who are not scholars, and
probably have not books of reference at hand, in a position to
approach the translation at as little disadvantage as may be.
Accordingly, we give the account that commends itself to us, without
discussion or reference to authorities. Those who would like a more
complete idea of Lucian should read Croiset's _Essai sur la vie et
les oeuvres de Lucien_, on which the first two sections of this
introduction are very largely based. The only objections to the book
(if they are objections) are that it is in French, and of 400 octavo
pages. It is eminently readable.
1. LIFE
With the exception of a very small number of statements, of which the
truth is by no means certain, all that we know of Lucian is derived
from his own writings. And any reader who prefers to have his facts at
first rather than at second hand can consequently get them by reading
certain of his pieces, and making the natural deductions from them.
Those that contain biographical matter are, in the order corresponding
to the periods of his life on which they throw light, _The Vision,
Demosthenes, Nigrinus, The Portrait-study_ and _Defence_ (in which
Lucian is _Lycinus_), _The Way to write History, The double ndictment_
(in which he is _The Syrian_), _The Fisher_ (_Parrhesiades_), _Swans
and Amber, Alexander_, Hermotimus_ (_Lycinus_), _Menippus and
Icaromenippus_ (in which _Menippus_ represents him), _A literary
Prometheus, Herodotus, Zeuxis, Harmonides, The Scythian_, The Death of
Peregrine, The Book-fancier, Demonax, The Rhetorician's Vade mecum,
Dionysus, Heracles, A Slip of the Tongue, Apology for 'The dependent
Scholar. '_ Of these _The Vision_ is a direct piece of autobiography;
there is intentional but veiled autobiography in several of the other
pieces; in others again conclusions can be drawn from comparison of
his statements with facts known from external sources.
Lucian lived from about 125 to about 200 A. D. , under the Roman
Emperors Antoninus Pius, M. Aurelius and Lucius Verus, Commodus, and
perhaps Pertinax. He was a Syrian, born at Samosata on the Euphrates,
of parents to whom it was of importance that he should earn his living
without spending much time or money on education. His maternal uncle
being a statuary, he was apprenticed to him, having shown an aptitude
for modelling in the wax that he surreptitiously scraped from his
school writing-tablets. The apprenticeship lasted one day. It is clear
that he was impulsive all through life; and when his uncle corrected
him with a stick for breaking a piece of marble, he ran off home,
disposed already to think he had had enough of statuary. His mother
took his part, and he made up his mind by the aid of a vision that
came to him the same night.
It was the age of the rhetoricians. If war was not a thing of the
past, the shadow of the _pax Romana_ was over all the small states,
and the aspiring provincial's readiest road to fame was through words
rather than deeds. The arrival of a famous rhetorician to lecture was
one of the important events in any great city's annals; and Lucian's
works are full of references to the impression these men produced, and
the envy they enjoyed. He himself was evidently consumed, during his
youth and early manhood, with desire for a position like theirs. To
him, sleeping with memories of the stick, appeared two women,
corresponding to _Virtue_ and _Pleasure_ in Prodicus's _Choice of
Heracles_--the working woman _Statuary_, and the lady _Culture_. They
advanced their claims to him in turn; but before _Culture_ had
completed her reply, the choice was made: he was to be a rhetorician.
From her reminding him that she was even now not all unknown to him,
we may perhaps assume that he spoke some sort of Greek, or was being
taught it; but he assures us that after leaving Syria he was still a
barbarian; we have also a casual mention of his offering a lock of his
hair to the Syrian goddess in his youth.
He was allowed to follow his bent and go to Ionia. Great Ionian cities
like Smyrna and Ephesus were full of admired sophists or teachers of
rhetoric. But it is unlikely that Lucian's means would have enabled
him to become the pupil of these. He probably acquired his skill to a
great extent by the laborious method, which he ironically deprecates
in _The Rhetorician's Vade mecum_, of studying exhaustively the old
Attic orators, poets, and historians.
He was at any rate successful. The different branches that a
rhetorician might choose between or combine were: (1) Speaking in
court on behalf of a client; (2) Writing speeches for a client to
deliver; (3) Teaching pupils; (4) Giving public displays of his skill.
There is a doubtful statement that Lucian failed in (1), and took to
(2) in default. His surviving rhetorical pieces (_The Tyrannicide,
The Disinherited, Phalaris_) are declamations on hypothetical cases
which might serve either for (3) or (4); and _The Hall, The Fly,
Dipsas_, and perhaps _Demosthenes_, suggest (4). A common form of
exhibition was for a sophist to appear before an audience and let
them propose subjects, of which he must choose one and deliver an
impromptu oration upon it.
Whatever his exact line was, he earned an income in Ionia, then in
Greece, had still greater success in Italy, and appears to have
settled for some time in Gaul, perhaps occupying a professorial chair
there. The intimate knowledge of Roman life in some aspects which
appears in _The dependent Scholar_ suggests that he also lived some
time in Rome. He seems to have known some Latin, since he could
converse with boatmen on the Po; but his only clear reference (A Slip
of the Tongue,) implies an imperfect knowledge of it; and there is not
a single mention in all his works, which are crammed with literary
allusions, of any Latin author. He claims to have been during his time
in Gaul one of the rhetoricians who could command high fees; and his
descriptions of himself as resigning his place close about his lady's
(i. e. Rhetoric's) person, and as casting off his wife Rhetoric because
she did not keep herself exclusively to him, show that he regarded
himself, or wished to be regarded, as having been at the head of his
profession.
This brings us to about the year 160 A. D. We may conceive Lucian now
to have had some of that yearning for home which he ascribes in the
_Patriotism_ even to the successful exile. He returned home, we
suppose, a distinguished man at thirty-five, and enjoyed impressing
the fact on his fellow citizens in _The Vision_. He may then have
lived at Antioch as a rhetorician for some years, of which we have a
memorial in _The Portrait-study_. Lucius Verus, M. Aurelius's
colleague, was at Antioch in 162 or 163 A. D. on his way to the
Parthian war, and _The Portrait-study_ is a panegyric on Verus's
mistress Panthea, whom Lucian saw there.
A year or two later we find him migrating to Athens, taking his father
with him, and at Athens he settled and remained many years. It was on
this journey that the incident occurred, which he relates with such a
curious absence of shame in the _Alexander_, of his biting that
charlatan's hand.
This change in his manner of life corresponds nearly with the change
in habit of mind and use of his powers that earned him his
immortality. His fortieth year is the date given by himself for his
abandonment of Rhetoric and, as he calls it, taking up with Dialogue,
or, as we might say, becoming a man of letters. Between Rhetoric and
Dialogue there was a feud, which had begun when Socrates five
centuries before had fought his battles with the sophists. Rhetoric
appeals to the emotions and obscures the issues (such had been
Socrates's position); the way to elicit truth is by short question and
answer. The Socratic method, illustrated by Plato, had become, if not
the only, the accredited instrument of philosophers, who, so far as
they are genuine, are truth-seekers; Rhetoric had been left to the
legal persons whose object is not truth but victory. Lucian's
abandonment of Rhetoric was accordingly in some sort his change from a
lawyer to a philosopher. As it turned out, however, philosophy was
itself only a transitional stage with him.
Already during his career as a rhetorician, which we may put at
145-164 A. D. , he seems both to have had leanings to philosophy, and to
have toyed with dialogue. There is reason to suppose that the
Nigrinus_, with its strong contrast between the noise and vulgarity of
Rome and the peace and culture of Athens, its enthusiastic picture of
the charm of philosophy for a sensitive and intelligent spirit, was
written in 150 A. D. , or at any rate described an incident that
occurred in that year; and the _Portrait-study_ and its _Defence_,
dialogues written with great care, whatever their other merits, belong
to 162 or 163 A. D. But these had been excursions out of his own
province. After settling at Athens he seems to have adopted the
writing of dialogues as his regular work. The _Toxaris_, a collection
of stories on friendship, strung together by dialogue, the
_Anacharsis_, a discussion on the value of physical training, and the
_Pantomime_, a description slightly relieved by the dialogue form, may
be regarded as experiments with his new instrument. There is no trace
in them of the characteristic use that he afterwards made of dialogue,
for the purposes of satire.
That was an idea that we may suppose to have occurred to him after the
composition of the _Hermotimus_. This is in form the most philosophic
of his dialogues; it might indeed be a dialogue of Plato, of the
merely destructive kind; but it is at the same time, in matter, his
farewell to philosophy, establishing that the pursuit of it is
hopeless for mortal man. From this time onward, though he always
professes himself a lover of true philosophy, he concerns himself no
more with it, except to expose its false professors. The dialogue that
perhaps comes next, _The Parasite_, is still Platonic in form, but
only as a parody; its main interest (for a modern reader is outraged,
as in a few other pieces of Lucian's, by the disproportion between
subject and treatment) is in the combination for the first time of
satire with dialogue.
One more step remained to be taken. In the piece called _A literary
Prometheus_, we are told what Lucian himself regarded as his claim
to the title of an original writer. It was the fusing of Comedy and
Dialogue--the latter being the prose conversation hat had hitherto
been confined to philosophical discussion. The new literary form,
then, was conversation, frankly for purposes of entertainment, as in
Comedy, but to be read and not acted. In this kind of writing he
remains, though he has been often imitated, first in merit as clearly
as in time; and nearly all his great masterpieces took this form. They
followed in rapid succession, being all written, perhaps, between 165
and 175 A. D. And we make here no further comment upon them, except to
remark that they fall roughly into three groups as he drew inspiration
successively from the writers of the New Comedy (or Comedy of ordinary
life) like Menander, from the satires of Menippus, and from writers of
the Old Comedy (or Comedy of fantastic imagination) like Aristophanes.
The best specimens of the first group are _The Liar_ and the
_Dialogues of the Hetaerae;_ of the second, the _Dialogues of the
Dead_ and _of the Gods, Menippus_ and _Icaromenippus, Zeus
cross-examined;_ of the third, _Timon, Charon, A Voyage to the lower
World, The Sale of Creeds, The Fisher, Zeus Tragoedus, The Cock, The
double Indictment, The Ship_.
During these ten or more years, though he lived at Athens, he is to be
imagined travelling occasionally, to read his dialogues to audiences
in various cities, or to see the Olympic Games. And these excursions
gave occasion to some works not of the dialogue kind; the _Zeuxis_ and
several similar pieces are introductions to series of readings away
from Athens; The _Way to write History_, a piece of literary criticism
still very readable, if out of date for practical purposes, resulted
from a visit to Ionia, where all the literary men were producing
histories of the Parthian war, then in progress (165 A. D. ). An
attendance at the Olympic Games of 169 A. D. suggested _The Death of
Peregrine_, which in its turn, through the offence given to Cynics,
had to be supplemented by the dialogue of _The Runaways. The True
History_, most famous, but, admirable as it is, far from best of his
works, presumably belongs to this period also, but cannot be
definitely placed. The _Book-fancier_ and _The Rhetorician's Vade
mecum_ are unpleasant records of bitter personal quarrels.
After some ten years of this intense literary activity, producing,
reading, and publishing, Lucian seems to have given up both the
writing of dialogues and the presenting of them to audiences, and to
have lived quietly for many years. The only pieces that belong here
are the _Life of Demonax_, the man whom he held the best of all
philosophers, and with whom he had been long intimate at Athens, and
that of Alexander, the Asiatic charlatan, who was the prince of
impostors as Demonax of philosophers. When quite old, Lucian was
appointed by the Emperor Commodus to a well-paid legal post in Egypt.
We also learn, from the new introductory lectures called _Dionysus_
and _Heracles_, that he resumed the practice of reading his dialogues;
but he wrote nothing more of importance. It is stated in Suidas that
he was torn to pieces by dogs; but, as other statements in the article
are discredited, it is supposed that this is the Christian revenge for
Lucian's imaginary hostility to Christianity. We have it from himself
that he suffered from gout in his old age. He solaced himself
characteristically by writing a play on the subject; but whether the
goddess Gout, who gave it its name, was appeased by it, or carried him
off, we cannot tell.
2. PROBABLE ORDER OF WRITINGS
The received order in which Lucian's works stand is admitted to be
entirely haphazard. The following arrangement in groups is roughly
chronological, though it is quite possible that they overlap each
other. It is M. Croiset's, put into tabular form. Many details in it
are open to question; but to read in this order would at least be more
satisfactory to any one who wishes to study Lucian seriously than to
take the pieces as they come. The table will also serve as a rough
guide to the first-class and the inferior pieces. The names italicized
are those of pieces rejected as spurious by M. Croiset, and therefore
not placed by him; we have inserted them where they seem to belong; as
to their genuineness, it is our opinion that the objections made (not
by M. Croiset, who does not discuss authenticity) to the _Demosthenes_
and _The Cynic_ at least are, in view of the merits of these,
unconvincing.
(i) About 145 to 160 A. D. Lucian a rhetorician in Ionia, Greece,
Italy, and Gaul.
The Tyrannicide, a rhetorical exercise.
The Disinherited.
Phalaris I & II.
_Demosthenes_, a panegyric.
Patriotism, an essay.
The Fly, an essay.
Swans and Amber, an introductory lecture.
Dipsas, an introductory lecture.
The Hall, an introductory lecture.
Nigrinus, a dialogue on philosophy, 150 A. D.
(ii) About 160 to 164 A. D. After Lucian's return to Asia.
The Portrait-study, a panegyric in dialogue, 162 A. D.
Defence of The Portrait-study, in dialogue.
A Trial in the Court of Vowels, a _jeu d'esprit_.
Hesiod, a short dialogue.
The Vision, an autobiographical address.
(iii) About 165 A. D. At Athens.
Pantomime, art criticism in dialogue.
Anacharsis, a dialogue on physical training.
Toxaris, stories of friendship in dialogue.
Slander, a moral essay.
The Way to write History, an essay in literary criticism.
The next eight groups, iv-xi, belong to the years from about 165 A. D.
to about 175 A. D. , when Lucian was at his best and busiest; iv-ix are
to be regarded roughly as succeeding each other in time; x and xi
being independent in this respect. Pieces are assigned to groups
mainly according to their subjects; but some are placed in groups that
do not seem at first sight the most appropriate, owing to specialties
in their treatment; e. g. _The Ship_ might seem more in place with vii
than with ix; but M. Croiset finds in it a maturity that induces him
to put it later.
(iv) About 165 A. D.
Hermotimus, a philosophic dialogue.
The Parasite, a parody of a philosophic dialogue.
(v) Influence of the New Comedy writers.
The Liar, a dialogue satirizing superstition.
A Feast of Lapithae, a dialogue satirizing the manners of
philosophers.
Dialogues of the Hetaerae, a series of short dialogues.
(vi) Influence of the Menippean satire.
Dialogues of the Dead, a series of short dialogues.
Dialogues of the Gods, a series of short dialogues.
Dialogues of the Sea-Gods, a series of short dialogues.
Menippus, a dialogue satirizing philosophy.
Icaromenippus, a dialogue satirizing philosophy and religion.
Zeus cross-examined, a dialogue satirizing religion.
_The Cynic_, a dialogue against luxury.
_Of Sacrifice_, an essay satirizing religion.
Saturnalia, dialogue and letters on the relation of rich and poor.
The True History, a parody of the old Greek historians,
(vii) Influence of the Old Comedy writers: vanity of human wishes.
A Voyage to the Lower World, a dialogue on the vanity of power.
Charon, a dialogue on the vanity of all things.
Timon, a dialogue on the vanity of riches.
The Cock, a dialogue on the vanity of riches and power,
(viii) Influence of the Old Comedy writers: dialogues satirizing
religion.
Prometheus on Caucasus.
Zeus Tragoedus.
The Gods in Council.
(ix) Influence of the Old Comedy writers: satire on philosophers.
The Ship, a dialogue on foolish aspirations.
The Life of Peregrine, a narrative satirizing the Cynics, 169 A. D.
The Runaways, a dialogue satirizing the Cynics.
The double Indictment, an autobiographic dialogue.
The Sale of Creeds, a dialogue satirizing philosophers.
The Fisher, an autobiographic dialogue satirizing philosophers.
(x) 165-175 A. D. Introductory lectures.
Herodotus.
Zeuxis.
Harmonides.
The Scythian.
A literary Prometheus.
(xi) 165-175 A. D. Scattered pieces standing apart from the great
dialogue series, but written during the same period.
The Book-fancier, an invective. About 170 A. D.
_The Purist purized_, a literary satire in dialogue.
Lexiphanes, a literary satire in dialogue.
The Rhetorician's Vade-mecum, a personal satire. About 178 A. D.
(xii) After 180 A. D.
Demonax, a biography.
Alexander, a satirical biography,
(xiii) In old age.
Mourning, an essay.
Dionysus, an introductory lecture.
Heracles, an introductory lecture.
Apology for 'The dependent Scholar. '
A Slip of the Tongue.
In conclusion, we have to say that this arrangement of M. Croiset's,
which we have merely tabulated without intentionally departing from it
in any particular, seems to us well considered in its broad lines;
there are a few modifications which we should have been disposed to
make in it; but we thought it better to take it entire than to
exercise our own judgment in a matter where we felt very little
confidence.
3. CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE TIME
M. Aurelius has for us moderns this great superiority in interest over
Saint Louis or Alfred, that he lived and acted in a state of society
modern by its essential characteristics, in an epoch akin to our own,
in a brilliant centre of civilization. Trajan talks of "our
enlightened age" just as glibly as _The Times_ talks of it. ' M.
Arnold, _Essays in Criticism, M. Aurelius_.
The age of M. Aurelius is also the age of Lucian, and with any man of
that age who has, like these two, left us a still legible message we
can enter into quite different relations from those which are possible
with what M. Arnold calls in the same essay 'classical-dictionary
heroes. ' A twentieth-century Englishman, a second-century Greek or
Roman, would be much more at home in each other's century, if they had
the gift of tongues, than in most of those which have intervened. It
is neither necessary nor possible to go deeply into the resemblance
here [Footnote: Some words of Sir Leslie Stephen's may be given,
however, describing the welter of religious opinions that prevailed at
both epochs: 'The analogy between the present age and that which
witnessed the introduction of Christianity is too striking to have
been missed by very many observers. The most superficial acquaintance
with the general facts shows how close a parallel might be drawn by a
competent historian. There are none of the striking manifestations of
the present day to which it would not be easy to produce an analogy,
though in some respects on a smaller scale. Now, as then, we can find
mystical philosophers trying to evolve a satisfactory creed by some
process of logical legerdemain out of theosophical moonshine; and
amiable and intelligent persons labouring hard to prove that the old
mythology could be forced to accept a rationalistic interpretation--
whether in regard to the inspection of entrails or prayers for fine
weather; and philosophers framing systems of morality entirely apart
from the ancient creeds, and sufficiently satisfactory to themselves,
while hopelessly incapable of impressing the popular mind; and
politicians, conscious that the basis of social order was being sapped
by the decay of the faith in which it had arisen, and therefore
attempting the impossible task of galvanizing dead creeds into a
semblance of vitality; and strange superstitions creeping out of their
lurking-places, and gaining influence in a luxurious society whose
intelligence was an ineffectual safeguard against the most grovelling
errors; and a dogged adherence of formalists and conservatives to
ancient ways, and much empty profession of barren orthodoxy; and,
beneath all, a vague disquiet, a breaking up of ancient social and
natural bonds, and a blind groping toward some more cosmopolitan creed
and some deeper satisfaction for the emotional needs of mankind. '--
_The Religion of all Sensible Men_ in _An Agnostic's Apology_, 1893. ];
all that need be done is to pass in review those points of it, some
important, and some trifling, which are sure to occur in a detached
way to readers of Lucian.
The Graeco-Roman world was as settled and peaceful, as conscious of
its imperial responsibilities, as susceptible to boredom, as greedy of
amusement, could show as numerous a leisured class, and believed as
firmly in money, as our own. What is more important for our purpose,
it was questioning the truth of its religion as we are to-day
questioning the truth of ours. Lucian was the most vehement of the
questioners. Of what played the part then that the Christian religion
plays now, the pagan religion was only one half; the other half was
philosophy. The gods of Olympus had long lost their hold upon the
educated, but not perhaps upon the masses; the educated, ill content
to be without any guide through the maze of life, had taken to
philosophy instead. Stoicism was the prevalent creed, and how noble a
form this could take in a cultivated and virtuous mind is to be seen
in the _Thoughts_ of M. Aurelius. The test of a religion, however, is
not what form it takes in a virtuous mind, but what effects it
produces on those of another sort. Lucian applies the test of results
alike to the religion usually so called, and to its philosophic
substitute. He finds both wanting; the test is not a satisfactory one,
but it is being applied by all sorts and conditions of men to
Christianity in our own time; so is the second test, that of inherent
probability, which he uses as well as the other upon the pagan
theology; and it is this that gives his writings, even apart from
their wit and fancy, a special interest for our own time. Our
attention seems to be concentrated more and more on the ethical, as
opposed to the speculative or dogmatic aspect of religion; just such
was Lucian's attitude towards philosophy.
Some minor points of similarity may be briefly noted. As we read the
_Anacharsis_, we are reminded of the modern prominence of athletics;
the question of football _versus_ drill is settled for us; light is
thrown upon the question of conscription; we think of our Commissions
on national deterioration, and the schoolmaster's wail over the
athletic _Frankenstein's_ monster which, like _Eucrates_ in _The
Liar_, he has created but cannot control. The 'horsy talk in every
street' of the _Nigrinus_ calls up the London newsboy with his 'All
the winners. ' We think of palmists and spiritualists in the
police-courts as we read of Rutilianus and the Roman nobles consulting
the impostor Alexander. This sentence reads like the description of a
modern man of science confronted with the supernatural: 'It was an
occasion for a man whose intelligence was steeled against such
assaults by scepticism and insight, one who, if he could not detect
the precise imposture, would at any rate have been perfectly certain
that, though this escaped him, the whole thing was a lie and an
impossibility. ' The upper-class audiences who listened to Lucian's
readings, taking his points with quiet smiles instead of the loud
applause given to the rhetorician, must have been something like
that which listens decorously to an Extension lecturer. When Lucian
bids us mark 'how many there are who once were but cyphers, but whom
words have raised to fame and opulence, ay, and to noble lineage too,'
we remember not only Gibbon's remark about the very Herodes Atticus of
whom Lucian may have been thinking ('The family of Herod, at least
after it had been favoured by fortune, was lineally descended from
Cimon and Miltiades'), but also the modern _carriere ouverte aux
talents_, and the fact that Tennyson was a lord. There are the
elements of a socialist question in the feelings between rich and poor
described in the _Saturnalia_; while, on the other hand, the fact
of there being an audience for the _Dialogues of the Hetaerae_ is an
illustration of that spirit of _humani nihil a me alienum puto_ which
is again prevalent today. We care now to realize the thoughts of other
classes besides our own; so did they in Lucian's time; but it is
significant that Francklin in 1780, refusing to translate this series,
says: 'These dialogues exhibit to us only such kind of conversation as
we may hear in the purlieus of Covent Garden--lewd, dull, and
insipid. ' The lewdness hardly goes beyond the title; they are full of
humour and insight; and we make no apology for translating most of
them. Lastly, a generation that is always complaining of the modern
over-production of books feels that it would be at home in a state of
society in which our author found that, not to be too singular, he
must at least write about writing history, if he declined writing it
himself, even as Diogenes took to rolling his tub, lest he should be
the only idle man when Corinth was bustling about its defences.
As Lucian is so fond of saying, 'this is but a small selection of the
facts which might have been quoted' to illustrate the likeness between
our age and his. It may be well to allude, on the other hand, to a few
peculiarities of the time that appear conspicuously in his writings.
The Roman Empire was rather Graeco-Roman than Roman; this is now a
commonplace. It is interesting to observe that for Lucian 'we' is on
occasion the Romans; 'we' is also everywhere the Greeks; while at the
same time 'I' is a barbarian and a Syrian. Roughly speaking, the Roman
element stands for energy, material progress, authority, and the Greek
for thought; the Roman is the British Philistine, the Greek the man of
culture. Lucian is conscious enough of the distinction, and there is
no doubt where his own preference lies. He may be a materialist, so
far as he is anything, in philosophy; but in practice he puts the
things of the mind before the things of the body.
If our own age supplies parallels for most of what we meet with in the
second century, there are two phenomena which are to be matched rather
in an England that has passed away. The first is the Cynics, who swarm
in Lucian's pages like the begging friars in those of a historical
novelist painting the middle ages. Like the friars, they began nobly
in the desire for plain living and high thinking; in both cases the
thinking became plain, the living not perhaps high, but the best that
circumstances admitted of, and the class--with its numbers hugely
swelled by persons as little like their supposed teachers as a Marian
or Elizabethan persecutor was like the founder of Christianity--a pest
to society. Lucian's sympathy with the best Cynics, and detestation of
the worst, make Cynicism one of his most familiar themes. The second
is the class so vividly presented in _The dependent Scholar_--the
indigent learned Greek who looks about for a rich vulgar Roman to buy
his company, and finds he has the worst of the bargain. His
successors, the 'trencher chaplains' who 'from grasshoppers turn
bumble-bees and wasps, plain parasites, and make the Muses mules, to
satisfy their hunger-starved panches, and get a meal's meat,' were
commoner in Burton's days than in our own, and are to be met in
Fielding, and Macaulay, and Thackeray.
Two others of Lucian's favourite figures, the parasite and the
legacy-hunter, exist still, no doubt, as they are sure to in every
complex civilization; but their operations are now conducted with more
regard to the decencies. This is worth remembering when we are
occasionally offended by his frankness on subjects to which we are not
accustomed to allude; he is not an unclean or a sensual writer, but
the waters of decency have risen since his time and submerged some
things which were then visible.
A slight prejudice, again, may sometimes be aroused by Lucian's trick
of constant and trivial quotation; he would rather put the simplest
statement, or even make his transition from one subject to another, in
words of Homer than in his own; we have modern writers too who show
the same tendency, and perhaps we like or dislike them for it in
proportion as their allusions recall memories or merely puzzle us; we
cannot all be expected to have agreeable memories stirred by
insignificant Homer tags; and it is well to bear in mind by way of
palliation that in Greek education Homer played as great a part as the
Bible in ours. He might be taken simply or taken allegorically; but
one way or the other he was the staple of education, and it might be
assumed that every one would like the mere sound of him.
We may end by remarking that the public readings of his own works, to
which the author makes frequent reference, were what served to a great
extent the purpose of our printing-press. We know that his pieces were
also published; but the public that could be reached by hand-written
copies would bear a very small proportion to that which heard them
from the writer's own lips; and though the modern system may have the
advantage on the whole, it is hard to believe that the unapproached
life and naturalness of Lucian's dialogue does not owe something to
this necessity.
4. LUCIAN AS A WRITER
With all the sincerity of Lucian in _The True History_, 'soliciting
his reader's incredulity,' we solicit our reader's neglect of this
appreciation. We have no pretensions whatever to the critical faculty;
the following remarks are to be taken as made with diffidence, and
offered to those only who prefer being told what to like, and why, to
settling the matter for themselves.
Goethe, aged fourteen, with seven languages on hand, devised the plan
of a correspondence kept up by seven imaginary brothers scattered over
the globe, each writing in the language of his adopted land. The
stay-at-home in Frankfort was to write Jew-German, for which purpose
some Hebrew must be acquired. His father sent him to Rector Albrecht.
The rector was always found with one book open before him--a
well-thumbed Lucian. But the Hebrew vowel-points were perplexing, and
the boy found better amusement in putting shrewd questions on what
struck him as impossibilities or inconsistencies in the Old-Testament
narrative they were reading. The old gentleman was infinitely amused,
had fits of mingled coughing and laughter, but made little attempt at
solving his pupil's difficulties, beyond ejaculating _Er narrischer
Kerl! Er narrischer Junge_! He let him dig for solutions, however, in
an English commentary on the shelves, and occupied the time with
turning the familiar pages of his Lucian [Footnote: _Wahrheit und
Dichtung_, book iv. ]. The wicked old rector perhaps chuckled to think
that here was one who bade fair to love Lucian one day as well as he
did himself.
For Lucian too was one who asked questions--spent his life doing
little else; if one were invited to draw him with the least possible
expenditure of ink, one's pen would trace a mark of interrogation.
That picture is easily drawn; to put life into it is a more difficult
matter. However, his is not a complex character, for all the irony in
which he sometimes chooses to clothe his thought; and materials are at
least abundant; he is one of the self-revealing fraternity; his own
personal presence is to be detected more often than not in his work.
He may give us the assistance, or he may not, of labelling a character
_Lucian_ or _Lycinus_; we can detect him, _volentes volentem_, under
the thin disguise of _Menippus_ or _Tychiades_ or _Cyniscus_ as well.
And the essence of him as he reveals himself is the questioning
spirit. He has no respect for authority. Burke describes the majority
of mankind, who do not form their own opinions, as 'those whom
Providence has doomed to live on trust'; Lucian entirely refuses to
live on trust; he 'wants to know. ' It was the wish of _Arthur
Clennam_, who had in consequence a very bad name among the _Tite
Barnacles_ and other persons in authority. Lucian has not escaped the
same fate; 'the scoffer Lucian' has become as much a commonplace as
'_fidus Achates_,' or 'the well-greaved Achaeans,' the reading of him
has been discountenanced, and, if he has not actually lost his place
at the table of Immortals, promised him when he temporarily left the
Island of the Blest, it has not been so 'distinguished' a place as it
was to have been and should have been. And all because he 'wanted to
know. '
His questions, of course, are not all put in the same manner. In the
_Dialogues of the Gods_, for instance, the mark of interrogation is
not writ large; they have almost the air at first of little stories
in dialogue form, which might serve to instruct schoolboys in the
attributes and legends of the gods--a manual charmingly done, yet a
manual only. But we soon see that he has said to himself: Let us put
the thing into plain natural prose, and see what it looks like with
its glamour of poetry and reverence stripped off; the Gods do human
things; why not represent them as human persons, and see what results?
What did result was that henceforth any one who still believed in the
pagan deities might at the cost of an hour's light reading satisfy
himself that his gods were not gods, or, if they were, had no business
to be. Whether many or few did so read and so satisfy themselves, we
have no means of knowing; it is easy to over-estimate the effect such
writing may have had, and to forget that those who were capable of
being convinced by exposition of this sort would mostly be those who
were already convinced without; still, so far as Lucian had any effect
on the religious position, it must have been in discrediting paganism
and increasing the readiness to accept the new faith beginning to make
its way. Which being so, it was ungrateful of the Christian church to
turn and rend him. It did so, partly in error. Lucian had referred in
the _Life of Peregrine_ to the Christians, in words which might seem
irreverent to Christians at a time when they were no longer an obscure
sect; he had described and ridiculed in _The Liar_ certain 'Syrian'
miracles which have a remarkable likeness to the casting out of
spirits by Christ and the apostles; and worse still, the _Philopatris_
passed under his name. This dialogue, unlike what Lucian had written
in the _Peregrine_ and _The Liar_, is a deliberate attack on
Christianity. It is clear to us now that it was written two hundred
years after his time, under Julian the Apostate; but there can be no
more doubt of its being an imitation of Lucian than of its not being
his; it consequently passed for his, the story gained currency that he
was an apostate himself, and his name was anathema for the church. It
was only partly in error, however. Though Lucian might be useful on
occasion ('When Tertullian or Lactantius employ their labours in
exposing the falsehood and extravagance of Paganism, they are obliged
to transcribe the eloquence of Cicero or the wit of Lucian' [Footnote:
Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_, cap. xv. ]), the very word heretic is
enough to remind us that the Church could not show much favour to one
who insisted always on thinking for himself. His works survived, but
he was not read, through the Middle Ages. With the Renaissance he
partly came into his own again, but still laboured under the
imputations of scoffing and atheism, which confined the reading of him
to the few.
The method followed in the _Dialogues of the Gods_ and similar pieces
is a very indirect way of putting questions. It is done much more
directly in others, the _Zeus cross-examined_, for instance. Since the
fallen angels
reasoned high
Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate--
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute--
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost,
these subjects have had their share of attention; but the questions
can hardly be put more directly, or more neatly, than in the _Zeus
cross-examined_, and the thirtieth _Dialogue of the Dead_.
He has many other interrogative methods besides these, which may be
left to reveal themselves in the course of reading. As for answering
questions, that is another matter. The answer is sometimes apparent,
sometimes not; he will not refrain from asking a question just because
he does not know the answer; his _role_ is asking, not answering. Nor
when he gives an answer is it always certain whether it is to be taken
in earnest. Was he a cynic? one would say so after reading _The
Cynic_; was he an Epicurean? one would say so after reading the
_Alexander_; was he a philosopher? one would say Yes at a certain
point of the _Hermotimus_, No at another. He doubtless had his moods,
and he was quite unhampered by desire for any consistency except
consistent independence of judgement. Moreover, the difficulty of
getting at his real opinions is increased by the fact that he was an
ironist. We have called him a self-revealer; but you never quite know
where to have an ironical self-revealer. Goethe has the useful phrase,
'direct irony'; a certain German writer 'makes too free a use of
direct irony, praising the blameworthy and blaming the praiseworthy--a
rhetorical device which should be very sparingly employed. In the long
run it disgusts the sensible and misleads the dull, pleasing only the
great intermediate class to whom it offers the satisfaction of being
able to think themselves more shrewd than other people, without
expending much thought of their own' (_Wahrheit und Dichtung_, book
vii). Fielding gives us in _Jonathan Wild_ a sustained piece of
'direct irony'; you have only to reverse everything said, and you get
the author's meaning. Lucian's irony is not of that sort; you cannot
tell when you are to reverse him, only that you will have sometimes to
do so. He does use the direct kind; _The Rhetorician's Vade mecum_ and
_The Parasite_ are examples; the latter is also an example (unless a
translator, who is condemned not to skip or skim, is an unfair judge)
of how tiresome it may become. But who shall say how much of irony and
how much of genuine feeling there is in the fine description of the
philosophic State given in the _Hermotimus_ (with its suggestions of
_Christian_ in _The Pilgrim's Progress_, and of the 'not many wise men
after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble'), or in the
whimsical extravagance (as it strikes a modern) of the _Pantomime_, or
in the triumph permitted to the Cynic (against 'Lycinus' too) in the
dialogue called after him? In one of his own introductory lectures he
compares his pieces aptly enough to the bacchante's thyrsus with its
steel point concealed.
With his questions and his irony and his inconsistencies, it is no
wonder that Lucian is accused of being purely negative and
destructive. But we need not think he is disposed of in that way, any
more than our old-fashioned literary education is disposed of when it
has been pointed out that it does not equip its _alumni_ with
knowledge of electricity or of a commercially useful modern language;
it may have equipped them with something less paying, but more worth
paying for. Lucian, it is certain, will supply no one with a religion
or a philosophy; but it may be doubted whether any writer will supply
more fully both example and precept in favour of doing one's thinking
for oneself; and it may be doubted also whether any other intellectual
lesson is more necessary. He is _nullius addictus iurare in verba
magistri_, if ever man was; he is individualist to the core. No
religion or philosophy, he seems to say, will save you; the thing is
to think for yourself, and be a man of sense. 'It was but small
consolation,' says _Menippus_, 'to reflect that I was in numerous
and wise and eminently sensible company, if I was a fool still, all
astray in my quest for truth. ' _Vox populi_ is no _vox dei_ for him;
he is quite proof against majorities; _Athanasius contra mundum_ is
more to his taste. "What is this I hear? " asked Arignotus, scowling
upon me; "you deny the existence of the supernatural, when there is
scarcely a man who has not seen some evidence of it? " "Therein lies my
exculpation," I replied; "I do not believe in the supernatural,
because, unlike the rest of mankind, I do not see it; if I saw, I
should doubtless believe, just as you all do. "' That British
schoolboys should have been brought up for centuries on Ovid, and
Lucian have been tabooed, is, in view of their comparative efficacy in
stimulating thought, an interesting example of _habent sua fata
libelli_.
It need not be denied that there is in him a certain lack of feeling,
not surprising in one of his analytic temper, but not agreeable
either. He is a hard bright intelligence, with no bowels; he applies
the knife without the least compunction--indeed with something of
savage enjoyment. The veil is relentlessly torn from family affection
in the _Mourning_. _Solon_ in the _Charon_ pursues his victory so far
as to make us pity instead of scorning _Croesus_. _Menippus_ and his
kind, in the shades, do their lashing of dead horses with a
disagreeable gusto, which tempts us to raise a society for the
prevention of cruelty to the Damned. A voyage through Lucian in search
of pathos will yield as little result as one in search of interest in
nature. There is a touch of it here and there (which has probably
evaporated in translation) in the _Hermotimus_, the _Demonax_, and the
_Demosthenes_; but that is all. He was perhaps not unconscious of all
this himself. 'But what is your profession? ' asks _Philosophy_. 'I
profess hatred of imposture and pretension, lying and pride. . .
However, I do not neglect the complementary branch, in which love
takes the place of hate; it includes love of truth and beauty and
simplicity, and all that is akin to love. _But the subjects for this
branch of the profession are sadly few_. '
Before going on to his purely literary qualities, we may collect here
a few detached remarks affecting rather his character than his skill
as an artist. And first of his relations to philosophy. The statements
in the _Menippus_ and the _Icaromenippus_, as well as in _The Fisher_
and _The double Indictment_, have all the air of autobiography
(especially as they are in the nature of digressions), and give us to
understand that he had spent much time and energy on philosophic
study. He claims _Philosophy_ as his mistress in _The Fisher_, and in
a case where he is in fact judge as well as party, has no difficulty
in getting his claim established. He is for ever reminding us that he
loves philosophy and only satirizes the degenerate philosophers of his
day. But it _will_ occur to us after reading him through that he has
dissembled his love, then, very well. There is not a passage from
beginning to end of his works that indicates any real comprehension of
any philosophic system.
IN FOUR VOLUMES
What work nobler than transplanting foreign thought into the barren
domestic soil? except indeed planting thought of your own, which the
fewest are privileged to do. --_Sarlor Resartus_.
At each flaw, be this your first thought: the author doubtless said
something quite different, and much more to the point. And then you
may hiss _me_ off, if you will. --LUCIAN, _Nigrinus, 9_.
(LUCIAN) The last great master of Attic eloquence and Attic wit. --
_Lord Macaulay_.
VOLUME I
PREFACE
The text followed in this translation is that of Jacobitz, Teubner,
1901, all deviations from which are noted.
In the following list of omissions, italics denote that the piece is
marked as spurious both by Dindorf and by Jacobitz. The other
omissions are mainly by way of expurgation. In a very few other
passages some isolated words and phrases have been excised; but it has
not been thought necessary to mark these in the texts by asterisks.
_Halcyon_; Deorum Dialogi, iv, v, ix, x, xvii, xxii, xxiii;
Dialogi Marini, xiii; Vera Historia, I. 22, II. 19; Alexander, 41,42;
Eunuchus; _De Astrologia_; _Amores_; _Lucius_ sive _Asinus_;
Rhetorum Preceptor, 23; _Hippias_; Adversus Indoctum, 23;
Pseudologista; _Longaevi_; Dialogi Meretricii, v, vi, x; De Syria
Dea; _Philopatris; Charidemus; Nero_; Tragodopodagra; Ocypus;
Epigrammata.
A word may be said about four pieces that seem to stand apart from the
rest. Of these, the _Trial in the Court of Vowels_ and _A Slip of the
Tongue_ will be interesting only to those who are familiar with Greek.
The _Lexiphanes_ and _A Purist Purized_, satirizing the pedants and
euphuists of Lucian's day, almost defy translation, and they must be
accepted at best as an effort to give the general effect of the
original.
The _Notes explanatory_ at the end of vol. iv will be used by the
reader at his discretion. Reference is made to them at the foot of the
page only when it is not obvious what name should be consulted.
The translators take this opportunity of offering their heartiest
thanks to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press for undertaking this
work; and, in particular, to the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University,
Dr. Merry, who has been good enough to read the proofs, and to give
much valuable advice both on the difficult subject of excision and on
details of style and rendering. In this connexion, however, it should
be added that for the retention of many modern phrases, which may
offend some readers as anachronistic, responsibility rests with the
translators alone.
CONTENTS of VOL. 1
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
THE VISION
A LITERARY PROMETHEUS
NIGRINUS
TRIAL IN THE COURT OF VOWELS
TIMON THE MISANTHROPE
PROMETHEUS ON CAUCASUS
DIALOGUES OF THE GODS
i, ii, iii, vi, vii, viii, xi, xii, xiii, xiv, xv, xvi, xviii, xix,
xx, xxi, xxiv, xxv, xxvi.
DIALOGUES OF THE SEA-GODS
i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi, vii, viii, ix, x, xi, xii, xiv, xv.
DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD
I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI,
XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII,
XXVIII, XXIX, XXX.
MENIPPUS
CHARON
OF SACRIFICE
SALE OF CREEDS
THE FISHER
VOYAGE TO THE LOWER WORLD
INTRODUCTION
1. LIFE.
2. PROBABLE ORDER OF WRITINGS.
3. CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE TIME.
4. LUCIAN AS A WRITER.
It is not to be understood that all statements here made are either
ascertained facts or universally admitted conjectures. The
introduction is intended merely to put those who are not scholars, and
probably have not books of reference at hand, in a position to
approach the translation at as little disadvantage as may be.
Accordingly, we give the account that commends itself to us, without
discussion or reference to authorities. Those who would like a more
complete idea of Lucian should read Croiset's _Essai sur la vie et
les oeuvres de Lucien_, on which the first two sections of this
introduction are very largely based. The only objections to the book
(if they are objections) are that it is in French, and of 400 octavo
pages. It is eminently readable.
1. LIFE
With the exception of a very small number of statements, of which the
truth is by no means certain, all that we know of Lucian is derived
from his own writings. And any reader who prefers to have his facts at
first rather than at second hand can consequently get them by reading
certain of his pieces, and making the natural deductions from them.
Those that contain biographical matter are, in the order corresponding
to the periods of his life on which they throw light, _The Vision,
Demosthenes, Nigrinus, The Portrait-study_ and _Defence_ (in which
Lucian is _Lycinus_), _The Way to write History, The double ndictment_
(in which he is _The Syrian_), _The Fisher_ (_Parrhesiades_), _Swans
and Amber, Alexander_, Hermotimus_ (_Lycinus_), _Menippus and
Icaromenippus_ (in which _Menippus_ represents him), _A literary
Prometheus, Herodotus, Zeuxis, Harmonides, The Scythian_, The Death of
Peregrine, The Book-fancier, Demonax, The Rhetorician's Vade mecum,
Dionysus, Heracles, A Slip of the Tongue, Apology for 'The dependent
Scholar. '_ Of these _The Vision_ is a direct piece of autobiography;
there is intentional but veiled autobiography in several of the other
pieces; in others again conclusions can be drawn from comparison of
his statements with facts known from external sources.
Lucian lived from about 125 to about 200 A. D. , under the Roman
Emperors Antoninus Pius, M. Aurelius and Lucius Verus, Commodus, and
perhaps Pertinax. He was a Syrian, born at Samosata on the Euphrates,
of parents to whom it was of importance that he should earn his living
without spending much time or money on education. His maternal uncle
being a statuary, he was apprenticed to him, having shown an aptitude
for modelling in the wax that he surreptitiously scraped from his
school writing-tablets. The apprenticeship lasted one day. It is clear
that he was impulsive all through life; and when his uncle corrected
him with a stick for breaking a piece of marble, he ran off home,
disposed already to think he had had enough of statuary. His mother
took his part, and he made up his mind by the aid of a vision that
came to him the same night.
It was the age of the rhetoricians. If war was not a thing of the
past, the shadow of the _pax Romana_ was over all the small states,
and the aspiring provincial's readiest road to fame was through words
rather than deeds. The arrival of a famous rhetorician to lecture was
one of the important events in any great city's annals; and Lucian's
works are full of references to the impression these men produced, and
the envy they enjoyed. He himself was evidently consumed, during his
youth and early manhood, with desire for a position like theirs. To
him, sleeping with memories of the stick, appeared two women,
corresponding to _Virtue_ and _Pleasure_ in Prodicus's _Choice of
Heracles_--the working woman _Statuary_, and the lady _Culture_. They
advanced their claims to him in turn; but before _Culture_ had
completed her reply, the choice was made: he was to be a rhetorician.
From her reminding him that she was even now not all unknown to him,
we may perhaps assume that he spoke some sort of Greek, or was being
taught it; but he assures us that after leaving Syria he was still a
barbarian; we have also a casual mention of his offering a lock of his
hair to the Syrian goddess in his youth.
He was allowed to follow his bent and go to Ionia. Great Ionian cities
like Smyrna and Ephesus were full of admired sophists or teachers of
rhetoric. But it is unlikely that Lucian's means would have enabled
him to become the pupil of these. He probably acquired his skill to a
great extent by the laborious method, which he ironically deprecates
in _The Rhetorician's Vade mecum_, of studying exhaustively the old
Attic orators, poets, and historians.
He was at any rate successful. The different branches that a
rhetorician might choose between or combine were: (1) Speaking in
court on behalf of a client; (2) Writing speeches for a client to
deliver; (3) Teaching pupils; (4) Giving public displays of his skill.
There is a doubtful statement that Lucian failed in (1), and took to
(2) in default. His surviving rhetorical pieces (_The Tyrannicide,
The Disinherited, Phalaris_) are declamations on hypothetical cases
which might serve either for (3) or (4); and _The Hall, The Fly,
Dipsas_, and perhaps _Demosthenes_, suggest (4). A common form of
exhibition was for a sophist to appear before an audience and let
them propose subjects, of which he must choose one and deliver an
impromptu oration upon it.
Whatever his exact line was, he earned an income in Ionia, then in
Greece, had still greater success in Italy, and appears to have
settled for some time in Gaul, perhaps occupying a professorial chair
there. The intimate knowledge of Roman life in some aspects which
appears in _The dependent Scholar_ suggests that he also lived some
time in Rome. He seems to have known some Latin, since he could
converse with boatmen on the Po; but his only clear reference (A Slip
of the Tongue,) implies an imperfect knowledge of it; and there is not
a single mention in all his works, which are crammed with literary
allusions, of any Latin author. He claims to have been during his time
in Gaul one of the rhetoricians who could command high fees; and his
descriptions of himself as resigning his place close about his lady's
(i. e. Rhetoric's) person, and as casting off his wife Rhetoric because
she did not keep herself exclusively to him, show that he regarded
himself, or wished to be regarded, as having been at the head of his
profession.
This brings us to about the year 160 A. D. We may conceive Lucian now
to have had some of that yearning for home which he ascribes in the
_Patriotism_ even to the successful exile. He returned home, we
suppose, a distinguished man at thirty-five, and enjoyed impressing
the fact on his fellow citizens in _The Vision_. He may then have
lived at Antioch as a rhetorician for some years, of which we have a
memorial in _The Portrait-study_. Lucius Verus, M. Aurelius's
colleague, was at Antioch in 162 or 163 A. D. on his way to the
Parthian war, and _The Portrait-study_ is a panegyric on Verus's
mistress Panthea, whom Lucian saw there.
A year or two later we find him migrating to Athens, taking his father
with him, and at Athens he settled and remained many years. It was on
this journey that the incident occurred, which he relates with such a
curious absence of shame in the _Alexander_, of his biting that
charlatan's hand.
This change in his manner of life corresponds nearly with the change
in habit of mind and use of his powers that earned him his
immortality. His fortieth year is the date given by himself for his
abandonment of Rhetoric and, as he calls it, taking up with Dialogue,
or, as we might say, becoming a man of letters. Between Rhetoric and
Dialogue there was a feud, which had begun when Socrates five
centuries before had fought his battles with the sophists. Rhetoric
appeals to the emotions and obscures the issues (such had been
Socrates's position); the way to elicit truth is by short question and
answer. The Socratic method, illustrated by Plato, had become, if not
the only, the accredited instrument of philosophers, who, so far as
they are genuine, are truth-seekers; Rhetoric had been left to the
legal persons whose object is not truth but victory. Lucian's
abandonment of Rhetoric was accordingly in some sort his change from a
lawyer to a philosopher. As it turned out, however, philosophy was
itself only a transitional stage with him.
Already during his career as a rhetorician, which we may put at
145-164 A. D. , he seems both to have had leanings to philosophy, and to
have toyed with dialogue. There is reason to suppose that the
Nigrinus_, with its strong contrast between the noise and vulgarity of
Rome and the peace and culture of Athens, its enthusiastic picture of
the charm of philosophy for a sensitive and intelligent spirit, was
written in 150 A. D. , or at any rate described an incident that
occurred in that year; and the _Portrait-study_ and its _Defence_,
dialogues written with great care, whatever their other merits, belong
to 162 or 163 A. D. But these had been excursions out of his own
province. After settling at Athens he seems to have adopted the
writing of dialogues as his regular work. The _Toxaris_, a collection
of stories on friendship, strung together by dialogue, the
_Anacharsis_, a discussion on the value of physical training, and the
_Pantomime_, a description slightly relieved by the dialogue form, may
be regarded as experiments with his new instrument. There is no trace
in them of the characteristic use that he afterwards made of dialogue,
for the purposes of satire.
That was an idea that we may suppose to have occurred to him after the
composition of the _Hermotimus_. This is in form the most philosophic
of his dialogues; it might indeed be a dialogue of Plato, of the
merely destructive kind; but it is at the same time, in matter, his
farewell to philosophy, establishing that the pursuit of it is
hopeless for mortal man. From this time onward, though he always
professes himself a lover of true philosophy, he concerns himself no
more with it, except to expose its false professors. The dialogue that
perhaps comes next, _The Parasite_, is still Platonic in form, but
only as a parody; its main interest (for a modern reader is outraged,
as in a few other pieces of Lucian's, by the disproportion between
subject and treatment) is in the combination for the first time of
satire with dialogue.
One more step remained to be taken. In the piece called _A literary
Prometheus_, we are told what Lucian himself regarded as his claim
to the title of an original writer. It was the fusing of Comedy and
Dialogue--the latter being the prose conversation hat had hitherto
been confined to philosophical discussion. The new literary form,
then, was conversation, frankly for purposes of entertainment, as in
Comedy, but to be read and not acted. In this kind of writing he
remains, though he has been often imitated, first in merit as clearly
as in time; and nearly all his great masterpieces took this form. They
followed in rapid succession, being all written, perhaps, between 165
and 175 A. D. And we make here no further comment upon them, except to
remark that they fall roughly into three groups as he drew inspiration
successively from the writers of the New Comedy (or Comedy of ordinary
life) like Menander, from the satires of Menippus, and from writers of
the Old Comedy (or Comedy of fantastic imagination) like Aristophanes.
The best specimens of the first group are _The Liar_ and the
_Dialogues of the Hetaerae;_ of the second, the _Dialogues of the
Dead_ and _of the Gods, Menippus_ and _Icaromenippus, Zeus
cross-examined;_ of the third, _Timon, Charon, A Voyage to the lower
World, The Sale of Creeds, The Fisher, Zeus Tragoedus, The Cock, The
double Indictment, The Ship_.
During these ten or more years, though he lived at Athens, he is to be
imagined travelling occasionally, to read his dialogues to audiences
in various cities, or to see the Olympic Games. And these excursions
gave occasion to some works not of the dialogue kind; the _Zeuxis_ and
several similar pieces are introductions to series of readings away
from Athens; The _Way to write History_, a piece of literary criticism
still very readable, if out of date for practical purposes, resulted
from a visit to Ionia, where all the literary men were producing
histories of the Parthian war, then in progress (165 A. D. ). An
attendance at the Olympic Games of 169 A. D. suggested _The Death of
Peregrine_, which in its turn, through the offence given to Cynics,
had to be supplemented by the dialogue of _The Runaways. The True
History_, most famous, but, admirable as it is, far from best of his
works, presumably belongs to this period also, but cannot be
definitely placed. The _Book-fancier_ and _The Rhetorician's Vade
mecum_ are unpleasant records of bitter personal quarrels.
After some ten years of this intense literary activity, producing,
reading, and publishing, Lucian seems to have given up both the
writing of dialogues and the presenting of them to audiences, and to
have lived quietly for many years. The only pieces that belong here
are the _Life of Demonax_, the man whom he held the best of all
philosophers, and with whom he had been long intimate at Athens, and
that of Alexander, the Asiatic charlatan, who was the prince of
impostors as Demonax of philosophers. When quite old, Lucian was
appointed by the Emperor Commodus to a well-paid legal post in Egypt.
We also learn, from the new introductory lectures called _Dionysus_
and _Heracles_, that he resumed the practice of reading his dialogues;
but he wrote nothing more of importance. It is stated in Suidas that
he was torn to pieces by dogs; but, as other statements in the article
are discredited, it is supposed that this is the Christian revenge for
Lucian's imaginary hostility to Christianity. We have it from himself
that he suffered from gout in his old age. He solaced himself
characteristically by writing a play on the subject; but whether the
goddess Gout, who gave it its name, was appeased by it, or carried him
off, we cannot tell.
2. PROBABLE ORDER OF WRITINGS
The received order in which Lucian's works stand is admitted to be
entirely haphazard. The following arrangement in groups is roughly
chronological, though it is quite possible that they overlap each
other. It is M. Croiset's, put into tabular form. Many details in it
are open to question; but to read in this order would at least be more
satisfactory to any one who wishes to study Lucian seriously than to
take the pieces as they come. The table will also serve as a rough
guide to the first-class and the inferior pieces. The names italicized
are those of pieces rejected as spurious by M. Croiset, and therefore
not placed by him; we have inserted them where they seem to belong; as
to their genuineness, it is our opinion that the objections made (not
by M. Croiset, who does not discuss authenticity) to the _Demosthenes_
and _The Cynic_ at least are, in view of the merits of these,
unconvincing.
(i) About 145 to 160 A. D. Lucian a rhetorician in Ionia, Greece,
Italy, and Gaul.
The Tyrannicide, a rhetorical exercise.
The Disinherited.
Phalaris I & II.
_Demosthenes_, a panegyric.
Patriotism, an essay.
The Fly, an essay.
Swans and Amber, an introductory lecture.
Dipsas, an introductory lecture.
The Hall, an introductory lecture.
Nigrinus, a dialogue on philosophy, 150 A. D.
(ii) About 160 to 164 A. D. After Lucian's return to Asia.
The Portrait-study, a panegyric in dialogue, 162 A. D.
Defence of The Portrait-study, in dialogue.
A Trial in the Court of Vowels, a _jeu d'esprit_.
Hesiod, a short dialogue.
The Vision, an autobiographical address.
(iii) About 165 A. D. At Athens.
Pantomime, art criticism in dialogue.
Anacharsis, a dialogue on physical training.
Toxaris, stories of friendship in dialogue.
Slander, a moral essay.
The Way to write History, an essay in literary criticism.
The next eight groups, iv-xi, belong to the years from about 165 A. D.
to about 175 A. D. , when Lucian was at his best and busiest; iv-ix are
to be regarded roughly as succeeding each other in time; x and xi
being independent in this respect. Pieces are assigned to groups
mainly according to their subjects; but some are placed in groups that
do not seem at first sight the most appropriate, owing to specialties
in their treatment; e. g. _The Ship_ might seem more in place with vii
than with ix; but M. Croiset finds in it a maturity that induces him
to put it later.
(iv) About 165 A. D.
Hermotimus, a philosophic dialogue.
The Parasite, a parody of a philosophic dialogue.
(v) Influence of the New Comedy writers.
The Liar, a dialogue satirizing superstition.
A Feast of Lapithae, a dialogue satirizing the manners of
philosophers.
Dialogues of the Hetaerae, a series of short dialogues.
(vi) Influence of the Menippean satire.
Dialogues of the Dead, a series of short dialogues.
Dialogues of the Gods, a series of short dialogues.
Dialogues of the Sea-Gods, a series of short dialogues.
Menippus, a dialogue satirizing philosophy.
Icaromenippus, a dialogue satirizing philosophy and religion.
Zeus cross-examined, a dialogue satirizing religion.
_The Cynic_, a dialogue against luxury.
_Of Sacrifice_, an essay satirizing religion.
Saturnalia, dialogue and letters on the relation of rich and poor.
The True History, a parody of the old Greek historians,
(vii) Influence of the Old Comedy writers: vanity of human wishes.
A Voyage to the Lower World, a dialogue on the vanity of power.
Charon, a dialogue on the vanity of all things.
Timon, a dialogue on the vanity of riches.
The Cock, a dialogue on the vanity of riches and power,
(viii) Influence of the Old Comedy writers: dialogues satirizing
religion.
Prometheus on Caucasus.
Zeus Tragoedus.
The Gods in Council.
(ix) Influence of the Old Comedy writers: satire on philosophers.
The Ship, a dialogue on foolish aspirations.
The Life of Peregrine, a narrative satirizing the Cynics, 169 A. D.
The Runaways, a dialogue satirizing the Cynics.
The double Indictment, an autobiographic dialogue.
The Sale of Creeds, a dialogue satirizing philosophers.
The Fisher, an autobiographic dialogue satirizing philosophers.
(x) 165-175 A. D. Introductory lectures.
Herodotus.
Zeuxis.
Harmonides.
The Scythian.
A literary Prometheus.
(xi) 165-175 A. D. Scattered pieces standing apart from the great
dialogue series, but written during the same period.
The Book-fancier, an invective. About 170 A. D.
_The Purist purized_, a literary satire in dialogue.
Lexiphanes, a literary satire in dialogue.
The Rhetorician's Vade-mecum, a personal satire. About 178 A. D.
(xii) After 180 A. D.
Demonax, a biography.
Alexander, a satirical biography,
(xiii) In old age.
Mourning, an essay.
Dionysus, an introductory lecture.
Heracles, an introductory lecture.
Apology for 'The dependent Scholar. '
A Slip of the Tongue.
In conclusion, we have to say that this arrangement of M. Croiset's,
which we have merely tabulated without intentionally departing from it
in any particular, seems to us well considered in its broad lines;
there are a few modifications which we should have been disposed to
make in it; but we thought it better to take it entire than to
exercise our own judgment in a matter where we felt very little
confidence.
3. CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE TIME
M. Aurelius has for us moderns this great superiority in interest over
Saint Louis or Alfred, that he lived and acted in a state of society
modern by its essential characteristics, in an epoch akin to our own,
in a brilliant centre of civilization. Trajan talks of "our
enlightened age" just as glibly as _The Times_ talks of it. ' M.
Arnold, _Essays in Criticism, M. Aurelius_.
The age of M. Aurelius is also the age of Lucian, and with any man of
that age who has, like these two, left us a still legible message we
can enter into quite different relations from those which are possible
with what M. Arnold calls in the same essay 'classical-dictionary
heroes. ' A twentieth-century Englishman, a second-century Greek or
Roman, would be much more at home in each other's century, if they had
the gift of tongues, than in most of those which have intervened. It
is neither necessary nor possible to go deeply into the resemblance
here [Footnote: Some words of Sir Leslie Stephen's may be given,
however, describing the welter of religious opinions that prevailed at
both epochs: 'The analogy between the present age and that which
witnessed the introduction of Christianity is too striking to have
been missed by very many observers. The most superficial acquaintance
with the general facts shows how close a parallel might be drawn by a
competent historian. There are none of the striking manifestations of
the present day to which it would not be easy to produce an analogy,
though in some respects on a smaller scale. Now, as then, we can find
mystical philosophers trying to evolve a satisfactory creed by some
process of logical legerdemain out of theosophical moonshine; and
amiable and intelligent persons labouring hard to prove that the old
mythology could be forced to accept a rationalistic interpretation--
whether in regard to the inspection of entrails or prayers for fine
weather; and philosophers framing systems of morality entirely apart
from the ancient creeds, and sufficiently satisfactory to themselves,
while hopelessly incapable of impressing the popular mind; and
politicians, conscious that the basis of social order was being sapped
by the decay of the faith in which it had arisen, and therefore
attempting the impossible task of galvanizing dead creeds into a
semblance of vitality; and strange superstitions creeping out of their
lurking-places, and gaining influence in a luxurious society whose
intelligence was an ineffectual safeguard against the most grovelling
errors; and a dogged adherence of formalists and conservatives to
ancient ways, and much empty profession of barren orthodoxy; and,
beneath all, a vague disquiet, a breaking up of ancient social and
natural bonds, and a blind groping toward some more cosmopolitan creed
and some deeper satisfaction for the emotional needs of mankind. '--
_The Religion of all Sensible Men_ in _An Agnostic's Apology_, 1893. ];
all that need be done is to pass in review those points of it, some
important, and some trifling, which are sure to occur in a detached
way to readers of Lucian.
The Graeco-Roman world was as settled and peaceful, as conscious of
its imperial responsibilities, as susceptible to boredom, as greedy of
amusement, could show as numerous a leisured class, and believed as
firmly in money, as our own. What is more important for our purpose,
it was questioning the truth of its religion as we are to-day
questioning the truth of ours. Lucian was the most vehement of the
questioners. Of what played the part then that the Christian religion
plays now, the pagan religion was only one half; the other half was
philosophy. The gods of Olympus had long lost their hold upon the
educated, but not perhaps upon the masses; the educated, ill content
to be without any guide through the maze of life, had taken to
philosophy instead. Stoicism was the prevalent creed, and how noble a
form this could take in a cultivated and virtuous mind is to be seen
in the _Thoughts_ of M. Aurelius. The test of a religion, however, is
not what form it takes in a virtuous mind, but what effects it
produces on those of another sort. Lucian applies the test of results
alike to the religion usually so called, and to its philosophic
substitute. He finds both wanting; the test is not a satisfactory one,
but it is being applied by all sorts and conditions of men to
Christianity in our own time; so is the second test, that of inherent
probability, which he uses as well as the other upon the pagan
theology; and it is this that gives his writings, even apart from
their wit and fancy, a special interest for our own time. Our
attention seems to be concentrated more and more on the ethical, as
opposed to the speculative or dogmatic aspect of religion; just such
was Lucian's attitude towards philosophy.
Some minor points of similarity may be briefly noted. As we read the
_Anacharsis_, we are reminded of the modern prominence of athletics;
the question of football _versus_ drill is settled for us; light is
thrown upon the question of conscription; we think of our Commissions
on national deterioration, and the schoolmaster's wail over the
athletic _Frankenstein's_ monster which, like _Eucrates_ in _The
Liar_, he has created but cannot control. The 'horsy talk in every
street' of the _Nigrinus_ calls up the London newsboy with his 'All
the winners. ' We think of palmists and spiritualists in the
police-courts as we read of Rutilianus and the Roman nobles consulting
the impostor Alexander. This sentence reads like the description of a
modern man of science confronted with the supernatural: 'It was an
occasion for a man whose intelligence was steeled against such
assaults by scepticism and insight, one who, if he could not detect
the precise imposture, would at any rate have been perfectly certain
that, though this escaped him, the whole thing was a lie and an
impossibility. ' The upper-class audiences who listened to Lucian's
readings, taking his points with quiet smiles instead of the loud
applause given to the rhetorician, must have been something like
that which listens decorously to an Extension lecturer. When Lucian
bids us mark 'how many there are who once were but cyphers, but whom
words have raised to fame and opulence, ay, and to noble lineage too,'
we remember not only Gibbon's remark about the very Herodes Atticus of
whom Lucian may have been thinking ('The family of Herod, at least
after it had been favoured by fortune, was lineally descended from
Cimon and Miltiades'), but also the modern _carriere ouverte aux
talents_, and the fact that Tennyson was a lord. There are the
elements of a socialist question in the feelings between rich and poor
described in the _Saturnalia_; while, on the other hand, the fact
of there being an audience for the _Dialogues of the Hetaerae_ is an
illustration of that spirit of _humani nihil a me alienum puto_ which
is again prevalent today. We care now to realize the thoughts of other
classes besides our own; so did they in Lucian's time; but it is
significant that Francklin in 1780, refusing to translate this series,
says: 'These dialogues exhibit to us only such kind of conversation as
we may hear in the purlieus of Covent Garden--lewd, dull, and
insipid. ' The lewdness hardly goes beyond the title; they are full of
humour and insight; and we make no apology for translating most of
them. Lastly, a generation that is always complaining of the modern
over-production of books feels that it would be at home in a state of
society in which our author found that, not to be too singular, he
must at least write about writing history, if he declined writing it
himself, even as Diogenes took to rolling his tub, lest he should be
the only idle man when Corinth was bustling about its defences.
As Lucian is so fond of saying, 'this is but a small selection of the
facts which might have been quoted' to illustrate the likeness between
our age and his. It may be well to allude, on the other hand, to a few
peculiarities of the time that appear conspicuously in his writings.
The Roman Empire was rather Graeco-Roman than Roman; this is now a
commonplace. It is interesting to observe that for Lucian 'we' is on
occasion the Romans; 'we' is also everywhere the Greeks; while at the
same time 'I' is a barbarian and a Syrian. Roughly speaking, the Roman
element stands for energy, material progress, authority, and the Greek
for thought; the Roman is the British Philistine, the Greek the man of
culture. Lucian is conscious enough of the distinction, and there is
no doubt where his own preference lies. He may be a materialist, so
far as he is anything, in philosophy; but in practice he puts the
things of the mind before the things of the body.
If our own age supplies parallels for most of what we meet with in the
second century, there are two phenomena which are to be matched rather
in an England that has passed away. The first is the Cynics, who swarm
in Lucian's pages like the begging friars in those of a historical
novelist painting the middle ages. Like the friars, they began nobly
in the desire for plain living and high thinking; in both cases the
thinking became plain, the living not perhaps high, but the best that
circumstances admitted of, and the class--with its numbers hugely
swelled by persons as little like their supposed teachers as a Marian
or Elizabethan persecutor was like the founder of Christianity--a pest
to society. Lucian's sympathy with the best Cynics, and detestation of
the worst, make Cynicism one of his most familiar themes. The second
is the class so vividly presented in _The dependent Scholar_--the
indigent learned Greek who looks about for a rich vulgar Roman to buy
his company, and finds he has the worst of the bargain. His
successors, the 'trencher chaplains' who 'from grasshoppers turn
bumble-bees and wasps, plain parasites, and make the Muses mules, to
satisfy their hunger-starved panches, and get a meal's meat,' were
commoner in Burton's days than in our own, and are to be met in
Fielding, and Macaulay, and Thackeray.
Two others of Lucian's favourite figures, the parasite and the
legacy-hunter, exist still, no doubt, as they are sure to in every
complex civilization; but their operations are now conducted with more
regard to the decencies. This is worth remembering when we are
occasionally offended by his frankness on subjects to which we are not
accustomed to allude; he is not an unclean or a sensual writer, but
the waters of decency have risen since his time and submerged some
things which were then visible.
A slight prejudice, again, may sometimes be aroused by Lucian's trick
of constant and trivial quotation; he would rather put the simplest
statement, or even make his transition from one subject to another, in
words of Homer than in his own; we have modern writers too who show
the same tendency, and perhaps we like or dislike them for it in
proportion as their allusions recall memories or merely puzzle us; we
cannot all be expected to have agreeable memories stirred by
insignificant Homer tags; and it is well to bear in mind by way of
palliation that in Greek education Homer played as great a part as the
Bible in ours. He might be taken simply or taken allegorically; but
one way or the other he was the staple of education, and it might be
assumed that every one would like the mere sound of him.
We may end by remarking that the public readings of his own works, to
which the author makes frequent reference, were what served to a great
extent the purpose of our printing-press. We know that his pieces were
also published; but the public that could be reached by hand-written
copies would bear a very small proportion to that which heard them
from the writer's own lips; and though the modern system may have the
advantage on the whole, it is hard to believe that the unapproached
life and naturalness of Lucian's dialogue does not owe something to
this necessity.
4. LUCIAN AS A WRITER
With all the sincerity of Lucian in _The True History_, 'soliciting
his reader's incredulity,' we solicit our reader's neglect of this
appreciation. We have no pretensions whatever to the critical faculty;
the following remarks are to be taken as made with diffidence, and
offered to those only who prefer being told what to like, and why, to
settling the matter for themselves.
Goethe, aged fourteen, with seven languages on hand, devised the plan
of a correspondence kept up by seven imaginary brothers scattered over
the globe, each writing in the language of his adopted land. The
stay-at-home in Frankfort was to write Jew-German, for which purpose
some Hebrew must be acquired. His father sent him to Rector Albrecht.
The rector was always found with one book open before him--a
well-thumbed Lucian. But the Hebrew vowel-points were perplexing, and
the boy found better amusement in putting shrewd questions on what
struck him as impossibilities or inconsistencies in the Old-Testament
narrative they were reading. The old gentleman was infinitely amused,
had fits of mingled coughing and laughter, but made little attempt at
solving his pupil's difficulties, beyond ejaculating _Er narrischer
Kerl! Er narrischer Junge_! He let him dig for solutions, however, in
an English commentary on the shelves, and occupied the time with
turning the familiar pages of his Lucian [Footnote: _Wahrheit und
Dichtung_, book iv. ]. The wicked old rector perhaps chuckled to think
that here was one who bade fair to love Lucian one day as well as he
did himself.
For Lucian too was one who asked questions--spent his life doing
little else; if one were invited to draw him with the least possible
expenditure of ink, one's pen would trace a mark of interrogation.
That picture is easily drawn; to put life into it is a more difficult
matter. However, his is not a complex character, for all the irony in
which he sometimes chooses to clothe his thought; and materials are at
least abundant; he is one of the self-revealing fraternity; his own
personal presence is to be detected more often than not in his work.
He may give us the assistance, or he may not, of labelling a character
_Lucian_ or _Lycinus_; we can detect him, _volentes volentem_, under
the thin disguise of _Menippus_ or _Tychiades_ or _Cyniscus_ as well.
And the essence of him as he reveals himself is the questioning
spirit. He has no respect for authority. Burke describes the majority
of mankind, who do not form their own opinions, as 'those whom
Providence has doomed to live on trust'; Lucian entirely refuses to
live on trust; he 'wants to know. ' It was the wish of _Arthur
Clennam_, who had in consequence a very bad name among the _Tite
Barnacles_ and other persons in authority. Lucian has not escaped the
same fate; 'the scoffer Lucian' has become as much a commonplace as
'_fidus Achates_,' or 'the well-greaved Achaeans,' the reading of him
has been discountenanced, and, if he has not actually lost his place
at the table of Immortals, promised him when he temporarily left the
Island of the Blest, it has not been so 'distinguished' a place as it
was to have been and should have been. And all because he 'wanted to
know. '
His questions, of course, are not all put in the same manner. In the
_Dialogues of the Gods_, for instance, the mark of interrogation is
not writ large; they have almost the air at first of little stories
in dialogue form, which might serve to instruct schoolboys in the
attributes and legends of the gods--a manual charmingly done, yet a
manual only. But we soon see that he has said to himself: Let us put
the thing into plain natural prose, and see what it looks like with
its glamour of poetry and reverence stripped off; the Gods do human
things; why not represent them as human persons, and see what results?
What did result was that henceforth any one who still believed in the
pagan deities might at the cost of an hour's light reading satisfy
himself that his gods were not gods, or, if they were, had no business
to be. Whether many or few did so read and so satisfy themselves, we
have no means of knowing; it is easy to over-estimate the effect such
writing may have had, and to forget that those who were capable of
being convinced by exposition of this sort would mostly be those who
were already convinced without; still, so far as Lucian had any effect
on the religious position, it must have been in discrediting paganism
and increasing the readiness to accept the new faith beginning to make
its way. Which being so, it was ungrateful of the Christian church to
turn and rend him. It did so, partly in error. Lucian had referred in
the _Life of Peregrine_ to the Christians, in words which might seem
irreverent to Christians at a time when they were no longer an obscure
sect; he had described and ridiculed in _The Liar_ certain 'Syrian'
miracles which have a remarkable likeness to the casting out of
spirits by Christ and the apostles; and worse still, the _Philopatris_
passed under his name. This dialogue, unlike what Lucian had written
in the _Peregrine_ and _The Liar_, is a deliberate attack on
Christianity. It is clear to us now that it was written two hundred
years after his time, under Julian the Apostate; but there can be no
more doubt of its being an imitation of Lucian than of its not being
his; it consequently passed for his, the story gained currency that he
was an apostate himself, and his name was anathema for the church. It
was only partly in error, however. Though Lucian might be useful on
occasion ('When Tertullian or Lactantius employ their labours in
exposing the falsehood and extravagance of Paganism, they are obliged
to transcribe the eloquence of Cicero or the wit of Lucian' [Footnote:
Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_, cap. xv. ]), the very word heretic is
enough to remind us that the Church could not show much favour to one
who insisted always on thinking for himself. His works survived, but
he was not read, through the Middle Ages. With the Renaissance he
partly came into his own again, but still laboured under the
imputations of scoffing and atheism, which confined the reading of him
to the few.
The method followed in the _Dialogues of the Gods_ and similar pieces
is a very indirect way of putting questions. It is done much more
directly in others, the _Zeus cross-examined_, for instance. Since the
fallen angels
reasoned high
Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate--
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute--
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost,
these subjects have had their share of attention; but the questions
can hardly be put more directly, or more neatly, than in the _Zeus
cross-examined_, and the thirtieth _Dialogue of the Dead_.
He has many other interrogative methods besides these, which may be
left to reveal themselves in the course of reading. As for answering
questions, that is another matter. The answer is sometimes apparent,
sometimes not; he will not refrain from asking a question just because
he does not know the answer; his _role_ is asking, not answering. Nor
when he gives an answer is it always certain whether it is to be taken
in earnest. Was he a cynic? one would say so after reading _The
Cynic_; was he an Epicurean? one would say so after reading the
_Alexander_; was he a philosopher? one would say Yes at a certain
point of the _Hermotimus_, No at another. He doubtless had his moods,
and he was quite unhampered by desire for any consistency except
consistent independence of judgement. Moreover, the difficulty of
getting at his real opinions is increased by the fact that he was an
ironist. We have called him a self-revealer; but you never quite know
where to have an ironical self-revealer. Goethe has the useful phrase,
'direct irony'; a certain German writer 'makes too free a use of
direct irony, praising the blameworthy and blaming the praiseworthy--a
rhetorical device which should be very sparingly employed. In the long
run it disgusts the sensible and misleads the dull, pleasing only the
great intermediate class to whom it offers the satisfaction of being
able to think themselves more shrewd than other people, without
expending much thought of their own' (_Wahrheit und Dichtung_, book
vii). Fielding gives us in _Jonathan Wild_ a sustained piece of
'direct irony'; you have only to reverse everything said, and you get
the author's meaning. Lucian's irony is not of that sort; you cannot
tell when you are to reverse him, only that you will have sometimes to
do so. He does use the direct kind; _The Rhetorician's Vade mecum_ and
_The Parasite_ are examples; the latter is also an example (unless a
translator, who is condemned not to skip or skim, is an unfair judge)
of how tiresome it may become. But who shall say how much of irony and
how much of genuine feeling there is in the fine description of the
philosophic State given in the _Hermotimus_ (with its suggestions of
_Christian_ in _The Pilgrim's Progress_, and of the 'not many wise men
after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble'), or in the
whimsical extravagance (as it strikes a modern) of the _Pantomime_, or
in the triumph permitted to the Cynic (against 'Lycinus' too) in the
dialogue called after him? In one of his own introductory lectures he
compares his pieces aptly enough to the bacchante's thyrsus with its
steel point concealed.
With his questions and his irony and his inconsistencies, it is no
wonder that Lucian is accused of being purely negative and
destructive. But we need not think he is disposed of in that way, any
more than our old-fashioned literary education is disposed of when it
has been pointed out that it does not equip its _alumni_ with
knowledge of electricity or of a commercially useful modern language;
it may have equipped them with something less paying, but more worth
paying for. Lucian, it is certain, will supply no one with a religion
or a philosophy; but it may be doubted whether any writer will supply
more fully both example and precept in favour of doing one's thinking
for oneself; and it may be doubted also whether any other intellectual
lesson is more necessary. He is _nullius addictus iurare in verba
magistri_, if ever man was; he is individualist to the core. No
religion or philosophy, he seems to say, will save you; the thing is
to think for yourself, and be a man of sense. 'It was but small
consolation,' says _Menippus_, 'to reflect that I was in numerous
and wise and eminently sensible company, if I was a fool still, all
astray in my quest for truth. ' _Vox populi_ is no _vox dei_ for him;
he is quite proof against majorities; _Athanasius contra mundum_ is
more to his taste. "What is this I hear? " asked Arignotus, scowling
upon me; "you deny the existence of the supernatural, when there is
scarcely a man who has not seen some evidence of it? " "Therein lies my
exculpation," I replied; "I do not believe in the supernatural,
because, unlike the rest of mankind, I do not see it; if I saw, I
should doubtless believe, just as you all do. "' That British
schoolboys should have been brought up for centuries on Ovid, and
Lucian have been tabooed, is, in view of their comparative efficacy in
stimulating thought, an interesting example of _habent sua fata
libelli_.
It need not be denied that there is in him a certain lack of feeling,
not surprising in one of his analytic temper, but not agreeable
either. He is a hard bright intelligence, with no bowels; he applies
the knife without the least compunction--indeed with something of
savage enjoyment. The veil is relentlessly torn from family affection
in the _Mourning_. _Solon_ in the _Charon_ pursues his victory so far
as to make us pity instead of scorning _Croesus_. _Menippus_ and his
kind, in the shades, do their lashing of dead horses with a
disagreeable gusto, which tempts us to raise a society for the
prevention of cruelty to the Damned. A voyage through Lucian in search
of pathos will yield as little result as one in search of interest in
nature. There is a touch of it here and there (which has probably
evaporated in translation) in the _Hermotimus_, the _Demonax_, and the
_Demosthenes_; but that is all. He was perhaps not unconscious of all
this himself. 'But what is your profession? ' asks _Philosophy_. 'I
profess hatred of imposture and pretension, lying and pride. . .
However, I do not neglect the complementary branch, in which love
takes the place of hate; it includes love of truth and beauty and
simplicity, and all that is akin to love. _But the subjects for this
branch of the profession are sadly few_. '
Before going on to his purely literary qualities, we may collect here
a few detached remarks affecting rather his character than his skill
as an artist. And first of his relations to philosophy. The statements
in the _Menippus_ and the _Icaromenippus_, as well as in _The Fisher_
and _The double Indictment_, have all the air of autobiography
(especially as they are in the nature of digressions), and give us to
understand that he had spent much time and energy on philosophic
study. He claims _Philosophy_ as his mistress in _The Fisher_, and in
a case where he is in fact judge as well as party, has no difficulty
in getting his claim established. He is for ever reminding us that he
loves philosophy and only satirizes the degenerate philosophers of his
day. But it _will_ occur to us after reading him through that he has
dissembled his love, then, very well. There is not a passage from
beginning to end of his works that indicates any real comprehension of
any philosophic system.
