No More Learning

Apart from literature in its narrower con notation, two men, conspicuous in the world's development of science, are contemporaries and we should like to bring them into actual juxtaposition with the others at the villa of Herodes. The great Ptolemy who lived and wrote in Alexandria, " the sister-university to Athens," could on occasion soar to his own stars in exquisite verse which is well worthy of its place among the choicest Greek epigrams. Whether Lucian could have known him either at Athens or later in Egypt is exceedingly doubtful but it is at least permissible, in this connection, to relieve Lucian of the authorship of the piece, Concerning Astrology, which has been included 5 among his writings. Lucian would not have been competent to write on astronomy but he would have been sure to rate astrology, in its narrowed, magical interpreta tion, amongst other unworthy superstitions. It flourished in the Orient and from the second century B. C. , when the Hellenic spirit was wan
[20]
ARTIST
AGE OF THE ANTONINES
ing, spread like a cancer through the Graeco- Latin world. 6
The other great scientific
Galen, the legatee of Hippocrates and the fore runner of modern psychiatry, was Lucian's junior by a few years only. It is not improbable that they may have met in Athens on some occasion when Galen was journeying between Pergamum and Italy at the Emperor's behest. Lucian unfortunately, however, confines him self to contemptuous satire upon superstitious or incompetent medical contemporaries.
Marcus Aurelius himself touched at Athens in 176 a. d. on his way home from Egypt to Rome and if we may postpone the death of Atticus to the year 180, the very latest date allowed him, it would be in order to think of the Emperor as entertained at the villa of his
favoured friend and former teacher. At any rate, if we were at liberty to collect all these guests at one time in one place,7 we know that the imperial author of The Meditations would have been able to discuss in Greek either math ematics with Ptolemy, medicine with Galen, or literature and ethics with Lucian and the others.
This Age of the Antonines is replete with [21]
contemporary,
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
interest. Material power centred at Rome and the attitude towards literature, philosophies and religions was very catholic — even super ciliously tolerant if we except the occasional severity to the Christians. Imperial University professorships were established, throughout the more civilized parts of the Empire, for repre sentatives not only of the Stoics but also for those of the three other officially recognized schools of philosophy — the Epicureans, the Academics and the Peripatetics, — while " Dis senters," like the Cynics and Sceptics, unpaid but unmolested, preached their doctrines out side the pale of the " established " systems.
Although the beneficent reign of Marcus Aurelius was to close amid the clash of arms and was darkened by misgivings, only too well grounded, in regard to his unworthy son and successor, such factors as make for an advanc ing civilization — literature, art, philosophy, mathematics and medicine — took on renewed life under the sunlight of imperial favour. As a mere boy Marcus Aurelius had put on the garb of a Stoic and throughout his life moulded his character by exemplifying the noble ele ments of self control and charity towards others — qualities not always equally predomi
[22]
AGE OF THE ANTONINES
nant in this stern creed. The blot on his other wise noble administration of the Empire is his reversal of the tolerant policy of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius towards the Christians. This seems out of keeping with the humane liber ality of Aurelius, but it is likely that he di vined, in Christianity's uncompromising rejec tion of all other faiths, the underlying menace to the State religion in which he actively be lieved. The contemptuous tolerance of the Christians expressed by an agnostic like Lu- cian, in his Life's End of Peregrinus, might well have seemed inadequate to the Emperor's sense of serious obligation.
As for religion in general, the wide-spread atheism of the first Christian century issued in this century in sporadic attempts to resuscitate the ghosts of old creeds or was supplanted by more novel attractions.
[23]
III. LIFE OF LUCIAN
the details of Lucian's life we are
thrown back upon the casual or explicit
references to his career in his own writ FOR
ings. From his contemporaries or from later writers we obtain little or nothing8 that is tangible. We do not know the exact dates of his birth and death but we are in a position to make a fairly clear sketch of some of the ex ternal facts of his life and we are able with reasonable certainty to fill in still more of the inner development of his mind and character.
Lucian was born, probably about 120 to 125 a. d. ,9 in Samosata on the Euphrates. This pro vincial town, capital of Commagene, the ex treme northeast portion of Syria, was not with out importance as commanding the passage of the Euphrates River on one of the great trade routes to the Orient. The district, first sub jected to Roman control in 18 a. d. , had, after various vicissitudes, been made by Vespasian permanently a province of the Roman Empire. The population, however, was mainly Syrian,
and Lucian, with the semi-defiance usual with [24]
LIFE OF LUCIAN
" self-made " men, refers, now and again, to his Syrian birth and barbarian mother tongue. His Samosatan parents were poor but eager to place their son in a calling suitable for a free-born man. To decide on his career a family conclave was held. From Lucian's Dream, an address made to his own townspeople when, rich and famous, he returned home on a visit, we get a sufficiently vivid picture of the boy's Samosatan environment and native endowment — at least on his mother's side. His maternal grandfather had been a statuary, apparently a modest sculp tor and stone-cutter combined, and his mother's two brothers followed the same calling. After various propositions had been considered for form's sake, the father of the family was given an opportunity to express publicly his wife's decision and, turning to one of the maternal uncles, remarked that in his presence no other master or career for the boy could be selected. " So do you take him," the text goes on, " and teach him to be a good worker and joiner of stone and a sculptor; for he has in this, as you know, native ability and cleverness. He drew the inference from the way I used to play with the wax. For, whenever I was let out of school, I used to scrape the wax off my tablets and
[25]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
model cows, horses or even humans, by Zeus, —very life-like ones as father thought. " Al though the boy had been repeatedly flogged for this maladministration of his writing materials, his fond parents now deemed it prophetic of his predestined artistic success. His apprentice ship to his uncle lasted, however, less than a day. Using his chisel with more zeal than dis cretion the boy broke a marble slab, was well flogged for it by his uncle, ran home sobbing to his masterful mother and explained to her that his uncle had already become jealous of his budding talent. The outraged mother, with all the acumen of a modern parent, sided at once with her offspring against his preceptor, her own brother, and, fortunately for posterity, saved the boy for a wider career than that of a local stone-cutter. The incident, however, is indicative of part of Lucian's equipment. His motifs drawn from plastic and pictorial art have been often recorded. His comments on actual sculpture and paintings extant in his time are not without value and indicate, at
least, sincere sympathy with beauty of line and composition. It is tempting to imagine that his boyish efforts at modelling issued in the keen ness of perception and fidelity of outline char
[26]
ARTIST
LIFE OF LUCIAN
acteristic of the literary artist. It is tempting also, though perhaps too proleptic, to think of Hermes and Charon, or their Syrian congeners,
together with sundry deceased Samosatans whose tombstone portraits he had seen in his uncle's marble yard, as already shaping them selves in his boyish imagination into the ghostly dramatis personae of after years.
Whatever his mental furnishing, the youth was sent forth, or went forth, to seek his for tune abroad. We must assume that his ambi tion was already stirring to make of himself a public speaker, advocate and rhetorician. Rhetoric kept the toll-gate on the highroad to
fame in this second century. There were fa mous centres of rhetoric at Antioch; at Ephe- sus and Smyrna on the Ionian seaboard; and at Athens. But even Antioch was 160 miles from his native town. We do not know either his means of livelihood, or just how he obtained instruction, or his itinerary in these ten years of preparation. He left home poor in purse, hardly emancipated from his oriental garb, and still " barbarian " in speech, but he had some how in these years succeeded in transforming himself into an incipient rhetorician and, far more important for his future career, had ac
[27]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
quired so intimate a knowledge both of Greek classic literature and of the spoken vernacular that he would presently be able to surpass his Greek-born contemporaries in the current ef fort, successful with a few only, to recall to new life the Attic Greek.
It would be interesting to know whether some master, like Polemon, recognizing his ability, admitted the impecunious youth to his high-priced lectures, accepting his promising talent in lieu of coin. If so, Lucian has left no record of his obligation. In view of his subse quent development it seems likely that he
picked up, here and there, such scraps as he could of technical knowledge but that his real disciplinary training was self-devised and eclec tic. He was, in short, fortunate enough to have escaped the deadening effects of the formal
pedagogy of the schools. His natural superfici ality, evident enough to the end of his career in his attitude, for example, towards the phil osophical systems, might, conceivably enough, have been more successfully concealed by per fecting himself in the conventional formulae of Rhetoric but he might also have been deflected from his true development as charming narra
tor and creator of Satiric Dialogues. [28]
ARTIST
LIFE OF LUCIAN
In the Fisher or The
phers, Lucian defends himself against the angry ghosts who have heard in the underworld in flaming reports of the insulting sale of philoso phers at auction. They have obtained a day's
furlough from Hades and are here to punish him. They have taken to themselves his bitter ridicule and condemnation of contemporary charlatans who disgrace their " cloth. " In the course of his defense Lucian says : "
Where or when have I ever insulted you? I who have lauded you personally beyond measure and have lived in communion with the literature
Resurgent Philoso
which you have left to posterity? Why, these very words that I am speaking, from what other source than from you did I receive them and, like a bee culling from flowers, transmit them to mankind? Nominally people envy me for my ' bouquet ' but in reality they admire
you and your meadow for putting forth bloom so varied and of such multiform colours. " It is evident enough that the Syrian youth, long be fore the date of this dialogue written in his best period, had familiarized himself with the Clas sic Greek, hampered, perhaps, only by the in accessibility of the rarer books. He became an artist in literature not because of, but in spite
[29]
LUCIAN,
of, intermittent practice as a lawyer or his successful career as a rhetorician.
As to the latter phase of his development we gain the best idea from his own account in the Double Indictment. This is an autobiographi cal resume of what to Lucian himself seemed momentous in his own career. The metaphori cal liaison with " Lady Rhetoric," it may be remarked, has been seized upon by literally- minded commentators as reflecting a real wed lock with a wife rich enough to furnish him with equipment for his war upon shams. As a matter of fact his two meagre allusions to his father, family and little son do not in clude even " brief mention " of an actual wife, although her existence is a not unreasonable inference.
The Double Indictment takes its title from two law-suits brought against Lucian: one by Rhetoric, for desertion; the other by Dialogue, for maltreatment. We are told that he had previously made a lucky match with a rich lady named Rhetoric, who now complains that
whereas she had bought fine clothes to replace his oriental "caftan";10 had taught him fine Greek to replace his Syrian speech; had taught him, too, how to manage like a gentleman the
[30]
SATIRIST AND ARTIST
LIFE OF LUCIAN
folds of his robe and his flowing eloquence; had, finally, to please him, secured sailing reservations and had taken him abroad and travelled with him everywhere — to Italy, to Transalpine Gaul and back again — and had raised him to fame and fortune, yet he had in the end basely deserted her for a boon com panion, named Dialogue.
" Dialogue," in turn, lodges formal com plaint that this deceitful Syrian, freed by him
from the degrading union with Lady Rhetoric, had maltreated him shamefully. " He has dis figured me," Dialogue urges, " beyond recogni tion. Taking advantage of our intimacy and of my unwary complaisance, he has forced me to masquerade in such strange guise that I no longer recognize myself as fit for Plato's Aca deme. He has hidden my honest countenance behind a leering comic mask out of which, de spite myself, issued iambic jest and Cynic dog gerel so that I am rated as an unclassified mon strosity like to nothing on earth or in the air. I can neither pace in prose nor mount on metre. "
This flash-light picture, taken from within, is worth more than many external details, which we lack, to illuminate the real development of
[3i]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
the man. He does make, however, many scat tered allusions to his career. His tour of the provinces, as a rhetorician, was very successful. He made a prolonged stay in Gaul, where he received large pay as one of the " high-priced Sophists. "
As to Lucian's linguistic equipment outside of Greek and Syrian, we have only negative data. He lays no claim to a knowledge of Celtic and, in fact, refers with satisfaction to a Gallic philosopher, " who spoke Greek accurately. " He is usually accredited with only a meagre knowledge of Latin and it would, in fact, be difficult to demonstrate, from his writings, a thorough-going familiarity with Latin literature. His various visits to Rome, however, may well have stimulated the versatile Syrian to perfect his acquaintance with the imperial language which he must have heard spoken in his boy hood, and a somewhat fluent, if superficial, knowledge of the vernacular is implied, though not proved, in his apology for an apparent break in conventional usage, made, when already of advanced age, in addressing the Emperor. Here he throws in the jaunty remark: " If I am at all expert in the speech of the Romans. " 11 The implied conclusion is: As I think I am. As he
[32]
LIFE OF LUCIAN
would hardly learn to speak fluently in a for eign tongue when he was already an aged gov ernment official we must conclude that he equipped himself with Latin by the time he was first lecturing in Gaul. The methods and limi tations of spoken communication through a
complex of languages such as existed under the Roman Empire or, for example, under the late Austro-Hungarian Empire, constitute a not un important factor in the mechanism of human history. The wide-spread use of the " Com mon " Greek was an asset taken over by the Romans from Alexander's legacy. Many Ro mans, " from Emperor to clown," could use it readily, and travellers bent on business or pleasure doubtless employed, at a pinch, either this " Common " Greek itself or some ruder compromise as a lingua franca.
There however, nothing to indicate that Lucian employed any other language than Greek in his public speeches. Even in the auto biographical address, made to his Samosatan townspeople, far from reverting to his native Syrian, he ostentatiously displays, along with other indicia of his success in life, his adroit use of the Greek language sprinkled with liter ary allusions. Incidentally, suggestive that
[33]
it is
is,
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
these allusions, however superficial, were intel ligible on the banks of the Euphrates.
Thus at the age of forty Lucian found him self possessed of no little fame. Doubtless he exaggerates this in his autobiographical boast ings. The Roman Empire was large and there was other more important news for the couriers to carry along the far-flung post-roads. But as things went in this second century he was an unqualified success as travelling rhetorician and show-lecturer. He could, as occasion de manded, deliver an Encomium on a Fly; a bio graphical appraisal like his Herodotus; or in dulge in philological fooling, as in The Suit of Sigma versus Tau.
From Gaul and Italy he apparently returned to Ionia by way of Athens. In the first years of the rule of Marcus Aurelius he was again in Syria, and in 1 62 or 1 63 a. d. at Antioch he saw Lucius Verus, the Emperor coadjutor. It has even been suggested that he had resumed for a time at Antioch his interrupted career as ad vocate. After this, it would seem, he made his final emigration to Athens, taking with him his father and his family.
In 165 a. d. Lucian was at Corinth and also at the Olympic Games for the third or the
[34]
ARTIST
LIFE OF LUCIAN
fourth time, according as we assume that the self-immolation of the Cynic Peregrinus near Olympia took place in this year or in 169 a. d. From this time on Lucian apparently made Athens his headquarters and we may refer to this period his best literary activity. It in deed, well-nigh impossible to give wholly satisfactory chronology for his writings but we are apprised by his own high-sounding words of the psychological crisis that supervened. " Tired of the shifting business of the turbulent
forum and the cloying applause of the masses " he turns in contempt from rhetoric " to take his pleasure with Dialogue either in the Acad emy or in the Lyceum. " Whenever this rebirth took place, was the principal event in his life. In the development of the Satiric Dialogue he
found his true career as literary artist. It was an intellectual and moral emancipation. The flowery fetters of rhetoric fell off; 12 he ceased to coquet with philosophy. The artist remained.
Well-to-do and well known, he composed for many years. In his old age, however, — the exact date unknown — we find him again, either by reason of pecuniary need or from restless desire for increasing his fame, turned into circuit show-lecturer and in his earlier
[35]
a
is
it
a
a
is,
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
manner suing for public favour through dec lamations and readings. Some genuine pieces which may have been written at this time would be inaptly ascribed to his more virile manhood. And, finally, when the curtain falls, we take leave of this life-long non-conformist installed in orthodox security as a government official in Egypt with a good salary drawn from the imperial treasury.
[36]
IV. EXTANT WRITINGS: FORM AND CONTENT
are at least eighty-two titles listed under Lucian's name. Of these,
six pieces are certainly not TIERE
genuine. Twenty-eight more have been called in question
by expert authorities who are, however, by no means in complete agreement. With all of these deducted there would remain only forty-eight but, by a reasonable, though composite, con sensus of opinion at least sixty 13 may be treated as genuine. Some of these fifty to sixty pieces are very short. Other titles, however, represent groups so that the total amount at tributed to Lucian occupies thirteen hundred and seven pages of (the Teubner) Greek text. "
Lucian, best known for the development, if not the creation, of the Satiric Dialogue and, next to that, for his skill as a story-teller, makes large use of other forms to suit varying content. There are a number of short epideic- tic pieces used, perhaps, as prefaces or " cur tain-raisers " to longer readings or lectures;
[37]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
there are many writings of a hortatory or di dactic, argumentative or polemical, and, occa sionally, of a biographical character; some pieces are constructively or even actually in the form of letters. He is not always severely care ful about preserving a consistent form but in jects, for example, into some of his best dia logues argumentative or narrative digressions to reenforce his theme. These insertions, which dam back, as in Plato, the current of the dia logue, occasionally contain some of his choicest satire.
There are also two tragico-comic poems which find tentative recognition as Lucianic compositions, to be accepted, perhaps, by re ferring them to his closing and less virile years. Finally, there are in the Greek Anthology forty-two epigrams attributed to Lucian. Only a few of these seem, from internal evidence, to suggest his authorship. There however, no reason to assume that the versatile Syrian may not, from time to time, have experimented, like many others of mediocre poetical facility, with this time-honoured and popular literary form.
It not safe to be dogmatic about the chro nological order of all of Lucian's writings. Con tradictory and plausible arguments have been
[38]
is
is,
EXTANT WRITINGS
adduced, in the case of many pieces, for a varying sequence. 15 It is safe, however, to ac cept Lucian's own testimony, in the autobio graphical Double Indictment, concerning the intellectual crisis through which he passed in transforming himself from a not unsuccessful rhetorician into an artist of a higher and more specialized type. The humourous parable con cerning Lady Rhetoric and Dialogue, the sub stitute partner, does not disguise the serious ness of the decision which confronted him when he came to the parting of the ways. The im portant point is that he knew and believed in his own artistic powers. His desertion of Lady
Rhetoric does not imply the obliteration of his early rhetorical self-training, nor even of all of his sophistic tendencies, but it does imply that he had the courage to turn from a fashionable and lucrative career to work out his own genius in his own way. It is evident that his best pro ductivity was subsequent to this change which was, of course, a progressive one. Feeling his way under the influence of Attic Comedy, he passed into a phase where the " ironic and treacherous grace " of the Cynic Menippus, in laid upon his Platonic and other studies, openly furnished him with suggestions for many of his
[39]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
most successful dialogues. He then entered upon a still more advanced period when his maturing powers came to perfection and his wit could reflect more clearly the brilliancy of the Old Comedy. He could now — in the Double Indictment — review his career with pardonable pride and claim Aristophanes and Plato as his two god-fathers. All the writings that secured his fame and that were destined to exert so great an influence upon distant gen erations, belong to these mature periods, but, in the case of several pieces, including some of the polemics, it is hazardous to assign even an approximate date. When he was, perhaps, nearly sixty there would seem to have been a cessation of his productivity. His latest writing and his epideictic addresses, resumed in his old age, offer little that is characteristic of his best period. Not only the waning of his powers but also his position as an imperial official ham
pered his wit and his freedom of speech. Whatever citations space will allow, in the
following chapters, must serve a double pur pose, illustrating some phase of activity under discussion — such as his crusades upon shams and superstitions —and also the qualities of his style.
[40]
ARTIST
EXTANT WRITINGS
Coming as a novus homo, so to say, into the peerage of Greek "literature, Lucian stored his mind with the classics," from Homer to Menander. By reading, memorizing, citing and even imitating he perfected his Attic Greek and familiarized himself with the content of much of the greatest Hellenic prose and poetry. Some writers, doubtless, were less accessible than others; in some the subject-matter made less appeal to him and it is not surprising, perhaps, to note, for example, conspicuous omission of several of the great Lyric poets. To various
others, moreover, he makes only perfunctory reference. He brought to his task his own con tribution of native wit, esprit and imagination, and, after his tentative apprenticeship, he struck out on his own path. It is no small tribute to this Syrian foreigner that any resum6 of Greek literature must be extended so as to
include his name. He remained, to some extent, self-conscious in his brilliant and painstaking application of his art. His barbarian extrac tion, to which he repeatedly refers, only height ened his frank satisfaction in his indebtedness to Plato, Demosthenes, Herodotus and other models. His rejoinder to the " resurgent phi losophers " in the Fisher is explicit. Although
[41]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST
AND ARTIST
he does not specify one only as his " Master," he is speaking directly to Plato when, like Dante, he acknowledges the source of the " beautiful style that has done honour " to him.
However difficult it may be to isolate the verbal mechanism of style from the spirit and qualities that it embodies, it is peculiarly neces sary in Lucian's case. " Proper words in proper places " is the dictum of Swift who prob ably, the most " Lucianic " of all of Lucian's modern legatees. To attain to this propriety the Syrian not only had to learn the language in question but he had the far more difficult task of joining with his contemporaries in the ambitious project of remoulding chaotic ver nacular into worthy instrument of grace and power. The " Atticists " of the day were at tempting this task by the purely artificial method — priori futile, might seem — of veneering classic Attic upon the " Common " Greek which, in the course of some four hun dred years, had deviated widely, both in form and in vocabulary, from the Greek of Demos thenes and Menander. Lucian accepted the challenge of the current fad — he was not, in fact, in position to do otherwise. He, too, strove to erect the " Common " Greek into
[42]
a
a
a
a
it
a
is,
EXTANT WRITINGS
thing of life. He was not a Virgil or a Dante, able to break in rebellious native colts and harness them obedient to the guiding rein of supreme poetry, sweeping to victory the vehicle itself of perfected speech. But he worked his own miracle. He succeeded, where most of his contemporaries failed, in writing an almost perfect Attic and, far more important, in
achieving a flexible, if not flawless, style of great charm and clarity.
When this mastery of the best practicable medium of language was once attained his na tive endowment had free course. He enfran chised himself, at the proper time, from the ab solute despotism of epideictic rhetoric but he also refused to spend his life in polishing and
repolishing his grammatical weapons. Confi dent enough in the approximate correctness of his own diction he could even venture on occa sion, as in his Lexiphanes, to satirize con
temporaries for their far-fetched or un-Attic Atticisms, imbedded in a jumble of solecisms. An adequate idea of his style and qualities
as a writer must be obtained by actual reading of selections from his best works, such as the Charon, Cock, Fisher, Icaromenippus, the True Story, Marine Dialogues, the Dialogues of the
[43]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
Gods, and the Dialogues of the Dead, but the sparkling wit of his satire, at a first reading, constantly deflects the reader from conscious ness that his reason is being led captive. Un disguised impossibilities become possible, ra tional, actual through Lucian's method of solemnly confirming the " utterly impossible " by specifying details. When, for example, chanticleer before dawn addresses his owner in human speech, the shoemaker is given no chance to recover from that surprise before he is swept on by the still greater surprise of find ing that his cock is Pythagoras and this fact
in turn, made inescapable by the unimpeach able autobiography forthwith detailed by the temporary rooster. Or, again, we have sinking feeling at the pit of our reason, as the Birdman flies up to heaven on his wings,
(one an eagle's, and one vulture's) we lose the sensation by the time we have put in for repairs at the private garage of Empedocles on the Moon, and, when once we are seated, en famille, at table with the Olympians, all the household economics of the gods seem mere matter of course.
Through all Lucian arguing without deflecting our attention. That surprise
[44]
is a
it
is
a
if
a
a is,
EXTANT WRITINGS
only realized when he pauses to inject some longer, more undisguised screed. This momen tum that carries us along is generated by his esprit and his power of imagination — his " fantaisie spirituelle " — the two outstanding qualities of his style. This " esprit " is as dif ficult to diagnose as is charm in a woman. The particular features of the subject in hand may be beautiful or ugly, bizarre or matter-of-fact,
but his charm, his verve still dominates. Lu- cian is master, par excellence, of an irony now biting, now subtly malicious, now good-hu moured and sympathetic. When he steps down
from his proper role as artist and gives way to personal polemic, this subtler irony is liable to degenerate into bitterness imperfectly sea soned with Attic salt.
The Satiric Dialogues, naturally, best reflect Lucian's dramatic art which was influenced by certain favourite dialogues of Plato and is often redolent of Aristophanic humour. To speak of imitation is beside the point. He borrows from both with each hand. But his debts are en
tered on an open ledger and the borrowed capital has been put out at interest. No Greek, for example, could fail to be reminded of Try-
gaeus and his journey to heaven on the beetle, [45]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
in the Peace of Aristophanes, by the aerial ex ploit of Icaromenippus but Lucian's new occa sion gives him opportunity for new and origi nal effects.
In narration Lucian's force and grace are on a par with his dramatic skill in the dialogues. He seizes upon the salient point, reenforces it by unexpected detail, and carries us, easily ac quiescent, into another impossibility. The True Story, the best known of his narrations and for centuries a quarry for imitators, still retains its primacy over all comers.
Even experts in the art of writing may gather fresh suggestion from a study of Lucian's meth ods.
The diagnosis of the styles of Voltaire and
Lucian, made with wonted Gallic precision by M. Croiset, is both a stimulating comparative study in the artistry of writing and a skilful indication of Lucian's assets and limitations. To a Frenchman, himself possessed of a per fect instrument of expression, the sympathetic understanding of both writers was possible, and no one except a Frenchman could, with so good a grace, attribute to Lucian preeminence, in certain particulars, over Voltaire's mastery in language.
[46]
ARTIST
V. PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS
LUCIAN'S scheme of life we need spend
less time, than we must in the case of the
Platonized Socrates, in distinguishing the IN
purely speculative from the practical. Al though he speaks so often and so glibly of philosophy and the philosophers he does not concern himself in detail with transmuting the transcendental into the pragmatic. He does, on occasion, contemptuously record certain obvi ous catch-words and theses from the pre-So- cratic philosophers, from Socrates himself and his contemporaries, or from the subsequent re alignment and development of philosophic spec ulation, but all this affords him mere copy for his cartoons or, at best, an abridged manual of practical rules of conduct. Usually he remained not only tone-deaf to the Pythagorean " music of the spheres " but apparently stone-blind to Plato's " vision of the more excellent in the ideal. " Only rarely does he allow some deeper misgiving to break through the salt crust of satire, as in his allusion to the haven of true
[47]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
philosophy, subtly reminiscent of a beautiful passage in Plato's Republic. One early piece, indeed, the Nigrinus, in form a short letter in troducing a dialogue, gives us his contact with a philosopher of the nobler type that he seldom recognizes as existing. This piece reads like the
record of a " conversion " from the vain de sires of this world to a higher life. Although this early dream " fades into the light of com mon day " in Lucian's subsequent bitterness and satire upon charlatans, it is only fair to remember that he began his career with this underlying ideal.
If we close our minds to the brilliant ar tistry of his dialogues we may apprehend his superficial attitude towards pure philosophy and science and, at the same time, appraise at its face value his avowed ethical purpose — his crusade against shams.
In this crusade, as was natural, contempo rary creeds and practices were chiefly his con cern. In his Sale of Soul Samples only two pre- Socratics are put up at auction. Pythagoras was a show-piece, suitable to start the bidding. Lucian treats with amused inadequacy his es oteric doctrines of "reminiscence," the diapa son of the planets and all the intricacies of the
[48]
PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS
great master's mathematical imagination. The Pythagoras proxy is made to say:
Pyth. I will teach you how to count.
But I know how already.
Buyer.
Pyth. How do you count?
Buyer. One, two, three, four. " " " "
Pyth. See? What you think four is ten and a perfect triangle and the oath we swear by. Buyer. Now, by your greatest oath, Number
Four, never did I hear propositions more divine nor more sacrosanct!
Next, the " four elements " are anachronisti- cally attributed to Pythagoras, and Lucian then passes on to ridicule the doctrine of im mortality and the transmigration of souls. Next come dietary data and other stock jokes — the Pythagorean five years' silence, embryo of the Trappist's vow; abstention from eating beans
hard-boiled reasons); and, finally, the traditional golden thigh of the master. This particular Pythagorean talent was not wrapped inactive in a napkin, for we find that later,16 in the " Islands of the Blest," the whole right side of the philosopher has aurified. Here the sagacious bidder buys him promptly, as an in vestment, for one hundred and eighty dollars.
Lucian, careless of chronology, does not put up another pre-Socratic philosopher until he
[49]
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has disposed of two later ones. There is good and sufficient artistic reason for this order. Heracleitus the Obscure, the pessimist, is saved up to pair with Democritus the Optimist — a stock contrast. They both prove unsalable. Lucian betrays little appreciation of the sig nificance of either of them. Heracleitus's aeon, to be sure, is neatly played with, but the Atomic theory of Democritus, adumbration of the modern ion, is dismissed with a punning joke. Lucian elsewhere 17 recognizes this theory as part of the Epicurean eclecticism and, with his characteristic trick of being specific, identi fies their special brand of atoms. The " Bird- man," appraising from his airy height the rela tive insignificance of earth's broad acres, sees that the largest landholder is " farming an es tate no bigger than an Epicurean atom. " Plato himself, it may be remembered, had ignored Democritus and, anyhow, it would be owlish literalness to expect the satirist to spoil his bur lesque by telling all that he knows. Even in the serious apologia of the sequel, The Fisher, Lu cian, when he attempts to restore the philoso phers to their rightful perspective, as con trasted with the charlatans masquerading in their cloaks, emphasizes only their ethical value
[So]
PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS
and their contributions to literary art. He leaves the real factor in the personal equation unsolved and an unknown quantity. In this sequel Heracleitus is altogether ignored and Pythagoras, referred to repeatedly, maintains his orthodox silence, though his greedy fol lowers urge his date as reason for precedence — " first come, first served. "
After disposing of the costly Pythagoras an tique, the auctioneer next puts up Diogenes the Cynic. This Great Unwashed, domiciled in a Corinthian jar — (not a " tub," that curiously wooden mistranslation! ) — was still, after more than four centuries, available as a sample of contemporary exponents of the strenuous life. Although Lucian, on occasion, was wont to masquerade under the incognito of Menippus, he became " exceeding mad " against the char latan Cynics of his own day whom he thinks of as so many " soap-box " radicals, fanatics or hypocrites.
The treatment of Diogenes is purely prag matic and external. The Cynic explains to an intending buyer how a systematic course in trampling upon all the conventionalities of life, ignoring all comforts, and welcoming discom fort and pain, will equip one to be a guide of
[SO
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others: " You'll need no culture, nor dialectics, nor nonsense. It will be a short cut to fame if you merely have shamelessness and impudence and learn thoroughly how to play the black guard. " (Some of this has, incidentally, a mod ern sound! ) Hermes, the auctioneer, gladly ac cepts a " marked down " price of six cents. This added insult to Diogenes is still rankling when he is put forward, in the sequel, as the most available prosecuting attorney. Was this Lucian's relative valuation of the philosophy of the Cynics at this period? He does not deign to give any inkling of their real doctrine, al though their rejection of polytheism may easily have appealed to him.
Next Aristippus of Cyrene is put up for sale. He made pleasure the summum bonum, draw ing from the common master, Socrates, this one distortion of "his teaching just as the " Dog- philosophers had gone off with only one bare bone of the Socratic anatomy. Aristippus, how ever, is too drunk to speak up for himself and this " professor of luxury " and " experienced chef " remains unsold. Later on, Epicurus him self is successfully auctioned off as a more ade
of this philosophy of life. In the sequel, however, both of them quickly
quate representative
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PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS
give out, through weariness of their pampered flesh, when the Resurrected Philosophers are in hot pursuit of their calumniator. Thus Lu- cian could include in his satire the vulnerable features of Epicurean practice, though, on oc casion, he praised, almost as if a disciple, the nobler creed of Epicurus himself.
After the unsuccessful attempt, above no ticed, to sell off the out-of-date Heracleitus and the unpractical Democritus, Socrates is put up for sale. It might be expected that he, at least, as an exponent of the ethical, would escape calumny; but Lucian outdoes Aristoph anes himself with one wicked thrust. In the sequel, however, he makes clear enough that he is merely unmasking the license lurking be neath contemporary cloaks. His mockery of Socrates otherwise, as, for example, his queer oaths, is good humoured enough and he does not, in this dialogue, even attack his belief in immortality which was for Lucian an irritating dogma. Elsewhere,18 indeed, in a confidential family talk between the dog-janitor and the dog-philosopher Menippus, Cerberus declares that Socrates, at his death, merely put on a brave front to impress those who were present. " But," continues Cerberus, " when he peeped
[S3]
LUCIAN,
down into the chasm, and the darkness became visible, and I, giving him a hemlock-bite as he was still holding back, jerked him down by the foot, he howled like an infant and bewailed his own children and ' turned every which way. ' "
In this " Sale," however, the buyer next asks Socrates about his mode of life. He replies that he lives in a Republic of his own and goes in
for his own Laws. Suddenly we are dealing with Plato himself. The buyer demands a sample of these laws and there is served up to him forthwith a choice digest of the matri monial communism in Book V of The Repub lic of Plato. Next the buyer demands the sum and substance of his system. The Socrates- Plato explains:
S. P. The Ideas and Exemplars of what is really existent. For you must know that of whatsoever you behold — the earth, things on the earth, the heavens, the sea — of all these, unseen images stand outside the universe.
Buyer. Stand? Where?
SATIRIST AND ARTIST
S. P. Nowhere. For if they were anywhere, they would not exist.
Buyer. I do not see these Exemplars of which you speak.
S. P. Naturally. For you are blind in your soul's eye.
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Finally the customer purchases the Platonized Socrates for two talents — more than two thou sand dollars — for the lot, or, for each one more than the sum total paid in for all the other soul-samples, who together net only $810. 06. It is as if Lucian in the midst of his raillery would indicate his relative estimate of Socrates — too secure in his noble fame to be harmed by ribald innuendo —and of Plato, whose primacy he is constrained to acknowledge, on more than one occasion.
Now comes the hasty sale, for thirty-six dol lars, of a real Epicurean. The comments though not very vicious, certainly do not suggest that Lucian, at the moment, was an orthodox Epi curean.
Then the Stoic, Lucian's bete noir, is put through the third degree with great gusto. Catch-words from the Stoic vocabulary are ridiculed. The Rt. Reverend Syllogism is brought out. Chrysippus — presumably it is he, his busts were omnipresent 19 —cites sol emnly sundry stock conundrums and proves that it is more altruistic, and therefore more blessed, to receive than to give. Systematic logic is satirized by his triumphant propound ing of illogical syllogisms, with undistributed
[55]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
middles. He is bought for two hundred and sixteen dollars by a large syndicate, a detail which reflects the numerical popularity of the Court creed.
Then the Peripatetic is sold for three hun dred and sixty dollars, the largest sum received for any lot offered except the Socrates-Plato. Lucian refrains, very noticeably, from any vio lent thrust at Aristotle. There of course, good-humoured bantering of the one " who knows all and sundry"; the one "who can tell how deep the sunshine penetrates the sea"; who knows " of what sort the soul-life of the oyster or of his X-ray insight into the for mation of the embryo, etc. The solid nucleus of biological investigation, Aristotle's most per manent contribution to science, was as unin
spiring to sophistic rhetoricians as had been, indeed, to the ethical preoccupation of Socrates the pregnant theories of Anaxagoras. And Lu cian, although he must have his joke about the " double " Aristotle, the exoteric and the eso teric, constrained to honour his three pecu liarly Hellenic qualities, "moderation, seemli- ness, and harmony of life," and to comment on the triple summum bonum inherent in the soul
(or mind), the body, and the environment. As [56]
is
";
is
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PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS
far as his own treatment was concerned, Aris totle need not have come up from Hades along with the other resurgent protestants to demand satisfaction.
Finally, a Sceptic is sold for one Attic mina, about eighteen dollars, a trifling price for an able-bodied slave. He is addressed as Pyrrhias, " carrots," to suggest at once a red-headed slave and also the name of the founder of the school, Pyrrho, a contemporary of Aristotle who, as contrasted with the Stoics, developed this tendency of the Academics. Lucian on various occasions, prone to merge the Sceptics and Academics together. Zeus, for example, seated over the trapdoor for ascending prayers, in the Icaromenippus, when he has the chance to make an equally good thing out of two identical promissory offerings in two mutually exclusive prayers, has that "usual Academic experience and, like Pyrrho, remained on the fence. "
It little surprising that Lucian, the cavil ling agnostic, who might be expected to sym pathize with the Sceptic philosophy, treats as contemptuously as he treated Plato's unreal " realities " or as he would treat today the in- corporealities of Christian " Science. " Pyr
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it
is,
is a
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
rhias, when asked what practical service he is good for, describes himself as a general utility man who can do anything and everything " ex cept catch a runaway slave. " As reason for this handicap he explains that he cannot " catch on " since there is no tangible standard for anything!
It is difficult, in fact, to identify Lucian with any school. If, as is sometimes assumed, the allusion20 to himself as a "high-priced soph ist " means that he actually held " in days gone by," out in Gaul, an imperial " professorship," it cannot have been while he was coquetting with the Cynics who, like the Sceptics, were ineligible for imperial preferment. We learn, for example, from the somewhat clinical test ing of a candidate in the Eunuchus (where, in deed, it was not a question of sect but of sex) that only the conventional " Big Four " — Aca demics, Epicureans, Peripatetics, and" Stoics, summarized by Gildersleeve as the Estab lished Church " in contrast with " Dissenters " like the Cynics — were eligible for these large imperial stipends. Lucian certainly was not a Stoic; hardly an Epicurean at this date; nor was he equipped, as it would seem, to elucidate the doctrines of either of the other two schools.
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In this Sale of Soul Samples he has held up to ridicule, in varying degree, all the four of ficially recognized schools as well as the Cynics and Sceptics. Pythagoras, Heracleitus and De- mocritus were also " good copy. " Empedocles, one of his pet aversions, was well toasted in Aetna, warmed over in the Moon,21 and will appear in the sequel in a very hot temper.
An appraisal of the companion-piece or se quel, The Fisher, would be a study of Lucian's best qualities, as a stylist, in the dramatic dia logue. It is consciously" Aristophanic in the opening scene where the Resurgents," on fur lough from Hades for one day — the same de vice as is used in the Charon — enter, in hot pursuit of their alleged calumniator. There is a succession of dramatic scenes. Lucian with dif
ficulty escapes lynching and persuades his cap tors that they must, by virtue of their own love of justice, grant him a judicial trial.
With much reluctance on the part of the philosophers, this is conceded and the defend ant easily proves his real innocence. All the censure and ridicule that he had poured out in the " Sale " was entirely directed against the charlatans of his own day. His triumphant, unanimous acquittal is a matter of course. The
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next thing is to punish the pseudo-philosophers. He receives his high commission from Lady Philosophy herself — to go up and down the world branding the false and crowning the gen uine. The last scene, which suggested the title, contains skilful satire. He borrows a hook and line, dedicated in the Parthenon by a grateful fisherman, borrows also from the Priestess some gold as bait, and proceeds to fish over the side of the Acropolis for the greedy dog-fish and other sharks who swarm in these second- century waters. By his selection of a repre sentative catch, he again betrays his intellec tual indifference towards the schools that were
not continued as a contemporary living issue — he was not after stale fish. In fact, he lands sample fish from four only of the six main schools: a dog-shark for the Cynics, but no Sceptic — probably they could not " catch on " — and specimen fish from the Platonic, Peri patetic and Stoic shoals, but no sluggish Epi curean! The fish are biting well, but he fears that he will lose his gold bait. These samples suffice. From them Lucian can feed the multi tude, his hearers.
Various other works of Lucian must be read for a full understanding of his attitude towards
[60]
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philosophy and ethics. Brief suggestion only of three more can be given here. All of these differ from each other in content.
The Hireling Philosophers, one of Lucian's most amusing pieces, vivid, witty, bitter, is a warning, in letter form though without super scription, to a friend, against selling his liberty and his intellect to lend eclat to a rich patron. With unsparing detail he pictures the life led by a domesticated scholar whether in the great city establishment or en route for the country- place in the servants' carriage, sandwiched between a vulgar valet and the mistress's " beauty-expert," where, incidentally, he is compelled to give maieutic assistance to my lady's Maltese lapdog which has been confided to his especial care. This tragic, though amus ing, recital has been a warning to many an
scholar. 22 Lucian himself in his old age, when dependent on a government salary, feels it incumbent upon him to defend
himself from his own satire by writing a feeble
Apologia.
The Symposium, like the Eunuchus, shows
us Lucian in his most unrestrained humour in his satire upon contemporary philosophers. And yet, outrageous as it only for few
[61]
impecunious
is,
a
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sentences does it degenerate into the banality of bitterness that sometimes mars his pages. In this piece he gathers together at a wedding- feast representatives of the four great sects (with two Stoics for good measure) and other prominent persons. Later a Cynic enters un invited not as a mere entree but as the piece de resistance. In a succession of rapid scenes Lucian gives us the most incredible situa tions, filled with jealousy and lust, wrangling, vituperation, gouged-out eyes, truncated noses, blows and blood. But it is incomparable for skill in narration and dramatic suggestion.
The Hermotimus or the Sects was written when Lucian was forty years old, when he is consciously turning to his proper business of literary creation. It is his longest and, in some respects, his most interesting work although not to be classed with his best dramatic and artistic productions. It is his serious deliver ance on philosophy or, more strictly, upon the systems of ethics. In form it is an undisguised reflection of Plato's dialogues. It was doubtless intended by Lucian to be his magnum opus and yet, in a sense, it is his most conspicuous fail ure. Attempting serious dialogue, he either lec tures or answers himself back in falsetto like a
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marionette-exhibitor. We might be tempted, at times, to say the same of the Platonized-Soc- rates, but the Republic of Plato is construc tive; it rears a lofty dwelling-place not made with hands, whereas Lucian uproots the very foundations. It is his " Confession of Unfaith. " The pupil Hermotimus, who has been painfully working the stony tract of Stoicism these forty
years — he is now sixty — is relentlessly driven from one refuge to another until, with his hopes shattered, he gives in at the last and exclaims in effect like Faust:
Naught can we know with certainty — That sears the very heart in me!
It is not simply the Stoics that have been weighed and found wanting. They are merely one outstanding illustration. " Lycinus " as sures the now disenchanted Hermotimus that it is the same with all creeds — neither
Jew nor Gentile, Stoic churchman nor Cynic dis
senter can guide you up the hill of Virtue. His substitute creed is " Common Sense and scep ticism. " " Keep sober," he says with Epichar- mus, " Keep sober and remember to doubt. "
We may well be sceptical as to how much Lucian actually accomplished for the ethics of
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his own generation; some critics consider his avowed crusade against shams as rhetorical ar rogance; others, inclined to grant, even to great men, a more generous margin of self-deception, may believe that Lucian, in his own estimate of his role, was really an honest Commissioner for repairing the highways and byways of his time.
ARTIST
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VI. THE SUPERNATURAL
i. The Gods
Crusade against Shams, how
ever much or little reasoned conviction
we may be disposed to concede to him, IUC^IAN'S
was not confined to attacks upon the unethical practices of contemporaries who posed as phi losophers. His satire, now bald and bitter, now glowing with iridescent charm, pursued relent lessly all superstitions and manifestations of a belief in the supernatural. The most intransi gent scientists of the middle of the nineteenth century in their consecrated quest for proto plasm were hardly more bitter than he against all belief in " things unseen. " They, to be sure, were " sustained by an unfaltering trust " in their constructive aims, whereas Lucian was cynically destructive, an iconoclast who could set up in the vacated shrines " no good God except good Greek. " 23 A continuous trip with him through the devastated region of his No- gods' land would become depressing were it not
for his unfailing humour that acts as a partial counter-irritant against pessimism.
[65]
LUCIAN,
To illustrate fully his hostility to the old es tablished Greek religion and to current super stitions, we should have to lay under contribu tion ten or twelve, at least, of his best pieces and add, moreover, many of the fifty-six short Dialogues of the Gods and Dialogues of the Dead.
Experts on the novel point out that the num ber of really distinct plots in the nature of things, very limited. Lucian's writings contain
disconcerting number of repetitions, both of ideas and matter. He was not by way of writ ing an orderly Manual of Ethics! When he wrote his " sequels," they were evidently in tended for audiences previously addressed, but, as rule, he could safely count either upon new hearers or upon his own adroitness and wit in presenting shop-worn roles under new mask.
As to his inconsistencies, these are not of character to indicate either moral obliquity or lack of stability. The most striking apparent inconsistency his shift to vitriolic vitupera tion of the Cynics after his earlier cordial, and even partisan, approval of their creed. The or dinary explanation doubtless, the correct one. His frank adherence to the Cynic Menip
[66]
SATIRIST AND ARTIST
is is,
a a
a
a
is,
THE SUPERNATURAL
pus as a model continued into a part, at least, of his best period. When it came to personal satire, as in the case of the suicide Peregrinus, he was under no bonds to any creed. It does not seem practicable to use this criterion with exactitude, in establishing the chronological sequence of his writings.
Minor inconsistencies are, of course, delib erate artistic devices. Such, for example, is the insouciance of his whim of the moment when Charon, at one time, conducts his ferry-boat on
the " pay-as-you-enter " system and refuses embarcation to a would-be passenger who can not pay down his obol, and rejects the sug gested compromise of allowing him to work out his fare, while, in another dialogue, he willingly permits a stow-away to work his passage by baling bilge-water or by taking a hand at the oar. Quite different from such deliberate de vices is the possible moral deterioration of Lu- cian grown old and submitting to imperial pat
ronage. To those who seek an ethical lesson this may suggest that a philosophy of negation is no safe sheet-anchor.
In his Zeus Cross-questioned he relentlessly annihilates the sovereignty of the gods. " Cy- niscus " (a Menippean incognito) is allowed by
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the Chairman of the gods to ask one thing, after promising that he will not ask for wealth or power. He therefore propounds the leading question : " Do Destiny and the Fates really dispose of all things without appeal? " Zeus, falling into the trap, goes the limit in emphasiz ing, as a cardinal doctrine for all orthodox be lief, that the ultimate decision for gods as well as for men, rests with the Fates. The logical application is easy for the Cynic. On this basis the inequalities of life cannot be relieved by any divine intervention, and the suggestion of any readjustment by rewards and punishments after death is seen to be preposterous. This age-old contradiction between predestination and free-will of course, favourite weapon with Lucian. He uses most artistically, per haps, in one of the Dialogues the Dead, where Minos, the judge, has already passed judgment on certain tyrant and then, out of deference to the legal right of the defendant to show cause why sentence should not be passed
upon him, makes the mistake of allowing the condemned criminal to interpellate the court. Minos has an irreproachably judicial mind and
led to admit that an executioner, for example, no more responsible for carrying out " orders
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is is
a
is,
of
it
a
THE SUPERNATURAL
from above " than is the sword itself with which he beheads the criminal. Sostratus, the tyrant, therefore claims, and receives, from the logical judge the cancellation of his sentence. " But," says Minos, " see to it that you don't put up the rest of the corpses to asking similar questions!