Lucian prolongs our appetite by the recur
rent intellectual spice of delicate parodies.
rent intellectual spice of delicate parodies.
Allinson - Lucian, Satirist and Artist
Practically all of these are susceptible of another and easier interpretation.
Although Lucian was a Syrian by birth and evidently acquainted, by hearsay at least, with some of the facts of the crucifixion of Christ, the canon of the New Testament was not as yet established nor were its contents publicly cir culated. Satire upon its tenets would not have made the wide and instant appeal to Lucian's audiences which was requisite for his purpose. His detailed description of the Islands of the Blest in the True Story, for example, would awaken welcome echoes of Pindar's second Olympic Ode or of the marvellous garden of Alcinous in the Odyssey. The detail of the vines which produce twelve crops annually and " yield fruit every month " seems now, to any reader of the New Testament, like an obvious loan from the Apocalypse, and it would be
[9Sl
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
risky to assert that this item could not have
been overheard by our Syrian at some
tian gathering. But, as a matter of reminiscence, it would develop naturally, by Lucian's favourite method of
details to give the effect of autopsy, from
Homer's own words:38 " Of these the fruitage never perishes nor even fails of winter or of summer the whole year through; but aye and ever does the Westwind blowing quicken these,
ARTIST
particularizing
Chris literary
and ripen those; pear on pear grows ripe and full, apple upon apple, clustered grape on grape succeeding, fig on fig. " He makes, for example, in the interest of telling the whole truth, one
addition: " They said, however, that the pome granates, apple and other fruit trees produce thirteen crops annually, for in one of their cal
endar months, the month ' Minos,' they yield two crops. " 39 The " casting out of devils," also an apparent slur on the New Testament, was more probably a generic reference to the thriving practitioners of magic.
As to hits at Old Testament stories, the chronological margin is elastic enough but the supposed references are not convincing. Lu- cian, in the True Story, did not have to enlarge the acreage of the interior of Jonah's " whale "
[96]
THE SUPERNATURAL
to make room for the truck-garden of Skin- tharos within his big sea-monster; and, again, the sudden chasm of air that interrupts his boat's course comes from his own brilliant fancy, not from the book of Exodus. The Bib lical crossing of the Red Sea would be, at best,
a very incomplete parallel.
Whatever degree of possibility, or probabil
ity, may be assigned to such covert reminis cences, the actual references to the Christians make Lucian a favourable, because uninten tional, witness. In the Alexander, the charlatan " prophet " includes the Christians with the Epicureans in his most bitter anathemas: "Away with the Christians! Away with the Epicureans! " But it is precisely in the Alex ander that Lucian most openly lauds Epicurus and the Epicureans, and contrasts their un compromising opposition to shams and super stitions with the perfect harmony existing be tween Alexander and the Stoic, Pythagorean and Platonic schools! The Christians, there fore, were in the best company that he could offer.
In the Life's End of Peregrinus, the Cynic philosopher, craving notoriety and needing fi nancial support, is represented as having joined
[97]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
the Christian sect after all other means of self- advertisement had grown stale and unremuner- ative. A certain real ability — for he was, after all, an accredited Cynic — raised him rapidly to prominence among the simpler folk of the Christian brotherhood. He expounded and, ac cording to Lucian, even wrote some of their
"
He was called a New Soc
sacred books !
rates " and his wants were well supplied. When cast into prison as too noisy a propagandist, he fairly lived "in clover. These " non-profes sionals," who hold all things in common," were easily duped by a professional charlatan like Peregrinus. " At short notice," says Lu cian, " they contribute everything without re serve. " " For," he continues, " these misguided persons have persuaded themselves that they are going to be altogether immortal and are going to live through time unending. In com
parison with this the most of them despise death and voluntarily give themselves up to it. Then, too, their first lawgiver persuaded them that they are all brothers, one of the other, after they have once thrown over and denied the gods of Greece and have done reverence to that crucified sophist himself and live accord
ing to his laws. "
[98]
THE SUPERNATURAL
Neither here nor elsewhere is Lucian making an attack on the Christians per se. Indeed, he poses almost as their partisan in his indignation against Peregrinus and his successful use of their simplicity. His patronizing contempt for their gullibility (as he saw it), led him to im mortalize some of the most lovable and charac teristic traits of the early brotherhood, and the church authorities of the sixteenth century seem short-sighted in placing on the Index librorunt prohibitorum a tractate that might have been exploited as impartial testimony in their favour.
[99]
VII. OTHER DRAMATIC DIALOGUES: POLEMICS: NARRATIONS
than twenty other writings of Lucian offer contributions necessary for an estimate both of his defects
MORE
and of his versatile interest in the " passing
show " — the human comedy. He was neither a master intelligence like Aristotle — expert in several of the many subjects to which he ad dressed himself — nor was he a mere polymath like Pliny the Elder or Aelian. In spite of his jaunty treatment of philosophy and exact sci ence, Lucian at least takes cognizance of the chief components of contemporary life and with his mordant wit etches the portraiture of a great century. This is not mere caricature.
(a) DRAMATIC DIALOGUES
Under this rubric might be included the ma jority of the dialogues cited above to illustrate specific objectives of Lucian's satire. Some of the best dialogues, however, fall outside of the
[ 100]
OTHER DRAMATIC
DIALOGUES
previous classification. To emphasize outstand
ing merit three titles are here treated rately.
The Cock
This is second to none of Lucian's dialogues in dramatic vigour. The flashes of wit and the sustained and entrancing humour of the situa tion are hardly equalled even in the Icaro- menippus. The interjected sermonizing may be tedious, perhaps, to the mercurial modern, craving his " quick lunch," but so are the long, brilliant speeches of the messenger in Greek tragedy — and, for that matter, much of Shakespeare himself.
The general theme of the Cock or the Dream is contentment. Micyllus the cobbler, with whom we become intimate elsewhere, supports the role of righteous poverty. The account of his first and only dinner at a rich man's table contrasts the inequalities in human conditions. He in dream, living over again the fleeting splendour of this banquet when he awakened by the crowing of his officious cock who replies to his master's angry reproaches by perfectly
reasonable remark, made in excellent Greek. Indignation naturally gives place to amaze ment as the bird calmly explains his possession
[IOI]
sepa
a
is
is, a
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
of human speech. He is Pythagoras, it seems, in addition to many other aliases. His soul, in fact, has lived through many transmigrations, brute and human, man and woman, with powers unimpaired. As Euphorbus, in the time of the Trojan War, he knew much more about Helen than did Homer who, at the time, was a mere Bactrian camel! After Pythagoras he was Aspasia, but admits that the role of Chan ticleer is preferable to that of a mother-hen, so to say. Next he was the Cynic Crates, an ex pert pick-lock. This fact doubtless accounts for the special form of magic which he pres
ently exhibits, albeit his inbred piety ascribes this power to Hermes, the Lord of Looting. The cock, as it transpires, can at will turn his long, curved, right-hand tail-feather into a mas ter-key and this same night, before dawn, he takes the cobbler unseen through three rich men's houses. The cock, in various rebirths, had played many parts — rich man, poor man, king, horse, jackdaw et al. His experience of life is all-embracing. He tells the cobbler that, as a matter of fact, he has never seen anyone living more happily than Micyllus himself. " Than I, Cock? " the cobbler exclaims, " I wish you the same! Excuse me, please, but you
[102]
ARTIST
OTHER DRAMATIC DIALOGUES
forced out this curse. " In the end, however, Micyllus is convinced. He learns the lesson of contentment.
When they start on their rounds the cobbler plucks out both the curving tail-feathers, ex plaining to the bereaved rooster that he wishes to make doubly sure of the key to the situation, adding that this precaution will also prevent the cock from being lop-sided. In the first house entered Simon, his nouveau riche neigh bour, is seen, sleepless from fear of burglars, uncovering and counting and burying again his gold — a pale, worn miser. After a brief visit to a rich Shylock's house the magic feather next unlocks the door of Eucrates. Here the cobbler dined a few hours ago and all this gold- plate and other magnificence he had just in herited in his dream when awakened prema turely by the cock. As Micyllus enters the house he is once more dazzled by the splendour and exclaims: " All this was mine a little while ago! " Presently, however, he sees Eucrates, here betraying himself by his own passions, and here betrayed by his unfaithful wife. It is enough. The breaking dawn curtails the feather's magic and irradiates the beauty of the honest cobbler's daily toil.
[103]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
Timon the Misanthrope
In this dialogue Lucian rehearses his familiar attacks on parasites, philosophers, rhetoricians, and the futility of the shopworn gods them selves. The Timon is accounted by some com petent critics as Lucian's masterpiece, though he allows the caricature of the orator Demeas to become farcical, thus marring the artistic verisimilitude of the piece and, to this extent, putting it on a lower level than the Charon, or the Cock. But the dialogue marches to its goal —the creation 40 in literature of the typical
Misanthropist. This involves, along with the dramatic, though incidental, punishment of the ungrateful parasites, the far greater punish ment of Timon himself in becoming a full- fledged Egoist. To this egoism both poverty and riches contribute.
Lucian ignored Plutarch's data, if he knew them, and is not diverted from his main pur pose by attributing any real virtue to Timon that could stand the strain of either riches or poverty. In the revamped Shakespearian play the centre of gravity is shifted to Timon's earlier days of prosperity and his good-natured prodigality is half confused with philanthropy,
[ 104]
OTHER DRAMATIC DIALOGUES
as reflected in the sympathy of the loyal and lovable Flavius. One of the " authors " of the Timon of Athens, indeed, outdoes Lucian by
the cynical touch of subventions to the poison ous harlots, but he shuffles Timon off the stage, before he is fairly established as a practising misanthrope, and then deflects our attention to extraneous matter.
Lucian's neatest bit of satire, perhaps, is the egoism of Zeus, who rewards Timon simply and solely for his generous offerings, on Thanks giving days, of fat bulls and "goats. " Their savour," he naively remarks, is still in my nostrils. " The punishment of the ungrateful parasites must wait till he can have his thunder bolt repaired. Two of its tines were broken re cently by striking the rock at the " Anaceum " temple instead of a sinner. For very bull-head- edness Zeus never could hit the bull's-eye.
The personification of the blind god, Wealth, gives Lucian a grateful opportunity both for ethical observations and for picturesque geo graphical details, and his open and skilful use of the Plutus of Aristophanes only enhances his own dramatic creation.
[105]
LUCIAN,
The Dialogues of the Sea
In these fifteen aquarelles satirist and artist blend. Our ductile vision is refracted by the shining water and everything is credible within its magic depths. The artistic charm is perme ated, but never marred, by a delicate satire, less obvious than the grim derision in the Dia
logues of the Dead. While mocking at canoni cal mythology Lucian here reaches his end by no crass caricature but, ever and anon, Fancy astride a dolphin rises from the blue sea that holds the unnoticed satire in solution.
Several of these dialogues were pretty cer tainly suggested 41 by works of art extant in Lucian's time. Others would probably find their motive, or parallel, in paintings or sculpture now lost. Here, as elsewhere, Lucian illustrates the freemasonry of the brush, the chisel and the pen.
Within each tiny dialogue there is condensed a nucleus. Sometimes there are two centres of interest. Now, it is Polyphemus's brute strength succumbing to intellectual cunning and, inlaid upon the mimicry of Homer's ram; now, the cool bubbling fountain, worthy of Horace; now, the statuesque beauty of the
[106]
SATIRIST AND AKTIST
it,
OTHER DRAMATIC DIALOGUES
girl with her water jar; now, the rescue of An dromeda, with the inimitable detail of the sea- monster's bi-focal death — some of him slain outright by the falchion of Perseus, and " as much of him as had seen the Medusa " petri fying independently! Again, we have two pic tures of Europa carried off by Zeus, incognito as milk-white bull — a favourite model from Ovid to Titian and Tennyson. Lucian's setting is his own. The unlucky Southwind, assigned that day to the Indian ocean, has missed this lovely Mediterranean spectacle — the most " magnificent sea-processional," Westwind tells him, " that I have ever seen since I live and have my blowing! "
The attention first centres on Europa, bullied into an unwitting elopement. Then comes the wedding-march. Only the more attractive sub marine life, such as tritons, dolphins and half- naked Nereids, is allowed to show even a peri scope above the glassy surface. Poseidon, as best man, convoys his swimming brother, and Aphrodite, quite in her element, lolls back in her sea-car, the fairest and most nonchalant
flower-girl that ever scattered roses from near by Rhodes. As the handsome bull's front hooves strike the beach he changes into the
[107]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
divine bridegroom and the marines circum spectly submerge, setting the water a-boil. " And I," says the envious Southwind, " was looking at griffins, elephants, and black-a- moors! "
In the Danae seascape, finally, is a picture that Simonides himself cannot blur from our memory — the blue Aegean; the little ark; the fair and smiling child; the fairer mother; the brawny, gentle fishermen. Thetis, in a sub marine chat with Doris, tells how Danae put up no prayer for herself, when exposed on the sea with Perseus, " but tried to beg off her baby from death by shedding tears, as she holds it out to its grandfather, and it was just the prettiest little thing! And the baby, uncon scious of ills, breaks into smiles at the sight of the sea. ' Why my eyes are filled again " with tears, Doris, as I but remember them! '
bitter polemics in which Lucian openly names the person attacked. This has already been dis cussed in the chapter on the " Supernatural. " The piece, however, contains much additional matter of interest. This, at least, should be
[108]
POLEMICS
(b)
Alexander the Fake-Prophet is one of two
in
From bronze statuette and cast of Boston Museum
coin, struck under Lucius Verus, the of Fine Arts.
EEE EAGGK
GGKA
See
Note
35.
POLEMICS
added. After due allowance is made for per sonal animosity the account does not seem to be a caricature and is partially confirmed by extant medals and a bronze-figure. 42 It may be used as furnishing data, essentially credible, for the diagnostician of human credulity.
The Life's-End of Peregrinus is also an at tack upon a contemporary whose name is given
and whose spectacular suicide is recorded several unimpeachable authorities. 43 It is note worthy not only for the allusions to the Chris tians, cited above, but also for the diagnosis of a man possessed with the demon of self-adver tisement; for the psychology of the deceiving philosophers and their deceived contempora ries; for archaeological data — the picturesque references to the Games and to the terrain of Olympia should be read on the spot —; and, finally, the vivid narration, including the death- scene, the construction of the pyre, the sor rowing but self-possessed disciples, the pale philosopher, stripped to his shirt (" decidedly dirty " according to Cynic convention), weak ening at the last moment but spurred on to the irrevocable act by the relentless admonition: "Go on with your programme! " This fling comes from one of the brotherhood who is al
[ 109]
by
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
ready banking on the marketable value to the Cynic sect of the canonization of a self-im molated martyr. Lucian, indeed, anticipates the hatching of their chicken by letting an anapaestic vulture fly up in advance from the Cynic's ashes, chanting:
The Earth I have left, to Olympus I fare!
One thing only in this whole portrayal is open to question but that, unfortunately, is a matter of major importance. The self-immo lation is amply attested by others but the char acter of Peregrinus is lauded by Aulus Gellius. Was he, at worst, only a fanatic or was he an imposter bitten by greed for glory? Is Lucian repeating unsupported gossip or even actual calumnies when he refers nonchalantly to vari ous unsavoury episodes, including his murder of his father and his parasitical connection with the Christians? We cannot say, although it is an important factor in our estimate of Lucian
himself. But the amiable assumption of Gel lius, the myopic grammarian, is not demonstra tion. It does not prove either for his day or for our own that lofty sentiments must necessarily be sincere. Our golden idol may have feet of clay. Lucian, on the other hand, seldom identi
[no]
POLEMICS
fies himself with Charity that " thinketh no evil. "
Lucian, in fact, was not properly a biog rapher. The Life of Demonax, for example, if written by him, is dull. From Plutarch, whose honest shade had joined his mighty dead about the time of Lucian's birth, he may have drawn various hints but he made no nearer approach to his biographies than occasional juxtaposi
tions like that of Alexander with Hannibal and Scipio in the Dialogues of the Dead. Nor need we count" as biography the rhetorical " white washing of the infamous Phalaris. The story, too, about Herodotus, retailed in the " curtain- raiser " that bears his name, is an isolated, though interesting, item that reenforces Lu cian's undisguised admiration for the " incom parable charm of the incorrigible Story teller. "
The Coach in Rhetoric
This diatribe is apparently directed against a real person. His actual name is suppressed but the reference to Castor and Pollux is al most sufficient 44 identification. Julius Pollux, a cheap but self-confident rhetorician, would seem, as appointee of the Emperor Commodus to the official Chair of Rhetoric in Athens, to
[in]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
have aroused the contempt of the intelligentsia. It is unnecessary to assume that Lucian him self was an unsuccessful rival for the place. If half of the caricature were essentially represen tative it would justify his indignation as a sin cere lover of good language and literature even if the frank personalities were as untrue as they are unnecessary.
The Coach in Rhetoric purports to be the advice given gratis by a charlatan " professor " to a neophyte seeking a short-cut to the same showy success. Condensed from Lucian's bitter gibing his advice, in fine, is to ignore the old- fashioned, out-of-date disciplinary training. None of that is needed or even desirable. The easy road is also the shortest. Bold elocution, brassy assertion, arrogant physical bearing are the winning cards. You can begin at once. Not even a psychological test is necessary, let alone exact knowledge of anything. This has a fa miliar sound. If Lucian could have subordi nated vituperation to his incisive wit and in escapable satire, and had made this attack in his best manner, we might use it to draw an easy and useful parallel by substituting for " Rhetorician " our own denatured term " Edu cator. "
[112]
POLEMICS
The Lexiphanes** or phrase-monger, is in a vein already opened up in the preceding piece. The would-be Atticist who injects into the matrix of vulgar Greek far-fetched Attic gems, which often turn out to be paste imita tions, was typical of the imperfect imitators of Attic Greek who eagerly sought to excel in this contemporary, artificial Atticism. "
Whether Pollux, as a charlatan Commis sioner of Education," or the whole breed of pretenders was the subject of this attack, Lu- cian, the expert Atticist, had a well-earned right to his contemptuous satire.
We cannot pursue further Lucian's philolog ical polemics,46 but any reader of Greek may derive pure fun in philology from the Suit of Sigma against Tau. This amusing little piece carries us out of the sorry milieu of human polemics into the miniature cock-pit of the letters of the alphabet. The Privy Council of the Vowels holds its sitting. At the end we are ready to crucify this accursed T on his own cross. If the piece is not, as has been sug gested,47 by Lucian himself we should like to
read more by the same writer.
[113]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
The Illiterate Bibliophile
This diatribe is directed against an unnamed but actual contemporary, a fellow Syrian, an ostentatious book-collector who is too ignorant to appraise the niceties of Attic style or even to read intelligently the contents of his costly col lection. Like many a so-called " bibliophile " today, his love for books extends only to their external and marketable assets, such as : Copies by So and So; or their physical format, e. g. , a very beautiful scroll with purple vellum " jacket " and " golden knobs " on the end of the cylinder. The ugly personalities, in which Lucian sees fit to indulge, even if true, are be side the point. The rest of his incisive satire, changing certain details, is not out of date.
The collector's passion, however, is not con fined to books which he never reads. He also collects relics. Among his exhibits, and pro cured for one thousand dollars plus, is the staff of the precious Cynic suicide, Peregrinus Proteus, thrown aside when he leaped into the fire. To show up all such futility Lucian re hearses how the tyrant Dionysius hoped to im prove his literary style by procuring the very writing-tablets upon which Aeschylus had first
[114]
POLEMICS
jotted down in Sicily some of his tragedies — useless as the lyre of Orpheus without Orpheus, or, in modern terms, as a Stradivarius without the skilled musician!
How Should History be Written?
This informal letter begins with flaying con temporary would-be historians and gives illus trations of their brazen ignorance of facts, their untruthfulness, their vanity, or parasitical praise of patrons. Diogenes comes on the scene, bowling his tenement-;ar up and down the market-place in Corinth, cynically mock ing the ill-directed activities of his fellow- citizens who were preparing to repel an inva sion. How not to write history was a congenial theme for Lucian's destructive criticism. Ad dressing himself, in the second part, to the con structive side, and conscious of his unusual role, Lucian says, deprecatingly: " I, too, roll my jar! " His formulae are unstable under the blow-torch of modern historical research. He treats somewhat sketchily preliminary training and also the sifting of facts and their sources, but demands " political insight " and " faculty of expression " along with unwavering inde pendence of spirit and loyalty to Truth. He
[US]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
would like to combine all the charm of Herod otus with the terse objectivity of Thucydides, whom he names specifically as the model.
Were it not so evident that the graces of style and diction are, for him, of such over mastering importance we could hardly demand of his age a higher conception of history. As it
some modern non-professional readers may agree that historical characters are not " pris oners at the bar. " To illustrate the Thucy- didean belief that history must be inscribed on the bed-rock of Truth, he tells the effective story how on the veneered surface of the base of the Pharos light-house the architect attrib uted, by an inscription, its construction to the reigning Ptolemy, knowing well that the perish able exterior would, at some time safely re mote, peel off and reveal to posterity his own name and fame.
in other types of writing has free play in his True Story. This serves, indeed, as comple
ment to the polemic just cited, but not so much sequel as an antidote — dose of hellebore against all boredom. He makes his
[116]
NARRATIONS
(c)
Though Lucian's skill in narration emerges
a
it is
a
it is
it
is,
NARRATIONS
own explanation of his purpose. After paying his respects to the purveyors of myths and histories, modern and ancient,48 from the Odys sey on, he says: " Wishing to play my part in the world of letters and liars, and having no facts to recount — since nothing worth record ing has ever happened to me — I will say in advance this one true thing, to wit, that I am going to tell you lies. So, then, I write about what I neither saw nor experienced nor heard of from others and, what's more, about things
that never happen at all nor could happen. " With this premised, we take ship with Lu- cian and pass through " The Straits " into the uncharted West. Atlas, vainly trying to
hold asunder the divinely wedded Earth and Heaven, drops behind the horizon and, after some preliminary adventures, our seaplane is whirled aloft into the heavenly hemisphere. All earthly cares are jettisoned. Later, indeed, we have brief glimpses of home affairs reflected in the magic mirror of the Moon, or seen by the light of our own family lamp, encountered while it is taking a day off in Lamp-heaven, but none of these things ruffle our high celestial content.
Lucian's conceits rarely degenerate into bur [117]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
lesque. Through the whole narrative he holds us captive by his air of verisimilitude. His magical imagination does not travel on the stilts of magic — that hard-worked deus ex machina of tales like Kalevala — for Magic itself is only one more quarry 49 for his falcon wit. Even in his frequent recourse to exaggera tion his surprises vary. The monstrous fish, for example, gulps down unharmed Lucian's ship, crew and all, down through his roomy throat,
past another vessel, lying there a derelict. Within, there are forests and fields and hostile tribes. There is a lake and a vegetable garden cultivated by a Crusoe and his son, long since interned. The escape attempted by tunnelling the right-hand wall of the huge crypt makes a relatively insignificant dent and is abandoned after excavating for five-eighths of a mile ! The ship is finally hauled up and lowered into the sea by using as davits the monster's huge teeth. The vessel slips through the interstices as easily as might a strand of dentist's floss. Again, in the Island of Dreams, he finds that Homer was wholly inadequate in limiting the " Doorways for Dreams " to two only —the " horn " and the " ivory. " As a matter of fact there were four! Or Rhadamanthus embarks fifty heroes
[118]
NARRATIONS
to pursue Helen, who is again eloping, in a long-boat hewn from a single log of asphodel — a monoxyl! The slender asphodel, it seems, knows no girth-control under the never-ending sunshine in the Island of the Blessed.
Or his method may be to invert reality. The questing ship, for example, comes suddenly to a crevasse, yawning in its path, and is checked just in time before it plunges over the edge into the chasm of air. 50 This chasm, however, is presently crossed on a Natural Bridge of water, sighted nearby, which unites precariously, on the surface, the severed cliffs of water.
Lucian prolongs our appetite by the recur
rent intellectual spice of delicate parodies.
at the end he draws aside his rainbow veil to show us the ass's shins of reality and bows us, breathless, back again into " our own continent that lies opposite. "
It would be easy to make other detached excerpts but only by reading the whole can we fully appreciate how, with gathered momentum, the True Story has stimulated the long line of imitators who also have smuggled through the " ivory gate " their lesser share of celestial loot.
Familiarized with the flavour of Lucian's narration in the True Story, the Lie-Fancier,
[119]
Just
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
the Icaromenippus, the Toxaris and other writ ings, it is tempting to accept as genuine the Syrian Goddess and the Ass. The Syrian God dess,51 flaunting her oriental nakedness through the diaphanous Ionic dress, has touches of hu mour that suggest a deliberate satire on the naivete of Herodotus and on the current fad for Ionicizing, notwithstanding some linguistic flaws foreign to Lucian's style. Lucius or the Ass 52 is apparently an epitome of a lost origi nal. Lapses into the vulgar dialect betray a different hand (or, perhaps, an artistic whim),
but long stretches of narration in this famous and outrageous tale suggest that Lucian is lurk ing in person within the ass, availing himself
with gusto of this excellent chance to satirize the current belief in magic.
The identical matter of certain passages in this and in Apuleius's Golden Ass presupposes an archetype. 53 Whether this was written by Apuleius or, as it has been argued, by Lucian himself, the brilliant Syrian was no mere plagiarist and whatever part he may have had in telling, or retelling, the tale, the purpose underlying his facile narration was the mockery
of credulity. He was a lion in an ass's skin! [120]
VIII. LUCIAN'S CREDITORS AND DEBTORS
i. Sources
THE case of authorship antedating the
honest confessional of the footnote or the
scholar's page, sicklied o'er with conscien IN
tious references, the identification of indebted ness, varying from conjecture to certainty, is a fascinating and, at times, an illuminating pursuit.
Fully to tabulate Lucian's obligations to predecessors and, perhaps, to contemporaries is not now practicable. He is openly proud of his debt to classic Greek writers but is normally reticent about obligations to Roman predeces sors, or to contemporaries, whether Greek or Roman. His writings abound in parodies, full quotation, and interwoven scraps of citation. In all this the intended effect would depend largely upon the instant recognition by his audience of the original. For example, the second Dialogue of the Sea, except for those familiar with the Odyssey, would lack mean
[121]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
ing when, with Lucianic additions, the Cyclops rehearses to his father, the naive Poseidon, the story of Odysseus and the ram. This would, in turn, recall the inimitable parody in the Wasps of Aristophanes, where the jury-maniac, Phi- locleon, essays escape under the shaggy belly of the family donkey.
The revamping of plot or of whole charac ters from the Attic drama would be more than an extension of this form of intentional remi niscence. The title of Lucian's Timon was not improbably suggested by the Timon of Antiph- anes, not now extant. This, however, in itself proves nothing. Just as " Electra " changed her robes under the hands of her three distin guished couturieres of the fifth century, so we find in the Comic Fragments more than identical titles reappearing respectively in the writings of from two to eight different authors. As a matter of fact, it is to the Plutus of Aristophanes that we turn to enjoy, in Lucian's
Timon, his adroit use of a predecessor. The result was not a mere contaminatio. We may assume the same with the Charon, or the Cock. Their effect upon the mind renders incredible the suggestion that they are not fresh-minted. If in his Charon, for example, Lucian had some
[ 122 ]
250
lucian's creditors and debtors
" original " in mind we do not need to know either for understanding or for enjoyment. It would, however, make difference in our esti mate could be shown that our author slavishly or clandestinely imitated, in form or in substance, works now no longer extant. Should we give to Menippus, for example, the real credit for the creation of the Satiric Dia logue? Are the Necyomanteia, the Dialogues
the Dead, the Cronos Letters, the orgiastic satire in the Symposium, and elements in the Hermotimus, etc. , plagiarisms? We cannot be dogmatic in each case but at least obvious that the frequent references to Menippus would have sufficiently recalled writings that were still accessible. Lucian was content with his own originality and submits his book-keeping for inspection in open court. Modern critics most entitled °4 to an opinion rank Lucian among the great, though not the greatest, creative writers of antiquity.
In general, seems safe to conclude that Lucian regarded the writings of predecessors and contemporaries as an open quarry from which he first built up his own style and then picked out material to imbed, with an artist's skill, in the parti-coloured mosaic of his satire.
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[
it
it is
of
if it
a
it,
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
Such material, drawn here and there from the Wonders of the Island Thule of Antonius Di ogenes 55 or from Theopompus before him, or from the pious Plutarch, or from the elusive sources of the Arabian Nights or other oriental tales, may have been freely transferred to his True Story without implying plagiarism any more than did his"parodies on the Odyssey. Even the Ass by Lucius of Patrae," if we discover the Lucianic stigmata beneath its shaggy hair, would justify itself, contrasted with the " golden " credulity of Apuleius, as a pungent satire on the current belief in magic.
Whether Lucian is to be accredited with the creation or only the development of the Satiric Dialogue is a different matter. This, in a sense, calls in question his originality. Perhaps the first suggestion for his brilliant Sale of Sample Lives came from a dialogue of Menippus, en titled the Sale of Diogenes. Croiset, however, justly remarks : 56 " si Lucien 1'a imite, ce n'a ete qu'en se reservant le droit de la trans former " — the quality of this transformation
in the last analysis, the essential thing.
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[
is,
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Latin Sources
The identification in Lucian's writings of direct reminiscences from Latin writers is pre carious when so much of the content of litera ture and tradition had passed into community ownership but, apart from the argument ex silentio, which would be as misleading here as elsewhere, there is no good reason to ignore Lucian's own words and to assume that he could not use freely such Latin writings as were physically available.
Certain passages reflect, some certainly, some with more or less probability, the thought or actual words of Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, Tacitus, Juvenal, Ovid and Pliny. A number of such reminiscences or parallels have been pointed out by various67 scholars. By way of supplement it may be remarked here that the details, even verbal, in Lucian's description of Phaethon (number twenty-five of the Dia logues of the Gods), read like a racy synopsis
of Ovid's words. The contacts with Ovid's poetry are numerous and Lucian, who compares himself to an Attic bee questing for honey, would have noted Ovid's exquisite verses 68 fragrant with memories of Mt. Hymettus. In
[125]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
the Charon the falling tile which prevents the dinner-guest from keeping his engagement, has an obvious parallel in Juvenal's third satire. This particular type of accidental death was, indeed, so common that we cannot claim from this incident alone an actual reminiscence, but the community of feeling throughout the corre sponding scene in Juvenal reenforces the ante cedent probability that Lucian was familiar with the Roman satirist.
Suggestions from Works of Art
Among Lucian's creditors we must also in clude sculptors, painters and architects. His obligations, however, in the realms of art, other than his own, would require a separate treatise. 59 When he discusses, either inciden tally or of set purpose, actual works of art, his comments are so incisive that he has been
characterized as " undoubtedly the most trust worthy art-critic of antiquity. " 80 This discrim inating apperception of truth and beauty, in form and design, was an integral part of his mental equipment. We feel this discrimination in his visualization of a certain portrait statue, otherwise unknown, — " a pot-bellied man, hair receding on the forehead, half-naked, some
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hairs of his beard wind-tossed, outstanding veins, a man to the very life " — no less than in his vivid sketches of world-famous statues like Myron's Discobolus, the Cnidian Aphro dite, the Diadumenus, or the Tyrant-slayers. His inspiration, too, from pictorial art was im portant. He welcomes the opportunity, for ex ample, to give a " word-picture " of the Cen
taur Family by Zeuxis (though from a copy of the original) which is itself important in the history of painting. Or again, we feel the im pression made on his mind by the painter's art in his catalogue of the paintings which adorned the lecture auditorium of whose architectural splendour, incidentally, he gives us a wordy picture.
But quite apart from this incidental legacy of art through description, more important for our appreciation of Lucian are his elusive trans fers, not always capable of identification, from the medium of plastic and graphic art into such word-pictures as the vignettes in the Dialogues of the Gods and the Dialogues of the Sea. Ob viously, in some instances, a telescoping of sources — from both art and literature — may be assumed. For the Europa 91 story, for ex ample, there was abundant material in art, and
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in literature in the accounts given by Mos- chus and twice by Ovid. In the Rescue of An dromeda Ovid represents Perseus as slaying the monster with his falchion only, while Lucian brings in also the Medusa head and follows the monuments of art (except the vases), as, for ex ample, in the painting described by him in The Hall (22). This, of course, gives Lucian his chance for his characteristic persiflage. 62 Lu- cian's delight in placing the gods in a comic situation led him more than once into repeti tion. The sight of a statuette, as Bliimner sug gests, where a woman with upraised hand is threatening her victim with chastisement from her sandal, gave him, perhaps, the cue for the
punishment of the naughty Eros by his mother (Dialogues of the Gods, 11. 1) and also for
the lubberly Heracles brought under the san dal of Omphale (Dial. , 13. 2 and How to Write History, 10). Passing over other similar in stances, we note in the Charon another sugges tion from the field of art — if art it may be called. The ferryman is explaining why his ship's galley is so well-stocked with Homeric hors d'oeuvres. The poet, it seems, had grown suddenly sea-sick on the voyage and had left unclaimed in Charon's boat an ample chres
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tomathy, " including Scylla, Charybdis, and Cyclops. " Lucian may have seen a picture made by Galato in the age of the Ptolemies representing the citations issuing from Homer's mouth while the lesser breed of poets were gathering up these " winged words " — these undigested " slices " from the Homeric menu !
Lucian, as coinheritor of Greek art, moved about continuously in a world of beauty, per haps only " half-realized " even by our patient and pious reconstruction. He could see, day after day, the still virgin Parthenon and within it the gold-ivory Athena with Victory 63 on her extended hand. He could see in the Acropolis Picture Gallery and in the Cnidian Club at Delphi paintings of Polygnotus whose popu lous portrayal of the Underworld was catholic enough to include, for his benefit, Charon and the boat, as well as the ghostly dramatis
personae from the Odyssey. And, across the Aegean, he could see the Cnidian Aphrodite herself — no mere reproduction where the copyist's defacing fingers have blurred the perfect work of Praxiteles.
As satirist Lucian seized his opportunities at will but the artist within him could respond just as seriously to the impacts of beauty from
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sculpture and painting as to the suggestions garnered from his own field of art — from prose and poetry.
2. Lucian's Legatees
i. IN ART
In the field of art Lucian transmitted or originated suggestions for some of the greatest artists of Europe. Wherever these suggestions can be identified as themselves transmuted by Lucian from monuments of sculpture or, more frequently, from pictorial art, our interest is enhanced by the very continuity of motif.
It is not surprising that the fresh impulse given by the Revival of Greek, and the re covery of Lucian among other writers, should have stimulated the imagination of Renaissance artists more effectively than did the abundant suggestions already at hand, for example, in the duller pages of the elder Pliny. Leone Bat- tista Alberti (1404-1472), musician, painter, sculptor, architect, poet and prose-writer, was
an enthusiastic intermediary. By a special tract on Lucian's description, in his De Calumnia, of the painting ascribed to Apelles he com mended Lucian to the attention of artists as
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convincingly as Quintilian, in his day, had commended Menander to young Roman ora
tors. Botticelli reconstructed Lucian's
tion in his immortal painting and was followed by Raphael, Mantegna and others. 64 Albrecht Durer included the " Calumny of Apelles " among the designs furnished for the mural decorations in Nuremberg. Froben, in answer to the detractors of Erasmus, inserted in a second edition of the New Testament, as one of the illustrations, this still vigorous Calum- nia. Rembrandt, or a pupil, still later repro duced Mantegna's motif. Botticelli also trans ferred, somewhat altered, to his canvas Lu cian's description of the Centaur Family — a precursor of the landscape. In the Palazzo Borghese a pupil filled out Raphael's sketch
(still extant) of Lucian's Marriage of Alexan der and Roxana, which also formed the nu cleus of Sodoma's splendid fresco in the Chigi house in Rome and was later to reappear from the fecund brush of Rubens. " "
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The imaginative picture of eloquence
in Lucian's Gallic Heracles emerges in sketches by Raphael, Durer, and Holbein. Holbein also reproduced vividly Lucian's cashiered family- tutor and passed on the needed, long unheeded,
descrip
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
warning to all literati who hang on patrons' favours.
In the Nigrinus of Lucian occurs the sug gestion for the red-crayon drawing, by"Michel angelo, of the archer shooting the winged word " at his victim. From this drawing, found at Windsor Castle, a scholar of Raphael later made a fresco.
In Diirer's sketchbook in Vienna is pre served his " Europa " taken from the fifteenth Dialogue of the Sea. Titian's coarse lady, loll ing on the bull, has only the subject in com mon with the delicate beauty of Lucian's de scription, happily retouched in perfect lines by Tennyson in his Palace of Art.
The Dialogues of the Dead, more than any other work by Lucian have furnished sugges tions to pictorial artists. Death's toll is even more universal than the levy exacted by Eros. Hans Holbein's name is conventionally identi fied with the " Dance of Death. " 65 Some rep resentations of it have been incorrectly attrib uted to him. 66 He has even been falsely ac credited with the invention of the motif itself. This subject was a favourite decoration for bridges as, for example, the arresting gable- paintings in the covered Pont des Moulins at
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Lucerne; for churches and churchyards: for example, the Dominican convent at Bale, Saint Mary's"Church at Liibeck,67 the " Triumph of Death in the Campo Santo at Pisa; for houses, as the one at Bale said to have been decorated by Holbein, or the frescoes said to have been painted by him for Henry VIII in the palace of Whitehall and burnt in 1697; or as decorations on ladies' fans — a beneficent cave feminam! The irony of Lucian's. dialogues was also woven into the " Hans Holbein Al phabet," and it was Holbein who sketched the grim reminders on the margin of Erasmus's Encomium Moriae and who used them to illus trate Sir Thomas More's Utopia.
Observing all due precaution against making arbitrary identifications one might go on to gather other examples. Even a casual review of museum catalogues suggests, here and there, Lucian's influence, direct or indirect, upon pictorial art.
IN LITERATURE
Reminiscence: Imitation: Parallels
Lucian's influence upon subsequent litera ture, in the sum total, has been very great,
[133]
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greater, of course, at some periods than at others. 68
Probably he influenced his younger con temporaries. What relation may have existed between him and Apuleius has not been de termined past peradventure. It seems clear, however, that the vigour of both of them in story-telling, whatever their indebtedness to the Odyssey and to Herodotus or to Ovid himself, launched anew 69 the Story, as such, on its long voyage through the Middle Ages down to the modern novel.
The dates and data at our disposal are not always precise. Alciphron, for example, is va riously treated as a younger contemporary or as a slightly later writer. The Letter to Lucian, included among his works, would seem, to the present writer, to indicate that the latter 70 as sumption, rather than the former, were correct. In addition to their common debt to the New Comedy Alciphron betrays, on occasion, his indebtedness to Lucian.
Philostratus, writing in the third century, did not pay Lucian the doubtful compliment of in cluding him in his " Lives of the Sophists," probably because he observed " the sophistic convention of silence as to the one who so ex
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celled and satirized them all. " 71 Lucian, how ever, is conspicuous by the omission. He made a fortunate and timely escape from this narrow profession, but he none the less, inevitably drawn by modern critics into comparison with the Sophists.
Gregory of Nazianzes and John Chrysostom, still reflecting genuine Hellenism in the fourth century, were able and willing to appreciate Lucian in spite of his paganism.
The Emperor Julian found in Lucian be cause of his paganism welcome ally in the losing battle for a decadent Hellenism. And Libanius, who had taught, Chrysostom elo quence, and who was the much older contem porary and guide of Julian, in his voluminous outpouring of wearisome rhetoric, could include meaningless critiques upon Aristophanes and Lucian while he makes use of the latter to give flavour to his own insipid declamation. He is, for example, borrowing from Lucian's brilliant and scathing diagnosis of the Hireling Pro
when, in his epideictic oration 72 on the varied forms of human slavery, he dilates upon the bondage of the " house-professor. " To satisfy father, mother, grandpa and grand ma the " professor," he says, must demonstrate
[135]
fessors
a
a
is,
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that their young hopeful is on a par with the sons of gods! Nor may he venture to ignore anyone in the whole entourage — not the door- tender, not the " male chaperone," not the serv ants who carry the boy's books, not even — note the present-day touch! — the athlete! A picture sordid enough, certainly, even for the twentieth century, and unenlivened by Lucian's caustic comments. It does, however, indicate the wholesome contempt to which the sophistic professor of mere rhetoric was again subjected in the fourth century, as contrasted with his unparalleled power and popularity in the time of Philostratus. 73 Thus the keen satire of Lu-
cian, the " Apostate " from sophistic rhetoric, was already in process of vindication. Fast colours do not fade!
At the end of the third century and the be ginning of this fourth century two other well- known writers, pro-Christian and pro-pagan respectively, testify that Lucian was present, at least, in the consciousness of both factions. Lactantius, the very respectable " Christian Cicero," speaks 74 of Lucian as one who spared neither gods nor men, while the inferior but useful Eunapius selects 75 for approval, because of its serious purpose, the dull Demonax, of
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doubtful authenticity though ascribed to Lu- cian the " expert in mockery. "
As we penetrate deeper into the labyrinth of Byzantine literature we find Lucian secure in his place among Greek classics, either included directly by name or by the still more flattering praise of imitation. The large number of only partly edited " imitators " in the Paris and Vatican libraries, respectively,76 might contrib ute further data, and the late and spurious
Phttopatris, foisted upon the Lucianic canon by an unknown tenth-century author, continued for centuries to involve Lucian in wholly un necessary abuse from uncritical Christians.
Photius, in the ninth century, in addition to
detailed comment, already mentioned, includes
Lucian as an especial favourite in his list of
prose authors. Luitprand, the " most original
hellenist "
alia, from Lucian's Dream.
77
of the tenth century, quotes, inter
Suidas, whose combined lexicon and ency clopaedia is referred to " the third quarter of the eleventh century," 78 gives a genial and doubtless quite orthodox opinion as to Lucian's contemporary whereabouts. Lucian in his Life's End of Peregrinus had spoken in a patronizing, but by no means entirely uncomplimentary
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manner of the Christians, referring, incident ally, to " that crucified sophist " of theirs. This draws from the pious lexicographer specific de tails as to Lucian's death and subsequent ca reer, closing with the words : " And in the time to come he shall be joint heir with Satan of the fire everlasting! " Of this much, at least, we may be sure: the Peregrinus had not yet, as was the case later, been cut out of the Lucian manuscript accessible to Suidas.
Tzetzes in the twelfth century, in his huge poem, nearly thirteen " chiliads " in length, gives Lucian, of course, his due place among some four hundred authors cited, from Homer down to Byzantine times. 79
The Experiences of Timarion in his visit to the Underworld is also referred to the twelfth century by Krumbacher and described as " one of the numberless Byzantine imitations of Lu cian " for, although the theme itself goes back to the Odyssey, it is a direct revival in dialogue form of Lucian's Menippus or Necromancy. Incidentally the great ghost of Psellus, " the Photius of the Eleventh century," is satirized under a thin disguise. 80 This motif continued to be a favourite. It reappears, for example, in Mazaris's Trip to Hades,*1 about 141 6 a. d. ,
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which is a combination of dialogue and letter- form and one of the more wooden imitations of Lucian.
Theodorus Prodromus82 (1118-1180) stands at the very threshold of Modern Greek litera ture and wrote, indeed, both in the vulgar and in the Byzantine Greek. He was an inveterate polygraph in poetry and prose, ranging from rhetoric and theology, grammar and philoso phy and astrology to the poetic romance and satire. His interest for us lies in the fact that he was apparently at his best when following Lucian, as in his loans from the Tragical Zeus and in his better-known satirical dialogue The Sale of Philosophers and Statesmen, which is an elaborate imitation of Lucian's brilliant Sale of Soul Samples. In this he sells off, amongst other parcels, Homer, Hippocrates, Aristoph anes, Euripides and Demosthenes. 83
•
Katrarius, sometimes referred to the tenth century but more probably of the twelfth or thirteenth,84 may be allowed to close this summary selection from Byzantine writers. The Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204 a. d. , made possible direct access to Greek
learning without the intervention of the Arabic, while the infiltration into the West of a knowl
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LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
edge of the Greek language prepared the way for a Revival of Greek Learning, happily an ticipating the actual occupation by the Turk,
in the fifteenth century, of the moribund By zantine Empire.
Lucian made his debut in Italy toward the end of this period. Greater names received first attention but also, by the perversity of circum stance, authors inferior to him gained an earlier hearing. No other characteristic of these in tellectual Crusaders is more pathetic than their lack of perspective in the reverence for any and every MS. recovered — any goose, Roman or
Greek, became forthwith a swan ! Petrarch, in deed, treasured a Homer and a Plato that he could not read and his Letters to Dead Authors do not reecho Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead. Boccaccio, who could boast of being the first Italian to " resume " the reading of Homer, contented himself with Latin authors, like Ovid and Apuleius, when, if Lucian had been easily accessible, he might have found stimulus in him also.
To Aurispa of Sicily, who in 1423 brought some 238 Greek MSS. to Venice,85 may be as cribed the introduction of Lucian into Italy. He was, however, less remarkable as a scholar
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than as a collector of MSS. and thought it a matter of plain patriotic duty, in translating Lucian's twelfth Dialogue of the Dead, to alter the original by assigning the first place to the Roman Scipio instead of to Alexander the Great! 86
In this group of collectors, who were also translators of Lucian, may be mentioned: Filelfo, long resident in Constantinople, who, by way of perfecting his Greek, married the grand-niece of Chrysoloras, the first and greatest of the " visiting professors " of Greek; also the famous Poggio himself; and, with especial honour, Guarino da Verona, who not only imported in 1408 more than fifty MSS. but was also a sound and inspiring scholar. Among other works he translated at least three of Lucian's writings. Very early in the fifteenth century translations and citations in lectures from Greek authors took a wide range, as with Bruni and Marsuppini. For Lucian, in particular, several writers may be empha sized. Alberti, as above mentioned, stimu lated by the association with graphic art, started, by his tractate on the De Calumnia of Lucian, this rather mediocre piece on its long and efficient career.
[141]
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Matteo Maria Boiardo, towards the end of the fifteenth century, however, selected one of Lucian's most famous dialogues, The Timon,
from which he developed a full-fledged comedy in verse, // Timone,87 with its lame and im potent denouement. This, in turn, may have been indirectly laid under contribution in con structing the patch-work, play, Timon
of Athens, attached to Shakespeare's name, which,
in spite of futile accretions, manages to pre serve some of the original Lucianic colour. Be that as it may, Lucian transmitted from anti quity and standardized for the modern world a clear-cut type of the misanthrope. 88
Pontano, also, who died in 1503, in his poetic satire, Charon, had Lucian's like-named dialogue 88 as forerunner.
Ariosto, the successor of Boiardo in more senses than one, is deeply in debt to Lucian. Of him and of two of his slightly younger
"
to Lucian . . . than to the quest of the New World, and the discovery of its wonders. " By this time, in fact, Lucian had become very
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The peregrinations of Ariosto and Folengo and Rabelais, the adventures of their heroes, the strange countries they visit, owe much more
contemporaries it has been remarked : 90
lucian's creditors and debtors
popular and Folengo's burlesque romance, Baldus, makes particularly clear the influence of the True Story.
When we pass from Italy to the north and west of Europe, in the latter part of the
fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, it is embarrassing to attempt to catalogue and still more to classify rigidly the more significant names of Lucian's debtors. He stimulated, indeed, imaginative humour now with, now without, an ulterior motive of didactic satire. But, for the most part, the wanton joys of the pagan Revival in Italy are obscured in the cold transalpine mists of con troversy. The satire of Lucian, the potential foe to all theologies, was a weapon available to opposing warriors in the joyless jousts of the Reformation.
The editio princeps of Lucian, printed in Florence, 1494-96, by Constantine Lascaris, made his writings the common property of scholars. Translation, citation, and imitation in Latin or even in the vernaculars, widened in definitely his sphere of influence.
Desiderius Erasmus (1467-1536), whose reduplicated Graeco-Roman name could ignore all geographic barriers, is the best liaison be
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tween the members of the brilliant groups of his immediate or younger contemporaries — Dutch, English, French, German or Italian — who perpetuated Lucian's influence. His lucid Latin is not a borrowed tool. It is intellec tually and stylistically his own. Incidentally, he models on the Lexiphanes of Lucian his dialogue, Ciceronianus,'1 in which he derides the folly of a slavish imitation of a single author. This sterling Latinity of his, good at its face value for the " Latin Union " of the European intelligentsia, was the medium through which Lucian's best satire first " swims into the ken " of many eager contemporaries. Keen in distinguishing between the ephemeral and the universal, Erasmus applied Lucian's satire to current ethics and ecclesiastical
prac tices. In addition to other minor pieces he translated many of Lucian's vital writings,
including the Cock, the Icaromenippus, Timon,92 Alexander the False Prophet, the Banquet, the Hireling Professors and the Saturnalia, often sending them as gifts to friendly patrons, before they were published, along with others translated by his running
mate, Sir Thomas More. With generous en thusiasm he writes to another friend, Am
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" I am delighted that you are Lucianizing. " Loyal to his own religious beliefs, Erasmus did not hesitate to use Lucian to scourge ec clesiastical shams, although charged, on the one hand, with heresy and atheism by venal and sensual clerics, or branded as a " second Lucian " 94 by the dogmatic Luther. But Chris
tendom would listen neither to " Right Rea son " nor to satire. The antichristian spirit of hate and persecution common to both parties, precipitated the long orgy of blood and fire,
and in all the subsequent stagings of this tragedy of religion Lucian's mocking laugh ter reechoes, again and again, as the blood stained actors make their respective exits down " Charon's Stairs " to take up their new roles, on the transstygian shore, as dramatis personae in unpublished Dialogues of the Dead.
Lucian's influence upon Erasmus is even more important in writings other than his direct translations. The Praise of Folly, which electrified both the fools and the savants of Europe, is charged with the Lucianic current. In his priceless Colloquia Erasmus, like Lucian,
paints contemporary life in vivid colours but [145]
93
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
is free from Lucian's taint of bitter pessi mism. 95 He seasons his observations, however, as he says elsewhere,*6 with both sal nigrum and sal candidum from his Lucianic salt cellar.
Although Lucian was a Syrian by birth and evidently acquainted, by hearsay at least, with some of the facts of the crucifixion of Christ, the canon of the New Testament was not as yet established nor were its contents publicly cir culated. Satire upon its tenets would not have made the wide and instant appeal to Lucian's audiences which was requisite for his purpose. His detailed description of the Islands of the Blest in the True Story, for example, would awaken welcome echoes of Pindar's second Olympic Ode or of the marvellous garden of Alcinous in the Odyssey. The detail of the vines which produce twelve crops annually and " yield fruit every month " seems now, to any reader of the New Testament, like an obvious loan from the Apocalypse, and it would be
[9Sl
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risky to assert that this item could not have
been overheard by our Syrian at some
tian gathering. But, as a matter of reminiscence, it would develop naturally, by Lucian's favourite method of
details to give the effect of autopsy, from
Homer's own words:38 " Of these the fruitage never perishes nor even fails of winter or of summer the whole year through; but aye and ever does the Westwind blowing quicken these,
ARTIST
particularizing
Chris literary
and ripen those; pear on pear grows ripe and full, apple upon apple, clustered grape on grape succeeding, fig on fig. " He makes, for example, in the interest of telling the whole truth, one
addition: " They said, however, that the pome granates, apple and other fruit trees produce thirteen crops annually, for in one of their cal
endar months, the month ' Minos,' they yield two crops. " 39 The " casting out of devils," also an apparent slur on the New Testament, was more probably a generic reference to the thriving practitioners of magic.
As to hits at Old Testament stories, the chronological margin is elastic enough but the supposed references are not convincing. Lu- cian, in the True Story, did not have to enlarge the acreage of the interior of Jonah's " whale "
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THE SUPERNATURAL
to make room for the truck-garden of Skin- tharos within his big sea-monster; and, again, the sudden chasm of air that interrupts his boat's course comes from his own brilliant fancy, not from the book of Exodus. The Bib lical crossing of the Red Sea would be, at best,
a very incomplete parallel.
Whatever degree of possibility, or probabil
ity, may be assigned to such covert reminis cences, the actual references to the Christians make Lucian a favourable, because uninten tional, witness. In the Alexander, the charlatan " prophet " includes the Christians with the Epicureans in his most bitter anathemas: "Away with the Christians! Away with the Epicureans! " But it is precisely in the Alex ander that Lucian most openly lauds Epicurus and the Epicureans, and contrasts their un compromising opposition to shams and super stitions with the perfect harmony existing be tween Alexander and the Stoic, Pythagorean and Platonic schools! The Christians, there fore, were in the best company that he could offer.
In the Life's End of Peregrinus, the Cynic philosopher, craving notoriety and needing fi nancial support, is represented as having joined
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the Christian sect after all other means of self- advertisement had grown stale and unremuner- ative. A certain real ability — for he was, after all, an accredited Cynic — raised him rapidly to prominence among the simpler folk of the Christian brotherhood. He expounded and, ac cording to Lucian, even wrote some of their
"
He was called a New Soc
sacred books !
rates " and his wants were well supplied. When cast into prison as too noisy a propagandist, he fairly lived "in clover. These " non-profes sionals," who hold all things in common," were easily duped by a professional charlatan like Peregrinus. " At short notice," says Lu cian, " they contribute everything without re serve. " " For," he continues, " these misguided persons have persuaded themselves that they are going to be altogether immortal and are going to live through time unending. In com
parison with this the most of them despise death and voluntarily give themselves up to it. Then, too, their first lawgiver persuaded them that they are all brothers, one of the other, after they have once thrown over and denied the gods of Greece and have done reverence to that crucified sophist himself and live accord
ing to his laws. "
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THE SUPERNATURAL
Neither here nor elsewhere is Lucian making an attack on the Christians per se. Indeed, he poses almost as their partisan in his indignation against Peregrinus and his successful use of their simplicity. His patronizing contempt for their gullibility (as he saw it), led him to im mortalize some of the most lovable and charac teristic traits of the early brotherhood, and the church authorities of the sixteenth century seem short-sighted in placing on the Index librorunt prohibitorum a tractate that might have been exploited as impartial testimony in their favour.
[99]
VII. OTHER DRAMATIC DIALOGUES: POLEMICS: NARRATIONS
than twenty other writings of Lucian offer contributions necessary for an estimate both of his defects
MORE
and of his versatile interest in the " passing
show " — the human comedy. He was neither a master intelligence like Aristotle — expert in several of the many subjects to which he ad dressed himself — nor was he a mere polymath like Pliny the Elder or Aelian. In spite of his jaunty treatment of philosophy and exact sci ence, Lucian at least takes cognizance of the chief components of contemporary life and with his mordant wit etches the portraiture of a great century. This is not mere caricature.
(a) DRAMATIC DIALOGUES
Under this rubric might be included the ma jority of the dialogues cited above to illustrate specific objectives of Lucian's satire. Some of the best dialogues, however, fall outside of the
[ 100]
OTHER DRAMATIC
DIALOGUES
previous classification. To emphasize outstand
ing merit three titles are here treated rately.
The Cock
This is second to none of Lucian's dialogues in dramatic vigour. The flashes of wit and the sustained and entrancing humour of the situa tion are hardly equalled even in the Icaro- menippus. The interjected sermonizing may be tedious, perhaps, to the mercurial modern, craving his " quick lunch," but so are the long, brilliant speeches of the messenger in Greek tragedy — and, for that matter, much of Shakespeare himself.
The general theme of the Cock or the Dream is contentment. Micyllus the cobbler, with whom we become intimate elsewhere, supports the role of righteous poverty. The account of his first and only dinner at a rich man's table contrasts the inequalities in human conditions. He in dream, living over again the fleeting splendour of this banquet when he awakened by the crowing of his officious cock who replies to his master's angry reproaches by perfectly
reasonable remark, made in excellent Greek. Indignation naturally gives place to amaze ment as the bird calmly explains his possession
[IOI]
sepa
a
is
is, a
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
of human speech. He is Pythagoras, it seems, in addition to many other aliases. His soul, in fact, has lived through many transmigrations, brute and human, man and woman, with powers unimpaired. As Euphorbus, in the time of the Trojan War, he knew much more about Helen than did Homer who, at the time, was a mere Bactrian camel! After Pythagoras he was Aspasia, but admits that the role of Chan ticleer is preferable to that of a mother-hen, so to say. Next he was the Cynic Crates, an ex pert pick-lock. This fact doubtless accounts for the special form of magic which he pres
ently exhibits, albeit his inbred piety ascribes this power to Hermes, the Lord of Looting. The cock, as it transpires, can at will turn his long, curved, right-hand tail-feather into a mas ter-key and this same night, before dawn, he takes the cobbler unseen through three rich men's houses. The cock, in various rebirths, had played many parts — rich man, poor man, king, horse, jackdaw et al. His experience of life is all-embracing. He tells the cobbler that, as a matter of fact, he has never seen anyone living more happily than Micyllus himself. " Than I, Cock? " the cobbler exclaims, " I wish you the same! Excuse me, please, but you
[102]
ARTIST
OTHER DRAMATIC DIALOGUES
forced out this curse. " In the end, however, Micyllus is convinced. He learns the lesson of contentment.
When they start on their rounds the cobbler plucks out both the curving tail-feathers, ex plaining to the bereaved rooster that he wishes to make doubly sure of the key to the situation, adding that this precaution will also prevent the cock from being lop-sided. In the first house entered Simon, his nouveau riche neigh bour, is seen, sleepless from fear of burglars, uncovering and counting and burying again his gold — a pale, worn miser. After a brief visit to a rich Shylock's house the magic feather next unlocks the door of Eucrates. Here the cobbler dined a few hours ago and all this gold- plate and other magnificence he had just in herited in his dream when awakened prema turely by the cock. As Micyllus enters the house he is once more dazzled by the splendour and exclaims: " All this was mine a little while ago! " Presently, however, he sees Eucrates, here betraying himself by his own passions, and here betrayed by his unfaithful wife. It is enough. The breaking dawn curtails the feather's magic and irradiates the beauty of the honest cobbler's daily toil.
[103]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
Timon the Misanthrope
In this dialogue Lucian rehearses his familiar attacks on parasites, philosophers, rhetoricians, and the futility of the shopworn gods them selves. The Timon is accounted by some com petent critics as Lucian's masterpiece, though he allows the caricature of the orator Demeas to become farcical, thus marring the artistic verisimilitude of the piece and, to this extent, putting it on a lower level than the Charon, or the Cock. But the dialogue marches to its goal —the creation 40 in literature of the typical
Misanthropist. This involves, along with the dramatic, though incidental, punishment of the ungrateful parasites, the far greater punish ment of Timon himself in becoming a full- fledged Egoist. To this egoism both poverty and riches contribute.
Lucian ignored Plutarch's data, if he knew them, and is not diverted from his main pur pose by attributing any real virtue to Timon that could stand the strain of either riches or poverty. In the revamped Shakespearian play the centre of gravity is shifted to Timon's earlier days of prosperity and his good-natured prodigality is half confused with philanthropy,
[ 104]
OTHER DRAMATIC DIALOGUES
as reflected in the sympathy of the loyal and lovable Flavius. One of the " authors " of the Timon of Athens, indeed, outdoes Lucian by
the cynical touch of subventions to the poison ous harlots, but he shuffles Timon off the stage, before he is fairly established as a practising misanthrope, and then deflects our attention to extraneous matter.
Lucian's neatest bit of satire, perhaps, is the egoism of Zeus, who rewards Timon simply and solely for his generous offerings, on Thanks giving days, of fat bulls and "goats. " Their savour," he naively remarks, is still in my nostrils. " The punishment of the ungrateful parasites must wait till he can have his thunder bolt repaired. Two of its tines were broken re cently by striking the rock at the " Anaceum " temple instead of a sinner. For very bull-head- edness Zeus never could hit the bull's-eye.
The personification of the blind god, Wealth, gives Lucian a grateful opportunity both for ethical observations and for picturesque geo graphical details, and his open and skilful use of the Plutus of Aristophanes only enhances his own dramatic creation.
[105]
LUCIAN,
The Dialogues of the Sea
In these fifteen aquarelles satirist and artist blend. Our ductile vision is refracted by the shining water and everything is credible within its magic depths. The artistic charm is perme ated, but never marred, by a delicate satire, less obvious than the grim derision in the Dia
logues of the Dead. While mocking at canoni cal mythology Lucian here reaches his end by no crass caricature but, ever and anon, Fancy astride a dolphin rises from the blue sea that holds the unnoticed satire in solution.
Several of these dialogues were pretty cer tainly suggested 41 by works of art extant in Lucian's time. Others would probably find their motive, or parallel, in paintings or sculpture now lost. Here, as elsewhere, Lucian illustrates the freemasonry of the brush, the chisel and the pen.
Within each tiny dialogue there is condensed a nucleus. Sometimes there are two centres of interest. Now, it is Polyphemus's brute strength succumbing to intellectual cunning and, inlaid upon the mimicry of Homer's ram; now, the cool bubbling fountain, worthy of Horace; now, the statuesque beauty of the
[106]
SATIRIST AND AKTIST
it,
OTHER DRAMATIC DIALOGUES
girl with her water jar; now, the rescue of An dromeda, with the inimitable detail of the sea- monster's bi-focal death — some of him slain outright by the falchion of Perseus, and " as much of him as had seen the Medusa " petri fying independently! Again, we have two pic tures of Europa carried off by Zeus, incognito as milk-white bull — a favourite model from Ovid to Titian and Tennyson. Lucian's setting is his own. The unlucky Southwind, assigned that day to the Indian ocean, has missed this lovely Mediterranean spectacle — the most " magnificent sea-processional," Westwind tells him, " that I have ever seen since I live and have my blowing! "
The attention first centres on Europa, bullied into an unwitting elopement. Then comes the wedding-march. Only the more attractive sub marine life, such as tritons, dolphins and half- naked Nereids, is allowed to show even a peri scope above the glassy surface. Poseidon, as best man, convoys his swimming brother, and Aphrodite, quite in her element, lolls back in her sea-car, the fairest and most nonchalant
flower-girl that ever scattered roses from near by Rhodes. As the handsome bull's front hooves strike the beach he changes into the
[107]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
divine bridegroom and the marines circum spectly submerge, setting the water a-boil. " And I," says the envious Southwind, " was looking at griffins, elephants, and black-a- moors! "
In the Danae seascape, finally, is a picture that Simonides himself cannot blur from our memory — the blue Aegean; the little ark; the fair and smiling child; the fairer mother; the brawny, gentle fishermen. Thetis, in a sub marine chat with Doris, tells how Danae put up no prayer for herself, when exposed on the sea with Perseus, " but tried to beg off her baby from death by shedding tears, as she holds it out to its grandfather, and it was just the prettiest little thing! And the baby, uncon scious of ills, breaks into smiles at the sight of the sea. ' Why my eyes are filled again " with tears, Doris, as I but remember them! '
bitter polemics in which Lucian openly names the person attacked. This has already been dis cussed in the chapter on the " Supernatural. " The piece, however, contains much additional matter of interest. This, at least, should be
[108]
POLEMICS
(b)
Alexander the Fake-Prophet is one of two
in
From bronze statuette and cast of Boston Museum
coin, struck under Lucius Verus, the of Fine Arts.
EEE EAGGK
GGKA
See
Note
35.
POLEMICS
added. After due allowance is made for per sonal animosity the account does not seem to be a caricature and is partially confirmed by extant medals and a bronze-figure. 42 It may be used as furnishing data, essentially credible, for the diagnostician of human credulity.
The Life's-End of Peregrinus is also an at tack upon a contemporary whose name is given
and whose spectacular suicide is recorded several unimpeachable authorities. 43 It is note worthy not only for the allusions to the Chris tians, cited above, but also for the diagnosis of a man possessed with the demon of self-adver tisement; for the psychology of the deceiving philosophers and their deceived contempora ries; for archaeological data — the picturesque references to the Games and to the terrain of Olympia should be read on the spot —; and, finally, the vivid narration, including the death- scene, the construction of the pyre, the sor rowing but self-possessed disciples, the pale philosopher, stripped to his shirt (" decidedly dirty " according to Cynic convention), weak ening at the last moment but spurred on to the irrevocable act by the relentless admonition: "Go on with your programme! " This fling comes from one of the brotherhood who is al
[ 109]
by
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
ready banking on the marketable value to the Cynic sect of the canonization of a self-im molated martyr. Lucian, indeed, anticipates the hatching of their chicken by letting an anapaestic vulture fly up in advance from the Cynic's ashes, chanting:
The Earth I have left, to Olympus I fare!
One thing only in this whole portrayal is open to question but that, unfortunately, is a matter of major importance. The self-immo lation is amply attested by others but the char acter of Peregrinus is lauded by Aulus Gellius. Was he, at worst, only a fanatic or was he an imposter bitten by greed for glory? Is Lucian repeating unsupported gossip or even actual calumnies when he refers nonchalantly to vari ous unsavoury episodes, including his murder of his father and his parasitical connection with the Christians? We cannot say, although it is an important factor in our estimate of Lucian
himself. But the amiable assumption of Gel lius, the myopic grammarian, is not demonstra tion. It does not prove either for his day or for our own that lofty sentiments must necessarily be sincere. Our golden idol may have feet of clay. Lucian, on the other hand, seldom identi
[no]
POLEMICS
fies himself with Charity that " thinketh no evil. "
Lucian, in fact, was not properly a biog rapher. The Life of Demonax, for example, if written by him, is dull. From Plutarch, whose honest shade had joined his mighty dead about the time of Lucian's birth, he may have drawn various hints but he made no nearer approach to his biographies than occasional juxtaposi
tions like that of Alexander with Hannibal and Scipio in the Dialogues of the Dead. Nor need we count" as biography the rhetorical " white washing of the infamous Phalaris. The story, too, about Herodotus, retailed in the " curtain- raiser " that bears his name, is an isolated, though interesting, item that reenforces Lu cian's undisguised admiration for the " incom parable charm of the incorrigible Story teller. "
The Coach in Rhetoric
This diatribe is apparently directed against a real person. His actual name is suppressed but the reference to Castor and Pollux is al most sufficient 44 identification. Julius Pollux, a cheap but self-confident rhetorician, would seem, as appointee of the Emperor Commodus to the official Chair of Rhetoric in Athens, to
[in]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
have aroused the contempt of the intelligentsia. It is unnecessary to assume that Lucian him self was an unsuccessful rival for the place. If half of the caricature were essentially represen tative it would justify his indignation as a sin cere lover of good language and literature even if the frank personalities were as untrue as they are unnecessary.
The Coach in Rhetoric purports to be the advice given gratis by a charlatan " professor " to a neophyte seeking a short-cut to the same showy success. Condensed from Lucian's bitter gibing his advice, in fine, is to ignore the old- fashioned, out-of-date disciplinary training. None of that is needed or even desirable. The easy road is also the shortest. Bold elocution, brassy assertion, arrogant physical bearing are the winning cards. You can begin at once. Not even a psychological test is necessary, let alone exact knowledge of anything. This has a fa miliar sound. If Lucian could have subordi nated vituperation to his incisive wit and in escapable satire, and had made this attack in his best manner, we might use it to draw an easy and useful parallel by substituting for " Rhetorician " our own denatured term " Edu cator. "
[112]
POLEMICS
The Lexiphanes** or phrase-monger, is in a vein already opened up in the preceding piece. The would-be Atticist who injects into the matrix of vulgar Greek far-fetched Attic gems, which often turn out to be paste imita tions, was typical of the imperfect imitators of Attic Greek who eagerly sought to excel in this contemporary, artificial Atticism. "
Whether Pollux, as a charlatan Commis sioner of Education," or the whole breed of pretenders was the subject of this attack, Lu- cian, the expert Atticist, had a well-earned right to his contemptuous satire.
We cannot pursue further Lucian's philolog ical polemics,46 but any reader of Greek may derive pure fun in philology from the Suit of Sigma against Tau. This amusing little piece carries us out of the sorry milieu of human polemics into the miniature cock-pit of the letters of the alphabet. The Privy Council of the Vowels holds its sitting. At the end we are ready to crucify this accursed T on his own cross. If the piece is not, as has been sug gested,47 by Lucian himself we should like to
read more by the same writer.
[113]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
The Illiterate Bibliophile
This diatribe is directed against an unnamed but actual contemporary, a fellow Syrian, an ostentatious book-collector who is too ignorant to appraise the niceties of Attic style or even to read intelligently the contents of his costly col lection. Like many a so-called " bibliophile " today, his love for books extends only to their external and marketable assets, such as : Copies by So and So; or their physical format, e. g. , a very beautiful scroll with purple vellum " jacket " and " golden knobs " on the end of the cylinder. The ugly personalities, in which Lucian sees fit to indulge, even if true, are be side the point. The rest of his incisive satire, changing certain details, is not out of date.
The collector's passion, however, is not con fined to books which he never reads. He also collects relics. Among his exhibits, and pro cured for one thousand dollars plus, is the staff of the precious Cynic suicide, Peregrinus Proteus, thrown aside when he leaped into the fire. To show up all such futility Lucian re hearses how the tyrant Dionysius hoped to im prove his literary style by procuring the very writing-tablets upon which Aeschylus had first
[114]
POLEMICS
jotted down in Sicily some of his tragedies — useless as the lyre of Orpheus without Orpheus, or, in modern terms, as a Stradivarius without the skilled musician!
How Should History be Written?
This informal letter begins with flaying con temporary would-be historians and gives illus trations of their brazen ignorance of facts, their untruthfulness, their vanity, or parasitical praise of patrons. Diogenes comes on the scene, bowling his tenement-;ar up and down the market-place in Corinth, cynically mock ing the ill-directed activities of his fellow- citizens who were preparing to repel an inva sion. How not to write history was a congenial theme for Lucian's destructive criticism. Ad dressing himself, in the second part, to the con structive side, and conscious of his unusual role, Lucian says, deprecatingly: " I, too, roll my jar! " His formulae are unstable under the blow-torch of modern historical research. He treats somewhat sketchily preliminary training and also the sifting of facts and their sources, but demands " political insight " and " faculty of expression " along with unwavering inde pendence of spirit and loyalty to Truth. He
[US]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
would like to combine all the charm of Herod otus with the terse objectivity of Thucydides, whom he names specifically as the model.
Were it not so evident that the graces of style and diction are, for him, of such over mastering importance we could hardly demand of his age a higher conception of history. As it
some modern non-professional readers may agree that historical characters are not " pris oners at the bar. " To illustrate the Thucy- didean belief that history must be inscribed on the bed-rock of Truth, he tells the effective story how on the veneered surface of the base of the Pharos light-house the architect attrib uted, by an inscription, its construction to the reigning Ptolemy, knowing well that the perish able exterior would, at some time safely re mote, peel off and reveal to posterity his own name and fame.
in other types of writing has free play in his True Story. This serves, indeed, as comple
ment to the polemic just cited, but not so much sequel as an antidote — dose of hellebore against all boredom. He makes his
[116]
NARRATIONS
(c)
Though Lucian's skill in narration emerges
a
it is
a
it is
it
is,
NARRATIONS
own explanation of his purpose. After paying his respects to the purveyors of myths and histories, modern and ancient,48 from the Odys sey on, he says: " Wishing to play my part in the world of letters and liars, and having no facts to recount — since nothing worth record ing has ever happened to me — I will say in advance this one true thing, to wit, that I am going to tell you lies. So, then, I write about what I neither saw nor experienced nor heard of from others and, what's more, about things
that never happen at all nor could happen. " With this premised, we take ship with Lu- cian and pass through " The Straits " into the uncharted West. Atlas, vainly trying to
hold asunder the divinely wedded Earth and Heaven, drops behind the horizon and, after some preliminary adventures, our seaplane is whirled aloft into the heavenly hemisphere. All earthly cares are jettisoned. Later, indeed, we have brief glimpses of home affairs reflected in the magic mirror of the Moon, or seen by the light of our own family lamp, encountered while it is taking a day off in Lamp-heaven, but none of these things ruffle our high celestial content.
Lucian's conceits rarely degenerate into bur [117]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
lesque. Through the whole narrative he holds us captive by his air of verisimilitude. His magical imagination does not travel on the stilts of magic — that hard-worked deus ex machina of tales like Kalevala — for Magic itself is only one more quarry 49 for his falcon wit. Even in his frequent recourse to exaggera tion his surprises vary. The monstrous fish, for example, gulps down unharmed Lucian's ship, crew and all, down through his roomy throat,
past another vessel, lying there a derelict. Within, there are forests and fields and hostile tribes. There is a lake and a vegetable garden cultivated by a Crusoe and his son, long since interned. The escape attempted by tunnelling the right-hand wall of the huge crypt makes a relatively insignificant dent and is abandoned after excavating for five-eighths of a mile ! The ship is finally hauled up and lowered into the sea by using as davits the monster's huge teeth. The vessel slips through the interstices as easily as might a strand of dentist's floss. Again, in the Island of Dreams, he finds that Homer was wholly inadequate in limiting the " Doorways for Dreams " to two only —the " horn " and the " ivory. " As a matter of fact there were four! Or Rhadamanthus embarks fifty heroes
[118]
NARRATIONS
to pursue Helen, who is again eloping, in a long-boat hewn from a single log of asphodel — a monoxyl! The slender asphodel, it seems, knows no girth-control under the never-ending sunshine in the Island of the Blessed.
Or his method may be to invert reality. The questing ship, for example, comes suddenly to a crevasse, yawning in its path, and is checked just in time before it plunges over the edge into the chasm of air. 50 This chasm, however, is presently crossed on a Natural Bridge of water, sighted nearby, which unites precariously, on the surface, the severed cliffs of water.
Lucian prolongs our appetite by the recur
rent intellectual spice of delicate parodies.
at the end he draws aside his rainbow veil to show us the ass's shins of reality and bows us, breathless, back again into " our own continent that lies opposite. "
It would be easy to make other detached excerpts but only by reading the whole can we fully appreciate how, with gathered momentum, the True Story has stimulated the long line of imitators who also have smuggled through the " ivory gate " their lesser share of celestial loot.
Familiarized with the flavour of Lucian's narration in the True Story, the Lie-Fancier,
[119]
Just
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
the Icaromenippus, the Toxaris and other writ ings, it is tempting to accept as genuine the Syrian Goddess and the Ass. The Syrian God dess,51 flaunting her oriental nakedness through the diaphanous Ionic dress, has touches of hu mour that suggest a deliberate satire on the naivete of Herodotus and on the current fad for Ionicizing, notwithstanding some linguistic flaws foreign to Lucian's style. Lucius or the Ass 52 is apparently an epitome of a lost origi nal. Lapses into the vulgar dialect betray a different hand (or, perhaps, an artistic whim),
but long stretches of narration in this famous and outrageous tale suggest that Lucian is lurk ing in person within the ass, availing himself
with gusto of this excellent chance to satirize the current belief in magic.
The identical matter of certain passages in this and in Apuleius's Golden Ass presupposes an archetype. 53 Whether this was written by Apuleius or, as it has been argued, by Lucian himself, the brilliant Syrian was no mere plagiarist and whatever part he may have had in telling, or retelling, the tale, the purpose underlying his facile narration was the mockery
of credulity. He was a lion in an ass's skin! [120]
VIII. LUCIAN'S CREDITORS AND DEBTORS
i. Sources
THE case of authorship antedating the
honest confessional of the footnote or the
scholar's page, sicklied o'er with conscien IN
tious references, the identification of indebted ness, varying from conjecture to certainty, is a fascinating and, at times, an illuminating pursuit.
Fully to tabulate Lucian's obligations to predecessors and, perhaps, to contemporaries is not now practicable. He is openly proud of his debt to classic Greek writers but is normally reticent about obligations to Roman predeces sors, or to contemporaries, whether Greek or Roman. His writings abound in parodies, full quotation, and interwoven scraps of citation. In all this the intended effect would depend largely upon the instant recognition by his audience of the original. For example, the second Dialogue of the Sea, except for those familiar with the Odyssey, would lack mean
[121]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
ing when, with Lucianic additions, the Cyclops rehearses to his father, the naive Poseidon, the story of Odysseus and the ram. This would, in turn, recall the inimitable parody in the Wasps of Aristophanes, where the jury-maniac, Phi- locleon, essays escape under the shaggy belly of the family donkey.
The revamping of plot or of whole charac ters from the Attic drama would be more than an extension of this form of intentional remi niscence. The title of Lucian's Timon was not improbably suggested by the Timon of Antiph- anes, not now extant. This, however, in itself proves nothing. Just as " Electra " changed her robes under the hands of her three distin guished couturieres of the fifth century, so we find in the Comic Fragments more than identical titles reappearing respectively in the writings of from two to eight different authors. As a matter of fact, it is to the Plutus of Aristophanes that we turn to enjoy, in Lucian's
Timon, his adroit use of a predecessor. The result was not a mere contaminatio. We may assume the same with the Charon, or the Cock. Their effect upon the mind renders incredible the suggestion that they are not fresh-minted. If in his Charon, for example, Lucian had some
[ 122 ]
250
lucian's creditors and debtors
" original " in mind we do not need to know either for understanding or for enjoyment. It would, however, make difference in our esti mate could be shown that our author slavishly or clandestinely imitated, in form or in substance, works now no longer extant. Should we give to Menippus, for example, the real credit for the creation of the Satiric Dia logue? Are the Necyomanteia, the Dialogues
the Dead, the Cronos Letters, the orgiastic satire in the Symposium, and elements in the Hermotimus, etc. , plagiarisms? We cannot be dogmatic in each case but at least obvious that the frequent references to Menippus would have sufficiently recalled writings that were still accessible. Lucian was content with his own originality and submits his book-keeping for inspection in open court. Modern critics most entitled °4 to an opinion rank Lucian among the great, though not the greatest, creative writers of antiquity.
In general, seems safe to conclude that Lucian regarded the writings of predecessors and contemporaries as an open quarry from which he first built up his own style and then picked out material to imbed, with an artist's skill, in the parti-coloured mosaic of his satire.
123]
[
it
it is
of
if it
a
it,
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
Such material, drawn here and there from the Wonders of the Island Thule of Antonius Di ogenes 55 or from Theopompus before him, or from the pious Plutarch, or from the elusive sources of the Arabian Nights or other oriental tales, may have been freely transferred to his True Story without implying plagiarism any more than did his"parodies on the Odyssey. Even the Ass by Lucius of Patrae," if we discover the Lucianic stigmata beneath its shaggy hair, would justify itself, contrasted with the " golden " credulity of Apuleius, as a pungent satire on the current belief in magic.
Whether Lucian is to be accredited with the creation or only the development of the Satiric Dialogue is a different matter. This, in a sense, calls in question his originality. Perhaps the first suggestion for his brilliant Sale of Sample Lives came from a dialogue of Menippus, en titled the Sale of Diogenes. Croiset, however, justly remarks : 56 " si Lucien 1'a imite, ce n'a ete qu'en se reservant le droit de la trans former " — the quality of this transformation
in the last analysis, the essential thing.
124]
[
is,
lucian's creditors and debtors
Latin Sources
The identification in Lucian's writings of direct reminiscences from Latin writers is pre carious when so much of the content of litera ture and tradition had passed into community ownership but, apart from the argument ex silentio, which would be as misleading here as elsewhere, there is no good reason to ignore Lucian's own words and to assume that he could not use freely such Latin writings as were physically available.
Certain passages reflect, some certainly, some with more or less probability, the thought or actual words of Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, Tacitus, Juvenal, Ovid and Pliny. A number of such reminiscences or parallels have been pointed out by various67 scholars. By way of supplement it may be remarked here that the details, even verbal, in Lucian's description of Phaethon (number twenty-five of the Dia logues of the Gods), read like a racy synopsis
of Ovid's words. The contacts with Ovid's poetry are numerous and Lucian, who compares himself to an Attic bee questing for honey, would have noted Ovid's exquisite verses 68 fragrant with memories of Mt. Hymettus. In
[125]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
the Charon the falling tile which prevents the dinner-guest from keeping his engagement, has an obvious parallel in Juvenal's third satire. This particular type of accidental death was, indeed, so common that we cannot claim from this incident alone an actual reminiscence, but the community of feeling throughout the corre sponding scene in Juvenal reenforces the ante cedent probability that Lucian was familiar with the Roman satirist.
Suggestions from Works of Art
Among Lucian's creditors we must also in clude sculptors, painters and architects. His obligations, however, in the realms of art, other than his own, would require a separate treatise. 59 When he discusses, either inciden tally or of set purpose, actual works of art, his comments are so incisive that he has been
characterized as " undoubtedly the most trust worthy art-critic of antiquity. " 80 This discrim inating apperception of truth and beauty, in form and design, was an integral part of his mental equipment. We feel this discrimination in his visualization of a certain portrait statue, otherwise unknown, — " a pot-bellied man, hair receding on the forehead, half-naked, some
[126]
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lucian's creditors and debtors
hairs of his beard wind-tossed, outstanding veins, a man to the very life " — no less than in his vivid sketches of world-famous statues like Myron's Discobolus, the Cnidian Aphro dite, the Diadumenus, or the Tyrant-slayers. His inspiration, too, from pictorial art was im portant. He welcomes the opportunity, for ex ample, to give a " word-picture " of the Cen
taur Family by Zeuxis (though from a copy of the original) which is itself important in the history of painting. Or again, we feel the im pression made on his mind by the painter's art in his catalogue of the paintings which adorned the lecture auditorium of whose architectural splendour, incidentally, he gives us a wordy picture.
But quite apart from this incidental legacy of art through description, more important for our appreciation of Lucian are his elusive trans fers, not always capable of identification, from the medium of plastic and graphic art into such word-pictures as the vignettes in the Dialogues of the Gods and the Dialogues of the Sea. Ob viously, in some instances, a telescoping of sources — from both art and literature — may be assumed. For the Europa 91 story, for ex ample, there was abundant material in art, and
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in literature in the accounts given by Mos- chus and twice by Ovid. In the Rescue of An dromeda Ovid represents Perseus as slaying the monster with his falchion only, while Lucian brings in also the Medusa head and follows the monuments of art (except the vases), as, for ex ample, in the painting described by him in The Hall (22). This, of course, gives Lucian his chance for his characteristic persiflage. 62 Lu- cian's delight in placing the gods in a comic situation led him more than once into repeti tion. The sight of a statuette, as Bliimner sug gests, where a woman with upraised hand is threatening her victim with chastisement from her sandal, gave him, perhaps, the cue for the
punishment of the naughty Eros by his mother (Dialogues of the Gods, 11. 1) and also for
the lubberly Heracles brought under the san dal of Omphale (Dial. , 13. 2 and How to Write History, 10). Passing over other similar in stances, we note in the Charon another sugges tion from the field of art — if art it may be called. The ferryman is explaining why his ship's galley is so well-stocked with Homeric hors d'oeuvres. The poet, it seems, had grown suddenly sea-sick on the voyage and had left unclaimed in Charon's boat an ample chres
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tomathy, " including Scylla, Charybdis, and Cyclops. " Lucian may have seen a picture made by Galato in the age of the Ptolemies representing the citations issuing from Homer's mouth while the lesser breed of poets were gathering up these " winged words " — these undigested " slices " from the Homeric menu !
Lucian, as coinheritor of Greek art, moved about continuously in a world of beauty, per haps only " half-realized " even by our patient and pious reconstruction. He could see, day after day, the still virgin Parthenon and within it the gold-ivory Athena with Victory 63 on her extended hand. He could see in the Acropolis Picture Gallery and in the Cnidian Club at Delphi paintings of Polygnotus whose popu lous portrayal of the Underworld was catholic enough to include, for his benefit, Charon and the boat, as well as the ghostly dramatis
personae from the Odyssey. And, across the Aegean, he could see the Cnidian Aphrodite herself — no mere reproduction where the copyist's defacing fingers have blurred the perfect work of Praxiteles.
As satirist Lucian seized his opportunities at will but the artist within him could respond just as seriously to the impacts of beauty from
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sculpture and painting as to the suggestions garnered from his own field of art — from prose and poetry.
2. Lucian's Legatees
i. IN ART
In the field of art Lucian transmitted or originated suggestions for some of the greatest artists of Europe. Wherever these suggestions can be identified as themselves transmuted by Lucian from monuments of sculpture or, more frequently, from pictorial art, our interest is enhanced by the very continuity of motif.
It is not surprising that the fresh impulse given by the Revival of Greek, and the re covery of Lucian among other writers, should have stimulated the imagination of Renaissance artists more effectively than did the abundant suggestions already at hand, for example, in the duller pages of the elder Pliny. Leone Bat- tista Alberti (1404-1472), musician, painter, sculptor, architect, poet and prose-writer, was
an enthusiastic intermediary. By a special tract on Lucian's description, in his De Calumnia, of the painting ascribed to Apelles he com mended Lucian to the attention of artists as
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convincingly as Quintilian, in his day, had commended Menander to young Roman ora
tors. Botticelli reconstructed Lucian's
tion in his immortal painting and was followed by Raphael, Mantegna and others. 64 Albrecht Durer included the " Calumny of Apelles " among the designs furnished for the mural decorations in Nuremberg. Froben, in answer to the detractors of Erasmus, inserted in a second edition of the New Testament, as one of the illustrations, this still vigorous Calum- nia. Rembrandt, or a pupil, still later repro duced Mantegna's motif. Botticelli also trans ferred, somewhat altered, to his canvas Lu cian's description of the Centaur Family — a precursor of the landscape. In the Palazzo Borghese a pupil filled out Raphael's sketch
(still extant) of Lucian's Marriage of Alexan der and Roxana, which also formed the nu cleus of Sodoma's splendid fresco in the Chigi house in Rome and was later to reappear from the fecund brush of Rubens. " "
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The imaginative picture of eloquence
in Lucian's Gallic Heracles emerges in sketches by Raphael, Durer, and Holbein. Holbein also reproduced vividly Lucian's cashiered family- tutor and passed on the needed, long unheeded,
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warning to all literati who hang on patrons' favours.
In the Nigrinus of Lucian occurs the sug gestion for the red-crayon drawing, by"Michel angelo, of the archer shooting the winged word " at his victim. From this drawing, found at Windsor Castle, a scholar of Raphael later made a fresco.
In Diirer's sketchbook in Vienna is pre served his " Europa " taken from the fifteenth Dialogue of the Sea. Titian's coarse lady, loll ing on the bull, has only the subject in com mon with the delicate beauty of Lucian's de scription, happily retouched in perfect lines by Tennyson in his Palace of Art.
The Dialogues of the Dead, more than any other work by Lucian have furnished sugges tions to pictorial artists. Death's toll is even more universal than the levy exacted by Eros. Hans Holbein's name is conventionally identi fied with the " Dance of Death. " 65 Some rep resentations of it have been incorrectly attrib uted to him. 66 He has even been falsely ac credited with the invention of the motif itself. This subject was a favourite decoration for bridges as, for example, the arresting gable- paintings in the covered Pont des Moulins at
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Lucerne; for churches and churchyards: for example, the Dominican convent at Bale, Saint Mary's"Church at Liibeck,67 the " Triumph of Death in the Campo Santo at Pisa; for houses, as the one at Bale said to have been decorated by Holbein, or the frescoes said to have been painted by him for Henry VIII in the palace of Whitehall and burnt in 1697; or as decorations on ladies' fans — a beneficent cave feminam! The irony of Lucian's. dialogues was also woven into the " Hans Holbein Al phabet," and it was Holbein who sketched the grim reminders on the margin of Erasmus's Encomium Moriae and who used them to illus trate Sir Thomas More's Utopia.
Observing all due precaution against making arbitrary identifications one might go on to gather other examples. Even a casual review of museum catalogues suggests, here and there, Lucian's influence, direct or indirect, upon pictorial art.
IN LITERATURE
Reminiscence: Imitation: Parallels
Lucian's influence upon subsequent litera ture, in the sum total, has been very great,
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greater, of course, at some periods than at others. 68
Probably he influenced his younger con temporaries. What relation may have existed between him and Apuleius has not been de termined past peradventure. It seems clear, however, that the vigour of both of them in story-telling, whatever their indebtedness to the Odyssey and to Herodotus or to Ovid himself, launched anew 69 the Story, as such, on its long voyage through the Middle Ages down to the modern novel.
The dates and data at our disposal are not always precise. Alciphron, for example, is va riously treated as a younger contemporary or as a slightly later writer. The Letter to Lucian, included among his works, would seem, to the present writer, to indicate that the latter 70 as sumption, rather than the former, were correct. In addition to their common debt to the New Comedy Alciphron betrays, on occasion, his indebtedness to Lucian.
Philostratus, writing in the third century, did not pay Lucian the doubtful compliment of in cluding him in his " Lives of the Sophists," probably because he observed " the sophistic convention of silence as to the one who so ex
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celled and satirized them all. " 71 Lucian, how ever, is conspicuous by the omission. He made a fortunate and timely escape from this narrow profession, but he none the less, inevitably drawn by modern critics into comparison with the Sophists.
Gregory of Nazianzes and John Chrysostom, still reflecting genuine Hellenism in the fourth century, were able and willing to appreciate Lucian in spite of his paganism.
The Emperor Julian found in Lucian be cause of his paganism welcome ally in the losing battle for a decadent Hellenism. And Libanius, who had taught, Chrysostom elo quence, and who was the much older contem porary and guide of Julian, in his voluminous outpouring of wearisome rhetoric, could include meaningless critiques upon Aristophanes and Lucian while he makes use of the latter to give flavour to his own insipid declamation. He is, for example, borrowing from Lucian's brilliant and scathing diagnosis of the Hireling Pro
when, in his epideictic oration 72 on the varied forms of human slavery, he dilates upon the bondage of the " house-professor. " To satisfy father, mother, grandpa and grand ma the " professor," he says, must demonstrate
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fessors
a
a
is,
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that their young hopeful is on a par with the sons of gods! Nor may he venture to ignore anyone in the whole entourage — not the door- tender, not the " male chaperone," not the serv ants who carry the boy's books, not even — note the present-day touch! — the athlete! A picture sordid enough, certainly, even for the twentieth century, and unenlivened by Lucian's caustic comments. It does, however, indicate the wholesome contempt to which the sophistic professor of mere rhetoric was again subjected in the fourth century, as contrasted with his unparalleled power and popularity in the time of Philostratus. 73 Thus the keen satire of Lu-
cian, the " Apostate " from sophistic rhetoric, was already in process of vindication. Fast colours do not fade!
At the end of the third century and the be ginning of this fourth century two other well- known writers, pro-Christian and pro-pagan respectively, testify that Lucian was present, at least, in the consciousness of both factions. Lactantius, the very respectable " Christian Cicero," speaks 74 of Lucian as one who spared neither gods nor men, while the inferior but useful Eunapius selects 75 for approval, because of its serious purpose, the dull Demonax, of
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doubtful authenticity though ascribed to Lu- cian the " expert in mockery. "
As we penetrate deeper into the labyrinth of Byzantine literature we find Lucian secure in his place among Greek classics, either included directly by name or by the still more flattering praise of imitation. The large number of only partly edited " imitators " in the Paris and Vatican libraries, respectively,76 might contrib ute further data, and the late and spurious
Phttopatris, foisted upon the Lucianic canon by an unknown tenth-century author, continued for centuries to involve Lucian in wholly un necessary abuse from uncritical Christians.
Photius, in the ninth century, in addition to
detailed comment, already mentioned, includes
Lucian as an especial favourite in his list of
prose authors. Luitprand, the " most original
hellenist "
alia, from Lucian's Dream.
77
of the tenth century, quotes, inter
Suidas, whose combined lexicon and ency clopaedia is referred to " the third quarter of the eleventh century," 78 gives a genial and doubtless quite orthodox opinion as to Lucian's contemporary whereabouts. Lucian in his Life's End of Peregrinus had spoken in a patronizing, but by no means entirely uncomplimentary
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manner of the Christians, referring, incident ally, to " that crucified sophist " of theirs. This draws from the pious lexicographer specific de tails as to Lucian's death and subsequent ca reer, closing with the words : " And in the time to come he shall be joint heir with Satan of the fire everlasting! " Of this much, at least, we may be sure: the Peregrinus had not yet, as was the case later, been cut out of the Lucian manuscript accessible to Suidas.
Tzetzes in the twelfth century, in his huge poem, nearly thirteen " chiliads " in length, gives Lucian, of course, his due place among some four hundred authors cited, from Homer down to Byzantine times. 79
The Experiences of Timarion in his visit to the Underworld is also referred to the twelfth century by Krumbacher and described as " one of the numberless Byzantine imitations of Lu cian " for, although the theme itself goes back to the Odyssey, it is a direct revival in dialogue form of Lucian's Menippus or Necromancy. Incidentally the great ghost of Psellus, " the Photius of the Eleventh century," is satirized under a thin disguise. 80 This motif continued to be a favourite. It reappears, for example, in Mazaris's Trip to Hades,*1 about 141 6 a. d. ,
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which is a combination of dialogue and letter- form and one of the more wooden imitations of Lucian.
Theodorus Prodromus82 (1118-1180) stands at the very threshold of Modern Greek litera ture and wrote, indeed, both in the vulgar and in the Byzantine Greek. He was an inveterate polygraph in poetry and prose, ranging from rhetoric and theology, grammar and philoso phy and astrology to the poetic romance and satire. His interest for us lies in the fact that he was apparently at his best when following Lucian, as in his loans from the Tragical Zeus and in his better-known satirical dialogue The Sale of Philosophers and Statesmen, which is an elaborate imitation of Lucian's brilliant Sale of Soul Samples. In this he sells off, amongst other parcels, Homer, Hippocrates, Aristoph anes, Euripides and Demosthenes. 83
•
Katrarius, sometimes referred to the tenth century but more probably of the twelfth or thirteenth,84 may be allowed to close this summary selection from Byzantine writers. The Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204 a. d. , made possible direct access to Greek
learning without the intervention of the Arabic, while the infiltration into the West of a knowl
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edge of the Greek language prepared the way for a Revival of Greek Learning, happily an ticipating the actual occupation by the Turk,
in the fifteenth century, of the moribund By zantine Empire.
Lucian made his debut in Italy toward the end of this period. Greater names received first attention but also, by the perversity of circum stance, authors inferior to him gained an earlier hearing. No other characteristic of these in tellectual Crusaders is more pathetic than their lack of perspective in the reverence for any and every MS. recovered — any goose, Roman or
Greek, became forthwith a swan ! Petrarch, in deed, treasured a Homer and a Plato that he could not read and his Letters to Dead Authors do not reecho Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead. Boccaccio, who could boast of being the first Italian to " resume " the reading of Homer, contented himself with Latin authors, like Ovid and Apuleius, when, if Lucian had been easily accessible, he might have found stimulus in him also.
To Aurispa of Sicily, who in 1423 brought some 238 Greek MSS. to Venice,85 may be as cribed the introduction of Lucian into Italy. He was, however, less remarkable as a scholar
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than as a collector of MSS. and thought it a matter of plain patriotic duty, in translating Lucian's twelfth Dialogue of the Dead, to alter the original by assigning the first place to the Roman Scipio instead of to Alexander the Great! 86
In this group of collectors, who were also translators of Lucian, may be mentioned: Filelfo, long resident in Constantinople, who, by way of perfecting his Greek, married the grand-niece of Chrysoloras, the first and greatest of the " visiting professors " of Greek; also the famous Poggio himself; and, with especial honour, Guarino da Verona, who not only imported in 1408 more than fifty MSS. but was also a sound and inspiring scholar. Among other works he translated at least three of Lucian's writings. Very early in the fifteenth century translations and citations in lectures from Greek authors took a wide range, as with Bruni and Marsuppini. For Lucian, in particular, several writers may be empha sized. Alberti, as above mentioned, stimu lated by the association with graphic art, started, by his tractate on the De Calumnia of Lucian, this rather mediocre piece on its long and efficient career.
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Matteo Maria Boiardo, towards the end of the fifteenth century, however, selected one of Lucian's most famous dialogues, The Timon,
from which he developed a full-fledged comedy in verse, // Timone,87 with its lame and im potent denouement. This, in turn, may have been indirectly laid under contribution in con structing the patch-work, play, Timon
of Athens, attached to Shakespeare's name, which,
in spite of futile accretions, manages to pre serve some of the original Lucianic colour. Be that as it may, Lucian transmitted from anti quity and standardized for the modern world a clear-cut type of the misanthrope. 88
Pontano, also, who died in 1503, in his poetic satire, Charon, had Lucian's like-named dialogue 88 as forerunner.
Ariosto, the successor of Boiardo in more senses than one, is deeply in debt to Lucian. Of him and of two of his slightly younger
"
to Lucian . . . than to the quest of the New World, and the discovery of its wonders. " By this time, in fact, Lucian had become very
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The peregrinations of Ariosto and Folengo and Rabelais, the adventures of their heroes, the strange countries they visit, owe much more
contemporaries it has been remarked : 90
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popular and Folengo's burlesque romance, Baldus, makes particularly clear the influence of the True Story.
When we pass from Italy to the north and west of Europe, in the latter part of the
fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, it is embarrassing to attempt to catalogue and still more to classify rigidly the more significant names of Lucian's debtors. He stimulated, indeed, imaginative humour now with, now without, an ulterior motive of didactic satire. But, for the most part, the wanton joys of the pagan Revival in Italy are obscured in the cold transalpine mists of con troversy. The satire of Lucian, the potential foe to all theologies, was a weapon available to opposing warriors in the joyless jousts of the Reformation.
The editio princeps of Lucian, printed in Florence, 1494-96, by Constantine Lascaris, made his writings the common property of scholars. Translation, citation, and imitation in Latin or even in the vernaculars, widened in definitely his sphere of influence.
Desiderius Erasmus (1467-1536), whose reduplicated Graeco-Roman name could ignore all geographic barriers, is the best liaison be
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tween the members of the brilliant groups of his immediate or younger contemporaries — Dutch, English, French, German or Italian — who perpetuated Lucian's influence. His lucid Latin is not a borrowed tool. It is intellec tually and stylistically his own. Incidentally, he models on the Lexiphanes of Lucian his dialogue, Ciceronianus,'1 in which he derides the folly of a slavish imitation of a single author. This sterling Latinity of his, good at its face value for the " Latin Union " of the European intelligentsia, was the medium through which Lucian's best satire first " swims into the ken " of many eager contemporaries. Keen in distinguishing between the ephemeral and the universal, Erasmus applied Lucian's satire to current ethics and ecclesiastical
prac tices. In addition to other minor pieces he translated many of Lucian's vital writings,
including the Cock, the Icaromenippus, Timon,92 Alexander the False Prophet, the Banquet, the Hireling Professors and the Saturnalia, often sending them as gifts to friendly patrons, before they were published, along with others translated by his running
mate, Sir Thomas More. With generous en thusiasm he writes to another friend, Am
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" I am delighted that you are Lucianizing. " Loyal to his own religious beliefs, Erasmus did not hesitate to use Lucian to scourge ec clesiastical shams, although charged, on the one hand, with heresy and atheism by venal and sensual clerics, or branded as a " second Lucian " 94 by the dogmatic Luther. But Chris
tendom would listen neither to " Right Rea son " nor to satire. The antichristian spirit of hate and persecution common to both parties, precipitated the long orgy of blood and fire,
and in all the subsequent stagings of this tragedy of religion Lucian's mocking laugh ter reechoes, again and again, as the blood stained actors make their respective exits down " Charon's Stairs " to take up their new roles, on the transstygian shore, as dramatis personae in unpublished Dialogues of the Dead.
Lucian's influence upon Erasmus is even more important in writings other than his direct translations. The Praise of Folly, which electrified both the fools and the savants of Europe, is charged with the Lucianic current. In his priceless Colloquia Erasmus, like Lucian,
paints contemporary life in vivid colours but [145]
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is free from Lucian's taint of bitter pessi mism. 95 He seasons his observations, however, as he says elsewhere,*6 with both sal nigrum and sal candidum from his Lucianic salt cellar.
