To all, on
the other hand, who repined at poverty, resented exile, or
complained of old age or bad health, he administered laughing
consolation, and bade them not forget how soon their troubles would
be over, the distinction between good and bad be obsolete, and long
freedom succeed to short-lived distress.
the other hand, who repined at poverty, resented exile, or
complained of old age or bad health, he administered laughing
consolation, and bade them not forget how soon their troubles would
be over, the distinction between good and bad be obsolete, and long
freedom succeed to short-lived distress.
Lucian
Pray take measures to cure him.
_Lex_. Heal him, not me, Sopolis; he is manifestly moon-struck; persons
duly pia-matered he accounts beside their five wits; he might come from
Samos and call Mnesarchus father; for he enjoins silence and linguinanity.
But by the unabashed Athene, by Heracles the beast-killer, no jot or
tittle of notice shall he have from me. 'Tis my foreboding that I fall not
in with him again. For his censures, I void my rheum upon them.
_Sop_. What is the matter with him, Lycinus?
_Ly_. Why, _this_ is the matter; don't you hear? He leaves us his
contemporaries, and goes a thousand years off to talk to us, which he
does by aid of these tongue-gymnastics and extraordinary compounds--
prides himself upon it, too, as if it were a great thing to disguise
yourself, and mutilate the conversational currency.
_Sop_. Well, to be sure, this is a serious case; we must do all we
can for him. Providentially, here is an emetic I had just mixed for a
bilious patient; here, Lexiphanes, drink it off; the other man can wait;
let us purge you of this vocal derangement, and get you a clean bill of
health. Come along, down with it; you will feel much easier.
_Lex_. I know not what you would be at, you and Lycinus, with your
drenches; I fear me you are more like to end than mend my speech.
_Ly_. Drink, quick; it will make a man of you in thought and word.
_Lex_. Well, if I must. Lord, what is this? How it rumbles! I must have
swallowed a ventriloquist.
_Sop_. Now, let it come. Look, look! Here comes _in sooth, anon_ follows,
close upon them _quoth he, withal, sirrah, I trow,_ and a general
sprinkling of _sundry_. But try again; tickle your throat; that will help.
_Hard, by_ has not come up yet, nor _a-weary_, nor _rehearse_, nor
_quandary_. Oh, there are lots of them lurking yet, a whole stomachful. It
would be well to get rid of some of them by purging; there should be an
impressive explosion when _orotundity_ makes its windy exit. However, he
is pretty well cleaned out, except for what may be left in the lower
bowels. Lycinus, I shall now leave him in your charge; teach him better
ways, and tell him what are the right words to use.
_Ly_. I will, Sopolis; and thank you for clearing the way. Now,
Lexiphanes, listen to me. If you want sincere commendations upon your
style, and success with popular audiences, give a wide berth to that sort
of stuff. Make a beginning with the great poets, read them with some one
to help you, then go on to the orators, and when you have assimilated
their vocabulary, proceed in due time to Thucydides and Plato, not
forgetting a thorough course also of pleasant Comedy and grave Tragedy.
When you have culled the best that all these can show, you may reckon
that you have a style. You have not realized it, but at present you are
like the toymen's dolls, all gaudy colouring outside, and inside, fragile
clay.
If you will take this advice, put up for a little while with being called
uneducated, and not be ashamed to mend your ways, you may face an
audience without a tremor; you will not then be a laughing-stock any
more; the cultivated will no longer exercise their irony upon you and
nickname you the Hellene and the Attic just because you are less
intelligible than many barbarians. But above all things, do bear in mind
not to ape the worst tricks of the last generation's professors; you are
always nibbling at their wares; put your foot upon them once for all, and
take the ancients for your model. And no dallying with unsubstantial
flowers of speech; accustom yourself, like the athletes, to solid food.
And let your devotions be paid to the Graces and to Lucidity, whom you
have so neglected.
Further, put a stopper on bombast and grandiloquence and mannerism; be
neither supercilious nor overbearing; cease to carp at other people's
performances and to count their loss your gain. And then, perhaps the
greatest of all your errors is this: instead of arranging your matter
first, and then elaborating the diction, you find some out-of-the-way
word, or are captivated by one of your own invention, and try to build up
your meaning round it; if you cannot get it in somehow or other, though
it may have nothing to do with the matter, you are inconsolable; do you
remember the _mobled queen_ you let off the other day? It was quite
off the point, and you did not know what it meant yourself; however, its
oddness tickled the ears of the ignorant many; as for the cultivated,
they were equally amused at you and at your admirers.
Again, could anything be more ludicrous than for one who claims to be a
purist, drawing from the undefiled fountain of antiquity, to mix in
(though indeed that reverses the proportion) expressions that would be
impossible to the merest schoolboy? I felt as if I should like the earth
to swallow me up, when I heard you talk of a man's _chemise_, and use
_valet_ of a woman; who does not know that a man wears a shirt, and that a
valet is male? But you abound in far more flagrant blunders than these: I
have _chidden_, not _chode_ you; we do not _write_ a friend, we _write to_
him; we say _'onest_, not _honest_; these usages of yours cannot claim
even alien rights among us. Moreover, we do not like even poetry to read
like the dictionary. But the sort of poetry to which your prose
corresponds would be Dosiadas's _Altar_, Lycophron's _Alexandra_, or any
more pestilent pedantry that may happen to exist. If you take the pains to
unlearn all this, you will have done the best you can for yourself. If you
let yourself be seduced by your sweet baits again, I have at least put in
my word of warning, and you will have only yourself to blame when you find
yourself on the downward path.
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Title: Works, V3
Author: Lucian of Samosata
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Edition: 10
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THE WORKS OF LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
Complete with exceptions specified in the preface
TRANSLATED BY
H. W. FOWLER AND F. G. FOWLER
VOLUME III
OF FOUR VOLUMES
What work nobler than transplanting foreign thought into the barren
domestic soil? except indeed planting thought of your own, which
the fewest are privileged to do. --_Sartor Resartus_.
At each flaw, be this your first thought: the author doubtless said
something quite different, and much more to the point. And then you
may hiss _me_ off, if you will. --LUCIAN, _Nigrinus_, 9.
(LUCIAN) The last great master of Attic eloquence and Attic wit. --
_Lord Macaulay_.
CONTENTS OF VOL. III
LIFE OF DEMONAX
A PORTRAIT-STUDY
DEFENCE OF THE 'PORTRAIT-STUDY'
TOXARIS: A DIALOGUE OF FRIENDSHIP
ZEUS CROSS-EXAMINED
ZEUS TRAGOEDUS
THE COCK
ICAROMENIPPUS, AN AERIAL EXPEDITION
THE DOUBLE INDICTMENT
THE PARASITE, A DEMONSTRATION THAT SPONGING IS A PROFESSION
ANACHARSIS, A DISCUSSION OF PHYSICAL TRAINING
OF MOURNING
THE RHETORICIAN'S VADE MECUM
THE LIAR
DIONYSUS, AN INTRODUCTORY LECTURE
HERACLES, AN INTRODUCTORY LECTURE
SWANS AND AMBER
THE FLY, AN APPRECIATION
REMARKS ADDRESSED TO AN ILLITERATE BOOK-FANCIER
ALPHABETICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIFE OF DEMONAX
It was in the book of Fate that even this age of ours should not be
destitute entirely of noteworthy and memorable men, but produce a
body of extraordinary power, and a mind of surpassing wisdom. My
allusions are to Sostratus the Boeotian, whom the Greeks called,
and believed to be, Heracles; and more particularly to the
philosopher Demonax. I saw and marvelled at both of them, and with
the latter I long consorted. I have written of Sostratus elsewhere
[Footnote: The life of Sostratus is not extant. ], and described his
stature and enormous strength, his open-air life on Parnassus,
sleeping on the grass and eating what the mountain afforded, the
exploits that bore out his surname--robbers exterminated, rough
places made smooth, and deep waters bridged.
This time I am to write of Demonax, with two sufficient ends in
view: first, to keep his memory green among good men, as far as in
me lies; and secondly, to provide the most earnest of our rising
generation, who aspire to philosophy, with a contemporary pattern,
that they may not be forced back upon the ancients for worthy
models, but imitate this best--if I am any judge--of all
philosophers.
He came of a Cyprian family which enjoyed considerable property and
political influence. But his views soared above such things as
these; he claimed nothing less than the highest, and devoted
himself to philosophy. This was not due to any exhortations of
Agathobulus, his predecessor Demetrius, or Epictetus. He did indeed
enjoy the converse of all these, as well as of Timocrates of
Heraclea, that wise man whose gifts of expression and of
understanding were equal. It was not, however, to the exhortations
of any of these, but to a natural impulse towards the good, an
innate yearning for philosophy which manifested itself in childish
years, that he owed his superiority to all the things that ordinary
men pursue. He took independence and candour for his guiding
principles, lived himself an upright, wholesome, irreproachable
life, and exhibited to all who saw or heard him the model of his
own disposition and philosophic sincerity.
He was no half-baked enthusiast either; he had lived with the
poets, and knew most of them by heart; he was a practised speaker;
he had a knowledge of philosophic principles not of the superficial
skin-deep order; he had developed and hardened his body by exercise
and toil, and, in short, had been at the pains to make himself
every man's equal at every point. He was consistent enough, when he
found that he could no longer suffice to himself, to depart
voluntarily from life, leaving a great reputation behind him among
the true nobility of Greece.
Instead of confining himself to a single philosophic school, he
laid them all under contribution, without showing clearly which of
them he preferred; but perhaps he was nearest akin to Socrates;
for, though he had leanings as regards externals and plain living
to Diogenes, he never studied effect or lived for the applause and
admiration of the multitude; his ways were like other people's; he
mounted no high horse; he was just a man and a citizen. He indulged
in no Socratic irony; but his discourse was full of Attic grace;
those who heard it went away neither disgusted by servility nor
repelled by ill-tempered censure, but on the contrary lifted out of
themselves by charity, and encouraged to more orderly, contented,
hopeful lives.
He was never known to shout or be over vehement or angry, even when
he had to correct; he touched offences, but pardoned offenders,
saying that the doctors' was the right model, who treat sickness
but are not angry with the sick. It is human, he thought, to err,
but divine (whether in God or man) to put the error right.
A life of this sort left him without wants of his own; but he was
always ready to render any proper service to his friends--including
reminders to those among them who passed for fortunate, how brief
was their tenure of what they so prided themselves upon.
To all, on
the other hand, who repined at poverty, resented exile, or
complained of old age or bad health, he administered laughing
consolation, and bade them not forget how soon their troubles would
be over, the distinction between good and bad be obsolete, and long
freedom succeed to short-lived distress.
He was fond of playing peace-maker between brothers at variance, or
presiding over the restoration of marital harmony. He could say a
word in season, too, before an agitated political assembly, which
would turn the scale in favour of patriotic duty. Such was the
temper that philosophy produced in him, kindly, mild, and cheerful.
Nothing ever grieved him except the illness or death of a friend,
friendship being the one among blessings that he put highest; and
indeed he was every man's friend, counting among his kindred
whatever had human shape. Not that there were no degrees in the
pleasure different people's society gave him; but he avoided none,
except those who seemed so far astray that they could get no good
from him. And every word or act in which these principles took
shape might have been dictated by the Graces and Aphrodite; for 'on
his lips Persuasion sat,' as the play has it.
Accordingly he was regarded with reverence at Athens, both by the
collective assembly and by the officials; he always continued to be
a person of great consequence in their eyes. And this though most
of them had been at first offended with him, and hated him as
heartily as their ancestors had Socrates. Besides his candour and
independence, there had been found Anytuses and Meletuses to repeat
the historic charges: _he had never been known to sacrifice, and
he made himself singular by avoiding initiation at Eleusis_. On
this occasion he showed his courage by appearing in a garland and
festal attire, and then pleading his cause before the people with a
dash of unwonted asperity infused into his ordinary moderate tone.
On the count of never having sacrificed to Athene, 'Men of Athens,'
he said, 'there is nothing wonderful in this; it was only that I
gave the Goddess credit for being able to do very well without
sacrifices from me. ' And in the matter of the Mysteries, his reason
for not following the usual practice was this: if the Mysteries
turned out to be bad, he would never be able to keep quiet about it
to the uninitiated, but must dissuade them from the ceremony;
while, if they were good, humanity would tempt him to divulge them.
The Athenians, stone in hand already, were at once disarmed, and
from that time onwards paid him honour and respect, which
ultimately rose to reverence. Yet he had opened his case with a
bitter enough reproof: 'Men of Athens, you see me ready garlanded;
proceed to sacrifice me, then; your former offering [Footnote:
i. e. , Socrates. ] was deficient in this formality. '
I will now give some specimens of his pointed and witty sayings,
which may begin with his answers to Favorinus. The latter had heard
that he made fun of his lectures, and in particular of the
sentimental verses with which they were garnished, and which
Demonax thought contemptible, womanish, and quite unsuited to
philosophy. So he came and asked him: 'Who, pray, are you, that you
should pour scorn upon me? ' 'I am the possessor of a critical pair
of ears,' was the answer. The sophist had not had enough;
'_You_ are no infant,' he went on, 'but a philosopher, it
seems; may one ask what marks the transformation? ' 'The marks of
manhood,' said Demonax.
Another time the same person came up and asked him what school of
philosophy he belonged to. 'Who told you I was a philosopher? ' was
all he said. But as he left him, he had a good laugh to himself,
which Favorinus observing, demanded what he was laughing at; 'I was
only amused by your taking a man for a philosopher because he wears
a beard, when you have none yourself. '
When Sidonius, who had a great reputation at Athens as a teacher,
was boasting that he was conversant with all the philosophic
systems--but I had better quote his words. 'Let Aristotle call, and
I follow to the Lyceum; Plato, and I hurry to the Academy; Zeno,
and I make my home in the Porch; Pythagoras, and I keep the rule of
silence. ' Then rose Demonax from among the audience: 'Sidonius,
Pythagoras calls. '
A pretty girlish young man called Python, son of some Macedonian
grandee, once by way of quizzing him asked a riddling question and
invited him to show his acumen over it. 'I only see one thing, dear
child,' he said, 'and that is, that you are a _fair_ logician. '
The other lost his temper at this equivoque, and threatened him:
'You shall see in a minute what a man can do. ' 'Oh, you keep a man,
do you? ' was Demonax's smiling retort.
He once, for daring to laugh at an athlete who displayed himself in
gay clothes because he had won an Olympic victory, received a blow
on the head with a stone, which drew blood. The bystanders were all
as angry as if they had themselves been the victims, and set up a
shout--'The Proconsul! the Proconsul! ' 'Thank you, gentlemen,' said
Demonax, 'but I should prefer the doctor. '
He once picked up a little gold charm in the road as he walked, and
posted a notice in the market-place stating that the loser could
recover his property, if he would call upon Demonax and give
particulars of the weight, material, and workmanship. A handsome
young exquisite came, professing to have lost it. The philosopher
soon saw that it was a got-up story; 'Ah, my boy,' he said, 'you
will do very well, if you lose your other charms as little as you
have lost this one. '
A Roman senator at Athens once presented his son, who had great
beauty of a soft womanish type. 'My son salutes you, sir,' he said.
To which Demonax answered, 'A pretty lad, worthy of his father, and
extremely like his mother. '
A cynic who emphasized his principles by wearing a bear's skin he
insisted on addressing not by his name of Honoratus, but as Bruin.
Asked for a definition of Happiness, he said that only the free was
happy. 'Well,' said the questioner, 'there is no lack of free
men. '--'I count no man free who is subject to hopes and fears. '--
'You ask impossibilities; of these two we are all very much the
slaves. ' 'Once grasp the nature of human affairs,' said Demonax,
'and you will find that they justify neither hope nor fear, since
both pain and pleasure are to have an end. '
Peregrine Proteus was shocked at his taking things so lightly, and
treating mankind as a subject for humour: 'You have no teeth,
Demonax. ' 'And you, Peregrine, have no bowels. '
A physical philosopher was discoursing about the antipodes; Demonax
took his hand, and led him to a well, in which he showed him his
own reflection: 'Do you want us to believe that the antipodes are
like _that_? '
A man once boasted that he was a wizard, and possessed of mighty
charms whereby he could get what he chose out of anybody. 'Will it
surprise you to learn that I am a fellow-craftsman? ' asked Demonax;
'pray come with me to the baker's, and you shall see a single
charm, just one wave of my magic wand, induce him to bestow several
loaves upon me. ' Current coin, he meant, is as good a magician as
most.
The great Herodes, mourning the untimely death of Pollux, used to
have the carriage and horses got ready, and the place laid at
table, as though the dead were going to drive and eat. To him came
Demonax, saying that he brought a message from Pollux. Herodes,
delighted with the idea that Demonax was humouring his whim like
other people, asked what it was that Pollux required of him. 'He
cannot think why you are so long coming to him. '
When another person kept himself shut up in the dark, mourning his
son, Demonax represented himself to him as a magician: he would
call up the son's ghost, the only condition being that he should be
given the names of three people who had never had to mourn. The
father hum'd and ha'd, unable, doubtless, to produce any such
person, till Demonax broke in: 'And have you, then, a monopoly of
the unendurable, when you cannot name a man who has not some grief
to endure? '
He often ridiculed the people who use obsolete and uncommon words
in their lectures. One of these produced a bit of Attic purism in
answer to some question he had put. 'My dear sir,' he said, 'the
date of my question is to-day; that of your answer is _temp_.
_Bell_. _Troj_. '
A friend asking him to come to the temple of Asclepius, there to
make prayer for his son, 'Poor deaf Asclepius! ' he exclaimed; 'can
he not hear at this distance? '
He once saw two philosophers engaged in a very unedifying game of
cross questions and crooked answers. 'Gentlemen,' said he, 'here is
one man milking a billy-goat, and another catching the proceeds in
a sieve. '
When Agathocles the Peripatetic vaunted himself as the first and
only dialectician, he asked him how he could be the first, if he
was the only, or the only, if he was the first.
The consular Cethegus, on his way to serve under his father in
Asia, said and did many foolish things. A friend describing him as
a great ass, 'Not even a _great_ ass,' said Demonax.
When Apollonius was appointed professor of philosophy in the
Imperial household, Demonax witnessed his departure, attended by a
great number of his pupils. 'Why, here is Apollonius with all his
Argonauts,' he cried.
Asked whether he held the soul to be immortal, 'Dear me, yes,' he
said; 'everything is. '
He remarked a propos of Herodes that Plato was quite right about
our having more than one soul; the same soul could not possibly
compose those splendid declamations, and have places laid for
Regilla and Pollux after their death.
He was once bold enough to ask the assembled people, when he heard
the sacred proclamation, why they excluded barbarians from the
Mysteries, seeing that Eumolpus, the founder of them, was a
barbarian from Thrace.
When he once had a winter voyage to make, a friend asked how he
liked the thought of being capsized and becoming food for fishes.
'I should be very unreasonable to mind giving them a meal,
considering how many they have given me. '
To a rhetorician who had given a very poor declamation he
recommended constant practice. 'Why, I am always practising to
myself,' says the man. 'Ah, that accounts for it; you are
accustomed to such a foolish audience. '
Observing a soothsayer one day officiating for pay, he said: 'I
cannot see how you can ask pay. If it is because you can change the
course of Fate, you cannot possibly put the figure high enough: if
everything is settled by Heaven, and not by you, what is the good
of your soothsaying? '
A hale old Roman once gave him a little exhibition of his skill in
fence, taking a clothes-peg for his mark. 'What do you think of my
play, Demonax? ' he said. 'Excellent, so long as you have a wooden
man to play with. '
Even for questions meant to be insoluble he generally had a shrewd
answer at command. Some one tried to make a fool of him by asking,
If I burn a hundred pounds of wood, how many pounds of smoke shall
I get? 'Weigh the ashes; the difference is all smoke. '
One Polybius, an uneducated man whose grammar was very defective,
once informed him that he had received Roman citizenship from the
Emperor. 'Why did he not make you a Greek instead? ' asked Demonax.
Seeing a decorated person very proud of his broad stripe, he
whispered in his ear, while he took hold of and drew attention to
the cloth, 'This attire did not make its original wearer anything
but a sheep. '
Once at the bath the water was at boiling point, and some one
called him a coward for hesitating to get in. 'What,' said he, 'is
my country expecting me to do my duty? '
Some one asked him what he took the next world to be like. 'Wait a
bit, and I will send you the information. '
A minor poet called Admetus told him he had inserted a clause in
his will for the inscribing on his tomb of a monostich, which I
will give:
Admetus' husk earth holds, and Heaven himself.
'What a beautiful epitaph, Admetus! ' said Demonax, 'and what a pity
it is not up yet! '
The shrunk shanks of old age are a commonplace; but when his
reached this state, some one asked him what was the matter with
them. 'Ah,' he said with a smile, 'Charon has been having a bite at
them. '
He interrupted a Spartan who was scourging his servant with, 'Why
confer on your slave the privilege of Spartans [Footnote: See
_Spartans_ in Notes. ] like yourself? ' He observed to one Danae,
who was bringing a suit against her brother, 'Have the law of him
by all means; it was another Danae whose father was called the
Lawless. [Footnote: See _Danae_ in Notes. ]
He waged constant warfare against all whose philosophy was not
practical, but for show. So when he saw a cynic, with threadbare
cloak and wallet, but a braying-pestle instead of a staff,
proclaiming himself loudly as a follower of Antisthenes, Crates,
and Diogenes, he said: 'Tell us no lies; your master is the
professor of braying. '
Noticing how foul play was growing among the athletes, who often
supplemented the resources of boxing and wrestling with their
teeth, he said it was no wonder that the champions' partisans had
taken to describing them as lions.
There was both wit and sting in what he said to the proconsul. The
latter was one of the people who take all the hair off their bodies
with pitch-plaster. A cynic mounted a block of stone and cast this
practice in his teeth, suggesting that it was for immoral purposes.
The proconsul in a rage had the man pulled down, and was on the
point of condemning him to be beaten or banished, when Demonax, who
was present, pleaded for him on the ground that he was only
exercising the traditional cynic licence. 'Well,' said the
proconsul, 'I pardon him this time at your request; but if he
offends again, what shall I do to him? ' 'Have him depilated,' said
Demonax.
Another person, entrusted by the Emperor with the command of
legions and the charge of a great province, asked him what was the
way to govern well. 'Keep your temper, say little, and hear much. '
Asked whether he ate honey-cakes, 'Do you suppose,' he said, 'that
bees only make honey for fools? '
Noticing near the Poecile a statue minus a hand, he said it had
taken Athens a long time to get up a bronze to Cynaegirus.
Alluding to the lame Cyprian Rufinus, who was a Peripatetic and
spent much time in the Lyceum walks, 'What presumption,' he
exclaimed, 'for a cripple to call himself a Walking Philosopher! '
Epictetus once urged him, with a touch of reproof, to take a wife
and raise a family--for it beseemed a philosopher to leave some one
to represent him after the flesh. But he received the home thrust:
'Very well, Epictetus; give me one of your daughters. '
His remark to Herminus the Aristotelian is equally worth recording.
He was aware that this man's character was vile and his misdeeds
innumerable, and yet his mouth was always full of Aristotle and his
ten predicaments. 'Certainly, Herminus,' he said, 'no predicament
is too bad for you. '
When the Athenians were thinking, in their rivalry with Corinth, of
starting gladiatorial shows, he came forward and said: 'Men of
Athens, before you pass this motion, do not forget to destroy the
altar of Pity. '
On the occasion of his visiting Olympia, the Eleans voted a bronze
statue to him. But he remonstrated: 'It will imply a reproach to
your ancestors, men of Elis, who set up no statue to Socrates or
Diogenes. '
I once heard him observe to a learned lawyer that laws were not of
much use, whether meant for the good or for the bad; the first do
not need them, and upon the second they have no effect.
There was one line of Homer always on his tongue:
Idle or busy, death takes all alike.
He had a good word for Thersites, as a cynic and a leveller.
Asked which of the philosophers was most to his taste, he said: 'I
admire them all; Socrates I revere, Diogenes I admire, Aristippus I
love. '
He lived to nearly a hundred, free from disease and pain, burdening
no man, asking no man's favour, serving his friends, and having no
enemies. Not Athens only, but all Greece was so in love with him
that as he passed the great would give him place and there would be
a general hush. Towards the end of his long life he would go
uninvited into the first house that offered, and there get his
dinner and his bed, the household regarding it as the visit of some
heavenly being which brought them a blessing. When they saw him go
by, the baker-wives would contend for the honour of supplying him,
and a happy woman was the actual donor. Children too used to call
him father, and bring him offerings of fruit.
Party spirit was once running high at Athens; he came into the
assembly, and his mere appearance was enough to still the storm.
When he saw that they were ashamed, he departed again without
having uttered a word.
When he found that he was no longer able to take care of himself,
he repeated to his friends the tag with which the heralds close the
festival:
The games are done,
The crowns all won;
No more delay,
But haste away,
and from that moment abstaining from food, left life as cheerfully
as he had lived it.
When the end was near, he was asked his wishes about burial. 'Oh,
do not trouble; scent will summon my undertakers. ' Well, but it
would be indecent for the body of so great a man to feed birds and
dogs. 'Oh, no harm in making oneself useful in death to anything
that lives. '
However, the Athenians gave him a magnificent public funeral, long
lamented him, worshipped and garlanded the stone seat on which he
had been wont to rest when tired, accounting the mere stone
sanctified by him who had sat upon it. No one would miss the
funeral ceremony, least of all any of the philosophers. It was
these who bore him to the grave.
I have made but a small selection of the material available; but it
may serve to give readers some idea of this great man's character.
A PORTRAIT-STUDY
_Lycinus. Polystratus_
_Ly_. Polystratus, I know now what men must have felt like
when they saw the Gorgon's head. I have just experienced the same
sensation, at the sight of a most lovely woman. A little more, and
I should have realized the legend, by being turned to stone; I am
benumbed with admiration.
_Poly_. Wonderful indeed must have been the beauty, and
terrible the power of the woman who could produce such an
impression on Lycinus. Tell me of this petrifying Medusa. Who is
she, and whence? I would see her myself. You will not grudge me
that privilege? Your jealousy will not take alarm at the prospect
of a rival petrifaction at your side?
_Ly_. Well, I give you fair warning: one distant glimpse of
her, and you are speechless, motionless as any statue. Nay, that is
a light affliction: the mortal wound is not dealt till _her_
glance has fallen on _you_. What can save you then? She will
lead you in chains, hither and thither, as the magnet draws the
steel.
_Poly_. Enough! You would make her more than human. And now
tell me who she is.
_Ly_. You think I am exaggerating: I fear you will have but a
poor opinion of my eloquence when you see her as she is--so far
above my praise. _Who_ she is, I cannot say: but to judge from
the splendour of her surroundings, her retinue, her host of eunuchs
and maids, she must be of no ordinary rank.
_Poly_. And you never even asked her name?
_Ly_. Why no; but she is from Ionia; because, as she passed, I
heard one of the bystanders speak aside to his neighbour: 'See, he
exclaimed, 'what Smyrna can produce! And what wonder, if the
fairest of Ionian cities has given birth to the fairest of women? '
I thought he must come from Smyrna himself, he was so proud of her.
_Poly_. There you acted your stony part to perfection. As you
could neither follow her, nor make inquiries of the Smyrnaean, it
only remains for you to describe her as best you can, on the chance
of my recognizing her.
_Ly_. You know not what you ask. It is not in the power of
words--certainly not of _my_ words--to portray such wondrous
beauty; scarcely could an Apelles, a Zeuxis, a Parrhasius,--a
Phidias or an Alcamenes, do justice to it; as for my flimsy
workmanship, it will but insult the original.
_Poly_. Well, never mind; what was she like? There can be no
harm in trying your hand. What if the portrait be somewhat out of
drawing? --the critic is your good friend.
_Ly_. I think my best way out of it will be to call in the aid
of some of the old masters I have named: let them fashion the
likeness for me.
_Poly_. Well, but--will they come? They have been dead so
long.
_Lex_. Heal him, not me, Sopolis; he is manifestly moon-struck; persons
duly pia-matered he accounts beside their five wits; he might come from
Samos and call Mnesarchus father; for he enjoins silence and linguinanity.
But by the unabashed Athene, by Heracles the beast-killer, no jot or
tittle of notice shall he have from me. 'Tis my foreboding that I fall not
in with him again. For his censures, I void my rheum upon them.
_Sop_. What is the matter with him, Lycinus?
_Ly_. Why, _this_ is the matter; don't you hear? He leaves us his
contemporaries, and goes a thousand years off to talk to us, which he
does by aid of these tongue-gymnastics and extraordinary compounds--
prides himself upon it, too, as if it were a great thing to disguise
yourself, and mutilate the conversational currency.
_Sop_. Well, to be sure, this is a serious case; we must do all we
can for him. Providentially, here is an emetic I had just mixed for a
bilious patient; here, Lexiphanes, drink it off; the other man can wait;
let us purge you of this vocal derangement, and get you a clean bill of
health. Come along, down with it; you will feel much easier.
_Lex_. I know not what you would be at, you and Lycinus, with your
drenches; I fear me you are more like to end than mend my speech.
_Ly_. Drink, quick; it will make a man of you in thought and word.
_Lex_. Well, if I must. Lord, what is this? How it rumbles! I must have
swallowed a ventriloquist.
_Sop_. Now, let it come. Look, look! Here comes _in sooth, anon_ follows,
close upon them _quoth he, withal, sirrah, I trow,_ and a general
sprinkling of _sundry_. But try again; tickle your throat; that will help.
_Hard, by_ has not come up yet, nor _a-weary_, nor _rehearse_, nor
_quandary_. Oh, there are lots of them lurking yet, a whole stomachful. It
would be well to get rid of some of them by purging; there should be an
impressive explosion when _orotundity_ makes its windy exit. However, he
is pretty well cleaned out, except for what may be left in the lower
bowels. Lycinus, I shall now leave him in your charge; teach him better
ways, and tell him what are the right words to use.
_Ly_. I will, Sopolis; and thank you for clearing the way. Now,
Lexiphanes, listen to me. If you want sincere commendations upon your
style, and success with popular audiences, give a wide berth to that sort
of stuff. Make a beginning with the great poets, read them with some one
to help you, then go on to the orators, and when you have assimilated
their vocabulary, proceed in due time to Thucydides and Plato, not
forgetting a thorough course also of pleasant Comedy and grave Tragedy.
When you have culled the best that all these can show, you may reckon
that you have a style. You have not realized it, but at present you are
like the toymen's dolls, all gaudy colouring outside, and inside, fragile
clay.
If you will take this advice, put up for a little while with being called
uneducated, and not be ashamed to mend your ways, you may face an
audience without a tremor; you will not then be a laughing-stock any
more; the cultivated will no longer exercise their irony upon you and
nickname you the Hellene and the Attic just because you are less
intelligible than many barbarians. But above all things, do bear in mind
not to ape the worst tricks of the last generation's professors; you are
always nibbling at their wares; put your foot upon them once for all, and
take the ancients for your model. And no dallying with unsubstantial
flowers of speech; accustom yourself, like the athletes, to solid food.
And let your devotions be paid to the Graces and to Lucidity, whom you
have so neglected.
Further, put a stopper on bombast and grandiloquence and mannerism; be
neither supercilious nor overbearing; cease to carp at other people's
performances and to count their loss your gain. And then, perhaps the
greatest of all your errors is this: instead of arranging your matter
first, and then elaborating the diction, you find some out-of-the-way
word, or are captivated by one of your own invention, and try to build up
your meaning round it; if you cannot get it in somehow or other, though
it may have nothing to do with the matter, you are inconsolable; do you
remember the _mobled queen_ you let off the other day? It was quite
off the point, and you did not know what it meant yourself; however, its
oddness tickled the ears of the ignorant many; as for the cultivated,
they were equally amused at you and at your admirers.
Again, could anything be more ludicrous than for one who claims to be a
purist, drawing from the undefiled fountain of antiquity, to mix in
(though indeed that reverses the proportion) expressions that would be
impossible to the merest schoolboy? I felt as if I should like the earth
to swallow me up, when I heard you talk of a man's _chemise_, and use
_valet_ of a woman; who does not know that a man wears a shirt, and that a
valet is male? But you abound in far more flagrant blunders than these: I
have _chidden_, not _chode_ you; we do not _write_ a friend, we _write to_
him; we say _'onest_, not _honest_; these usages of yours cannot claim
even alien rights among us. Moreover, we do not like even poetry to read
like the dictionary. But the sort of poetry to which your prose
corresponds would be Dosiadas's _Altar_, Lycophron's _Alexandra_, or any
more pestilent pedantry that may happen to exist. If you take the pains to
unlearn all this, you will have done the best you can for yourself. If you
let yourself be seduced by your sweet baits again, I have at least put in
my word of warning, and you will have only yourself to blame when you find
yourself on the downward path.
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Title: Works, V3
Author: Lucian of Samosata
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THE WORKS OF LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
Complete with exceptions specified in the preface
TRANSLATED BY
H. W. FOWLER AND F. G. FOWLER
VOLUME III
OF FOUR VOLUMES
What work nobler than transplanting foreign thought into the barren
domestic soil? except indeed planting thought of your own, which
the fewest are privileged to do. --_Sartor Resartus_.
At each flaw, be this your first thought: the author doubtless said
something quite different, and much more to the point. And then you
may hiss _me_ off, if you will. --LUCIAN, _Nigrinus_, 9.
(LUCIAN) The last great master of Attic eloquence and Attic wit. --
_Lord Macaulay_.
CONTENTS OF VOL. III
LIFE OF DEMONAX
A PORTRAIT-STUDY
DEFENCE OF THE 'PORTRAIT-STUDY'
TOXARIS: A DIALOGUE OF FRIENDSHIP
ZEUS CROSS-EXAMINED
ZEUS TRAGOEDUS
THE COCK
ICAROMENIPPUS, AN AERIAL EXPEDITION
THE DOUBLE INDICTMENT
THE PARASITE, A DEMONSTRATION THAT SPONGING IS A PROFESSION
ANACHARSIS, A DISCUSSION OF PHYSICAL TRAINING
OF MOURNING
THE RHETORICIAN'S VADE MECUM
THE LIAR
DIONYSUS, AN INTRODUCTORY LECTURE
HERACLES, AN INTRODUCTORY LECTURE
SWANS AND AMBER
THE FLY, AN APPRECIATION
REMARKS ADDRESSED TO AN ILLITERATE BOOK-FANCIER
ALPHABETICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIFE OF DEMONAX
It was in the book of Fate that even this age of ours should not be
destitute entirely of noteworthy and memorable men, but produce a
body of extraordinary power, and a mind of surpassing wisdom. My
allusions are to Sostratus the Boeotian, whom the Greeks called,
and believed to be, Heracles; and more particularly to the
philosopher Demonax. I saw and marvelled at both of them, and with
the latter I long consorted. I have written of Sostratus elsewhere
[Footnote: The life of Sostratus is not extant. ], and described his
stature and enormous strength, his open-air life on Parnassus,
sleeping on the grass and eating what the mountain afforded, the
exploits that bore out his surname--robbers exterminated, rough
places made smooth, and deep waters bridged.
This time I am to write of Demonax, with two sufficient ends in
view: first, to keep his memory green among good men, as far as in
me lies; and secondly, to provide the most earnest of our rising
generation, who aspire to philosophy, with a contemporary pattern,
that they may not be forced back upon the ancients for worthy
models, but imitate this best--if I am any judge--of all
philosophers.
He came of a Cyprian family which enjoyed considerable property and
political influence. But his views soared above such things as
these; he claimed nothing less than the highest, and devoted
himself to philosophy. This was not due to any exhortations of
Agathobulus, his predecessor Demetrius, or Epictetus. He did indeed
enjoy the converse of all these, as well as of Timocrates of
Heraclea, that wise man whose gifts of expression and of
understanding were equal. It was not, however, to the exhortations
of any of these, but to a natural impulse towards the good, an
innate yearning for philosophy which manifested itself in childish
years, that he owed his superiority to all the things that ordinary
men pursue. He took independence and candour for his guiding
principles, lived himself an upright, wholesome, irreproachable
life, and exhibited to all who saw or heard him the model of his
own disposition and philosophic sincerity.
He was no half-baked enthusiast either; he had lived with the
poets, and knew most of them by heart; he was a practised speaker;
he had a knowledge of philosophic principles not of the superficial
skin-deep order; he had developed and hardened his body by exercise
and toil, and, in short, had been at the pains to make himself
every man's equal at every point. He was consistent enough, when he
found that he could no longer suffice to himself, to depart
voluntarily from life, leaving a great reputation behind him among
the true nobility of Greece.
Instead of confining himself to a single philosophic school, he
laid them all under contribution, without showing clearly which of
them he preferred; but perhaps he was nearest akin to Socrates;
for, though he had leanings as regards externals and plain living
to Diogenes, he never studied effect or lived for the applause and
admiration of the multitude; his ways were like other people's; he
mounted no high horse; he was just a man and a citizen. He indulged
in no Socratic irony; but his discourse was full of Attic grace;
those who heard it went away neither disgusted by servility nor
repelled by ill-tempered censure, but on the contrary lifted out of
themselves by charity, and encouraged to more orderly, contented,
hopeful lives.
He was never known to shout or be over vehement or angry, even when
he had to correct; he touched offences, but pardoned offenders,
saying that the doctors' was the right model, who treat sickness
but are not angry with the sick. It is human, he thought, to err,
but divine (whether in God or man) to put the error right.
A life of this sort left him without wants of his own; but he was
always ready to render any proper service to his friends--including
reminders to those among them who passed for fortunate, how brief
was their tenure of what they so prided themselves upon.
To all, on
the other hand, who repined at poverty, resented exile, or
complained of old age or bad health, he administered laughing
consolation, and bade them not forget how soon their troubles would
be over, the distinction between good and bad be obsolete, and long
freedom succeed to short-lived distress.
He was fond of playing peace-maker between brothers at variance, or
presiding over the restoration of marital harmony. He could say a
word in season, too, before an agitated political assembly, which
would turn the scale in favour of patriotic duty. Such was the
temper that philosophy produced in him, kindly, mild, and cheerful.
Nothing ever grieved him except the illness or death of a friend,
friendship being the one among blessings that he put highest; and
indeed he was every man's friend, counting among his kindred
whatever had human shape. Not that there were no degrees in the
pleasure different people's society gave him; but he avoided none,
except those who seemed so far astray that they could get no good
from him. And every word or act in which these principles took
shape might have been dictated by the Graces and Aphrodite; for 'on
his lips Persuasion sat,' as the play has it.
Accordingly he was regarded with reverence at Athens, both by the
collective assembly and by the officials; he always continued to be
a person of great consequence in their eyes. And this though most
of them had been at first offended with him, and hated him as
heartily as their ancestors had Socrates. Besides his candour and
independence, there had been found Anytuses and Meletuses to repeat
the historic charges: _he had never been known to sacrifice, and
he made himself singular by avoiding initiation at Eleusis_. On
this occasion he showed his courage by appearing in a garland and
festal attire, and then pleading his cause before the people with a
dash of unwonted asperity infused into his ordinary moderate tone.
On the count of never having sacrificed to Athene, 'Men of Athens,'
he said, 'there is nothing wonderful in this; it was only that I
gave the Goddess credit for being able to do very well without
sacrifices from me. ' And in the matter of the Mysteries, his reason
for not following the usual practice was this: if the Mysteries
turned out to be bad, he would never be able to keep quiet about it
to the uninitiated, but must dissuade them from the ceremony;
while, if they were good, humanity would tempt him to divulge them.
The Athenians, stone in hand already, were at once disarmed, and
from that time onwards paid him honour and respect, which
ultimately rose to reverence. Yet he had opened his case with a
bitter enough reproof: 'Men of Athens, you see me ready garlanded;
proceed to sacrifice me, then; your former offering [Footnote:
i. e. , Socrates. ] was deficient in this formality. '
I will now give some specimens of his pointed and witty sayings,
which may begin with his answers to Favorinus. The latter had heard
that he made fun of his lectures, and in particular of the
sentimental verses with which they were garnished, and which
Demonax thought contemptible, womanish, and quite unsuited to
philosophy. So he came and asked him: 'Who, pray, are you, that you
should pour scorn upon me? ' 'I am the possessor of a critical pair
of ears,' was the answer. The sophist had not had enough;
'_You_ are no infant,' he went on, 'but a philosopher, it
seems; may one ask what marks the transformation? ' 'The marks of
manhood,' said Demonax.
Another time the same person came up and asked him what school of
philosophy he belonged to. 'Who told you I was a philosopher? ' was
all he said. But as he left him, he had a good laugh to himself,
which Favorinus observing, demanded what he was laughing at; 'I was
only amused by your taking a man for a philosopher because he wears
a beard, when you have none yourself. '
When Sidonius, who had a great reputation at Athens as a teacher,
was boasting that he was conversant with all the philosophic
systems--but I had better quote his words. 'Let Aristotle call, and
I follow to the Lyceum; Plato, and I hurry to the Academy; Zeno,
and I make my home in the Porch; Pythagoras, and I keep the rule of
silence. ' Then rose Demonax from among the audience: 'Sidonius,
Pythagoras calls. '
A pretty girlish young man called Python, son of some Macedonian
grandee, once by way of quizzing him asked a riddling question and
invited him to show his acumen over it. 'I only see one thing, dear
child,' he said, 'and that is, that you are a _fair_ logician. '
The other lost his temper at this equivoque, and threatened him:
'You shall see in a minute what a man can do. ' 'Oh, you keep a man,
do you? ' was Demonax's smiling retort.
He once, for daring to laugh at an athlete who displayed himself in
gay clothes because he had won an Olympic victory, received a blow
on the head with a stone, which drew blood. The bystanders were all
as angry as if they had themselves been the victims, and set up a
shout--'The Proconsul! the Proconsul! ' 'Thank you, gentlemen,' said
Demonax, 'but I should prefer the doctor. '
He once picked up a little gold charm in the road as he walked, and
posted a notice in the market-place stating that the loser could
recover his property, if he would call upon Demonax and give
particulars of the weight, material, and workmanship. A handsome
young exquisite came, professing to have lost it. The philosopher
soon saw that it was a got-up story; 'Ah, my boy,' he said, 'you
will do very well, if you lose your other charms as little as you
have lost this one. '
A Roman senator at Athens once presented his son, who had great
beauty of a soft womanish type. 'My son salutes you, sir,' he said.
To which Demonax answered, 'A pretty lad, worthy of his father, and
extremely like his mother. '
A cynic who emphasized his principles by wearing a bear's skin he
insisted on addressing not by his name of Honoratus, but as Bruin.
Asked for a definition of Happiness, he said that only the free was
happy. 'Well,' said the questioner, 'there is no lack of free
men. '--'I count no man free who is subject to hopes and fears. '--
'You ask impossibilities; of these two we are all very much the
slaves. ' 'Once grasp the nature of human affairs,' said Demonax,
'and you will find that they justify neither hope nor fear, since
both pain and pleasure are to have an end. '
Peregrine Proteus was shocked at his taking things so lightly, and
treating mankind as a subject for humour: 'You have no teeth,
Demonax. ' 'And you, Peregrine, have no bowels. '
A physical philosopher was discoursing about the antipodes; Demonax
took his hand, and led him to a well, in which he showed him his
own reflection: 'Do you want us to believe that the antipodes are
like _that_? '
A man once boasted that he was a wizard, and possessed of mighty
charms whereby he could get what he chose out of anybody. 'Will it
surprise you to learn that I am a fellow-craftsman? ' asked Demonax;
'pray come with me to the baker's, and you shall see a single
charm, just one wave of my magic wand, induce him to bestow several
loaves upon me. ' Current coin, he meant, is as good a magician as
most.
The great Herodes, mourning the untimely death of Pollux, used to
have the carriage and horses got ready, and the place laid at
table, as though the dead were going to drive and eat. To him came
Demonax, saying that he brought a message from Pollux. Herodes,
delighted with the idea that Demonax was humouring his whim like
other people, asked what it was that Pollux required of him. 'He
cannot think why you are so long coming to him. '
When another person kept himself shut up in the dark, mourning his
son, Demonax represented himself to him as a magician: he would
call up the son's ghost, the only condition being that he should be
given the names of three people who had never had to mourn. The
father hum'd and ha'd, unable, doubtless, to produce any such
person, till Demonax broke in: 'And have you, then, a monopoly of
the unendurable, when you cannot name a man who has not some grief
to endure? '
He often ridiculed the people who use obsolete and uncommon words
in their lectures. One of these produced a bit of Attic purism in
answer to some question he had put. 'My dear sir,' he said, 'the
date of my question is to-day; that of your answer is _temp_.
_Bell_. _Troj_. '
A friend asking him to come to the temple of Asclepius, there to
make prayer for his son, 'Poor deaf Asclepius! ' he exclaimed; 'can
he not hear at this distance? '
He once saw two philosophers engaged in a very unedifying game of
cross questions and crooked answers. 'Gentlemen,' said he, 'here is
one man milking a billy-goat, and another catching the proceeds in
a sieve. '
When Agathocles the Peripatetic vaunted himself as the first and
only dialectician, he asked him how he could be the first, if he
was the only, or the only, if he was the first.
The consular Cethegus, on his way to serve under his father in
Asia, said and did many foolish things. A friend describing him as
a great ass, 'Not even a _great_ ass,' said Demonax.
When Apollonius was appointed professor of philosophy in the
Imperial household, Demonax witnessed his departure, attended by a
great number of his pupils. 'Why, here is Apollonius with all his
Argonauts,' he cried.
Asked whether he held the soul to be immortal, 'Dear me, yes,' he
said; 'everything is. '
He remarked a propos of Herodes that Plato was quite right about
our having more than one soul; the same soul could not possibly
compose those splendid declamations, and have places laid for
Regilla and Pollux after their death.
He was once bold enough to ask the assembled people, when he heard
the sacred proclamation, why they excluded barbarians from the
Mysteries, seeing that Eumolpus, the founder of them, was a
barbarian from Thrace.
When he once had a winter voyage to make, a friend asked how he
liked the thought of being capsized and becoming food for fishes.
'I should be very unreasonable to mind giving them a meal,
considering how many they have given me. '
To a rhetorician who had given a very poor declamation he
recommended constant practice. 'Why, I am always practising to
myself,' says the man. 'Ah, that accounts for it; you are
accustomed to such a foolish audience. '
Observing a soothsayer one day officiating for pay, he said: 'I
cannot see how you can ask pay. If it is because you can change the
course of Fate, you cannot possibly put the figure high enough: if
everything is settled by Heaven, and not by you, what is the good
of your soothsaying? '
A hale old Roman once gave him a little exhibition of his skill in
fence, taking a clothes-peg for his mark. 'What do you think of my
play, Demonax? ' he said. 'Excellent, so long as you have a wooden
man to play with. '
Even for questions meant to be insoluble he generally had a shrewd
answer at command. Some one tried to make a fool of him by asking,
If I burn a hundred pounds of wood, how many pounds of smoke shall
I get? 'Weigh the ashes; the difference is all smoke. '
One Polybius, an uneducated man whose grammar was very defective,
once informed him that he had received Roman citizenship from the
Emperor. 'Why did he not make you a Greek instead? ' asked Demonax.
Seeing a decorated person very proud of his broad stripe, he
whispered in his ear, while he took hold of and drew attention to
the cloth, 'This attire did not make its original wearer anything
but a sheep. '
Once at the bath the water was at boiling point, and some one
called him a coward for hesitating to get in. 'What,' said he, 'is
my country expecting me to do my duty? '
Some one asked him what he took the next world to be like. 'Wait a
bit, and I will send you the information. '
A minor poet called Admetus told him he had inserted a clause in
his will for the inscribing on his tomb of a monostich, which I
will give:
Admetus' husk earth holds, and Heaven himself.
'What a beautiful epitaph, Admetus! ' said Demonax, 'and what a pity
it is not up yet! '
The shrunk shanks of old age are a commonplace; but when his
reached this state, some one asked him what was the matter with
them. 'Ah,' he said with a smile, 'Charon has been having a bite at
them. '
He interrupted a Spartan who was scourging his servant with, 'Why
confer on your slave the privilege of Spartans [Footnote: See
_Spartans_ in Notes. ] like yourself? ' He observed to one Danae,
who was bringing a suit against her brother, 'Have the law of him
by all means; it was another Danae whose father was called the
Lawless. [Footnote: See _Danae_ in Notes. ]
He waged constant warfare against all whose philosophy was not
practical, but for show. So when he saw a cynic, with threadbare
cloak and wallet, but a braying-pestle instead of a staff,
proclaiming himself loudly as a follower of Antisthenes, Crates,
and Diogenes, he said: 'Tell us no lies; your master is the
professor of braying. '
Noticing how foul play was growing among the athletes, who often
supplemented the resources of boxing and wrestling with their
teeth, he said it was no wonder that the champions' partisans had
taken to describing them as lions.
There was both wit and sting in what he said to the proconsul. The
latter was one of the people who take all the hair off their bodies
with pitch-plaster. A cynic mounted a block of stone and cast this
practice in his teeth, suggesting that it was for immoral purposes.
The proconsul in a rage had the man pulled down, and was on the
point of condemning him to be beaten or banished, when Demonax, who
was present, pleaded for him on the ground that he was only
exercising the traditional cynic licence. 'Well,' said the
proconsul, 'I pardon him this time at your request; but if he
offends again, what shall I do to him? ' 'Have him depilated,' said
Demonax.
Another person, entrusted by the Emperor with the command of
legions and the charge of a great province, asked him what was the
way to govern well. 'Keep your temper, say little, and hear much. '
Asked whether he ate honey-cakes, 'Do you suppose,' he said, 'that
bees only make honey for fools? '
Noticing near the Poecile a statue minus a hand, he said it had
taken Athens a long time to get up a bronze to Cynaegirus.
Alluding to the lame Cyprian Rufinus, who was a Peripatetic and
spent much time in the Lyceum walks, 'What presumption,' he
exclaimed, 'for a cripple to call himself a Walking Philosopher! '
Epictetus once urged him, with a touch of reproof, to take a wife
and raise a family--for it beseemed a philosopher to leave some one
to represent him after the flesh. But he received the home thrust:
'Very well, Epictetus; give me one of your daughters. '
His remark to Herminus the Aristotelian is equally worth recording.
He was aware that this man's character was vile and his misdeeds
innumerable, and yet his mouth was always full of Aristotle and his
ten predicaments. 'Certainly, Herminus,' he said, 'no predicament
is too bad for you. '
When the Athenians were thinking, in their rivalry with Corinth, of
starting gladiatorial shows, he came forward and said: 'Men of
Athens, before you pass this motion, do not forget to destroy the
altar of Pity. '
On the occasion of his visiting Olympia, the Eleans voted a bronze
statue to him. But he remonstrated: 'It will imply a reproach to
your ancestors, men of Elis, who set up no statue to Socrates or
Diogenes. '
I once heard him observe to a learned lawyer that laws were not of
much use, whether meant for the good or for the bad; the first do
not need them, and upon the second they have no effect.
There was one line of Homer always on his tongue:
Idle or busy, death takes all alike.
He had a good word for Thersites, as a cynic and a leveller.
Asked which of the philosophers was most to his taste, he said: 'I
admire them all; Socrates I revere, Diogenes I admire, Aristippus I
love. '
He lived to nearly a hundred, free from disease and pain, burdening
no man, asking no man's favour, serving his friends, and having no
enemies. Not Athens only, but all Greece was so in love with him
that as he passed the great would give him place and there would be
a general hush. Towards the end of his long life he would go
uninvited into the first house that offered, and there get his
dinner and his bed, the household regarding it as the visit of some
heavenly being which brought them a blessing. When they saw him go
by, the baker-wives would contend for the honour of supplying him,
and a happy woman was the actual donor. Children too used to call
him father, and bring him offerings of fruit.
Party spirit was once running high at Athens; he came into the
assembly, and his mere appearance was enough to still the storm.
When he saw that they were ashamed, he departed again without
having uttered a word.
When he found that he was no longer able to take care of himself,
he repeated to his friends the tag with which the heralds close the
festival:
The games are done,
The crowns all won;
No more delay,
But haste away,
and from that moment abstaining from food, left life as cheerfully
as he had lived it.
When the end was near, he was asked his wishes about burial. 'Oh,
do not trouble; scent will summon my undertakers. ' Well, but it
would be indecent for the body of so great a man to feed birds and
dogs. 'Oh, no harm in making oneself useful in death to anything
that lives. '
However, the Athenians gave him a magnificent public funeral, long
lamented him, worshipped and garlanded the stone seat on which he
had been wont to rest when tired, accounting the mere stone
sanctified by him who had sat upon it. No one would miss the
funeral ceremony, least of all any of the philosophers. It was
these who bore him to the grave.
I have made but a small selection of the material available; but it
may serve to give readers some idea of this great man's character.
A PORTRAIT-STUDY
_Lycinus. Polystratus_
_Ly_. Polystratus, I know now what men must have felt like
when they saw the Gorgon's head. I have just experienced the same
sensation, at the sight of a most lovely woman. A little more, and
I should have realized the legend, by being turned to stone; I am
benumbed with admiration.
_Poly_. Wonderful indeed must have been the beauty, and
terrible the power of the woman who could produce such an
impression on Lycinus. Tell me of this petrifying Medusa. Who is
she, and whence? I would see her myself. You will not grudge me
that privilege? Your jealousy will not take alarm at the prospect
of a rival petrifaction at your side?
_Ly_. Well, I give you fair warning: one distant glimpse of
her, and you are speechless, motionless as any statue. Nay, that is
a light affliction: the mortal wound is not dealt till _her_
glance has fallen on _you_. What can save you then? She will
lead you in chains, hither and thither, as the magnet draws the
steel.
_Poly_. Enough! You would make her more than human. And now
tell me who she is.
_Ly_. You think I am exaggerating: I fear you will have but a
poor opinion of my eloquence when you see her as she is--so far
above my praise. _Who_ she is, I cannot say: but to judge from
the splendour of her surroundings, her retinue, her host of eunuchs
and maids, she must be of no ordinary rank.
_Poly_. And you never even asked her name?
_Ly_. Why no; but she is from Ionia; because, as she passed, I
heard one of the bystanders speak aside to his neighbour: 'See, he
exclaimed, 'what Smyrna can produce! And what wonder, if the
fairest of Ionian cities has given birth to the fairest of women? '
I thought he must come from Smyrna himself, he was so proud of her.
_Poly_. There you acted your stony part to perfection. As you
could neither follow her, nor make inquiries of the Smyrnaean, it
only remains for you to describe her as best you can, on the chance
of my recognizing her.
_Ly_. You know not what you ask. It is not in the power of
words--certainly not of _my_ words--to portray such wondrous
beauty; scarcely could an Apelles, a Zeuxis, a Parrhasius,--a
Phidias or an Alcamenes, do justice to it; as for my flimsy
workmanship, it will but insult the original.
_Poly_. Well, never mind; what was she like? There can be no
harm in trying your hand. What if the portrait be somewhat out of
drawing? --the critic is your good friend.
_Ly_. I think my best way out of it will be to call in the aid
of some of the old masters I have named: let them fashion the
likeness for me.
_Poly_. Well, but--will they come? They have been dead so
long.
