When we are close at hand we will take
to the ground, if you please, and come up to him walking, so as
not to frighten him by dropping in from the unseen.
to the ground, if you please, and come up to him walking, so as
not to frighten him by dropping in from the unseen.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v16 - Lev to Mai
Darwin observed that the
Fuegians had great difficulty in comprehending an alternative;
and every one must have noticed the tendency among savages to
form words by reduplication. This also is characteristic of child-
hood among civilized races.
Again, some of the most brutal acts which have been recorded
against them are to be regarded less as instances of deliberate
cruelty than of a childish thoughtlessness and impulsiveness. A
striking instance of this is recorded by Byron in his narrative of
the 'Loss of the Wager. ' A cacique of the Chonos, who was
nominally a Christian, had been out with his wife to fish for sea-
eggs, and having had little success, returned in a bad humor.
"A little boy of theirs, about three years old, whom they appeared
to be doatingly fond of, watching for his father and mother's
return, ran into the surf to meet them: the father handed a
basket of eggs to the child, which being too heavy for him to
carry, he let it fall; upon which the father jumped out of the
canoe, and catching the boy up in his arms, dashed him with the
utmost violence against the stones. The poor little creature lay
motionless and bleeding, and in that condition was taken up by
the mother, but died soon after. "
In fact, we may fairly sum up this part of the question in a
few words by saying, as the most general conclusion which can
be arrived at, that savages have the character of children with
the passions and strength of men.
## p. 9285 (#301) ###########################################
9285
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
(120-200? A. D. )
BY EMILY JAMES SMITH
D
URING the middle and end of the second Christian century, a
revival of Greek letters gave us the remarkable movement
known as the New Sophistic. For the most part futile in
aim and pedantic in method, the sophistic offers such a spectacle of
solemn and fatuous frivolity that the lover of Hellenism knows not
where to look. But by sheer force of monopoly in education and
literature, the school counted as its disciples whatever men of talent
the century produced; and among them a man of letters of almost
the highest rank. Having as their aim
nothing less than a forcible recovery of the
productive Greek genius, the sophists fol-
lowed a vigorous propedeutic in the works
of the great masters. A critical knowledge
of the vocabulary of Plato, of the Attic
orators, and of the Old Comedy, was the
foundation of every sophist's skill. This
erudition, in itself respectable and helpful,
was however put to foolish use. The dif-
ference between using the language of De-
mosthenes and being one's self an orator
was overlooked. Famous sentences of great
writers were worked over, rearranged, and
presented as a fresh creation,-as Virgil-
ian tags to-day coldly furnish forth the English schoolboy's verses.
It was probably the influence of Rome that determined the revival
as oratorical in form; the empire furnished it with endowed chairs
of rhetoric, with a royal audience, and with political importance: yet
it was held a solecism by the sophists to introduce a Roman name
or an allusion to Rome into a Greek composition.
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
Worldly ambition, then, and literary tastes pulled in the same
direction; and for a clever lad, growing up in a far Syrian village,
conscious of great gifts, and of a tumultuous egoism, there was no
alternative. Breaking away from the handicraft to which he was
apprenticed, Lucian betook himself, still a boy of fifteen, to the study
of Greek and to the profession of rhetoric. Asia Minor was full of
## p. 9286 (#302) ###########################################
9286
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
sophists. It is not likely that Lucian was able to afford a course
under any of the great masters, and he nowhere speaks of any such
thing. But the air was so full of their theories, and their public per-
formances were so frequent, that an apt student could easily learn
what their art was like. At any rate, we know that Lucian's ambi-
tion was successful: that he acquired what culture the sophistic had
to offer, won a share of its prizes,- and then broke with it, laugh-
ing at its methods and pretensions with the detachment of a critic
of to-day. The modern reader of Lucian is impressed by no qual-
ity more strongly than by his spontaneity; an adequate estimate of
his talent must be based on the reflection that this spontaneity is
inclosed in stereotyped forms and expressed in an acquired language.
His fair structure is raised on made ground. He owed the tools he
worked with, as well as the designs he followed, to the sophistic; and
the weapons that he turned on his preceptress were from her own
anvil. A man cannot, by criticizing his early education, rid himself
of the effects of it; and in spite of Lucian's conscious originality,
scorn of pedantry, and apparent disregard of convention, we must
realize that he is after all but the most favorable example of what
the sophistic training could do.
Possessed of a sense of humor that permitted even his irritable
vanity no illusions, and of a deep conviction of the unimportance of
serious matters, Lucian would have been delighted to hear that the
theologians and moralists of a new era were destined to take him
seriously. It is undeniable that he spoke slightingly of the Christians
on the one hand, and on the other took liberties with Olympus; but
it can hardly be proved that he was interested either in hastening
the end of th old order or in deferring the installation of the new.
In the extraordinary spiritual conditions of the second century of our
era, Lucian's attitude finds a background so striking as to produce a
feeling that in some way, contrary to the general laws of things, he
stood alone, unrelated to the spirit of his age, and without sympathy
as without peers.
Religion was under the protection of the empire
and of Stoicism; strange new doctrines were freely taught and fol-
lowed with fanaticism; the soul was not only held immortal, but was
believed to revisit the earth after its liberation from the body; new
oracles made themselves heard; philosophy leaned to mysticism. And
in this heyday of error a great writer appeared, distinguished next
to his literary gifts by a coolness of judgment in such matters, and
a taste for the truth, that would have been remarkable in any age.
The 'Dialogues of the Gods,' probably the most famous of Lucian's
works, from which the first two selections in this collection are made,
were written to be delivered by him in person before a popular
audience. When an author under these circumstances devoted his
## p. 9287 (#303) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9287
talents to parodying the popular religion, what idea are we to form
as to his own attitude, that of his hearers, and the effect he hoped
to produce? It seems idle to imagine either that Lucian's audience
was a band of atheists, drawn together primarily by the spirit of
philosophic controversy; or that Lucian himself, without being sure
of the temper of his hearers, was willing to risk unpopularity, if need
be, in the interests of truth as he conceived it. The second alter-
native was Friedländer's view, and is indeed generally held.
But we
may be sure, from Lucian's own account of the genesis of the new
form of comic dialogue, that his interest in its workings was chiefly
literary; it was the literary possibilities of Olympus that inspired
the 'Dialogues of the Gods. ' There is no trace in them of the bitter-
ness of polemic, or the forcing of the note that we should expect to
find if he relied on his irreverence as his chief charm. And next to
satisfying his own high standard of literary excellence, his chief
preoccupation was to recommend himself to the public. When his
attacks on contemporary philosophy passed the limit of what the pub-
lic wanted in that line; when his praise of a great person, or the
variance between his theory and practice in the matter of taking sal-
aries, were the subject of unflattering comment,- he was at pains
to meet objections and explain them away. Half a dozen passages
betray his sensitive vanity and his desire that men should speak well
of him. With these evidences of his temperament and his methods, it
is impossible to believe in him as an apostle.
The revival of orthodoxy which marked the religious thought of
the second century was a voluntary reaction against the skepticism
of the preceding age; men agreed to believe in the gods because
they could not bear to do without them. The literature of the day
shows a conscious surrender of the rights of the intellect, a willing-
ness to blink the truth if error satisfied the heart; a desire to mar-
shal the hopes and fears connected with the supernatural among the
motives toward right conduct, and a bewilderment in scientific mat-
ters that left room for the existence in heaven and earth of many
things inexplicable by any philosophy. The difference between an
artificial religious attitude like this, and the uncritical faith of men
who believe in the gods on grounds that they have never thought of
questioning, must be taken into account before we can estimate the
effect of Lucian's parodies. Though Aristides might write a hymn.
to Zeus, and Dion celebrate him in all his functions, still each man
had his own complex of ideas represented by the name; and it is
hardly possible that to thoughtful minds it still called up with mov-
ing force the Homeric husband of Hera. The laborious task was not
to throw off the phraseology and demeanor of orthodoxy, but to pre-
serve them; and Lucian declined to make the effort.
## p. 9288 (#304) ###########################################
9288
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
His parody, then, of the Homeric gods, though it undoubtedly pro-
duced in many of his hearers a pleasurable thrill of misgiving, a
sense of almost perilous audacity in the light use of words once
sacred, derived its effect primarily from its literary quality. We may
safely say that the substitution of every-day prose for the epic style
in the mouths of the gods was more striking to the audience than
the ethical and theological inferences to be drawn from the dialogues.
That is to say, the inferences must have been tolerably familiar to
men's minds before such an entertainment could be risked by a pop-
ular performer. In these dialogues Lucian keeps to the authorities.
He takes each situation as he finds it, and holds tradition sacred,
showing a literary preoccupation obviously incompatible with a serious
tendency. Most of them show little of the malice of caricature; the
scene between Aphrodite and Selene, included here, with its charm-
ing pictures of the sleeping Endymion, would not have shocked the
Theocritean worshipers of Adonis. Those in which the comic element
is stronger, still stand on their own merits as character studies; and
the fact that the persons concerned were once held to be divine seems
to have been less before the author's mind than the fact that Homer
once treated of them in the grand manner, clothing even undignified
situations in a majesty which it was Lucian's delight to tear away.
Most handbooks of the history of ancient philosophy include Lu-
cian's name, though with some vagueness in the statement of their
grounds for so doing. It is true that he had a great deal to say
about philosophers, and something about philosophy; but this was the
result of two accidental circumstances. One of these was the fact of
Plato's style, which had an irresistible claim on him as a man of let-
ters; the other was the prevalence of philosophers as a picturesque
element in that contemporary society which he was interested in
describing. The Platonic system as a lesson in expression, and con-
temporary systems as social phenomena, occupied him greatly; with
the fortunate result that we know how each affected a man of the
world. In close relation to the literary hold of Plato himself on
Lucian, we must take into account the attraction that existed for
his taste in the decency of the contemporary Platonic discipline and
the exclusiveness of the Platonic temper. The Platonist in Lucian's
Symposium is the type of propriety in appearance and conduct, and
exhibits a strained and scornful courtesy. Plato himself remains
aloof, even beyond the grave, and is found neither in Hades nor in
the Isles of the Blest, preferring to dwell in his own Polity. But
this exclusiveness was too congenial to Lucian to be dwelt on with
any vigor of sarcasm, and indeed he reflects part of it in his remarks
on the shoemaker in philosophy. For physical theory and meta-
physics he never had a serious word, rejecting them with an easy
## p. 9289 (#305) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9289
assumption of superiority on the ground that their advocates differed
among themselves and used terms unintelligible to a layman; and it
was not only the contemporary presentation to which he objected,
but that of the originators as well, Plato among the rest.
Besides these two feelings for Platonism,- indifference to its
metaphysics and enthusiasm for its form,-Lucian had a deep dis-
trust of it in a practical matter that interested him greatly; viz. , the
question of the marvelous and its credibility. The Platonic doctrine
of the future state of the soul had expanded into a variety of fantas-
tic beliefs, developed by the Stoics for ethical purposes into a doc-
trinal basis for ghost stories. In one aspect the "dæmon" was an
underling and emissary of the supreme godhead, immortal but subject.
to sensation, working with men in all ways, and appearing to them
in visible shape as this god or that. In another aspect it was man's
own soul, divine in essence though conditioned by the limitations
of bodily life, which when freed from its earthly hamper came freely
among men out of pity for their impotent condition, which it once
shared. These two conceptions of the dæmon converged in the gen-
eral notion of innumerable supernatural agencies, corporeal and
therefore of like passions with men, who spoke through the oracles,
possessed epileptics, haunted houses, and conveniently accounted for
the inexplicable in general.
The manifestations of this belief and the unscrupulous use made
of it by impostors constituted a burning question with Lucian; and
in his travels through the world, this phase of folly moved him to
more than disinterested literary treatment. We have seen how little
odium theologicum he brought to bear on Olympus, even contriving to
give his readers a fresh impression of the ineffable beauty of god-
desses and the petulant grace of nymphs. And even when his quick
and impatient mind was playing with the philosophers, whether
selling them at auction in pure frolic, or as a man of the world tell-
ing a friend with innuendo how they dine, or ranging himself with
the great dead and haranguing his contemporaries with a rhetoric at
which he smiled himself, it is plain that in his eyes the literary
opportunities they gave him excused their existence. After all, he
did not excite himself about them. But one set of persons and ideas
so stirred him as to break through his serenity, and bring him down
from his seat as a spectator to try a fall himself. In the Philo-
pseudes,' the third of the selections here given,-a Stoic, a Platon-
ist, a Peripatetic, and a Pythagorean, meeting at the bedside of a sick
friend, exchange tales of the marvelous, and try to persuade Tychi-
ades, the champion of common-sense, that dæmons exist, and phan-
tasms, and that the souls of the dead walk the earth, appearing to
whom they will. Of the sects represented, it was the Platonists and
Pythagoreans who were chiefly responsible for the degradation of the
## p. 9290 (#306) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9290
dæmon theory; and Lucian's feeling toward them is expressed in
the dialogue with successful malice. Apart from this consideration,
the most significant passage for Lucian's philosophy expresses his
approval of Democritus's steadfast conviction that souls do not exist
after they leave the body. His agreement with Democritus and the
Epicureans in this matter, more fully expressed in his remarkable
pamphlet on Alexander the charlatan of Abonotichas, seems to be
the nearest approach he made towards seriously adopting the tenets
of a sect.
nor
The selections given here, and this commentary on them, cover
the chief ground of debate in regard to Lucian. Neither a theologian
philosopher, he contrived by means of his literary gift so to
clothe ideas in themselves unimportant as to give them a goodly
chance of immortality. The Christian scholiasts of the Byzantine age
read him with anathemas; the scholars of the Renaissance recovered
him with delight; Erasmus and Sir Thomas More used him as a
literary model; Raphael and Dürer illustrated him. In recent days
Mr. Pater has given him a fresh vogue with the general reader; and
scholars are busy with his text, his style, and his antiquities. Inter-
est in him is not likely to fail: he lived in a period of vital historic
issues. By birth a Syrian, politically a Roman, intellectually the last
of the Hellenes, he stands as an epitome of the most momentous of
international episodes.
Swith
Quily James
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. -There is no complete modern English
translation of the works of Lucian. The following translations of
selected works have appeared within the last ten years:- 'Lucian's
Dialogues': Howard Williams, M. A. , London, 1888. 'Selections from
Lucian': Emily James Smith, New York, 1892. Contents: The Dream,
Zeus in Tragedy, The Ass, The Cock, Toxaris, The Halcyon, A True
History, The Sale of Lives. Six Dialogues of Lucian's': Sidney T.
Irwin, M. A. , London, 1894. Partial translations of 'Hermotimus' and
"The Halcyon' occur in Walter Pater's Marius the Epicurean,' pages
245-248 and 291-310. An English commentary on Lucian's life and
works is to be found in the volume entitled 'Lucian' of the 'Ancient
Classics for English Readers' Series, by the Rev. W. L. Collins.
'Selections from Lucian,' in the original Greek, have been edited
with English notes by Evelyn Abbott, London, 1872. Several other
editions of one or more works of Lucian are included in the 'Pitt
Press' and 'Clarendon Press' series.
E. J. S.
## p. 9291 (#307) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9291
―――
----
APHRODITE AND SELENE
PHRODITE
A
What is this story about you, Selene? They say
that whenever you come to Curia you stop your car to
gaze down upon Endymion, sleeping under the open sky as
becomes a huntsman. And sometimes, they say, you leave your
course altogether and descend to him.
Selene - Ask that son of yours, Aphrodite. He is to blame
for all this.
Aphrodite-Ah, he respects no one. What things he has
done to me, his mother! now dragging me to Ida for Anchi-
ses's sake, now to Libanus to meet that Assyrian boy. And the
Assyrian he brought into Persephone's good graces too, and so
robbed me of half my lover. I have often threatened to break
his arrows and quiver and tie his wings unless he abandoned
these games. And I have taken him across my knee before
this and smacked him with my sandal. But somehow or other,
though he is frightened at the moment and prays for mercy, he
presently forgets all about it. But tell me, is Endymion hand-
some ?
Selene To my mind he is very handsome indeed, Aphrodite;
especially when he lies wrapped in his blanket asleep on the
rocks, his left hand loosely closed upon his darts, his right arm
bent above his head and making a charming frame for his face,
his whole body relaxed in sleep and stirred by his sweet breath-
ing. Then I came down noiselessly, on tiptoe, lest he wake
annoyed. Still, you know all this: why should I tell you any
But I am sick with love.
more?
Translated by Emily James Smith.
THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS
Persons: Zeus, Hermes, Paris, Hera, Athena, Aphrodite
Z FU
EUS-Hermes, take this apple and go to Phrygia, to Priam's
son, the cowherd,- he is pasturing his drove on Ida,- and
say to him that since he is handsome himself, and a connois-
seur in matters of love, he has been appointed by Zeus to judge
which is the fairest of the three goddesses. The apple is to be
the victor's prize. [To the goddesses. ] It is time now that you
ladies were off to the judge. I have delegated the office of
## p. 9292 (#308) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9292
umpire because I am equally attached to you all, and if it were
possible I should gladly see you all win. Moreover, the man who
gives the prize of beauty to one must in the nature of things be
detested by the others. These reasons disqualify me as umpire;
but the young man in Phrygia to whom you are going is of a
royal house, being in fact a cousin of Ganymede, whom you
know,- and he has the simple manner of the mountains.
Aphrodite - For my part, Zeus, you might make Momus him-
self the umpire and I should still go confidently to trial; for what
could he find to criticize in me? And the others must needs put
up with the man.
――――――
Hera-We are not afraid either, Aphrodite, even if your
Ares were to settle the question. We are satisfied with this
man, whoever he is, this Paris.
Zeus [to Athena]-Well, daughter, are you of the same mind?
What do you say? You turn away blushing? It is natural for
you virgins to be coy in such matters. But you might at least
nod. [Athena nods. ] Off with you, then; and the defeated,
mind you, are not to be angry with the judge nor to do any
harm to the young man. It is impossible for all to be equal in
beauty. [They start. ]
Hermes-Let us make straight for Phrygia.
and do you follow smartly. And don't be uneasy.
he is a handsome young fellow, a lover by temperament, and a
most competent judge in such cases as this. His decision will
certainly be correct.
you.
―――――――
I will go first,
I know Paris;
Aphrodite-That is good news, and all in my favor. [Ta
Hermes, apart. ] Is this person a bachelor, or has he a wife?
Hermes-Not exactly a bachelor.
Aphrodite - What do you mean?
Hermes-Apparently a woman of Ida is his mate: a good
enough creature, but crude and extremely rustic. He does not
seem to care much about her. But why do you ask?
Aphrodite-Oh, I just asked.
Athena [to Hermes]- This is a breach of trust, sirrah. You
are having a private understanding with Aphrodite.
Hermes-It's nothing terrible, and has nothing to do with
She was asking me whether Paris is a bachelor.
Athena - Why is that any business of hers?
Hermes I don't know; she says she asked casually, without
any object.
## p. 9293 (#309) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9293
Athena-Well, is he a bachelor?
Hermes - Apparently not.
Athena Has he any leaning towards war? Is he an ambi-
tious person, or a cowherd merely?
Hermes I can't say certainly; but it is safe to guess that a
man of his age will hanker after fighting and long to distinguish
himself in the field.
-
――
-
Aphrodite See now, I don't find any fault with you for talk-
ing apart with her. Fault-finding is not natural to Aphrodite.
Hermes-She was asking me almost exactly what you did, so
don't take it amiss or think you are badly treated. I answered
her just as simply as I did you.
But while we are talking we have come a long way.
We
have left the stars behind and almost reached Phrygia. I see Ida
and the whole range of Gargarus clearly; and unless I am mis-
taken, I can even make out Paris, your judge.
Hera-Where is he? I don't see him.
Hermes-Look off to the left, not at the summit of the
mountain, but along the flank where the cave is.
There you see
the herd.
-
Hera- - But not the herdsman.
Hermes-What? Look along my finger, so.
Don't you see
the cows coming from among the rocks, and a man with a crook
running down the bluff to hem them in and keep them from
scattering further?
Hera- I see now, if that is he.
Hermes-That's he.
When we are close at hand we will take
to the ground, if you please, and come up to him walking, so as
not to frighten him by dropping in from the unseen.
Hera-Very good, we will do so. [They alight. ] Now that
we are on earth, Aphrodite, you had better go ahead and lead
the way.
You are probably familiar with the spot. The story
goes that you have visited Anchises here more than once.
Aphrodite - Those jokes don't bother me very much, Hera.
Hermes-I will lead the way myself. Here is the umpire
close by: let us address him. [To Paris. ] Good morning, cow-
herd!
Paris - Good morning, my lad. Who are you? And who are
these women whom you are escorting? —not mountain-bred: they
are too pretty.
## p. 9294 (#310) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9294
Hermes-And not women. Paris, you see before you Hera
and Athena and Aphrodite; and I am Hermes, bearing a mes-
sage from Zeus. Why do you tremble and lose color? Don't be
frightened; it's nothing bad. He bids you judge which of them
is fairest; "for," says Zeus, "you are fair yourself and wise in
lover's lore, so I turn over the case to you. You will know what
the prize is when you read the legend on the apple. " [Hands
him the apple. ]
Paris-Let me see what it all means. FOR THE FAIREST, the
apple says. How in the world, Lord Hermes, can I, a mortal
man and a rustic, be judge of this marvelous spectacle, which is
beyond a cowherd's powers? Judgment in such matters belongs
rather to the dainty folk in towns. As for me, I have the art to
judge between goat and goat, as between heifer and heifer, in
point of beauty. But these ladies are beautiful alike. I do not
know how a man could drag his sight from one to rest it on an-
other. Wherever my eye falls first, there it clings and approves
what it finds. I am fairly bathed in their beauty. It surrounds
me altogether. I wish I were all eyes, like Argus. I think I
should judge wisely if I gave the apple to all. And here is
something to consider too: one of them is sister and wife of
Zeus, while the others are his daughters. Doesn't this make the
decision hard?
Hermes-I can't say. I only know that you can't shirk what
Zeus commands.
Paris-Make them promise one thing, Hermes: that the losers
will not be angry with me, but only consider my sight defective.
Hermes-They say they will do so; but it is time you made
your decision.
Good heavens,
Paris-I will try; for what else can I do?
what a sight! What beauty! What delight! How fair the maiden
goddess is! and how queenly, glorious, and worthy of her station
is the wife of Zeus! And how sweet is Aphrodite's glance, with
her soft, winning smile! - Bah! I can hold no more pleasure. If
you please, I should like to study each separately; as it is, I look
two ways at once.
Aphrodite - Yes, let us do it that way.
Paris-Go off, then, two of you. Hera, do you stay.
Hera-I will; and when you have considered me carefully
you had better consider something else,-whether you like the
## p. 9295 (#311) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9295
results of a verdict in my favor. For if you decide, Paris, that
I am the fairest, you shall be lord of all Asia.
Go now,
Paris-My justice is not for sale.
I am satisfied.
Come next, Athena.
Athena - Here I am, Paris; and if you decide that I am
fairest, you shall never be beaten in battle. I will make you a
victorious warrior.
Paris I have no use for war and battle, Athena. Peace
reigns, as you see, in Phrygia and Lydia, and my father's realm
is undisturbed. But cheer up: you shall not suffer for it, even
if my justice is not for sale. I have finished with you; it is
Aphrodite's turn.
Aphrodite - At your service, Paris, and I shall bear careful
inspection. And if you like, my dear lad, listen to me too. I
have had an eye on you for some time; and seeing you so young
and handsome-does Phrygia hold such another? -I congratu-
late you on your looks, but I blame you for not leaving these
rocks and living in the city. Why do you waste your beauty in
the desert? What good do you get of the mountains? How are
your cattle the better because you are handsome? You ought
to have had a wife before this; not a wild country girl like the
women of Ida, but a queen from Argos or Corinth, or a Spartan
woman like Helen, for instance. She is young and lovely, in no
way inferior to me, and what is most important, made for love.
If that woman should but see you, I know she would surrender
herself, and leave everything to follow you and be your wife;
but of course you have heard about her yourself.
Paris-Not a word. But I should love to listen if you will
tell me the whole story.
Aphrodite - She is the daughter of that fair Leda whom Zeus
loved.
Paris And what does she look like?
Aphrodite - She is blonde, soft, and delicate, yet strong with
athletic sports. She is so sought after that men fought for her
sake when Theseus stole her, yet a little girl. And when she
was grown up, all the noblest of the Greeks came courting her;
and Menelaus was chosen, of the family of Pelops. But if you
like, I will make her your wife.
-
Paris-What do you mean? She is married already.
Aphrodite - You are a young provincial, to be sure. But I
know how to manage an affair like that.
## p. 9296 (#312) ###########################################
9296
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
Paris-How? I should like to know myself.
Aphrodite-You will set out on your travels, ostensibly to see
Greece; and when you come to Lacedæmon, Helen will see you.
The rest shall be my affair, to arrange that she shall fall in love
with you and follow you.
Paris Ah, that is what seems impossible to me,-that a
woman should be willing to leave her husband and sail away
with a stranger to a strange land.
Aphrodite - Don't worry about that. I have two fair children,
Longing and Love, whom I shall give you as guides on your
journey. And Love shall enter into the woman and compel her
to love, while Longing shall invest you with charm in her eyes.
I will be there myself, and I will ask the Graces to come too, so
that we may make a joint attack upon her.
Paris-How all this is to come about remains to be seen; but
I am already in love with Helen. Somehow or other I see her
with my mind's eye, and my voyage to Greece and my visit to
Sparta and my return with her. It oppresses me that I am not
carrying it out this minute.
Aphrodite - Don't fall in love, Paris, until you have given me
the matchmaker's fee in the shape of a verdict. It would be nice
if we could have a joint festival in honor of your marriage and
my victory. It all rests with you. You can buy love, beauty, a
wife, with that apple.
Paris-I am afraid you will forget me after the award is
made.
Aphrodite - Do you want my oath?
Paris By no means; only your promise.
Aphrodite I promise that I will give you Helen to be your
wife, that she shall follow you to Troy, and that I will attend in
person and help you in every way.
Paris-And you will bring Love and Longing and the Graces?
Aphrodite - Trust me, and I will have Desire and Hymen
there into the bargain.
Paris-On these conditions I award the apple to you. Take it!
Translated by Emily James Smith.
## p. 9297 (#313) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9297
THE AMATEUR OF LYING
Persons: Tychiades, Philocles
YCHIADES-
Τ
I have just come from a visit to Eucrates- -every-
body knows Eucrates-and at his house I heard a lot of
incredible fables. Indeed, I came away in the middle be-
cause I could not stand the extravagance of what I heard. I fled
from the tale of portents and wonders as though the Furies were
at my heels.
-
Philocles-What were they, in Heaven's name? I should like
to know what form of folly Eucrates devises behind that impress-
ive beard of his.
Tychiades-I found at his house a goodly company, includ-
ing Cleodomus the Peripatetic, and Deinomachus the Stoic, and
Ion; - you know Ion, who thinks himself an authority on the
writings of Plato, believing himself the only man who has ex-
actly understood the master's meaning so as to interpret him to
the world. You see what sort of m en were there, of wisdom
and virtue all compact. Antigonus the doctor was there too;
called in professionally, I suppose. Eucrates seemed to be eased
already; his difficulty was a chronic one, and the humors had
subsided to his feet. He motioned me to sit down beside him
on the couch, sinking his voice to invalid's pitch when he saw
me, though I had heard him shouting as I came in. So I sat
down beside him, taking great care not to touch his feet, and
explaining, as one does, that I hadn't heard of his illness before,
and came on a run as soon as the news reached me.
They happened to be still carrying on a discussion of his ail-
ment which had already occupied them some time; and each man
was suggesting a method of treatment.
XVI-582
"Now, if you kill a field-mouse in the way I described," said
Cleodomus, "and pick up one of its teeth from the ground with
your left hand, and wrap it in the skin of a lion newly flayed,
and then tie it round your legs, the pain will cease at once. "
"Why, do you think," I asked, "that any charm can work the
cure, or that what you clap on outside affects a disease lodged
within ? "
"Don't mind him," said Ion. "I will tell you a queer story.
When I was a boy about fourteen years old, a messenger came to
tell my father that Midas, one of his vine-dressers,-a robust,
active fellow,-had been bitten by a snake about noonday, and
## p. 9298 (#314) ###########################################
9298
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
•
#
was then lying with a mortifying leg. As he was tying up the
tendrils and fastening them to the poles, the creature had crept
up and bitten his great toe, disappearing at once into its hole,
while Midas bawled in mortal agony. Such was the message,
and we saw Midas himself borne on a cot by his fellow slaves;
swollen, livid, clammy, and evidently with but a short time to
live. Seeing my father's distress, a friend who stood by said
to him, 'Cheer up: I will bring you a man a Chaldæan from
Babylon, they say who will cure the fellow. ' And to make a
long story short, the Babylonian came and put Midas on his feet,
driving the poison out of his body by an incantation and the
application to his foot of a chip from a maiden's tombstone. And
perhaps this is not very remarkable; though Midas picked up his
own bed and went back to the farm, showing the force that was
in the charm and the stone. But the Babylonian did some other
things that were really remarkable. Early in the morning he
went to the farm, pronounced seven sacred names from an ancient
book, walked round the place three times purifying it with torch
and sulphur, and drove out every creeping thing within the bor-
ders. They came out in numbers as though drawn to the charm:
snakes, asps, adders, horned snakes and darting snakes, toads and
newts. But one old serpent was left behind; detained by age, I
suppose. The magician declared he had not got them all, and
chose one of the snakes, the youngest, to send as an ambassador
to the old one, who very shortly made his appearance also. When
they were all assembled, the Babylonian blew upon them, and
they were forthwith burnt up by his breath, to our astonish-
ment. "
―――
-
"Tell me, Ion," said I, "did the young snake-the ambassa-
dor- give his hand to the old one, or had the old one a crutch
to lean on? "
"You are flippant," said Cleodomus.
While we were talking thus, Eucrates's two sons came in from
the gymnasium,-one of them already a young man, the other
about fifteen; and after greeting us they sat down on the couch.
by their father. A chair was brought for me, and Eucrates
addressed me as though reminded of something by the sight of
the lads. "Tychiades," said he, "may I have no comfort in
these," and he laid a hand on the head of each, "if I am not
telling you the truth. You all know my attachment to my wife,
the mother of these boys. I showed it by my care of her, not
## p. 9299 (#315) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9299
only while she lived, but after her death by burning with her all
the ornaments and clothing that she had pleasure in. On the
seventh day after she died, I was lying here on the couch as I
am at this moment, and trying to beguile my grief by quietly
reading Plato's book on the soul. In the midst of my reading
there enters to me Demineate herself and takes a seat near me,
where Eucratides is now. " He pointed to his younger son, who
forthwith shivered with childish terror. He had already grown
quite pale at the narrative.
"When I saw her," Eucrates went on, "I threw my arms
about her and burst into tears and cries. She however would
not suffer it; but chid me because when I burned all her other
things for her good pleasure, I failed to burn one of her sandals,
her golden sandals. It had fallen under the chest, she said, and
so not finding it we had burnt its fellow alone. While we were
still talking together, a little devil of a Melitæan dog that was
under the couch fell to barking, and at the sound she disap-
peared. The sandal, however, was found under the chest and
burned later. "
On the top of this recital there entered Arignotus the Pytha-
gorean, long of hair and reverend of face. You know the man,
famous for his wisdom and surnamed "the holy. " Well, when
I saw him I breathed again, thinking that here was an axe at
the root of error. Cleodomus rose to give him a seat. He first
asked about the invalid's condition; but when he heard from Eu-
crates that he was eased already, he asked, "What are you phi-
losophizing about? I listened as I was coming in, and it seemed
to me that the talk had taken a very delightful turn. ”
"We were only trying," said Eucrates, pointing to me, "to
convince this adamantine mind that there are such things as
dæmons, and that ghosts and souls of the dead wander on earth
and appear to whom they will. ”
I grew red at this, and hung my head in respect for Arignotus.
"Perhaps," said he, "Tychiades holds that only the souls of
those that have died by violence walk,- if a man be hanged or
beheaded or impaled or something of that sort, but that after a
natural death the soul does not return. If that is his view, it
can by no means be rejected. "
"No, by heaven," said Deinomachus; "but he does not believe
that such things exist at all, or have a substance that can be
seen. "
――――
## p. 9300 (#316) ###########################################
9300
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
"What do you mean? " asked Arignotus, looking at me
grimly. "Do you think none of these things occur, although
every one, I may say, has seen them? "
"You have made my defense," I said, "if the ground of
my disbelief is that I alone of all men do not even see these
things. If I had seen them, of course I should believe them as
you do. "
་
"Well," he said, "if you ever go to Corinth, ask where Eu-
batides's house is; and when it is pointed out to you beside the
Craneum, go in and tell Tibias the porter that you want to
see the spot from which Arignotus the Pythagorean dug up the
dæmon and drove him out, making the house habitable forever
after. "
"What was that? " asked Eucrates.
"The house had been vacant a long time," said he, "because
people were afraid of it. If any one tried to live in it, he
straightway fled in a panic, chased out by some terrible and dis-
tressing apparition. So it was falling to ruin, and the roof had
sunk, and there was absolutely no one who dared enter it. When
I heard of this I took my books,-I have a large collection of
Egyptian works on these subjects,- and went to the house in
the early evening; although the man with whom I was staying,
when he learned where I was going, tried to restrain me almost
by force from what he regarded as certain destruction. I took
a lamp and went in alone. In the largest room I set down my
light, seated myself on the floor, and quietly read my book. Up
comes the dæmon, thinking he had an ordinary man to deal with,
and hoping to frighten me as he had done the others, in the guise
of a squalid fellow, long-haired and blacker than night. Approach-
ing, he tried to get the better of me by onsets from every
quarter, now in the shape of a dog, now of a bull or a lion.
But I, having at hand the most blood-curdling conjuration, and
delivering it in the Egyptian tongue, drove him into the corner
of a dark room. Noting the spot at which he sank into the
ground, I desisted for the night. But at daybreak, when every
one had given me up, and expected to find me a corpse like the
others, I emerged, to the surprise of all, and proceeded to Euba-
tides, informing him that for the future his house would be inno-
cent and free from horrors. Conducting him and a crowd who
followed out of curiosity, I brought them to the spot where the
dæmon had disappeared, and bade them dig with mattock and
――――
## p. 9301 (#317) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9301
spade. When they had done so, we found at the depth of about
six feet a moldering corpse, only held together by the frame of
bones. We dug it up and buried it, and from that day forth the
house was no longer disturbed by apparitions. "
When this tale was told by Arignotus, a person of exceptional
learning and universally respected, there was not a man present
who did not upbraid me as a fool for disbelieving these things
even when they came from Arignotus. But I said, nothing
daunted either by his long hair or his reputation, "What is this?
You-truth's only hope-are you one of the same sort, with a
head full of smoke and spectres? "
"Why, man," said Arignotus, "if you won't believe me or
Deinomachus or Cleodomus or Eucrates himself, come, tell us
what opposing authority you have which you think more trust-
worthy?
Fuegians had great difficulty in comprehending an alternative;
and every one must have noticed the tendency among savages to
form words by reduplication. This also is characteristic of child-
hood among civilized races.
Again, some of the most brutal acts which have been recorded
against them are to be regarded less as instances of deliberate
cruelty than of a childish thoughtlessness and impulsiveness. A
striking instance of this is recorded by Byron in his narrative of
the 'Loss of the Wager. ' A cacique of the Chonos, who was
nominally a Christian, had been out with his wife to fish for sea-
eggs, and having had little success, returned in a bad humor.
"A little boy of theirs, about three years old, whom they appeared
to be doatingly fond of, watching for his father and mother's
return, ran into the surf to meet them: the father handed a
basket of eggs to the child, which being too heavy for him to
carry, he let it fall; upon which the father jumped out of the
canoe, and catching the boy up in his arms, dashed him with the
utmost violence against the stones. The poor little creature lay
motionless and bleeding, and in that condition was taken up by
the mother, but died soon after. "
In fact, we may fairly sum up this part of the question in a
few words by saying, as the most general conclusion which can
be arrived at, that savages have the character of children with
the passions and strength of men.
## p. 9285 (#301) ###########################################
9285
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
(120-200? A. D. )
BY EMILY JAMES SMITH
D
URING the middle and end of the second Christian century, a
revival of Greek letters gave us the remarkable movement
known as the New Sophistic. For the most part futile in
aim and pedantic in method, the sophistic offers such a spectacle of
solemn and fatuous frivolity that the lover of Hellenism knows not
where to look. But by sheer force of monopoly in education and
literature, the school counted as its disciples whatever men of talent
the century produced; and among them a man of letters of almost
the highest rank. Having as their aim
nothing less than a forcible recovery of the
productive Greek genius, the sophists fol-
lowed a vigorous propedeutic in the works
of the great masters. A critical knowledge
of the vocabulary of Plato, of the Attic
orators, and of the Old Comedy, was the
foundation of every sophist's skill. This
erudition, in itself respectable and helpful,
was however put to foolish use. The dif-
ference between using the language of De-
mosthenes and being one's self an orator
was overlooked. Famous sentences of great
writers were worked over, rearranged, and
presented as a fresh creation,-as Virgil-
ian tags to-day coldly furnish forth the English schoolboy's verses.
It was probably the influence of Rome that determined the revival
as oratorical in form; the empire furnished it with endowed chairs
of rhetoric, with a royal audience, and with political importance: yet
it was held a solecism by the sophists to introduce a Roman name
or an allusion to Rome into a Greek composition.
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
Worldly ambition, then, and literary tastes pulled in the same
direction; and for a clever lad, growing up in a far Syrian village,
conscious of great gifts, and of a tumultuous egoism, there was no
alternative. Breaking away from the handicraft to which he was
apprenticed, Lucian betook himself, still a boy of fifteen, to the study
of Greek and to the profession of rhetoric. Asia Minor was full of
## p. 9286 (#302) ###########################################
9286
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
sophists. It is not likely that Lucian was able to afford a course
under any of the great masters, and he nowhere speaks of any such
thing. But the air was so full of their theories, and their public per-
formances were so frequent, that an apt student could easily learn
what their art was like. At any rate, we know that Lucian's ambi-
tion was successful: that he acquired what culture the sophistic had
to offer, won a share of its prizes,- and then broke with it, laugh-
ing at its methods and pretensions with the detachment of a critic
of to-day. The modern reader of Lucian is impressed by no qual-
ity more strongly than by his spontaneity; an adequate estimate of
his talent must be based on the reflection that this spontaneity is
inclosed in stereotyped forms and expressed in an acquired language.
His fair structure is raised on made ground. He owed the tools he
worked with, as well as the designs he followed, to the sophistic; and
the weapons that he turned on his preceptress were from her own
anvil. A man cannot, by criticizing his early education, rid himself
of the effects of it; and in spite of Lucian's conscious originality,
scorn of pedantry, and apparent disregard of convention, we must
realize that he is after all but the most favorable example of what
the sophistic training could do.
Possessed of a sense of humor that permitted even his irritable
vanity no illusions, and of a deep conviction of the unimportance of
serious matters, Lucian would have been delighted to hear that the
theologians and moralists of a new era were destined to take him
seriously. It is undeniable that he spoke slightingly of the Christians
on the one hand, and on the other took liberties with Olympus; but
it can hardly be proved that he was interested either in hastening
the end of th old order or in deferring the installation of the new.
In the extraordinary spiritual conditions of the second century of our
era, Lucian's attitude finds a background so striking as to produce a
feeling that in some way, contrary to the general laws of things, he
stood alone, unrelated to the spirit of his age, and without sympathy
as without peers.
Religion was under the protection of the empire
and of Stoicism; strange new doctrines were freely taught and fol-
lowed with fanaticism; the soul was not only held immortal, but was
believed to revisit the earth after its liberation from the body; new
oracles made themselves heard; philosophy leaned to mysticism. And
in this heyday of error a great writer appeared, distinguished next
to his literary gifts by a coolness of judgment in such matters, and
a taste for the truth, that would have been remarkable in any age.
The 'Dialogues of the Gods,' probably the most famous of Lucian's
works, from which the first two selections in this collection are made,
were written to be delivered by him in person before a popular
audience. When an author under these circumstances devoted his
## p. 9287 (#303) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9287
talents to parodying the popular religion, what idea are we to form
as to his own attitude, that of his hearers, and the effect he hoped
to produce? It seems idle to imagine either that Lucian's audience
was a band of atheists, drawn together primarily by the spirit of
philosophic controversy; or that Lucian himself, without being sure
of the temper of his hearers, was willing to risk unpopularity, if need
be, in the interests of truth as he conceived it. The second alter-
native was Friedländer's view, and is indeed generally held.
But we
may be sure, from Lucian's own account of the genesis of the new
form of comic dialogue, that his interest in its workings was chiefly
literary; it was the literary possibilities of Olympus that inspired
the 'Dialogues of the Gods. ' There is no trace in them of the bitter-
ness of polemic, or the forcing of the note that we should expect to
find if he relied on his irreverence as his chief charm. And next to
satisfying his own high standard of literary excellence, his chief
preoccupation was to recommend himself to the public. When his
attacks on contemporary philosophy passed the limit of what the pub-
lic wanted in that line; when his praise of a great person, or the
variance between his theory and practice in the matter of taking sal-
aries, were the subject of unflattering comment,- he was at pains
to meet objections and explain them away. Half a dozen passages
betray his sensitive vanity and his desire that men should speak well
of him. With these evidences of his temperament and his methods, it
is impossible to believe in him as an apostle.
The revival of orthodoxy which marked the religious thought of
the second century was a voluntary reaction against the skepticism
of the preceding age; men agreed to believe in the gods because
they could not bear to do without them. The literature of the day
shows a conscious surrender of the rights of the intellect, a willing-
ness to blink the truth if error satisfied the heart; a desire to mar-
shal the hopes and fears connected with the supernatural among the
motives toward right conduct, and a bewilderment in scientific mat-
ters that left room for the existence in heaven and earth of many
things inexplicable by any philosophy. The difference between an
artificial religious attitude like this, and the uncritical faith of men
who believe in the gods on grounds that they have never thought of
questioning, must be taken into account before we can estimate the
effect of Lucian's parodies. Though Aristides might write a hymn.
to Zeus, and Dion celebrate him in all his functions, still each man
had his own complex of ideas represented by the name; and it is
hardly possible that to thoughtful minds it still called up with mov-
ing force the Homeric husband of Hera. The laborious task was not
to throw off the phraseology and demeanor of orthodoxy, but to pre-
serve them; and Lucian declined to make the effort.
## p. 9288 (#304) ###########################################
9288
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
His parody, then, of the Homeric gods, though it undoubtedly pro-
duced in many of his hearers a pleasurable thrill of misgiving, a
sense of almost perilous audacity in the light use of words once
sacred, derived its effect primarily from its literary quality. We may
safely say that the substitution of every-day prose for the epic style
in the mouths of the gods was more striking to the audience than
the ethical and theological inferences to be drawn from the dialogues.
That is to say, the inferences must have been tolerably familiar to
men's minds before such an entertainment could be risked by a pop-
ular performer. In these dialogues Lucian keeps to the authorities.
He takes each situation as he finds it, and holds tradition sacred,
showing a literary preoccupation obviously incompatible with a serious
tendency. Most of them show little of the malice of caricature; the
scene between Aphrodite and Selene, included here, with its charm-
ing pictures of the sleeping Endymion, would not have shocked the
Theocritean worshipers of Adonis. Those in which the comic element
is stronger, still stand on their own merits as character studies; and
the fact that the persons concerned were once held to be divine seems
to have been less before the author's mind than the fact that Homer
once treated of them in the grand manner, clothing even undignified
situations in a majesty which it was Lucian's delight to tear away.
Most handbooks of the history of ancient philosophy include Lu-
cian's name, though with some vagueness in the statement of their
grounds for so doing. It is true that he had a great deal to say
about philosophers, and something about philosophy; but this was the
result of two accidental circumstances. One of these was the fact of
Plato's style, which had an irresistible claim on him as a man of let-
ters; the other was the prevalence of philosophers as a picturesque
element in that contemporary society which he was interested in
describing. The Platonic system as a lesson in expression, and con-
temporary systems as social phenomena, occupied him greatly; with
the fortunate result that we know how each affected a man of the
world. In close relation to the literary hold of Plato himself on
Lucian, we must take into account the attraction that existed for
his taste in the decency of the contemporary Platonic discipline and
the exclusiveness of the Platonic temper. The Platonist in Lucian's
Symposium is the type of propriety in appearance and conduct, and
exhibits a strained and scornful courtesy. Plato himself remains
aloof, even beyond the grave, and is found neither in Hades nor in
the Isles of the Blest, preferring to dwell in his own Polity. But
this exclusiveness was too congenial to Lucian to be dwelt on with
any vigor of sarcasm, and indeed he reflects part of it in his remarks
on the shoemaker in philosophy. For physical theory and meta-
physics he never had a serious word, rejecting them with an easy
## p. 9289 (#305) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9289
assumption of superiority on the ground that their advocates differed
among themselves and used terms unintelligible to a layman; and it
was not only the contemporary presentation to which he objected,
but that of the originators as well, Plato among the rest.
Besides these two feelings for Platonism,- indifference to its
metaphysics and enthusiasm for its form,-Lucian had a deep dis-
trust of it in a practical matter that interested him greatly; viz. , the
question of the marvelous and its credibility. The Platonic doctrine
of the future state of the soul had expanded into a variety of fantas-
tic beliefs, developed by the Stoics for ethical purposes into a doc-
trinal basis for ghost stories. In one aspect the "dæmon" was an
underling and emissary of the supreme godhead, immortal but subject.
to sensation, working with men in all ways, and appearing to them
in visible shape as this god or that. In another aspect it was man's
own soul, divine in essence though conditioned by the limitations
of bodily life, which when freed from its earthly hamper came freely
among men out of pity for their impotent condition, which it once
shared. These two conceptions of the dæmon converged in the gen-
eral notion of innumerable supernatural agencies, corporeal and
therefore of like passions with men, who spoke through the oracles,
possessed epileptics, haunted houses, and conveniently accounted for
the inexplicable in general.
The manifestations of this belief and the unscrupulous use made
of it by impostors constituted a burning question with Lucian; and
in his travels through the world, this phase of folly moved him to
more than disinterested literary treatment. We have seen how little
odium theologicum he brought to bear on Olympus, even contriving to
give his readers a fresh impression of the ineffable beauty of god-
desses and the petulant grace of nymphs. And even when his quick
and impatient mind was playing with the philosophers, whether
selling them at auction in pure frolic, or as a man of the world tell-
ing a friend with innuendo how they dine, or ranging himself with
the great dead and haranguing his contemporaries with a rhetoric at
which he smiled himself, it is plain that in his eyes the literary
opportunities they gave him excused their existence. After all, he
did not excite himself about them. But one set of persons and ideas
so stirred him as to break through his serenity, and bring him down
from his seat as a spectator to try a fall himself. In the Philo-
pseudes,' the third of the selections here given,-a Stoic, a Platon-
ist, a Peripatetic, and a Pythagorean, meeting at the bedside of a sick
friend, exchange tales of the marvelous, and try to persuade Tychi-
ades, the champion of common-sense, that dæmons exist, and phan-
tasms, and that the souls of the dead walk the earth, appearing to
whom they will. Of the sects represented, it was the Platonists and
Pythagoreans who were chiefly responsible for the degradation of the
## p. 9290 (#306) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9290
dæmon theory; and Lucian's feeling toward them is expressed in
the dialogue with successful malice. Apart from this consideration,
the most significant passage for Lucian's philosophy expresses his
approval of Democritus's steadfast conviction that souls do not exist
after they leave the body. His agreement with Democritus and the
Epicureans in this matter, more fully expressed in his remarkable
pamphlet on Alexander the charlatan of Abonotichas, seems to be
the nearest approach he made towards seriously adopting the tenets
of a sect.
nor
The selections given here, and this commentary on them, cover
the chief ground of debate in regard to Lucian. Neither a theologian
philosopher, he contrived by means of his literary gift so to
clothe ideas in themselves unimportant as to give them a goodly
chance of immortality. The Christian scholiasts of the Byzantine age
read him with anathemas; the scholars of the Renaissance recovered
him with delight; Erasmus and Sir Thomas More used him as a
literary model; Raphael and Dürer illustrated him. In recent days
Mr. Pater has given him a fresh vogue with the general reader; and
scholars are busy with his text, his style, and his antiquities. Inter-
est in him is not likely to fail: he lived in a period of vital historic
issues. By birth a Syrian, politically a Roman, intellectually the last
of the Hellenes, he stands as an epitome of the most momentous of
international episodes.
Swith
Quily James
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. -There is no complete modern English
translation of the works of Lucian. The following translations of
selected works have appeared within the last ten years:- 'Lucian's
Dialogues': Howard Williams, M. A. , London, 1888. 'Selections from
Lucian': Emily James Smith, New York, 1892. Contents: The Dream,
Zeus in Tragedy, The Ass, The Cock, Toxaris, The Halcyon, A True
History, The Sale of Lives. Six Dialogues of Lucian's': Sidney T.
Irwin, M. A. , London, 1894. Partial translations of 'Hermotimus' and
"The Halcyon' occur in Walter Pater's Marius the Epicurean,' pages
245-248 and 291-310. An English commentary on Lucian's life and
works is to be found in the volume entitled 'Lucian' of the 'Ancient
Classics for English Readers' Series, by the Rev. W. L. Collins.
'Selections from Lucian,' in the original Greek, have been edited
with English notes by Evelyn Abbott, London, 1872. Several other
editions of one or more works of Lucian are included in the 'Pitt
Press' and 'Clarendon Press' series.
E. J. S.
## p. 9291 (#307) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9291
―――
----
APHRODITE AND SELENE
PHRODITE
A
What is this story about you, Selene? They say
that whenever you come to Curia you stop your car to
gaze down upon Endymion, sleeping under the open sky as
becomes a huntsman. And sometimes, they say, you leave your
course altogether and descend to him.
Selene - Ask that son of yours, Aphrodite. He is to blame
for all this.
Aphrodite-Ah, he respects no one. What things he has
done to me, his mother! now dragging me to Ida for Anchi-
ses's sake, now to Libanus to meet that Assyrian boy. And the
Assyrian he brought into Persephone's good graces too, and so
robbed me of half my lover. I have often threatened to break
his arrows and quiver and tie his wings unless he abandoned
these games. And I have taken him across my knee before
this and smacked him with my sandal. But somehow or other,
though he is frightened at the moment and prays for mercy, he
presently forgets all about it. But tell me, is Endymion hand-
some ?
Selene To my mind he is very handsome indeed, Aphrodite;
especially when he lies wrapped in his blanket asleep on the
rocks, his left hand loosely closed upon his darts, his right arm
bent above his head and making a charming frame for his face,
his whole body relaxed in sleep and stirred by his sweet breath-
ing. Then I came down noiselessly, on tiptoe, lest he wake
annoyed. Still, you know all this: why should I tell you any
But I am sick with love.
more?
Translated by Emily James Smith.
THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS
Persons: Zeus, Hermes, Paris, Hera, Athena, Aphrodite
Z FU
EUS-Hermes, take this apple and go to Phrygia, to Priam's
son, the cowherd,- he is pasturing his drove on Ida,- and
say to him that since he is handsome himself, and a connois-
seur in matters of love, he has been appointed by Zeus to judge
which is the fairest of the three goddesses. The apple is to be
the victor's prize. [To the goddesses. ] It is time now that you
ladies were off to the judge. I have delegated the office of
## p. 9292 (#308) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9292
umpire because I am equally attached to you all, and if it were
possible I should gladly see you all win. Moreover, the man who
gives the prize of beauty to one must in the nature of things be
detested by the others. These reasons disqualify me as umpire;
but the young man in Phrygia to whom you are going is of a
royal house, being in fact a cousin of Ganymede, whom you
know,- and he has the simple manner of the mountains.
Aphrodite - For my part, Zeus, you might make Momus him-
self the umpire and I should still go confidently to trial; for what
could he find to criticize in me? And the others must needs put
up with the man.
――――――
Hera-We are not afraid either, Aphrodite, even if your
Ares were to settle the question. We are satisfied with this
man, whoever he is, this Paris.
Zeus [to Athena]-Well, daughter, are you of the same mind?
What do you say? You turn away blushing? It is natural for
you virgins to be coy in such matters. But you might at least
nod. [Athena nods. ] Off with you, then; and the defeated,
mind you, are not to be angry with the judge nor to do any
harm to the young man. It is impossible for all to be equal in
beauty. [They start. ]
Hermes-Let us make straight for Phrygia.
and do you follow smartly. And don't be uneasy.
he is a handsome young fellow, a lover by temperament, and a
most competent judge in such cases as this. His decision will
certainly be correct.
you.
―――――――
I will go first,
I know Paris;
Aphrodite-That is good news, and all in my favor. [Ta
Hermes, apart. ] Is this person a bachelor, or has he a wife?
Hermes-Not exactly a bachelor.
Aphrodite - What do you mean?
Hermes-Apparently a woman of Ida is his mate: a good
enough creature, but crude and extremely rustic. He does not
seem to care much about her. But why do you ask?
Aphrodite-Oh, I just asked.
Athena [to Hermes]- This is a breach of trust, sirrah. You
are having a private understanding with Aphrodite.
Hermes-It's nothing terrible, and has nothing to do with
She was asking me whether Paris is a bachelor.
Athena - Why is that any business of hers?
Hermes I don't know; she says she asked casually, without
any object.
## p. 9293 (#309) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9293
Athena-Well, is he a bachelor?
Hermes - Apparently not.
Athena Has he any leaning towards war? Is he an ambi-
tious person, or a cowherd merely?
Hermes I can't say certainly; but it is safe to guess that a
man of his age will hanker after fighting and long to distinguish
himself in the field.
-
――
-
Aphrodite See now, I don't find any fault with you for talk-
ing apart with her. Fault-finding is not natural to Aphrodite.
Hermes-She was asking me almost exactly what you did, so
don't take it amiss or think you are badly treated. I answered
her just as simply as I did you.
But while we are talking we have come a long way.
We
have left the stars behind and almost reached Phrygia. I see Ida
and the whole range of Gargarus clearly; and unless I am mis-
taken, I can even make out Paris, your judge.
Hera-Where is he? I don't see him.
Hermes-Look off to the left, not at the summit of the
mountain, but along the flank where the cave is.
There you see
the herd.
-
Hera- - But not the herdsman.
Hermes-What? Look along my finger, so.
Don't you see
the cows coming from among the rocks, and a man with a crook
running down the bluff to hem them in and keep them from
scattering further?
Hera- I see now, if that is he.
Hermes-That's he.
When we are close at hand we will take
to the ground, if you please, and come up to him walking, so as
not to frighten him by dropping in from the unseen.
Hera-Very good, we will do so. [They alight. ] Now that
we are on earth, Aphrodite, you had better go ahead and lead
the way.
You are probably familiar with the spot. The story
goes that you have visited Anchises here more than once.
Aphrodite - Those jokes don't bother me very much, Hera.
Hermes-I will lead the way myself. Here is the umpire
close by: let us address him. [To Paris. ] Good morning, cow-
herd!
Paris - Good morning, my lad. Who are you? And who are
these women whom you are escorting? —not mountain-bred: they
are too pretty.
## p. 9294 (#310) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9294
Hermes-And not women. Paris, you see before you Hera
and Athena and Aphrodite; and I am Hermes, bearing a mes-
sage from Zeus. Why do you tremble and lose color? Don't be
frightened; it's nothing bad. He bids you judge which of them
is fairest; "for," says Zeus, "you are fair yourself and wise in
lover's lore, so I turn over the case to you. You will know what
the prize is when you read the legend on the apple. " [Hands
him the apple. ]
Paris-Let me see what it all means. FOR THE FAIREST, the
apple says. How in the world, Lord Hermes, can I, a mortal
man and a rustic, be judge of this marvelous spectacle, which is
beyond a cowherd's powers? Judgment in such matters belongs
rather to the dainty folk in towns. As for me, I have the art to
judge between goat and goat, as between heifer and heifer, in
point of beauty. But these ladies are beautiful alike. I do not
know how a man could drag his sight from one to rest it on an-
other. Wherever my eye falls first, there it clings and approves
what it finds. I am fairly bathed in their beauty. It surrounds
me altogether. I wish I were all eyes, like Argus. I think I
should judge wisely if I gave the apple to all. And here is
something to consider too: one of them is sister and wife of
Zeus, while the others are his daughters. Doesn't this make the
decision hard?
Hermes-I can't say. I only know that you can't shirk what
Zeus commands.
Paris-Make them promise one thing, Hermes: that the losers
will not be angry with me, but only consider my sight defective.
Hermes-They say they will do so; but it is time you made
your decision.
Good heavens,
Paris-I will try; for what else can I do?
what a sight! What beauty! What delight! How fair the maiden
goddess is! and how queenly, glorious, and worthy of her station
is the wife of Zeus! And how sweet is Aphrodite's glance, with
her soft, winning smile! - Bah! I can hold no more pleasure. If
you please, I should like to study each separately; as it is, I look
two ways at once.
Aphrodite - Yes, let us do it that way.
Paris-Go off, then, two of you. Hera, do you stay.
Hera-I will; and when you have considered me carefully
you had better consider something else,-whether you like the
## p. 9295 (#311) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9295
results of a verdict in my favor. For if you decide, Paris, that
I am the fairest, you shall be lord of all Asia.
Go now,
Paris-My justice is not for sale.
I am satisfied.
Come next, Athena.
Athena - Here I am, Paris; and if you decide that I am
fairest, you shall never be beaten in battle. I will make you a
victorious warrior.
Paris I have no use for war and battle, Athena. Peace
reigns, as you see, in Phrygia and Lydia, and my father's realm
is undisturbed. But cheer up: you shall not suffer for it, even
if my justice is not for sale. I have finished with you; it is
Aphrodite's turn.
Aphrodite - At your service, Paris, and I shall bear careful
inspection. And if you like, my dear lad, listen to me too. I
have had an eye on you for some time; and seeing you so young
and handsome-does Phrygia hold such another? -I congratu-
late you on your looks, but I blame you for not leaving these
rocks and living in the city. Why do you waste your beauty in
the desert? What good do you get of the mountains? How are
your cattle the better because you are handsome? You ought
to have had a wife before this; not a wild country girl like the
women of Ida, but a queen from Argos or Corinth, or a Spartan
woman like Helen, for instance. She is young and lovely, in no
way inferior to me, and what is most important, made for love.
If that woman should but see you, I know she would surrender
herself, and leave everything to follow you and be your wife;
but of course you have heard about her yourself.
Paris-Not a word. But I should love to listen if you will
tell me the whole story.
Aphrodite - She is the daughter of that fair Leda whom Zeus
loved.
Paris And what does she look like?
Aphrodite - She is blonde, soft, and delicate, yet strong with
athletic sports. She is so sought after that men fought for her
sake when Theseus stole her, yet a little girl. And when she
was grown up, all the noblest of the Greeks came courting her;
and Menelaus was chosen, of the family of Pelops. But if you
like, I will make her your wife.
-
Paris-What do you mean? She is married already.
Aphrodite - You are a young provincial, to be sure. But I
know how to manage an affair like that.
## p. 9296 (#312) ###########################################
9296
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
Paris-How? I should like to know myself.
Aphrodite-You will set out on your travels, ostensibly to see
Greece; and when you come to Lacedæmon, Helen will see you.
The rest shall be my affair, to arrange that she shall fall in love
with you and follow you.
Paris Ah, that is what seems impossible to me,-that a
woman should be willing to leave her husband and sail away
with a stranger to a strange land.
Aphrodite - Don't worry about that. I have two fair children,
Longing and Love, whom I shall give you as guides on your
journey. And Love shall enter into the woman and compel her
to love, while Longing shall invest you with charm in her eyes.
I will be there myself, and I will ask the Graces to come too, so
that we may make a joint attack upon her.
Paris-How all this is to come about remains to be seen; but
I am already in love with Helen. Somehow or other I see her
with my mind's eye, and my voyage to Greece and my visit to
Sparta and my return with her. It oppresses me that I am not
carrying it out this minute.
Aphrodite - Don't fall in love, Paris, until you have given me
the matchmaker's fee in the shape of a verdict. It would be nice
if we could have a joint festival in honor of your marriage and
my victory. It all rests with you. You can buy love, beauty, a
wife, with that apple.
Paris-I am afraid you will forget me after the award is
made.
Aphrodite - Do you want my oath?
Paris By no means; only your promise.
Aphrodite I promise that I will give you Helen to be your
wife, that she shall follow you to Troy, and that I will attend in
person and help you in every way.
Paris-And you will bring Love and Longing and the Graces?
Aphrodite - Trust me, and I will have Desire and Hymen
there into the bargain.
Paris-On these conditions I award the apple to you. Take it!
Translated by Emily James Smith.
## p. 9297 (#313) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9297
THE AMATEUR OF LYING
Persons: Tychiades, Philocles
YCHIADES-
Τ
I have just come from a visit to Eucrates- -every-
body knows Eucrates-and at his house I heard a lot of
incredible fables. Indeed, I came away in the middle be-
cause I could not stand the extravagance of what I heard. I fled
from the tale of portents and wonders as though the Furies were
at my heels.
-
Philocles-What were they, in Heaven's name? I should like
to know what form of folly Eucrates devises behind that impress-
ive beard of his.
Tychiades-I found at his house a goodly company, includ-
ing Cleodomus the Peripatetic, and Deinomachus the Stoic, and
Ion; - you know Ion, who thinks himself an authority on the
writings of Plato, believing himself the only man who has ex-
actly understood the master's meaning so as to interpret him to
the world. You see what sort of m en were there, of wisdom
and virtue all compact. Antigonus the doctor was there too;
called in professionally, I suppose. Eucrates seemed to be eased
already; his difficulty was a chronic one, and the humors had
subsided to his feet. He motioned me to sit down beside him
on the couch, sinking his voice to invalid's pitch when he saw
me, though I had heard him shouting as I came in. So I sat
down beside him, taking great care not to touch his feet, and
explaining, as one does, that I hadn't heard of his illness before,
and came on a run as soon as the news reached me.
They happened to be still carrying on a discussion of his ail-
ment which had already occupied them some time; and each man
was suggesting a method of treatment.
XVI-582
"Now, if you kill a field-mouse in the way I described," said
Cleodomus, "and pick up one of its teeth from the ground with
your left hand, and wrap it in the skin of a lion newly flayed,
and then tie it round your legs, the pain will cease at once. "
"Why, do you think," I asked, "that any charm can work the
cure, or that what you clap on outside affects a disease lodged
within ? "
"Don't mind him," said Ion. "I will tell you a queer story.
When I was a boy about fourteen years old, a messenger came to
tell my father that Midas, one of his vine-dressers,-a robust,
active fellow,-had been bitten by a snake about noonday, and
## p. 9298 (#314) ###########################################
9298
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
•
#
was then lying with a mortifying leg. As he was tying up the
tendrils and fastening them to the poles, the creature had crept
up and bitten his great toe, disappearing at once into its hole,
while Midas bawled in mortal agony. Such was the message,
and we saw Midas himself borne on a cot by his fellow slaves;
swollen, livid, clammy, and evidently with but a short time to
live. Seeing my father's distress, a friend who stood by said
to him, 'Cheer up: I will bring you a man a Chaldæan from
Babylon, they say who will cure the fellow. ' And to make a
long story short, the Babylonian came and put Midas on his feet,
driving the poison out of his body by an incantation and the
application to his foot of a chip from a maiden's tombstone. And
perhaps this is not very remarkable; though Midas picked up his
own bed and went back to the farm, showing the force that was
in the charm and the stone. But the Babylonian did some other
things that were really remarkable. Early in the morning he
went to the farm, pronounced seven sacred names from an ancient
book, walked round the place three times purifying it with torch
and sulphur, and drove out every creeping thing within the bor-
ders. They came out in numbers as though drawn to the charm:
snakes, asps, adders, horned snakes and darting snakes, toads and
newts. But one old serpent was left behind; detained by age, I
suppose. The magician declared he had not got them all, and
chose one of the snakes, the youngest, to send as an ambassador
to the old one, who very shortly made his appearance also. When
they were all assembled, the Babylonian blew upon them, and
they were forthwith burnt up by his breath, to our astonish-
ment. "
―――
-
"Tell me, Ion," said I, "did the young snake-the ambassa-
dor- give his hand to the old one, or had the old one a crutch
to lean on? "
"You are flippant," said Cleodomus.
While we were talking thus, Eucrates's two sons came in from
the gymnasium,-one of them already a young man, the other
about fifteen; and after greeting us they sat down on the couch.
by their father. A chair was brought for me, and Eucrates
addressed me as though reminded of something by the sight of
the lads. "Tychiades," said he, "may I have no comfort in
these," and he laid a hand on the head of each, "if I am not
telling you the truth. You all know my attachment to my wife,
the mother of these boys. I showed it by my care of her, not
## p. 9299 (#315) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9299
only while she lived, but after her death by burning with her all
the ornaments and clothing that she had pleasure in. On the
seventh day after she died, I was lying here on the couch as I
am at this moment, and trying to beguile my grief by quietly
reading Plato's book on the soul. In the midst of my reading
there enters to me Demineate herself and takes a seat near me,
where Eucratides is now. " He pointed to his younger son, who
forthwith shivered with childish terror. He had already grown
quite pale at the narrative.
"When I saw her," Eucrates went on, "I threw my arms
about her and burst into tears and cries. She however would
not suffer it; but chid me because when I burned all her other
things for her good pleasure, I failed to burn one of her sandals,
her golden sandals. It had fallen under the chest, she said, and
so not finding it we had burnt its fellow alone. While we were
still talking together, a little devil of a Melitæan dog that was
under the couch fell to barking, and at the sound she disap-
peared. The sandal, however, was found under the chest and
burned later. "
On the top of this recital there entered Arignotus the Pytha-
gorean, long of hair and reverend of face. You know the man,
famous for his wisdom and surnamed "the holy. " Well, when
I saw him I breathed again, thinking that here was an axe at
the root of error. Cleodomus rose to give him a seat. He first
asked about the invalid's condition; but when he heard from Eu-
crates that he was eased already, he asked, "What are you phi-
losophizing about? I listened as I was coming in, and it seemed
to me that the talk had taken a very delightful turn. ”
"We were only trying," said Eucrates, pointing to me, "to
convince this adamantine mind that there are such things as
dæmons, and that ghosts and souls of the dead wander on earth
and appear to whom they will. ”
I grew red at this, and hung my head in respect for Arignotus.
"Perhaps," said he, "Tychiades holds that only the souls of
those that have died by violence walk,- if a man be hanged or
beheaded or impaled or something of that sort, but that after a
natural death the soul does not return. If that is his view, it
can by no means be rejected. "
"No, by heaven," said Deinomachus; "but he does not believe
that such things exist at all, or have a substance that can be
seen. "
――――
## p. 9300 (#316) ###########################################
9300
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
"What do you mean? " asked Arignotus, looking at me
grimly. "Do you think none of these things occur, although
every one, I may say, has seen them? "
"You have made my defense," I said, "if the ground of
my disbelief is that I alone of all men do not even see these
things. If I had seen them, of course I should believe them as
you do. "
་
"Well," he said, "if you ever go to Corinth, ask where Eu-
batides's house is; and when it is pointed out to you beside the
Craneum, go in and tell Tibias the porter that you want to
see the spot from which Arignotus the Pythagorean dug up the
dæmon and drove him out, making the house habitable forever
after. "
"What was that? " asked Eucrates.
"The house had been vacant a long time," said he, "because
people were afraid of it. If any one tried to live in it, he
straightway fled in a panic, chased out by some terrible and dis-
tressing apparition. So it was falling to ruin, and the roof had
sunk, and there was absolutely no one who dared enter it. When
I heard of this I took my books,-I have a large collection of
Egyptian works on these subjects,- and went to the house in
the early evening; although the man with whom I was staying,
when he learned where I was going, tried to restrain me almost
by force from what he regarded as certain destruction. I took
a lamp and went in alone. In the largest room I set down my
light, seated myself on the floor, and quietly read my book. Up
comes the dæmon, thinking he had an ordinary man to deal with,
and hoping to frighten me as he had done the others, in the guise
of a squalid fellow, long-haired and blacker than night. Approach-
ing, he tried to get the better of me by onsets from every
quarter, now in the shape of a dog, now of a bull or a lion.
But I, having at hand the most blood-curdling conjuration, and
delivering it in the Egyptian tongue, drove him into the corner
of a dark room. Noting the spot at which he sank into the
ground, I desisted for the night. But at daybreak, when every
one had given me up, and expected to find me a corpse like the
others, I emerged, to the surprise of all, and proceeded to Euba-
tides, informing him that for the future his house would be inno-
cent and free from horrors. Conducting him and a crowd who
followed out of curiosity, I brought them to the spot where the
dæmon had disappeared, and bade them dig with mattock and
――――
## p. 9301 (#317) ###########################################
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9301
spade. When they had done so, we found at the depth of about
six feet a moldering corpse, only held together by the frame of
bones. We dug it up and buried it, and from that day forth the
house was no longer disturbed by apparitions. "
When this tale was told by Arignotus, a person of exceptional
learning and universally respected, there was not a man present
who did not upbraid me as a fool for disbelieving these things
even when they came from Arignotus. But I said, nothing
daunted either by his long hair or his reputation, "What is this?
You-truth's only hope-are you one of the same sort, with a
head full of smoke and spectres? "
"Why, man," said Arignotus, "if you won't believe me or
Deinomachus or Cleodomus or Eucrates himself, come, tell us
what opposing authority you have which you think more trust-
worthy?
