_ And a very
equitable
one it is, Momus.
Lucian
Now I am no Philip at the best, and do you
suppose, Archias, that if I could have got a man like Demosthenes, I
should have found nothing better to do with him than sending him like
an ox to the slaughter? or should I have made him my right-hand man
in the management of Greece and of the empire? I was instinctively
attracted long ago by his public record--an attraction heightened
by the witness of Aristotle. He constantly assured both Alexander
and myself that among all the vast number of his pupils he had found
none comparable to Demosthenes in natural genius and persevering
self-development, none whose intellect was at once so weighty and so
agile, none who spoke his opinions so freely or maintained them so
courageously.
_But you_ (said Aristotle) _confuse him with an Eubulus, a Phrynon_, _a
Philocrates, and think to convert with gifts a man who has actually
lavished his inheritance half on needy Athenians and half on Athens;
you vainly imagine that you can intimidate one who has long ago
resolved to set his life upon his country's doubtful fortunes; if
he arraigns your proceedings, you try denunciation; why, the nearer
terrors of the Assembly find him unmoved. You do not realize that the
mainspring of his policy is patriotism, and that the only personal
advantage he expects from it is the improvement of his own nature. _
All this it was, Archias, that made me long to have him with me, to
hear from his own lips what he thought about the state of things, and
be able at any time of need, abandoning the flatterers who infest us,
to hear the plain words of an independent mind and profit by sincere
advice. And I might fairly have drawn _his_ attention to the ungrateful
nature of those Athenians for whom he had risked all when he might have
had firmer and less unconscionable friends.
_Ar. _ O King, your other ends you might have gained, but that you would
have told him to no purpose; his love of Athens was a madness beyond
cure.
_Ant. _ It was so indeed; 'twere vain to deny it. But how died he?
_Ar. _ O King, there is further wonder in store for you. We who have
had the scene before our eyes are as startled and as unbelieving
yet as when we saw it. He must long ago have determined how to die;
his preparation shows it. He was seated within the temple, and our
arguments of the days before had been spent on him in vain.
_Ant. _ Ay? and what were they?
_Ar. _ Long and kindly I urged him, with promises on your part, not that
I looked to see them kept (for I knew not then, and took you to be
wroth with him), but in hopes they might prevail.
_Ant. _ And what hearing did he give them? Keep nothing back; I would I
were there now, hearing him with my own ears; failing which, do you
hide nothing from me. 'Tis worth much to learn the bearing of a true
man in the last moments of his life, whether he gave way and played the
coward, or kept his course unfaltering even to the end.
_Ar. _ Ah, in him was no bending to the storm; how far from it! With a
smiling allusion to my former life, he told me I was not actor enough
to make your lies convincing.
_Ant. _ Ha? he left life for want of belief in my promises?
_Ar. _ Not so; hear to the end, and you will see his distrust was not
all for you. Since you bid me speak, O King, he told me there was no
oath that could bind a Macedonian; it was nothing strange that they
should use against Demosthenes the weapon that had won them Amphipolis,
and Olynthus, and Oropus. And much more of the like; I had writers
there, that his words might be preserved for you. _Archias_ (he said),
_the prospect of death or torture would be enough to keep me out of
Antipater's presence. And if you tell me true, I must be on my guard
against the worse danger of receiving life itself as a present at his
hands, and deserting, to serve Macedonia, that post which I have sworn
to hold for Greece. _
_Life were a thing to be desired, Archias, were it purchased for me by
the power of Piraeus (a war-ship, my gift, has floated there), by the
wall and trench of which I bore the cost, by the tribe Pandionis whose
festival charges I took upon me, by the spirit of Solon and Draco, by
unmuzzled statesmen and a free people, by martial levies and naval
organization, by the virtues and the victories of our fathers, by the
affection of fellow citizens who have crowned me many a time, and by
the might of a Greece whose guardian I have never ceased to be. Or
again, if life is to be owed to compassion, though it be mean enough,
yet compassion I might endure among the kindred of the captives I have
ransomed, the fathers whose daughters I have helped to portion, and the
men whose debts I have joined in paying. _
_But if the island empire and the sea may not save me, I ask my safety
from the Posidon at whose altar and under whose sanctuary I stand.
And if Posidon's power avails not to keep his temple inviolate, if he
scorns not to surrender Demosthenes to Archias, then welcome death; I
will not transfer my worship to Antipater. I might have had Macedonia
more at my devotion than Athens, might be now a partaker in your
fortunes, if I would have ranged myself with Callimedon, and Pytheas,
and Demades. When things were far gone, I might yet have made a shift,
if I had not had respect to the daughters of Erechtheus and to Codrus.
Fortune might desert, I would not follow her; for death is a haven of
safety, which he who reaches will do no baseness more. Archias, I will
not be at this late day a stain upon the name of Athens; I will not
make choice of slavery; be my winding-sheet the white one of liberty. _
_Sir actor, let me recall to you a fine passage from one of your
tragedies_[22]:
_But even at the point of death
She forethought took to fall in seemly wise_.
_She was but a girl; and shall Demosthenes choose an unseemly life
before a seemly death, and forget what Xenocrates and Plato have said
of immortality? _ And then he was stirred to some bitter speech upon men
puffed up by fortune. What remains to tell? At last, as I now besought
and now threatened, mingling the stern and mild, 'Had I been Archias,'
he said, 'I had yielded; but seeing that I am Demosthenes, your pardon,
good sir, if my nature recoils from baseness. '
Then I was minded to hale him off by force. Which when he observed,
I saw him smile and glance at the God. _Archias_ (he said) _believes
that there is no might, no refuge for the human soul, but arms and
war-ships, walls and camps. He scorns that equipment of mine which
is proof against Illyrians and Triballi and Macedonians, surer than
that wooden wall_[23] _of old, which the God averred none should
prevail against. Secure in this I ever took a fearless course; fearless
I braved the might of Macedonia; little I cared for Euctemon or
Aristogiton, for Pytheas and Callimedon, for Philip in the old days,
for Archias to-day. _
And then, _Lay no hand upon me. Be it not mine to bring outrage upon
the temple; I will but greet the God, and follow of my free will. _ And
for me, I put reliance upon this, and when he lifted his hand to his
mouth, I thought it was but to do obeisance.
_Ant. _ And it was indeed--?
_Ar. _ We put his servant to the question later, and learned from her
that he had long had poison by him, to give him liberty by parting soul
from body. He had not yet passed the holy threshold, when he fixed his
eye on me and said: 'Take _this_ to Antipater; Demosthenes you shall
not take, no, by ----' And methought he would have added, by the men
that fell at Marathon.
And with that farewell he parted. So ends, O King, the siege of
Demosthenes.
_Ant. _ Archias, that was Demosthenes. Hail to that unconquerable soul!
how lofty the spirit, how republican the care, that would never be
parted from their warrant of freedom! Enough; the man has gone his way,
to live the life they tell of in the Isles of the heroic Blest, or to
walk the paths that, if tales be true, the heaven-bound spirits tread;
he shall attend, surely, on none but that Zeus who is named of Freedom.
For his body, we will send it to Athens, a nobler offering to that land
than the men that died at Marathon.
H.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] Homer, _Il. _ xii. 243. 'One omen is best--to fight for our own
country. '
[19] See _Demosthenes_ in Notes.
[20] Speeches in the law courts had a time limit appointed, which was
measured by the water-clock or clepsydra, generally called simply 'the
water', 'my water,' 'his water,' &c.
[21] To get a meaning, I translate as though the Greek, instead of #ou
Boiôtias oud' entha ti mê# were #ho men Boiôtias, ho d' entha#.
[22] Euripides, _Hecuba_. See _Polyxena_ in Notes.
[23] Oracle in Herodotus vii. 141: 'A bulwark of wood at the last Zeus
grants to the Trito-born goddess | Sole to remain unwasted. ' _G. C.
Macaulay. _ Variously interpreted of the thorn hedge of the Acropolis,
and of the Athenian fleet.
THE GODS IN COUNCIL
_Zeus. Hermes. Momus_
_Zeus. _ Now, gentlemen, enough of that muttering and whispering in
corners. You complain that our banquets are thrown open to a number
of undesirable persons. Very well: the Assembly has been convened
for the purpose of dealing with this very point, and every one is at
liberty to declare his sentiments openly, and bring what allegations he
will. --Hermes, make formal proclamation to that effect.
_Her. _ All duly qualified divinities are hereby invited to address the
Assembly on the subject of foreigners and immigrants.
_Mo. _ Have I your permission to speak, sir?
_Zeus. _ It is not needed; you have heard the proclamation.
_Mo. _ I desire, then, to protest against the insufferable vanity of
some among us who, not content with their own promotion to godhead,
would introduce their dependants and underlings here as our equals.
Sir, I shall express myself on this subject with that blunt sincerity
which is inseparable from my character. I am known to the world as one
whose unfettered tongue cannot refrain from speech in the presence of
wrong-doing; as one who probes matters to the bottom, and says what
he thinks, without concealment, without fear, and without scruple. My
frankness is burdensome to the generality of Gods, who mistake it for
censoriousness; I have been termed by such the Accuser General. But I
shall none the less avail myself of the freedom accorded to me by the
proclamation--and by your permission, sir--to speak my mind without
reserve. --There are, I repeat it, many persons who, despite their mixed
origin, have been admitted to our feasts and councils upon terms of
equality; and who, not satisfied with this, have brought hither their
servants and satellites, and enrolled them among the Gods; and these
menials now share in our rations and sacrifices without ever so much as
paying the customary tax.
_Zeus. _ These are riddles. Say what you mean in so many words, and let
us have the names. Generalities of this kind can only give ground for
random conjecture; they might apply to any one. You are a friend to
sincerity: speak on, then, without hesitation.
_Mo. _ This is really most gratifying. Such encouragement is precisely
what I should have expected of a king of your exalted spirit; I will
mention the name. I refer, in fact, to Dionysus. Although the mother of
this truly estimable demi-god was not only a mortal, but a barbarian,
and his maternal grandfather a tradesman in Phoenicia, one Cadmus, it
was thought necessary to confer immortality upon him. With his own
conduct since that time, I am not concerned; I shall have nothing
to say on the subject of his snood, his inebriety, or his manner of
walking. You may all see him for yourselves: an effeminate, half-witted
creature, reeking of strong liquor from the early hours of the day.
But we are indebted to him for the presence of a whole tribe of his
followers, whom he has introduced into our midst under the title
of Gods. Such are Pan, Silenus, and the Satyrs; coarse persons, of
frisky tendencies and eccentric appearance, drawn chiefly from the
goat-herd class. The first-mentioned of these, besides being horned,
has the hind-quarters of a goat, and his enormous beard is not unlike
that of the same animal. Silenus is an old man with a bald head and
a snub nose, who is generally to be seen riding on a donkey; he is
of Lydian extraction. The Satyrs are Phrygians; they too are bald,
and have pointed ears, and sprouting horns, like those of young kids.
When I add that every one of these persons is provided with a tail,
you will realize the extent of our obligation to Dionysus. And with
these theological curiosities before their eyes, we wonder why it is
that men think lightly of the Gods! I might have added that Dionysus
has also brought us a couple of ladies: Ariadne is one, his mistress,
whose crown is now set among the host of stars; the other is farmer
Icarius's daughter. And the cream of the jest is still to come: the
dog, Erigone's dog, must be translated too; the poor child would never
be happy in Heaven without the sweet little pet! What can we call this
but a drunken freak?
So much for Dionysus. I now proceed--
_Zeus. _ Now, Momus, I see what you are coming to: but you will kindly
leave Asclepius and Heracles alone. Asclepius is a physician, and
restores the sick; he is
More worth than many men.
And Heracles is my own son, and purchased his immortality with many
toils. So not one word against either of them.
_Mo. _ Very well, sir; as you wish, though I had something to say on
that subject, too. You will excuse my remarking, at any rate, that
they have something of a scorched appearance still. With reference to
yourself, sir, a good deal might be said, if I could feel at liberty----
_Zeus. _ Oh, as regards myself, you are,--perfectly at liberty. What,
then, I am an interloper too, am I?
_Mo. _ Worse than that, according to what they say in Crete: your
tomb is there on view. Not that _I_ believe them, any more than I
believe that Aegium story, about your being a changeling. But there
is one thing that I think ought to be made clear. You yourself,
sir, have set us the example in loose conduct of this kind; it is
you we have to thank--you and your terrestrial gallantries and your
transformations--for the present mixed state of society. We are quite
uneasy about it. You will be caught, some day, and sacrificed as a
bull; or some goldsmith will try his hand upon our gold-transmuted
sire, and we shall have nothing to show for it but a bracelet, a
necklace or a pair of earrings. The long and short of it is, that
Heaven is simply _swarming_ with these demi-gods of yours; there is
no other word for it. It tickles a man considerably when he suddenly
finds Heracles promoted to deity, and Eurystheus, his taskmaster,
dead and buried, his tomb within easy distance of his slave's temple;
or again when he observes in Thebes that Dionysus is a God, but that
God's cousins, Pentheus, Actaeon, and Learchus, only mortals, and poor
devils at that. You see, sir, ever since you gave the entrée to people
of this sort, and turned your attention to the daughters of Earth, all
the rest have followed suit; and the scandalous part of it is, that
the Goddesses are just as bad as the Gods. Of the cases of Anchises,
Tithonus, Endymion, Iasion, and others, I need say nothing; they are
familiar to every one, and it would be tedious to expatiate further.
_Zeus. _ Now I will have no reflections on Ganymede's antecedents; I
shall be very angry with you, if you hurt the boy's feelings.
_Mo. _ Ah; and out of consideration for him I suppose I must also
abstain from any reference to the eagle, which is now a God like the
rest of us, perches upon the royal sceptre, and may be expected at
any moment to build his nest upon the head of Majesty? --Well, you
must allow me Attis, Corybas, and Sabazius: by what contrivance, now,
did _they_ get here? and that Mede there, Mithras, with the candys
and tiara? why, the fellow cannot speak Greek; if you pledge him,
he does not know what you mean. The consequence is, that Scythians
and Goths, observing their success, snap their fingers at us, and
distribute divinity and immortality right and left; that was how
the slave Zamolxis's name slipped into our register. However, let
that pass. But I should just like to ask that Egyptian there--the
dog-faced gentleman in the linen suit[24]--who _he_ is, and whether he
proposes to establish his divinity by barking? And will the piebald
bull yonder[25], from Memphis, explain what use _he_ has for a temple,
an oracle, or a priest? As for the ibises and monkeys and goats and
worse absurdities that are bundled in upon us, goodness knows how, from
Egypt, I am ashamed to speak of them; nor do I understand how you,
gentlemen, can endure to see such creatures enjoying a prestige equal
to or greater than your own. --And you yourself, sir, must surely find
ram's horns a great inconvenience?
_Zeus. _ Certainly, it is disgraceful the way these Egyptians go on.
At the same time, Momus, there is an occult significance in most of
these things; and it ill becomes you, who are not of the initiated, to
ridicule them.
_Mo. _ Oh, come now: a God is one thing, and a person with a dog's head
is another; I need no initiation to tell me that.
_Zeus. _ Well, that will do for the Egyptians; time must be taken for
the consideration of their case. Proceed to others.
_Mo. _ Trophonius and Amphilochus come next. The thought of the latter,
in particular, causes my blood to boil: the father[26] is a matricide
and an outcast, and the son, if you please, sets up for a prophet in
Cilicia, and retails information--usually incorrect--to a believing
public at the rate of twopence an oracle. That is how Apollo here has
fallen into disrepute: it needs but a quack (and quacks are plentiful),
a sprinkling of oil, and a garland or two, and an oracle may be had in
these days wherever there is an altar or a stone pillar. Fever patients
may now be cured either at Olympia by the statue of Polydamas the
athlete, or in Thasos by that of Theagenes. Hector receives sacrifice
at Troy: Protesilaus just across the water on Chersonese. Ever since
the number of Gods has thus multiplied, perjury and temple-robbery have
been on the increase. In short, men do not care two straws about us;
nor can I blame them.
That is all I have to say on the subject of bastards and new
importations. But I have also observed with considerable amusement
the introduction of various strange names, denoting persons who
neither have nor could conceivably have any existence among us. Show
me this Virtue of whom we hear so much; show me Nature, and Destiny,
and Fortune, if they are anything more than unsubstantial names, the
vain imaginings of some philosopher's empty head. Yet these flimsy
personifications have so far gained upon the weak intelligences of
mankind, that not a man will now sacrifice to us, knowing that though
he should present us with a myriad of hecatombs, Fortune will none
the less work out that destiny which has been appointed for each man
from the beginning. I should take it kindly of you, sir, if you would
tell me whether you _have_ ever seen Virtue or Fortune or Destiny
anywhere? I know that you must have heard of them often enough, from
the philosophers, unless your ears are deaf enough to be proof against
their bawlings.
Much more might be said: but I forbear. I perceive that the public
indignation has already risen to hissing point; especially in those
quarters in which my plain truths have told home.
In conclusion, sir, I have drawn up a bill dealing with this subject;
which, with your permission, I shall now read.
_Zeus. _ Very well; some of your points are reasonable enough. We must
put a check on these abuses, or they will get worse.
_Mo. _ On the seventh day of the month in the prytany of Zeus and the
presidency of Posidon Apollo in the chair the following Bill introduced
by Sleep was read by Momus son of Night before a true and lawful
meeting of the Assembly whom Fortune direct.
Whereas _numerous persons both Greeks and barbarians being in no way
entitled to the franchise have by means unknown procured their names
to be enrolled on our register filling the Heavens with false Gods
troubling our banquets with a tumultuous rout of miscellaneous polyglot
humanity and causing a deficiency in the supplies of ambrosia and
nectar whereby the price of the latter commodity owing to increased
consumption has risen to four pounds the half-pint_:
And whereas _the said persons have presumptuously forced themselves
into the places of genuine and old-established deities and in
contravention of law and custom have further claimed precedence of the
same deities upon the Earth_:
It has seemed good to the Senate and People _that an Assembly be
convened upon Olympus at or about the time of the winter solstice for
the purpose of electing a Commission of Inquiry the Commissioners to
be duly-qualified Gods seven in number of whom three to be appointed
from the most ancient Senate of Cronus and the remaining four from
the twelve Gods of whom Zeus to be one and the said Commissioners
shall before taking their seats swear by Styx according to the
established form and Hermes shall summon by proclamation all such as
claim admission to the Assembly to appear and bring with them sworn
witnesses together with documentary proofs of their origin and all
such persons shall successively appear before the Commissioners and
the Commissioners after examination of their claims shall either
declare them to be Gods or dismiss them to their own tombs and family
vaults and if the Commissioners subsequently discover in Heaven any
person so disqualified from entering such person shall be thrown into
Tartarus and further each God shall follow his own profession and no
other and it shall not be lawful either for Athene to heal the sick
or for Asclepius to deliver oracles or for Apollo to practise three
professions at once but only one either prophecy or music or medicine
according as he shall select and instructions shall be issued to
philosophers forbidding them either to invent meaningless names or to
talk nonsense about matters of which they know nothing and if a temple
and sacrificial honours have already been accorded to any disqualified
person his statue shall be thrown down and that of Zeus or Hera or
Athene or other God substituted in its place and his city shall provide
him with a tomb and set up a pillar in lieu of his altar and against
any person refusing to appear before the Commissioners in accordance
with the proclamation judgement shall be given by default. _
That, gentlemen, is the Bill.
_Zeus.
_ And a very equitable one it is, Momus. All in favour of
this Bill hold up their hands! Or no: our opponents are sure to
be in a majority. You may all go away now, and when Hermes makes
the proclamation, every one must come, bringing with him complete
particulars and proofs, with his father's and mother's names, his tribe
and clan, and the reason and circumstances of his deification. And any
of you who fail to produce your proofs will find it is no use having
great temples on the Earth, or passing _there_ for Gods; that will not
help you with the Commissioners.
F.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Anubis.
[25] Apis.
[26] Amphiaraus, the father of Amphilochus, neither slew his own
mother, Hypermnestra, nor procured her death. He did, however, procure
the death of his wife, Eriphyle, at the hand of her son Alcmaeon; and
in this remote sense was a matricide. It must be confessed that a great
deal of the peculiar guilt of matricide evaporates in the process of
explanation. The reader may prefer to suppose simply that Lucian has
made a slip.
THE CYNIC
_Lycinus. A Cynic_
_Ly. _ Give an account of yourself, my man. You wear a beard and let
your hair grow; you eschew shirts; you exhibit your skin; your feet
are bare; you choose a wandering, outcast, beastly life; unlike other
people, you make your own body the object of your severities; you go
from place to place sleeping on the hard ground where chance finds you,
with the result that your old cloak, neither light nor soft nor gay to
begin with, has a plentiful load of filth to carry about with it. Why
_is_ it all?
_Cy. _ It meets my needs. It was easy to come by, and it gives its owner
no trouble. It is the cloak for me.
Pray tell me, do you not call extravagance a vice?
_Ly. _ Oh, yes.
_Cy. _ And economy a virtue?
_Ly. _ Yes, again.
_Cy. _ Then, if you find me living economically, and others
extravagantly, why blame me instead of them?
_Ly. _ I do not call your life more economical than other people's; I
call it more destitute--destitution and want, that is what it is; you
are no better than the poor who beg their daily bread.
_Cy. _ That brings us to the questions, What is want, and what is
sufficiency? Shall we try to find the answers?
_Ly. _ If you like, yes.
_Cy. _ A man's sufficiency is that which meets his necessities; will
that do?
_Ly. _ I pass that.
_Cy. _ And want occurs when the supply falls short of necessity--does
not meet the need?
_Ly. _ Yes.
_Cy. _ Very well, then, I am not in want; nothing of mine fails to
satisfy my need.
_Ly. _ How do you make that out?
_Cy. _ Well, consider the purpose of anything we require; the purpose of
a house is protection?
_Ly. _ Yes.
_Cy. _ Clothing--what is that for? protection too, I think.
_Ly. _ Yes.
_Cy. _ But now, pray, what is the purpose of the protection, in turn?
the better condition of the protected, I presume.
_Ly. _ I agree.
_Cy. _ Then do you think my feet are in worse condition than yours?
_Ly. _ I cannot say.
_Cy. _ Oh, yes; look at it this way; what have feet to do?
_Ly. _ Walk.
_Cy. _ And do you think my feet walk worse than yours, or than the
average man's?
_Ly. _ Oh, not that, I dare say.
_Cy. _ Then they are not in worse condition, if they do their work as
well.
_Ly. _ That may be so.
_Cy. _ So it appears that, as far as feet go, I am in no worse condition
than other people.
_Ly. _ No, I do not think you are.
_Cy. _ Well, the rest of my body, then? If it is in worse condition, it
must be weaker, strength being the virtue of the body. Is mine weaker?
_Ly. _ Not that I see.
_Cy. _ Consequently, neither my feet nor the rest of my body need
protection, it seems; if they did, they would be in bad condition;
for want is always an evil, and deteriorates the thing concerned. But
again, there is no sign, either, of my body's being nourished the worse
for its nourishment's being of a common sort.
_Ly. _ None whatever.
_Cy. _ It would not be healthy, if it were badly nourished; for bad food
injures the body.
_Ly. _ That is true.
_Cy. _ If so, it is for you to explain why you blame me and depreciate
my life and call it miserable.
_Ly. _ Easily explained. Nature (which you honour) and the Gods have
given us the earth, and brought all sorts of good things out of it,
providing us with abundance not merely for our necessities, but for
our pleasures; and then you abstain from all or nearly all of it, and
utilize these good things no more than the beasts. Your drink is water,
just like theirs; you eat what you pick up, like a dog, and the dog's
bed is as good as yours; straw is enough for either of you. Then your
clothes are no more presentable than a beggar's. Now, if this sort of
contentment is to pass for wisdom, God must have been all wrong in
making sheep woolly, filling grapes with wine, and providing all our
infinite variety of oil, honey, and the rest, that we might have food
of every sort, pleasant drink, money, soft beds, fine houses, all the
wonderful paraphernalia of civilization, in fact; for the productions
of art are God's gifts to us too. To live without all these would be
miserable enough even if one could not help it, as prisoners cannot,
for instance; it is far more so if the abstention is forced upon a man
by himself; it is then sheer madness.
_Cy. _ You may be right. But take this case, now. A rich man, indulging
genial kindly instincts, entertains at a banquet all sorts and
conditions of men; some of them are sick, others sound, and the dishes
provided are as various as the guests. There is one of these to whom
nothing comes amiss; he has his finger in every dish, not only the
ones within easy reach, but those some way off that were intended for
the invalids; this though he is in rude health, has not more than one
stomach, requires little to nourish him, and is likely to be upset by a
surfeit. What is your opinion of this gentleman? is he a man of sense?
_Ly. _ Why, no.
_Cy. _ Is he temperate?
_Ly. _ No, nor that.
_Cy. _ Well, then there is another guest at the same table; he seems
unconscious of all that variety, fixes on some dish close by that suits
his need, eats moderately of it and confines himself to it without a
glance at the rest. You surely find him a more temperate and better man
than the other?
_Ly. _ Certainly.
_Cy. _ Do you see, or must I explain?
_Ly. _ What?
_Cy. _ That the hospitable entertainer is God, who provides this variety
of all kinds that each may have something to suit him; this is for the
sound, that for the sick; this for the strong and that for the weak; it
is not all for all of us; each is to take what is within reach, and of
that only what he most needs.
Now you others are like the greedy unrestrained person who lays hands
on everything; local productions will not do for you, the world must be
your storehouse; your native land and its seas are quite insufficient;
you purchase your pleasures from the ends of the earth, prefer the
exotic to the home growth, the costly to the cheap, the rare to the
common; in fact you would rather have troubles and complications than
avoid them. Most of the precious instruments of happiness that you
so pride yourselves upon are won only by vexation and worry. Give a
moment's thought, if you will, to the gold you all pray for, to the
silver, the costly houses, the elaborate dresses, and do not forget
their conditions precedent, the trouble and toil and danger they
cost--nay, the blood and mortality and ruin; not only do numbers perish
at sea on their account, or endure miseries in the acquisition or
working of them; besides that, they have very likely to be fought for,
or the desire of them makes friends plot against friends, children
against parents, wives against husbands.
And how purposeless it all is! embroidered clothes have no more warmth
in them than others, gilded houses keep out the rain no better, the
drink is no sweeter out of a silver cup, or a gold one for that matter,
an ivory bed makes sleep no softer; on the contrary, your fortunate man
on his ivory bed between his delicate sheets constantly finds himself
wooing sleep in vain. And as to the elaborate dressing of food, I need
hardly say that instead of aiding nutrition it injures the body and
breeds diseases in it.
As superfluous to mention the abuse of the sexual instinct, so easily
managed if indulgence were not made an object. And if madness and
corruption were limited to that--; but men must take nowadays to
perverting the use of everything they have, turning it to unnatural
purposes, like him who insists on making a carriage of a couch.
_Ly. _ Is there such a person?
_Cy. _ Why, he is you; you for whom men are beasts of burden, you who
make them shoulder your couch-carriages, and loll up there yourselves
in luxury, driving your men like so many asses and bidding them turn
this way and not that; this is one of the outward and visible signs of
your happiness.
Again, when people use edible things not for food but to get dye out
of--the murex-dyers, for instance--are they not abusing God's gifts?
_Ly. _ Certainly not; the flesh of the murex can provide a pigment as
well as food.
_Cy. _ Ah, but it was not made for that. So you can _force_ a
mixing-bowl to do the work of a saucepan; but that is not what it
was made for. However, it is impossible to exhaust these people's
wrong-headedness; it is endless. And because I will not join them, you
reproach me. My life is that of the orderly man I described; I make
merry on what comes to hand, use what is cheap, and have no yearning
for the elaborate and exotic.
Moreover, if you think that because I need and use but few things I
live the life of a beast, that argument lands you in the conclusion
that the Gods are yet lower than the beasts; for they have no needs at
all. But to clear your ideas on the comparative merits of great and
small needs, you have only to reflect that children have more needs
than adults, women than men, the sick than the well, and generally the
inferior than the superior. Accordingly, the Gods have no needs, and
those men the fewest who are nearest Gods.
Take Heracles, the best man that ever lived, a divine man, and rightly
reckoned a God; was it wrong-headedness that made him go about in
nothing but a lion's skin, insensible to all the needs you feel? No,
he was not wrong-headed, who righted other people's wrongs; he was not
poor, who was lord of land and sea. Wherever he went, he was master;
he never met his superior or his equal as long as he lived. Do you
suppose he could not get sheets and shoes, and therefore went as he
did? absurd! he had self-control and fortitude; he wanted power, and
not luxury.
And Theseus his disciple--king of all the Athenians, son of 14.
Poseidon, says the legend, and best of his generation,--he too chose to
go naked and unshod; it was _his_ pleasure to let his hair and beard
grow; and not his pleasure only, but all his contemporaries'; they were
better men than you, and would no more have let you shave them than a
lion would; soft smooth flesh was very well for women, they thought;
as for them, they were men, and were content to look it; the beard was
man's ornament, like the lion's, or the horse's mane; God had made
certain beautiful and decorative additions to those creatures; and so
he had to man, in the beard. Well, I admire those ancients and would
fain be like them; I have not the smallest admiration for the present
generation's wonderful felicity--tables! clothes! bodies artificially
polished all over! not a hair to grow on any of the places where
nature plants it!
My prayer would be that my feet might be just hoofs, like Chiron's in
the story, that I might need bedclothes no more than the lion, and
costly food no more than the dog. Let my sufficient bed be the whole
earth, my house this universe, and the food of my choice the easiest
procurable. May I have no need, I nor any that I call friend, of gold
and silver. For all human evils spring from the desire of these,
seditions and wars, conspiracies and murders. The fountain of them all
is the desire of more. Never be that desire mine; let me never wish for
more than my share, but be content with less.
Such are our aspirations--considerably different from other people's.
It is no wonder that our get-up is peculiar, since the peculiarity of
our underlying principle is so marked. I cannot make out why you allow
a harpist his proper robe and get-up--and so the flute-player has his,
and the tragic actor his--, but will not be consistent and recognize
any uniform for a good man; the good man must be like every one else,
of course, regardless of the fact that every one else is all wrong.
Well, if the good are to have a uniform of their own, there can be
none better than that which the average sensual man will consider most
improper, and reject with most decision for himself.
Now my uniform consists of a rough hairy skin, a threadbare cloak,
long hair, and bare feet, whereas yours is for all the world that of
some minister to vice; there is not a pin to choose between you--the
gay colours, the soft texture, the number of garments you are swathed
in, the shoes, the sleeked hair, the very scent of you; for the more
blessed you are, the more do you exhale perfumes like his. What value
can one attach to a man whom one's nose would identify for one of those
minions? The consequence is, you are equal to no more work than they
are, and to quite as much pleasure. You feed like them, you sleep
like them, you walk like them--except so far as you avoid walking by
getting yourselves conveyed like parcels by porters or animals; as
for me, my feet take me anywhere that I want to go. I can put up with
cold and heat and be content with the works of God--such a miserable
wretch am I--, whereas you blessed ones are displeased with everything
that happens and grumble without ceasing; what is is intolerable, what
is not you pine for, in winter for summer, in summer for winter, in
heat for cold, in cold for heat, as fastidious and peevish as so many
invalids; only their reason is to be found in their illness, and yours
in your characters.
And then, because we occasionally make mistakes in practice, you
recommend us to change our plan and correct our principles, the fact
being that you in your own affairs go quite at random, never acting
on deliberation or reason, but always on habit and appetite. You are
no better than people washed about by a flood; they drift with the
current, you with your appetites. There is a story of a man on a
vicious horse that just gives your case. The horse ran away with him,
and at the pace it was going at he could not get off. A man in the way
asked him where he was off to; 'wherever this beast chooses,' was the
reply. So if one asked you where you were bound for, if you cared to
tell the truth you would say either generally, wherever your appetites
chose, or in particular, where pleasure chose to-day, where fancy chose
to-morrow, and where avarice chose another day; or sometimes it is
rage, sometimes fear, sometimes any other such feeling, that takes you
whither it will. You ride not one horse, but many at different times,
all vicious, and all out of control. They are carrying you straight for
pits and cliffs; but you do not realize that you are bound for a fall
till the fall comes.
The old cloak, the shaggy hair, the whole get-up that you ridicule, has
this effect: it enables me to live a quiet life, doing as I will and
keeping the company I want. No ignorant uneducated person will have
anything to say to one dressed like this; and the soft livers turn the
other way as soon as I am in sight. But the refined, the reasonable,
the earnest, seek me out; they are the men who seek me, because they
are the men I wish to see. At the doors of those whom the world counts
happy I do not dance attendance; their gold crowns and their purple I
call ostentation, and them I laugh to scorn.
These externals that you pour contempt upon, you may learn that they
are seemly enough not merely for good men, but for Gods, if you will
look at the Gods' statues; do those resemble you, or me? Do not confine
your attention to Greece; take a tour round the foreign temples too,
and see whether the Gods treat their hair and beards like me, or let
the painters and sculptors shave them. Most of them, you will find,
have no more shirt than I have, either. I hope you will not venture to
describe again as mean an appearance that is accepted as godlike.
H.
THE PURIST PURIZED
_Lycinus. Purist_
_Ly.
suppose, Archias, that if I could have got a man like Demosthenes, I
should have found nothing better to do with him than sending him like
an ox to the slaughter? or should I have made him my right-hand man
in the management of Greece and of the empire? I was instinctively
attracted long ago by his public record--an attraction heightened
by the witness of Aristotle. He constantly assured both Alexander
and myself that among all the vast number of his pupils he had found
none comparable to Demosthenes in natural genius and persevering
self-development, none whose intellect was at once so weighty and so
agile, none who spoke his opinions so freely or maintained them so
courageously.
_But you_ (said Aristotle) _confuse him with an Eubulus, a Phrynon_, _a
Philocrates, and think to convert with gifts a man who has actually
lavished his inheritance half on needy Athenians and half on Athens;
you vainly imagine that you can intimidate one who has long ago
resolved to set his life upon his country's doubtful fortunes; if
he arraigns your proceedings, you try denunciation; why, the nearer
terrors of the Assembly find him unmoved. You do not realize that the
mainspring of his policy is patriotism, and that the only personal
advantage he expects from it is the improvement of his own nature. _
All this it was, Archias, that made me long to have him with me, to
hear from his own lips what he thought about the state of things, and
be able at any time of need, abandoning the flatterers who infest us,
to hear the plain words of an independent mind and profit by sincere
advice. And I might fairly have drawn _his_ attention to the ungrateful
nature of those Athenians for whom he had risked all when he might have
had firmer and less unconscionable friends.
_Ar. _ O King, your other ends you might have gained, but that you would
have told him to no purpose; his love of Athens was a madness beyond
cure.
_Ant. _ It was so indeed; 'twere vain to deny it. But how died he?
_Ar. _ O King, there is further wonder in store for you. We who have
had the scene before our eyes are as startled and as unbelieving
yet as when we saw it. He must long ago have determined how to die;
his preparation shows it. He was seated within the temple, and our
arguments of the days before had been spent on him in vain.
_Ant. _ Ay? and what were they?
_Ar. _ Long and kindly I urged him, with promises on your part, not that
I looked to see them kept (for I knew not then, and took you to be
wroth with him), but in hopes they might prevail.
_Ant. _ And what hearing did he give them? Keep nothing back; I would I
were there now, hearing him with my own ears; failing which, do you
hide nothing from me. 'Tis worth much to learn the bearing of a true
man in the last moments of his life, whether he gave way and played the
coward, or kept his course unfaltering even to the end.
_Ar. _ Ah, in him was no bending to the storm; how far from it! With a
smiling allusion to my former life, he told me I was not actor enough
to make your lies convincing.
_Ant. _ Ha? he left life for want of belief in my promises?
_Ar. _ Not so; hear to the end, and you will see his distrust was not
all for you. Since you bid me speak, O King, he told me there was no
oath that could bind a Macedonian; it was nothing strange that they
should use against Demosthenes the weapon that had won them Amphipolis,
and Olynthus, and Oropus. And much more of the like; I had writers
there, that his words might be preserved for you. _Archias_ (he said),
_the prospect of death or torture would be enough to keep me out of
Antipater's presence. And if you tell me true, I must be on my guard
against the worse danger of receiving life itself as a present at his
hands, and deserting, to serve Macedonia, that post which I have sworn
to hold for Greece. _
_Life were a thing to be desired, Archias, were it purchased for me by
the power of Piraeus (a war-ship, my gift, has floated there), by the
wall and trench of which I bore the cost, by the tribe Pandionis whose
festival charges I took upon me, by the spirit of Solon and Draco, by
unmuzzled statesmen and a free people, by martial levies and naval
organization, by the virtues and the victories of our fathers, by the
affection of fellow citizens who have crowned me many a time, and by
the might of a Greece whose guardian I have never ceased to be. Or
again, if life is to be owed to compassion, though it be mean enough,
yet compassion I might endure among the kindred of the captives I have
ransomed, the fathers whose daughters I have helped to portion, and the
men whose debts I have joined in paying. _
_But if the island empire and the sea may not save me, I ask my safety
from the Posidon at whose altar and under whose sanctuary I stand.
And if Posidon's power avails not to keep his temple inviolate, if he
scorns not to surrender Demosthenes to Archias, then welcome death; I
will not transfer my worship to Antipater. I might have had Macedonia
more at my devotion than Athens, might be now a partaker in your
fortunes, if I would have ranged myself with Callimedon, and Pytheas,
and Demades. When things were far gone, I might yet have made a shift,
if I had not had respect to the daughters of Erechtheus and to Codrus.
Fortune might desert, I would not follow her; for death is a haven of
safety, which he who reaches will do no baseness more. Archias, I will
not be at this late day a stain upon the name of Athens; I will not
make choice of slavery; be my winding-sheet the white one of liberty. _
_Sir actor, let me recall to you a fine passage from one of your
tragedies_[22]:
_But even at the point of death
She forethought took to fall in seemly wise_.
_She was but a girl; and shall Demosthenes choose an unseemly life
before a seemly death, and forget what Xenocrates and Plato have said
of immortality? _ And then he was stirred to some bitter speech upon men
puffed up by fortune. What remains to tell? At last, as I now besought
and now threatened, mingling the stern and mild, 'Had I been Archias,'
he said, 'I had yielded; but seeing that I am Demosthenes, your pardon,
good sir, if my nature recoils from baseness. '
Then I was minded to hale him off by force. Which when he observed,
I saw him smile and glance at the God. _Archias_ (he said) _believes
that there is no might, no refuge for the human soul, but arms and
war-ships, walls and camps. He scorns that equipment of mine which
is proof against Illyrians and Triballi and Macedonians, surer than
that wooden wall_[23] _of old, which the God averred none should
prevail against. Secure in this I ever took a fearless course; fearless
I braved the might of Macedonia; little I cared for Euctemon or
Aristogiton, for Pytheas and Callimedon, for Philip in the old days,
for Archias to-day. _
And then, _Lay no hand upon me. Be it not mine to bring outrage upon
the temple; I will but greet the God, and follow of my free will. _ And
for me, I put reliance upon this, and when he lifted his hand to his
mouth, I thought it was but to do obeisance.
_Ant. _ And it was indeed--?
_Ar. _ We put his servant to the question later, and learned from her
that he had long had poison by him, to give him liberty by parting soul
from body. He had not yet passed the holy threshold, when he fixed his
eye on me and said: 'Take _this_ to Antipater; Demosthenes you shall
not take, no, by ----' And methought he would have added, by the men
that fell at Marathon.
And with that farewell he parted. So ends, O King, the siege of
Demosthenes.
_Ant. _ Archias, that was Demosthenes. Hail to that unconquerable soul!
how lofty the spirit, how republican the care, that would never be
parted from their warrant of freedom! Enough; the man has gone his way,
to live the life they tell of in the Isles of the heroic Blest, or to
walk the paths that, if tales be true, the heaven-bound spirits tread;
he shall attend, surely, on none but that Zeus who is named of Freedom.
For his body, we will send it to Athens, a nobler offering to that land
than the men that died at Marathon.
H.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] Homer, _Il. _ xii. 243. 'One omen is best--to fight for our own
country. '
[19] See _Demosthenes_ in Notes.
[20] Speeches in the law courts had a time limit appointed, which was
measured by the water-clock or clepsydra, generally called simply 'the
water', 'my water,' 'his water,' &c.
[21] To get a meaning, I translate as though the Greek, instead of #ou
Boiôtias oud' entha ti mê# were #ho men Boiôtias, ho d' entha#.
[22] Euripides, _Hecuba_. See _Polyxena_ in Notes.
[23] Oracle in Herodotus vii. 141: 'A bulwark of wood at the last Zeus
grants to the Trito-born goddess | Sole to remain unwasted. ' _G. C.
Macaulay. _ Variously interpreted of the thorn hedge of the Acropolis,
and of the Athenian fleet.
THE GODS IN COUNCIL
_Zeus. Hermes. Momus_
_Zeus. _ Now, gentlemen, enough of that muttering and whispering in
corners. You complain that our banquets are thrown open to a number
of undesirable persons. Very well: the Assembly has been convened
for the purpose of dealing with this very point, and every one is at
liberty to declare his sentiments openly, and bring what allegations he
will. --Hermes, make formal proclamation to that effect.
_Her. _ All duly qualified divinities are hereby invited to address the
Assembly on the subject of foreigners and immigrants.
_Mo. _ Have I your permission to speak, sir?
_Zeus. _ It is not needed; you have heard the proclamation.
_Mo. _ I desire, then, to protest against the insufferable vanity of
some among us who, not content with their own promotion to godhead,
would introduce their dependants and underlings here as our equals.
Sir, I shall express myself on this subject with that blunt sincerity
which is inseparable from my character. I am known to the world as one
whose unfettered tongue cannot refrain from speech in the presence of
wrong-doing; as one who probes matters to the bottom, and says what
he thinks, without concealment, without fear, and without scruple. My
frankness is burdensome to the generality of Gods, who mistake it for
censoriousness; I have been termed by such the Accuser General. But I
shall none the less avail myself of the freedom accorded to me by the
proclamation--and by your permission, sir--to speak my mind without
reserve. --There are, I repeat it, many persons who, despite their mixed
origin, have been admitted to our feasts and councils upon terms of
equality; and who, not satisfied with this, have brought hither their
servants and satellites, and enrolled them among the Gods; and these
menials now share in our rations and sacrifices without ever so much as
paying the customary tax.
_Zeus. _ These are riddles. Say what you mean in so many words, and let
us have the names. Generalities of this kind can only give ground for
random conjecture; they might apply to any one. You are a friend to
sincerity: speak on, then, without hesitation.
_Mo. _ This is really most gratifying. Such encouragement is precisely
what I should have expected of a king of your exalted spirit; I will
mention the name. I refer, in fact, to Dionysus. Although the mother of
this truly estimable demi-god was not only a mortal, but a barbarian,
and his maternal grandfather a tradesman in Phoenicia, one Cadmus, it
was thought necessary to confer immortality upon him. With his own
conduct since that time, I am not concerned; I shall have nothing
to say on the subject of his snood, his inebriety, or his manner of
walking. You may all see him for yourselves: an effeminate, half-witted
creature, reeking of strong liquor from the early hours of the day.
But we are indebted to him for the presence of a whole tribe of his
followers, whom he has introduced into our midst under the title
of Gods. Such are Pan, Silenus, and the Satyrs; coarse persons, of
frisky tendencies and eccentric appearance, drawn chiefly from the
goat-herd class. The first-mentioned of these, besides being horned,
has the hind-quarters of a goat, and his enormous beard is not unlike
that of the same animal. Silenus is an old man with a bald head and
a snub nose, who is generally to be seen riding on a donkey; he is
of Lydian extraction. The Satyrs are Phrygians; they too are bald,
and have pointed ears, and sprouting horns, like those of young kids.
When I add that every one of these persons is provided with a tail,
you will realize the extent of our obligation to Dionysus. And with
these theological curiosities before their eyes, we wonder why it is
that men think lightly of the Gods! I might have added that Dionysus
has also brought us a couple of ladies: Ariadne is one, his mistress,
whose crown is now set among the host of stars; the other is farmer
Icarius's daughter. And the cream of the jest is still to come: the
dog, Erigone's dog, must be translated too; the poor child would never
be happy in Heaven without the sweet little pet! What can we call this
but a drunken freak?
So much for Dionysus. I now proceed--
_Zeus. _ Now, Momus, I see what you are coming to: but you will kindly
leave Asclepius and Heracles alone. Asclepius is a physician, and
restores the sick; he is
More worth than many men.
And Heracles is my own son, and purchased his immortality with many
toils. So not one word against either of them.
_Mo. _ Very well, sir; as you wish, though I had something to say on
that subject, too. You will excuse my remarking, at any rate, that
they have something of a scorched appearance still. With reference to
yourself, sir, a good deal might be said, if I could feel at liberty----
_Zeus. _ Oh, as regards myself, you are,--perfectly at liberty. What,
then, I am an interloper too, am I?
_Mo. _ Worse than that, according to what they say in Crete: your
tomb is there on view. Not that _I_ believe them, any more than I
believe that Aegium story, about your being a changeling. But there
is one thing that I think ought to be made clear. You yourself,
sir, have set us the example in loose conduct of this kind; it is
you we have to thank--you and your terrestrial gallantries and your
transformations--for the present mixed state of society. We are quite
uneasy about it. You will be caught, some day, and sacrificed as a
bull; or some goldsmith will try his hand upon our gold-transmuted
sire, and we shall have nothing to show for it but a bracelet, a
necklace or a pair of earrings. The long and short of it is, that
Heaven is simply _swarming_ with these demi-gods of yours; there is
no other word for it. It tickles a man considerably when he suddenly
finds Heracles promoted to deity, and Eurystheus, his taskmaster,
dead and buried, his tomb within easy distance of his slave's temple;
or again when he observes in Thebes that Dionysus is a God, but that
God's cousins, Pentheus, Actaeon, and Learchus, only mortals, and poor
devils at that. You see, sir, ever since you gave the entrée to people
of this sort, and turned your attention to the daughters of Earth, all
the rest have followed suit; and the scandalous part of it is, that
the Goddesses are just as bad as the Gods. Of the cases of Anchises,
Tithonus, Endymion, Iasion, and others, I need say nothing; they are
familiar to every one, and it would be tedious to expatiate further.
_Zeus. _ Now I will have no reflections on Ganymede's antecedents; I
shall be very angry with you, if you hurt the boy's feelings.
_Mo. _ Ah; and out of consideration for him I suppose I must also
abstain from any reference to the eagle, which is now a God like the
rest of us, perches upon the royal sceptre, and may be expected at
any moment to build his nest upon the head of Majesty? --Well, you
must allow me Attis, Corybas, and Sabazius: by what contrivance, now,
did _they_ get here? and that Mede there, Mithras, with the candys
and tiara? why, the fellow cannot speak Greek; if you pledge him,
he does not know what you mean. The consequence is, that Scythians
and Goths, observing their success, snap their fingers at us, and
distribute divinity and immortality right and left; that was how
the slave Zamolxis's name slipped into our register. However, let
that pass. But I should just like to ask that Egyptian there--the
dog-faced gentleman in the linen suit[24]--who _he_ is, and whether he
proposes to establish his divinity by barking? And will the piebald
bull yonder[25], from Memphis, explain what use _he_ has for a temple,
an oracle, or a priest? As for the ibises and monkeys and goats and
worse absurdities that are bundled in upon us, goodness knows how, from
Egypt, I am ashamed to speak of them; nor do I understand how you,
gentlemen, can endure to see such creatures enjoying a prestige equal
to or greater than your own. --And you yourself, sir, must surely find
ram's horns a great inconvenience?
_Zeus. _ Certainly, it is disgraceful the way these Egyptians go on.
At the same time, Momus, there is an occult significance in most of
these things; and it ill becomes you, who are not of the initiated, to
ridicule them.
_Mo. _ Oh, come now: a God is one thing, and a person with a dog's head
is another; I need no initiation to tell me that.
_Zeus. _ Well, that will do for the Egyptians; time must be taken for
the consideration of their case. Proceed to others.
_Mo. _ Trophonius and Amphilochus come next. The thought of the latter,
in particular, causes my blood to boil: the father[26] is a matricide
and an outcast, and the son, if you please, sets up for a prophet in
Cilicia, and retails information--usually incorrect--to a believing
public at the rate of twopence an oracle. That is how Apollo here has
fallen into disrepute: it needs but a quack (and quacks are plentiful),
a sprinkling of oil, and a garland or two, and an oracle may be had in
these days wherever there is an altar or a stone pillar. Fever patients
may now be cured either at Olympia by the statue of Polydamas the
athlete, or in Thasos by that of Theagenes. Hector receives sacrifice
at Troy: Protesilaus just across the water on Chersonese. Ever since
the number of Gods has thus multiplied, perjury and temple-robbery have
been on the increase. In short, men do not care two straws about us;
nor can I blame them.
That is all I have to say on the subject of bastards and new
importations. But I have also observed with considerable amusement
the introduction of various strange names, denoting persons who
neither have nor could conceivably have any existence among us. Show
me this Virtue of whom we hear so much; show me Nature, and Destiny,
and Fortune, if they are anything more than unsubstantial names, the
vain imaginings of some philosopher's empty head. Yet these flimsy
personifications have so far gained upon the weak intelligences of
mankind, that not a man will now sacrifice to us, knowing that though
he should present us with a myriad of hecatombs, Fortune will none
the less work out that destiny which has been appointed for each man
from the beginning. I should take it kindly of you, sir, if you would
tell me whether you _have_ ever seen Virtue or Fortune or Destiny
anywhere? I know that you must have heard of them often enough, from
the philosophers, unless your ears are deaf enough to be proof against
their bawlings.
Much more might be said: but I forbear. I perceive that the public
indignation has already risen to hissing point; especially in those
quarters in which my plain truths have told home.
In conclusion, sir, I have drawn up a bill dealing with this subject;
which, with your permission, I shall now read.
_Zeus. _ Very well; some of your points are reasonable enough. We must
put a check on these abuses, or they will get worse.
_Mo. _ On the seventh day of the month in the prytany of Zeus and the
presidency of Posidon Apollo in the chair the following Bill introduced
by Sleep was read by Momus son of Night before a true and lawful
meeting of the Assembly whom Fortune direct.
Whereas _numerous persons both Greeks and barbarians being in no way
entitled to the franchise have by means unknown procured their names
to be enrolled on our register filling the Heavens with false Gods
troubling our banquets with a tumultuous rout of miscellaneous polyglot
humanity and causing a deficiency in the supplies of ambrosia and
nectar whereby the price of the latter commodity owing to increased
consumption has risen to four pounds the half-pint_:
And whereas _the said persons have presumptuously forced themselves
into the places of genuine and old-established deities and in
contravention of law and custom have further claimed precedence of the
same deities upon the Earth_:
It has seemed good to the Senate and People _that an Assembly be
convened upon Olympus at or about the time of the winter solstice for
the purpose of electing a Commission of Inquiry the Commissioners to
be duly-qualified Gods seven in number of whom three to be appointed
from the most ancient Senate of Cronus and the remaining four from
the twelve Gods of whom Zeus to be one and the said Commissioners
shall before taking their seats swear by Styx according to the
established form and Hermes shall summon by proclamation all such as
claim admission to the Assembly to appear and bring with them sworn
witnesses together with documentary proofs of their origin and all
such persons shall successively appear before the Commissioners and
the Commissioners after examination of their claims shall either
declare them to be Gods or dismiss them to their own tombs and family
vaults and if the Commissioners subsequently discover in Heaven any
person so disqualified from entering such person shall be thrown into
Tartarus and further each God shall follow his own profession and no
other and it shall not be lawful either for Athene to heal the sick
or for Asclepius to deliver oracles or for Apollo to practise three
professions at once but only one either prophecy or music or medicine
according as he shall select and instructions shall be issued to
philosophers forbidding them either to invent meaningless names or to
talk nonsense about matters of which they know nothing and if a temple
and sacrificial honours have already been accorded to any disqualified
person his statue shall be thrown down and that of Zeus or Hera or
Athene or other God substituted in its place and his city shall provide
him with a tomb and set up a pillar in lieu of his altar and against
any person refusing to appear before the Commissioners in accordance
with the proclamation judgement shall be given by default. _
That, gentlemen, is the Bill.
_Zeus.
_ And a very equitable one it is, Momus. All in favour of
this Bill hold up their hands! Or no: our opponents are sure to
be in a majority. You may all go away now, and when Hermes makes
the proclamation, every one must come, bringing with him complete
particulars and proofs, with his father's and mother's names, his tribe
and clan, and the reason and circumstances of his deification. And any
of you who fail to produce your proofs will find it is no use having
great temples on the Earth, or passing _there_ for Gods; that will not
help you with the Commissioners.
F.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Anubis.
[25] Apis.
[26] Amphiaraus, the father of Amphilochus, neither slew his own
mother, Hypermnestra, nor procured her death. He did, however, procure
the death of his wife, Eriphyle, at the hand of her son Alcmaeon; and
in this remote sense was a matricide. It must be confessed that a great
deal of the peculiar guilt of matricide evaporates in the process of
explanation. The reader may prefer to suppose simply that Lucian has
made a slip.
THE CYNIC
_Lycinus. A Cynic_
_Ly. _ Give an account of yourself, my man. You wear a beard and let
your hair grow; you eschew shirts; you exhibit your skin; your feet
are bare; you choose a wandering, outcast, beastly life; unlike other
people, you make your own body the object of your severities; you go
from place to place sleeping on the hard ground where chance finds you,
with the result that your old cloak, neither light nor soft nor gay to
begin with, has a plentiful load of filth to carry about with it. Why
_is_ it all?
_Cy. _ It meets my needs. It was easy to come by, and it gives its owner
no trouble. It is the cloak for me.
Pray tell me, do you not call extravagance a vice?
_Ly. _ Oh, yes.
_Cy. _ And economy a virtue?
_Ly. _ Yes, again.
_Cy. _ Then, if you find me living economically, and others
extravagantly, why blame me instead of them?
_Ly. _ I do not call your life more economical than other people's; I
call it more destitute--destitution and want, that is what it is; you
are no better than the poor who beg their daily bread.
_Cy. _ That brings us to the questions, What is want, and what is
sufficiency? Shall we try to find the answers?
_Ly. _ If you like, yes.
_Cy. _ A man's sufficiency is that which meets his necessities; will
that do?
_Ly. _ I pass that.
_Cy. _ And want occurs when the supply falls short of necessity--does
not meet the need?
_Ly. _ Yes.
_Cy. _ Very well, then, I am not in want; nothing of mine fails to
satisfy my need.
_Ly. _ How do you make that out?
_Cy. _ Well, consider the purpose of anything we require; the purpose of
a house is protection?
_Ly. _ Yes.
_Cy. _ Clothing--what is that for? protection too, I think.
_Ly. _ Yes.
_Cy. _ But now, pray, what is the purpose of the protection, in turn?
the better condition of the protected, I presume.
_Ly. _ I agree.
_Cy. _ Then do you think my feet are in worse condition than yours?
_Ly. _ I cannot say.
_Cy. _ Oh, yes; look at it this way; what have feet to do?
_Ly. _ Walk.
_Cy. _ And do you think my feet walk worse than yours, or than the
average man's?
_Ly. _ Oh, not that, I dare say.
_Cy. _ Then they are not in worse condition, if they do their work as
well.
_Ly. _ That may be so.
_Cy. _ So it appears that, as far as feet go, I am in no worse condition
than other people.
_Ly. _ No, I do not think you are.
_Cy. _ Well, the rest of my body, then? If it is in worse condition, it
must be weaker, strength being the virtue of the body. Is mine weaker?
_Ly. _ Not that I see.
_Cy. _ Consequently, neither my feet nor the rest of my body need
protection, it seems; if they did, they would be in bad condition;
for want is always an evil, and deteriorates the thing concerned. But
again, there is no sign, either, of my body's being nourished the worse
for its nourishment's being of a common sort.
_Ly. _ None whatever.
_Cy. _ It would not be healthy, if it were badly nourished; for bad food
injures the body.
_Ly. _ That is true.
_Cy. _ If so, it is for you to explain why you blame me and depreciate
my life and call it miserable.
_Ly. _ Easily explained. Nature (which you honour) and the Gods have
given us the earth, and brought all sorts of good things out of it,
providing us with abundance not merely for our necessities, but for
our pleasures; and then you abstain from all or nearly all of it, and
utilize these good things no more than the beasts. Your drink is water,
just like theirs; you eat what you pick up, like a dog, and the dog's
bed is as good as yours; straw is enough for either of you. Then your
clothes are no more presentable than a beggar's. Now, if this sort of
contentment is to pass for wisdom, God must have been all wrong in
making sheep woolly, filling grapes with wine, and providing all our
infinite variety of oil, honey, and the rest, that we might have food
of every sort, pleasant drink, money, soft beds, fine houses, all the
wonderful paraphernalia of civilization, in fact; for the productions
of art are God's gifts to us too. To live without all these would be
miserable enough even if one could not help it, as prisoners cannot,
for instance; it is far more so if the abstention is forced upon a man
by himself; it is then sheer madness.
_Cy. _ You may be right. But take this case, now. A rich man, indulging
genial kindly instincts, entertains at a banquet all sorts and
conditions of men; some of them are sick, others sound, and the dishes
provided are as various as the guests. There is one of these to whom
nothing comes amiss; he has his finger in every dish, not only the
ones within easy reach, but those some way off that were intended for
the invalids; this though he is in rude health, has not more than one
stomach, requires little to nourish him, and is likely to be upset by a
surfeit. What is your opinion of this gentleman? is he a man of sense?
_Ly. _ Why, no.
_Cy. _ Is he temperate?
_Ly. _ No, nor that.
_Cy. _ Well, then there is another guest at the same table; he seems
unconscious of all that variety, fixes on some dish close by that suits
his need, eats moderately of it and confines himself to it without a
glance at the rest. You surely find him a more temperate and better man
than the other?
_Ly. _ Certainly.
_Cy. _ Do you see, or must I explain?
_Ly. _ What?
_Cy. _ That the hospitable entertainer is God, who provides this variety
of all kinds that each may have something to suit him; this is for the
sound, that for the sick; this for the strong and that for the weak; it
is not all for all of us; each is to take what is within reach, and of
that only what he most needs.
Now you others are like the greedy unrestrained person who lays hands
on everything; local productions will not do for you, the world must be
your storehouse; your native land and its seas are quite insufficient;
you purchase your pleasures from the ends of the earth, prefer the
exotic to the home growth, the costly to the cheap, the rare to the
common; in fact you would rather have troubles and complications than
avoid them. Most of the precious instruments of happiness that you
so pride yourselves upon are won only by vexation and worry. Give a
moment's thought, if you will, to the gold you all pray for, to the
silver, the costly houses, the elaborate dresses, and do not forget
their conditions precedent, the trouble and toil and danger they
cost--nay, the blood and mortality and ruin; not only do numbers perish
at sea on their account, or endure miseries in the acquisition or
working of them; besides that, they have very likely to be fought for,
or the desire of them makes friends plot against friends, children
against parents, wives against husbands.
And how purposeless it all is! embroidered clothes have no more warmth
in them than others, gilded houses keep out the rain no better, the
drink is no sweeter out of a silver cup, or a gold one for that matter,
an ivory bed makes sleep no softer; on the contrary, your fortunate man
on his ivory bed between his delicate sheets constantly finds himself
wooing sleep in vain. And as to the elaborate dressing of food, I need
hardly say that instead of aiding nutrition it injures the body and
breeds diseases in it.
As superfluous to mention the abuse of the sexual instinct, so easily
managed if indulgence were not made an object. And if madness and
corruption were limited to that--; but men must take nowadays to
perverting the use of everything they have, turning it to unnatural
purposes, like him who insists on making a carriage of a couch.
_Ly. _ Is there such a person?
_Cy. _ Why, he is you; you for whom men are beasts of burden, you who
make them shoulder your couch-carriages, and loll up there yourselves
in luxury, driving your men like so many asses and bidding them turn
this way and not that; this is one of the outward and visible signs of
your happiness.
Again, when people use edible things not for food but to get dye out
of--the murex-dyers, for instance--are they not abusing God's gifts?
_Ly. _ Certainly not; the flesh of the murex can provide a pigment as
well as food.
_Cy. _ Ah, but it was not made for that. So you can _force_ a
mixing-bowl to do the work of a saucepan; but that is not what it
was made for. However, it is impossible to exhaust these people's
wrong-headedness; it is endless. And because I will not join them, you
reproach me. My life is that of the orderly man I described; I make
merry on what comes to hand, use what is cheap, and have no yearning
for the elaborate and exotic.
Moreover, if you think that because I need and use but few things I
live the life of a beast, that argument lands you in the conclusion
that the Gods are yet lower than the beasts; for they have no needs at
all. But to clear your ideas on the comparative merits of great and
small needs, you have only to reflect that children have more needs
than adults, women than men, the sick than the well, and generally the
inferior than the superior. Accordingly, the Gods have no needs, and
those men the fewest who are nearest Gods.
Take Heracles, the best man that ever lived, a divine man, and rightly
reckoned a God; was it wrong-headedness that made him go about in
nothing but a lion's skin, insensible to all the needs you feel? No,
he was not wrong-headed, who righted other people's wrongs; he was not
poor, who was lord of land and sea. Wherever he went, he was master;
he never met his superior or his equal as long as he lived. Do you
suppose he could not get sheets and shoes, and therefore went as he
did? absurd! he had self-control and fortitude; he wanted power, and
not luxury.
And Theseus his disciple--king of all the Athenians, son of 14.
Poseidon, says the legend, and best of his generation,--he too chose to
go naked and unshod; it was _his_ pleasure to let his hair and beard
grow; and not his pleasure only, but all his contemporaries'; they were
better men than you, and would no more have let you shave them than a
lion would; soft smooth flesh was very well for women, they thought;
as for them, they were men, and were content to look it; the beard was
man's ornament, like the lion's, or the horse's mane; God had made
certain beautiful and decorative additions to those creatures; and so
he had to man, in the beard. Well, I admire those ancients and would
fain be like them; I have not the smallest admiration for the present
generation's wonderful felicity--tables! clothes! bodies artificially
polished all over! not a hair to grow on any of the places where
nature plants it!
My prayer would be that my feet might be just hoofs, like Chiron's in
the story, that I might need bedclothes no more than the lion, and
costly food no more than the dog. Let my sufficient bed be the whole
earth, my house this universe, and the food of my choice the easiest
procurable. May I have no need, I nor any that I call friend, of gold
and silver. For all human evils spring from the desire of these,
seditions and wars, conspiracies and murders. The fountain of them all
is the desire of more. Never be that desire mine; let me never wish for
more than my share, but be content with less.
Such are our aspirations--considerably different from other people's.
It is no wonder that our get-up is peculiar, since the peculiarity of
our underlying principle is so marked. I cannot make out why you allow
a harpist his proper robe and get-up--and so the flute-player has his,
and the tragic actor his--, but will not be consistent and recognize
any uniform for a good man; the good man must be like every one else,
of course, regardless of the fact that every one else is all wrong.
Well, if the good are to have a uniform of their own, there can be
none better than that which the average sensual man will consider most
improper, and reject with most decision for himself.
Now my uniform consists of a rough hairy skin, a threadbare cloak,
long hair, and bare feet, whereas yours is for all the world that of
some minister to vice; there is not a pin to choose between you--the
gay colours, the soft texture, the number of garments you are swathed
in, the shoes, the sleeked hair, the very scent of you; for the more
blessed you are, the more do you exhale perfumes like his. What value
can one attach to a man whom one's nose would identify for one of those
minions? The consequence is, you are equal to no more work than they
are, and to quite as much pleasure. You feed like them, you sleep
like them, you walk like them--except so far as you avoid walking by
getting yourselves conveyed like parcels by porters or animals; as
for me, my feet take me anywhere that I want to go. I can put up with
cold and heat and be content with the works of God--such a miserable
wretch am I--, whereas you blessed ones are displeased with everything
that happens and grumble without ceasing; what is is intolerable, what
is not you pine for, in winter for summer, in summer for winter, in
heat for cold, in cold for heat, as fastidious and peevish as so many
invalids; only their reason is to be found in their illness, and yours
in your characters.
And then, because we occasionally make mistakes in practice, you
recommend us to change our plan and correct our principles, the fact
being that you in your own affairs go quite at random, never acting
on deliberation or reason, but always on habit and appetite. You are
no better than people washed about by a flood; they drift with the
current, you with your appetites. There is a story of a man on a
vicious horse that just gives your case. The horse ran away with him,
and at the pace it was going at he could not get off. A man in the way
asked him where he was off to; 'wherever this beast chooses,' was the
reply. So if one asked you where you were bound for, if you cared to
tell the truth you would say either generally, wherever your appetites
chose, or in particular, where pleasure chose to-day, where fancy chose
to-morrow, and where avarice chose another day; or sometimes it is
rage, sometimes fear, sometimes any other such feeling, that takes you
whither it will. You ride not one horse, but many at different times,
all vicious, and all out of control. They are carrying you straight for
pits and cliffs; but you do not realize that you are bound for a fall
till the fall comes.
The old cloak, the shaggy hair, the whole get-up that you ridicule, has
this effect: it enables me to live a quiet life, doing as I will and
keeping the company I want. No ignorant uneducated person will have
anything to say to one dressed like this; and the soft livers turn the
other way as soon as I am in sight. But the refined, the reasonable,
the earnest, seek me out; they are the men who seek me, because they
are the men I wish to see. At the doors of those whom the world counts
happy I do not dance attendance; their gold crowns and their purple I
call ostentation, and them I laugh to scorn.
These externals that you pour contempt upon, you may learn that they
are seemly enough not merely for good men, but for Gods, if you will
look at the Gods' statues; do those resemble you, or me? Do not confine
your attention to Greece; take a tour round the foreign temples too,
and see whether the Gods treat their hair and beards like me, or let
the painters and sculptors shave them. Most of them, you will find,
have no more shirt than I have, either. I hope you will not venture to
describe again as mean an appearance that is accepted as godlike.
H.
THE PURIST PURIZED
_Lycinus. Purist_
_Ly.
