No More Learning

Or his method may be to invert reality. The questing ship, for example, comes suddenly to a crevasse, yawning in its path, and is checked just in time before it plunges over the edge into the chasm of air. 50 This chasm, however, is presently crossed on a Natural Bridge of water, sighted nearby, which unites precariously, on the surface, the severed cliffs of water.
Lucian prolongs our appetite by the recur
rent intellectual spice of delicate parodies.
at the end he draws aside his rainbow veil to show us the ass's shins of reality and bows us, breathless, back again into " our own continent that lies opposite. "
It would be easy to make other detached excerpts but only by reading the whole can we fully appreciate how, with gathered momentum, the True Story has stimulated the long line of imitators who also have smuggled through the " ivory gate " their lesser share of celestial loot.
Familiarized with the flavour of Lucian's narration in the True Story, the Lie-Fancier,
[119]
Just
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
the Icaromenippus, the Toxaris and other writ ings, it is tempting to accept as genuine the Syrian Goddess and the Ass. The Syrian God dess,51 flaunting her oriental nakedness through the diaphanous Ionic dress, has touches of hu mour that suggest a deliberate satire on the naivete of Herodotus and on the current fad for Ionicizing, notwithstanding some linguistic flaws foreign to Lucian's style. Lucius or the Ass 52 is apparently an epitome of a lost origi nal. Lapses into the vulgar dialect betray a different hand (or, perhaps, an artistic whim),
but long stretches of narration in this famous and outrageous tale suggest that Lucian is lurk ing in person within the ass, availing himself
with gusto of this excellent chance to satirize the current belief in magic.
The identical matter of certain passages in this and in Apuleius's Golden Ass presupposes an archetype. 53 Whether this was written by Apuleius or, as it has been argued, by Lucian himself, the brilliant Syrian was no mere plagiarist and whatever part he may have had in telling, or retelling, the tale, the purpose underlying his facile narration was the mockery
of credulity. He was a lion in an ass's skin! [120]
VIII. LUCIAN'S CREDITORS AND DEBTORS
i. Sources
THE case of authorship antedating the
honest confessional of the footnote or the
scholar's page, sicklied o'er with conscien IN
tious references, the identification of indebted ness, varying from conjecture to certainty, is a fascinating and, at times, an illuminating pursuit.
Fully to tabulate Lucian's obligations to predecessors and, perhaps, to contemporaries is not now practicable. He is openly proud of his debt to classic Greek writers but is normally reticent about obligations to Roman predeces sors, or to contemporaries, whether Greek or Roman. His writings abound in parodies, full quotation, and interwoven scraps of citation. In all this the intended effect would depend largely upon the instant recognition by his audience of the original. For example, the second Dialogue of the Sea, except for those familiar with the Odyssey, would lack mean
[121]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
ing when, with Lucianic additions, the Cyclops rehearses to his father, the naive Poseidon, the story of Odysseus and the ram. This would, in turn, recall the inimitable parody in the Wasps of Aristophanes, where the jury-maniac, Phi- locleon, essays escape under the shaggy belly of the family donkey.
The revamping of plot or of whole charac ters from the Attic drama would be more than an extension of this form of intentional remi niscence. The title of Lucian's Timon was not improbably suggested by the Timon of Antiph- anes, not now extant. This, however, in itself proves nothing. Just as " Electra " changed her robes under the hands of her three distin guished couturieres of the fifth century, so we find in the Comic Fragments more than identical titles reappearing respectively in the writings of from two to eight different authors. As a matter of fact, it is to the Plutus of Aristophanes that we turn to enjoy, in Lucian's
Timon, his adroit use of a predecessor. The result was not a mere contaminatio. We may assume the same with the Charon, or the Cock. Their effect upon the mind renders incredible the suggestion that they are not fresh-minted. If in his Charon, for example, Lucian had some
[ 122 ]
250
lucian's creditors and debtors
" original " in mind we do not need to know either for understanding or for enjoyment. It would, however, make difference in our esti mate could be shown that our author slavishly or clandestinely imitated, in form or in substance, works now no longer extant. Should we give to Menippus, for example, the real credit for the creation of the Satiric Dia logue? Are the Necyomanteia, the Dialogues
the Dead, the Cronos Letters, the orgiastic satire in the Symposium, and elements in the Hermotimus, etc. , plagiarisms? We cannot be dogmatic in each case but at least obvious that the frequent references to Menippus would have sufficiently recalled writings that were still accessible. Lucian was content with his own originality and submits his book-keeping for inspection in open court. Modern critics most entitled °4 to an opinion rank Lucian among the great, though not the greatest, creative writers of antiquity.
In general, seems safe to conclude that Lucian regarded the writings of predecessors and contemporaries as an open quarry from which he first built up his own style and then picked out material to imbed, with an artist's skill, in the parti-coloured mosaic of his satire.
123]
[
it
it is
of
if it
a
it,
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
Such material, drawn here and there from the Wonders of the Island Thule of Antonius Di ogenes 55 or from Theopompus before him, or from the pious Plutarch, or from the elusive sources of the Arabian Nights or other oriental tales, may have been freely transferred to his True Story without implying plagiarism any more than did his"parodies on the Odyssey. Even the Ass by Lucius of Patrae," if we discover the Lucianic stigmata beneath its shaggy hair, would justify itself, contrasted with the " golden " credulity of Apuleius, as a pungent satire on the current belief in magic.
Whether Lucian is to be accredited with the creation or only the development of the Satiric Dialogue is a different matter. This, in a sense, calls in question his originality. Perhaps the first suggestion for his brilliant Sale of Sample Lives came from a dialogue of Menippus, en titled the Sale of Diogenes. Croiset, however, justly remarks : 56 " si Lucien 1'a imite, ce n'a ete qu'en se reservant le droit de la trans former " — the quality of this transformation
in the last analysis, the essential thing.
124]
[
is,
lucian's creditors and debtors
Latin Sources
The identification in Lucian's writings of direct reminiscences from Latin writers is pre carious when so much of the content of litera ture and tradition had passed into community ownership but, apart from the argument ex silentio, which would be as misleading here as elsewhere, there is no good reason to ignore Lucian's own words and to assume that he could not use freely such Latin writings as were physically available.
Certain passages reflect, some certainly, some with more or less probability, the thought or actual words of Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, Tacitus, Juvenal, Ovid and Pliny. A number of such reminiscences or parallels have been pointed out by various67 scholars. By way of supplement it may be remarked here that the details, even verbal, in Lucian's description of Phaethon (number twenty-five of the Dia logues of the Gods), read like a racy synopsis
of Ovid's words. The contacts with Ovid's poetry are numerous and Lucian, who compares himself to an Attic bee questing for honey, would have noted Ovid's exquisite verses 68 fragrant with memories of Mt. Hymettus. In
[125]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
the Charon the falling tile which prevents the dinner-guest from keeping his engagement, has an obvious parallel in Juvenal's third satire. This particular type of accidental death was, indeed, so common that we cannot claim from this incident alone an actual reminiscence, but the community of feeling throughout the corre sponding scene in Juvenal reenforces the ante cedent probability that Lucian was familiar with the Roman satirist.
Suggestions from Works of Art
Among Lucian's creditors we must also in clude sculptors, painters and architects. His obligations, however, in the realms of art, other than his own, would require a separate treatise. 59 When he discusses, either inciden tally or of set purpose, actual works of art, his comments are so incisive that he has been
characterized as " undoubtedly the most trust worthy art-critic of antiquity. " 80 This discrim inating apperception of truth and beauty, in form and design, was an integral part of his mental equipment. We feel this discrimination in his visualization of a certain portrait statue, otherwise unknown, — " a pot-bellied man, hair receding on the forehead, half-naked, some
[126]
ARTIST
lucian's creditors and debtors
hairs of his beard wind-tossed, outstanding veins, a man to the very life " — no less than in his vivid sketches of world-famous statues like Myron's Discobolus, the Cnidian Aphro dite, the Diadumenus, or the Tyrant-slayers. His inspiration, too, from pictorial art was im portant. He welcomes the opportunity, for ex ample, to give a " word-picture " of the Cen
taur Family by Zeuxis (though from a copy of the original) which is itself important in the history of painting. Or again, we feel the im pression made on his mind by the painter's art in his catalogue of the paintings which adorned the lecture auditorium of whose architectural splendour, incidentally, he gives us a wordy picture.
But quite apart from this incidental legacy of art through description, more important for our appreciation of Lucian are his elusive trans fers, not always capable of identification, from the medium of plastic and graphic art into such word-pictures as the vignettes in the Dialogues of the Gods and the Dialogues of the Sea. Ob viously, in some instances, a telescoping of sources — from both art and literature — may be assumed. For the Europa 91 story, for ex ample, there was abundant material in art, and
[127]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
in literature in the accounts given by Mos- chus and twice by Ovid. In the Rescue of An dromeda Ovid represents Perseus as slaying the monster with his falchion only, while Lucian brings in also the Medusa head and follows the monuments of art (except the vases), as, for ex ample, in the painting described by him in The Hall (22). This, of course, gives Lucian his chance for his characteristic persiflage. 62 Lu- cian's delight in placing the gods in a comic situation led him more than once into repeti tion. The sight of a statuette, as Bliimner sug gests, where a woman with upraised hand is threatening her victim with chastisement from her sandal, gave him, perhaps, the cue for the
punishment of the naughty Eros by his mother (Dialogues of the Gods, 11. 1) and also for
the lubberly Heracles brought under the san dal of Omphale (Dial. , 13. 2 and How to Write History, 10). Passing over other similar in stances, we note in the Charon another sugges tion from the field of art — if art it may be called. The ferryman is explaining why his ship's galley is so well-stocked with Homeric hors d'oeuvres. The poet, it seems, had grown suddenly sea-sick on the voyage and had left unclaimed in Charon's boat an ample chres
[128]
lucian's creditors and debtors
tomathy, " including Scylla, Charybdis, and Cyclops. " Lucian may have seen a picture made by Galato in the age of the Ptolemies representing the citations issuing from Homer's mouth while the lesser breed of poets were gathering up these " winged words " — these undigested " slices " from the Homeric menu !
Lucian, as coinheritor of Greek art, moved about continuously in a world of beauty, per haps only " half-realized " even by our patient and pious reconstruction. He could see, day after day, the still virgin Parthenon and within it the gold-ivory Athena with Victory 63 on her extended hand. He could see in the Acropolis Picture Gallery and in the Cnidian Club at Delphi paintings of Polygnotus whose popu lous portrayal of the Underworld was catholic enough to include, for his benefit, Charon and the boat, as well as the ghostly dramatis
personae from the Odyssey. And, across the Aegean, he could see the Cnidian Aphrodite herself — no mere reproduction where the copyist's defacing fingers have blurred the perfect work of Praxiteles.
As satirist Lucian seized his opportunities at will but the artist within him could respond just as seriously to the impacts of beauty from
[ 129]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
sculpture and painting as to the suggestions garnered from his own field of art — from prose and poetry.
2. Lucian's Legatees
i. IN ART
In the field of art Lucian transmitted or originated suggestions for some of the greatest artists of Europe. Wherever these suggestions can be identified as themselves transmuted by Lucian from monuments of sculpture or, more frequently, from pictorial art, our interest is enhanced by the very continuity of motif.
It is not surprising that the fresh impulse given by the Revival of Greek, and the re covery of Lucian among other writers, should have stimulated the imagination of Renaissance artists more effectively than did the abundant suggestions already at hand, for example, in the duller pages of the elder Pliny. Leone Bat- tista Alberti (1404-1472), musician, painter, sculptor, architect, poet and prose-writer, was
an enthusiastic intermediary. By a special tract on Lucian's description, in his De Calumnia, of the painting ascribed to Apelles he com mended Lucian to the attention of artists as
[130]
lucian's creditors and debtors
convincingly as Quintilian, in his day, had commended Menander to young Roman ora
tors. Botticelli reconstructed Lucian's
tion in his immortal painting and was followed by Raphael, Mantegna and others. 64 Albrecht Durer included the " Calumny of Apelles " among the designs furnished for the mural decorations in Nuremberg. Froben, in answer to the detractors of Erasmus, inserted in a second edition of the New Testament, as one of the illustrations, this still vigorous Calum- nia. Rembrandt, or a pupil, still later repro duced Mantegna's motif. Botticelli also trans ferred, somewhat altered, to his canvas Lu cian's description of the Centaur Family — a precursor of the landscape. In the Palazzo Borghese a pupil filled out Raphael's sketch
(still extant) of Lucian's Marriage of Alexan der and Roxana, which also formed the nu cleus of Sodoma's splendid fresco in the Chigi house in Rome and was later to reappear from the fecund brush of Rubens. " "
[131]
The imaginative picture of eloquence
in Lucian's Gallic Heracles emerges in sketches by Raphael, Durer, and Holbein. Holbein also reproduced vividly Lucian's cashiered family- tutor and passed on the needed, long unheeded,
descrip
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
warning to all literati who hang on patrons' favours.
In the Nigrinus of Lucian occurs the sug gestion for the red-crayon drawing, by"Michel angelo, of the archer shooting the winged word " at his victim. From this drawing, found at Windsor Castle, a scholar of Raphael later made a fresco.
In Diirer's sketchbook in Vienna is pre served his " Europa " taken from the fifteenth Dialogue of the Sea. Titian's coarse lady, loll ing on the bull, has only the subject in com mon with the delicate beauty of Lucian's de scription, happily retouched in perfect lines by Tennyson in his Palace of Art.
The Dialogues of the Dead, more than any other work by Lucian have furnished sugges tions to pictorial artists. Death's toll is even more universal than the levy exacted by Eros. Hans Holbein's name is conventionally identi fied with the " Dance of Death. " 65 Some rep resentations of it have been incorrectly attrib uted to him. 66 He has even been falsely ac credited with the invention of the motif itself. This subject was a favourite decoration for bridges as, for example, the arresting gable- paintings in the covered Pont des Moulins at
[ 132 ]
lucian's creditors and debtors
Lucerne; for churches and churchyards: for example, the Dominican convent at Bale, Saint Mary's"Church at Liibeck,67 the " Triumph of Death in the Campo Santo at Pisa; for houses, as the one at Bale said to have been decorated by Holbein, or the frescoes said to have been painted by him for Henry VIII in the palace of Whitehall and burnt in 1697; or as decorations on ladies' fans — a beneficent cave feminam! The irony of Lucian's. dialogues was also woven into the " Hans Holbein Al phabet," and it was Holbein who sketched the grim reminders on the margin of Erasmus's Encomium Moriae and who used them to illus trate Sir Thomas More's Utopia.
Observing all due precaution against making arbitrary identifications one might go on to gather other examples. Even a casual review of museum catalogues suggests, here and there, Lucian's influence, direct or indirect, upon pictorial art.
IN LITERATURE
Reminiscence: Imitation: Parallels
Lucian's influence upon subsequent litera ture, in the sum total, has been very great,
[133]
ii.
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
greater, of course, at some periods than at others. 68
Probably he influenced his younger con temporaries. What relation may have existed between him and Apuleius has not been de termined past peradventure. It seems clear, however, that the vigour of both of them in story-telling, whatever their indebtedness to the Odyssey and to Herodotus or to Ovid himself, launched anew 69 the Story, as such, on its long voyage through the Middle Ages down to the modern novel.
The dates and data at our disposal are not always precise. Alciphron, for example, is va riously treated as a younger contemporary or as a slightly later writer. The Letter to Lucian, included among his works, would seem, to the present writer, to indicate that the latter 70 as sumption, rather than the former, were correct. In addition to their common debt to the New Comedy Alciphron betrays, on occasion, his indebtedness to Lucian.
Philostratus, writing in the third century, did not pay Lucian the doubtful compliment of in cluding him in his " Lives of the Sophists," probably because he observed " the sophistic convention of silence as to the one who so ex
[134]
lucian's creditors and debtors
celled and satirized them all. " 71 Lucian, how ever, is conspicuous by the omission. He made a fortunate and timely escape from this narrow profession, but he none the less, inevitably drawn by modern critics into comparison with the Sophists.
Gregory of Nazianzes and John Chrysostom, still reflecting genuine Hellenism in the fourth century, were able and willing to appreciate Lucian in spite of his paganism.
The Emperor Julian found in Lucian be cause of his paganism welcome ally in the losing battle for a decadent Hellenism. And Libanius, who had taught, Chrysostom elo quence, and who was the much older contem porary and guide of Julian, in his voluminous outpouring of wearisome rhetoric, could include meaningless critiques upon Aristophanes and Lucian while he makes use of the latter to give flavour to his own insipid declamation. He is, for example, borrowing from Lucian's brilliant and scathing diagnosis of the Hireling Pro
when, in his epideictic oration 72 on the varied forms of human slavery, he dilates upon the bondage of the " house-professor. " To satisfy father, mother, grandpa and grand ma the " professor," he says, must demonstrate
[135]
fessors
a
a
is,
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
that their young hopeful is on a par with the sons of gods! Nor may he venture to ignore anyone in the whole entourage — not the door- tender, not the " male chaperone," not the serv ants who carry the boy's books, not even — note the present-day touch! — the athlete! A picture sordid enough, certainly, even for the twentieth century, and unenlivened by Lucian's caustic comments. It does, however, indicate the wholesome contempt to which the sophistic professor of mere rhetoric was again subjected in the fourth century, as contrasted with his unparalleled power and popularity in the time of Philostratus. 73 Thus the keen satire of Lu-
cian, the " Apostate " from sophistic rhetoric, was already in process of vindication. Fast colours do not fade!
At the end of the third century and the be ginning of this fourth century two other well- known writers, pro-Christian and pro-pagan respectively, testify that Lucian was present, at least, in the consciousness of both factions. Lactantius, the very respectable " Christian Cicero," speaks 74 of Lucian as one who spared neither gods nor men, while the inferior but useful Eunapius selects 75 for approval, because of its serious purpose, the dull Demonax, of
[136]
lucian's creditors and debtors
doubtful authenticity though ascribed to Lu- cian the " expert in mockery. "
As we penetrate deeper into the labyrinth of Byzantine literature we find Lucian secure in his place among Greek classics, either included directly by name or by the still more flattering praise of imitation. The large number of only partly edited " imitators " in the Paris and Vatican libraries, respectively,76 might contrib ute further data, and the late and spurious
Phttopatris, foisted upon the Lucianic canon by an unknown tenth-century author, continued for centuries to involve Lucian in wholly un necessary abuse from uncritical Christians.
Photius, in the ninth century, in addition to
detailed comment, already mentioned, includes
Lucian as an especial favourite in his list of
prose authors. Luitprand, the " most original
hellenist "
alia, from Lucian's Dream.
77
of the tenth century, quotes, inter
Suidas, whose combined lexicon and ency clopaedia is referred to " the third quarter of the eleventh century," 78 gives a genial and doubtless quite orthodox opinion as to Lucian's contemporary whereabouts. Lucian in his Life's End of Peregrinus had spoken in a patronizing, but by no means entirely uncomplimentary
[137]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
manner of the Christians, referring, incident ally, to " that crucified sophist " of theirs. This draws from the pious lexicographer specific de tails as to Lucian's death and subsequent ca reer, closing with the words : " And in the time to come he shall be joint heir with Satan of the fire everlasting! " Of this much, at least, we may be sure: the Peregrinus had not yet, as was the case later, been cut out of the Lucian manuscript accessible to Suidas.
Tzetzes in the twelfth century, in his huge poem, nearly thirteen " chiliads " in length, gives Lucian, of course, his due place among some four hundred authors cited, from Homer down to Byzantine times. 79
The Experiences of Timarion in his visit to the Underworld is also referred to the twelfth century by Krumbacher and described as " one of the numberless Byzantine imitations of Lu cian " for, although the theme itself goes back to the Odyssey, it is a direct revival in dialogue form of Lucian's Menippus or Necromancy. Incidentally the great ghost of Psellus, " the Photius of the Eleventh century," is satirized under a thin disguise. 80 This motif continued to be a favourite. It reappears, for example, in Mazaris's Trip to Hades,*1 about 141 6 a. d. ,
[138]
lucian's creditors and debtors
which is a combination of dialogue and letter- form and one of the more wooden imitations of Lucian.
Theodorus Prodromus82 (1118-1180) stands at the very threshold of Modern Greek litera ture and wrote, indeed, both in the vulgar and in the Byzantine Greek. He was an inveterate polygraph in poetry and prose, ranging from rhetoric and theology, grammar and philoso phy and astrology to the poetic romance and satire. His interest for us lies in the fact that he was apparently at his best when following Lucian, as in his loans from the Tragical Zeus and in his better-known satirical dialogue The Sale of Philosophers and Statesmen, which is an elaborate imitation of Lucian's brilliant Sale of Soul Samples. In this he sells off, amongst other parcels, Homer, Hippocrates, Aristoph anes, Euripides and Demosthenes. 83
•
Katrarius, sometimes referred to the tenth century but more probably of the twelfth or thirteenth,84 may be allowed to close this summary selection from Byzantine writers. The Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204 a. d. , made possible direct access to Greek
learning without the intervention of the Arabic, while the infiltration into the West of a knowl
[ 139]
Johannes
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
edge of the Greek language prepared the way for a Revival of Greek Learning, happily an ticipating the actual occupation by the Turk,
in the fifteenth century, of the moribund By zantine Empire.
Lucian made his debut in Italy toward the end of this period. Greater names received first attention but also, by the perversity of circum stance, authors inferior to him gained an earlier hearing. No other characteristic of these in tellectual Crusaders is more pathetic than their lack of perspective in the reverence for any and every MS. recovered — any goose, Roman or
Greek, became forthwith a swan ! Petrarch, in deed, treasured a Homer and a Plato that he could not read and his Letters to Dead Authors do not reecho Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead. Boccaccio, who could boast of being the first Italian to " resume " the reading of Homer, contented himself with Latin authors, like Ovid and Apuleius, when, if Lucian had been easily accessible, he might have found stimulus in him also.
To Aurispa of Sicily, who in 1423 brought some 238 Greek MSS. to Venice,85 may be as cribed the introduction of Lucian into Italy. He was, however, less remarkable as a scholar
[ 140]
lucian's creditors and debtors
than as a collector of MSS. and thought it a matter of plain patriotic duty, in translating Lucian's twelfth Dialogue of the Dead, to alter the original by assigning the first place to the Roman Scipio instead of to Alexander the Great! 86
In this group of collectors, who were also translators of Lucian, may be mentioned: Filelfo, long resident in Constantinople, who, by way of perfecting his Greek, married the grand-niece of Chrysoloras, the first and greatest of the " visiting professors " of Greek; also the famous Poggio himself; and, with especial honour, Guarino da Verona, who not only imported in 1408 more than fifty MSS. but was also a sound and inspiring scholar. Among other works he translated at least three of Lucian's writings. Very early in the fifteenth century translations and citations in lectures from Greek authors took a wide range, as with Bruni and Marsuppini. For Lucian, in particular, several writers may be empha sized. Alberti, as above mentioned, stimu lated by the association with graphic art, started, by his tractate on the De Calumnia of Lucian, this rather mediocre piece on its long and efficient career.
[141]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
Matteo Maria Boiardo, towards the end of the fifteenth century, however, selected one of Lucian's most famous dialogues, The Timon,
from which he developed a full-fledged comedy in verse, // Timone,87 with its lame and im potent denouement. This, in turn, may have been indirectly laid under contribution in con structing the patch-work, play, Timon
of Athens, attached to Shakespeare's name, which,
in spite of futile accretions, manages to pre serve some of the original Lucianic colour. Be that as it may, Lucian transmitted from anti quity and standardized for the modern world a clear-cut type of the misanthrope. 88
Pontano, also, who died in 1503, in his poetic satire, Charon, had Lucian's like-named dialogue 88 as forerunner.
Ariosto, the successor of Boiardo in more senses than one, is deeply in debt to Lucian. Of him and of two of his slightly younger
"
to Lucian . . . than to the quest of the New World, and the discovery of its wonders. " By this time, in fact, Lucian had become very
[142]
The peregrinations of Ariosto and Folengo and Rabelais, the adventures of their heroes, the strange countries they visit, owe much more
contemporaries it has been remarked : 90
lucian's creditors and debtors
popular and Folengo's burlesque romance, Baldus, makes particularly clear the influence of the True Story.
When we pass from Italy to the north and west of Europe, in the latter part of the
fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, it is embarrassing to attempt to catalogue and still more to classify rigidly the more significant names of Lucian's debtors. He stimulated, indeed, imaginative humour now with, now without, an ulterior motive of didactic satire. But, for the most part, the wanton joys of the pagan Revival in Italy are obscured in the cold transalpine mists of con troversy. The satire of Lucian, the potential foe to all theologies, was a weapon available to opposing warriors in the joyless jousts of the Reformation.
The editio princeps of Lucian, printed in Florence, 1494-96, by Constantine Lascaris, made his writings the common property of scholars. Translation, citation, and imitation in Latin or even in the vernaculars, widened in definitely his sphere of influence.
Desiderius Erasmus (1467-1536), whose reduplicated Graeco-Roman name could ignore all geographic barriers, is the best liaison be
[143]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
tween the members of the brilliant groups of his immediate or younger contemporaries — Dutch, English, French, German or Italian — who perpetuated Lucian's influence. His lucid Latin is not a borrowed tool. It is intellec tually and stylistically his own. Incidentally, he models on the Lexiphanes of Lucian his dialogue, Ciceronianus,'1 in which he derides the folly of a slavish imitation of a single author. This sterling Latinity of his, good at its face value for the " Latin Union " of the European intelligentsia, was the medium through which Lucian's best satire first " swims into the ken " of many eager contemporaries. Keen in distinguishing between the ephemeral and the universal, Erasmus applied Lucian's satire to current ethics and ecclesiastical
prac tices. In addition to other minor pieces he translated many of Lucian's vital writings,
including the Cock, the Icaromenippus, Timon,92 Alexander the False Prophet, the Banquet, the Hireling Professors and the Saturnalia, often sending them as gifts to friendly patrons, before they were published, along with others translated by his running
mate, Sir Thomas More. With generous en thusiasm he writes to another friend, Am
[ 144]
lucian's creditors and debtors monius, the Latin secretary of Henry VIII:
" I am delighted that you are Lucianizing. " Loyal to his own religious beliefs, Erasmus did not hesitate to use Lucian to scourge ec clesiastical shams, although charged, on the one hand, with heresy and atheism by venal and sensual clerics, or branded as a " second Lucian " 94 by the dogmatic Luther. But Chris
tendom would listen neither to " Right Rea son " nor to satire. The antichristian spirit of hate and persecution common to both parties, precipitated the long orgy of blood and fire,
and in all the subsequent stagings of this tragedy of religion Lucian's mocking laugh ter reechoes, again and again, as the blood stained actors make their respective exits down " Charon's Stairs " to take up their new roles, on the transstygian shore, as dramatis personae in unpublished Dialogues of the Dead.
Lucian's influence upon Erasmus is even more important in writings other than his direct translations. The Praise of Folly, which electrified both the fools and the savants of Europe, is charged with the Lucianic current. In his priceless Colloquia Erasmus, like Lucian,
paints contemporary life in vivid colours but [145]
93
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
is free from Lucian's taint of bitter pessi mism. 95 He seasons his observations, however, as he says elsewhere,*6 with both sal nigrum and sal candidum from his Lucianic salt cellar.
Lucianic reminiscences in the Colloquia may be culled almost at random. The Exorcism or The Apparition" for example, is a good pen dant to Lucian's Lie-Fancier, though the witty treatment is Erasmus's own; The Female Parliament,TM though patterned after Aristoph anes, contains almost more of Lucian; The CharonTM along with the Lucianic matter, in cludes suggestions of Aristophanes. But Eras mus is not hampered by his models. Charon's boat, old and rotten by this time, has just
foundered. Charon himself has made land, dripping from his immersion; his late pas sengers, the ghosts, are still swimming with the
Frogs I A new transport must be built, too staunch to be sunk by papal bulls or other ecclesiastical fauna smuggled on board. As to motive power the ghosts, whether commoners, monarchs or cardinals, reduced as they are to the least common denominator of democ racy, will have to do the rowing. The chief hitch is that there is no wood for shipbuilding,
[146]
lucian's creditors and debtors
as the Elysian forests have been consumed in the burning of heretics!
Among the many comments in the Epistles, Erasmus's reference to the Hireling Professors emphasizes a condition as acute in his day as in Lucian's. 100 The impecunious litterateur was more or less dependent on powerful patrons. Erasmus himself was no complete exception to the rule, but it is to his everlasting credit that
he rejected the temptation to exchange his poverty and independence for a life of luxury and power. He refused to become a " red- hatted lackey of the Holy See. " 101 Lucian's scathing and witty sermon on the hireling doubtless helped him to save alive his own soul. He could honestly continue to preach from Lucian's texts. Again and again through the centuries literary semi-parasites ruefully,
and almost involuntarily, confess the truth of Lucian's picture.
Sir Thomas More's Latin translations from Lucian, inspired by Erasmus and inserted in his volume, included the Cynic, the Menippus
or Necromancy and the Lie-Fancier pseudes). More's own comments 102 are illu minating. Despite his unshakable devotion to the authority of the Church, for which he was
[147]
(Philo-
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
to suffer martyrdom, he could, at this period, welcome the keen satire of Lucian as a pro phylactic. Even St. Chrysostom, he says in
reply to heckling ecclesiastics, included the Cynic, in part, in one of his homilies as a pro test against luxury and self-indulgence, while St. Augustine had been misled by some im- poster to accept as a Christian miracle what Lucian had ridiculed, under a different name, many years before him in the Philopseudes.
More's Utopia, which also belongs to Latin, not to English, literature, reflects, quite apart from Plato and St. Augustine, the humour and imagination of Lucian's True Story. It was translated into foreign vernaculars before it
was done into English. 103
Of this transition to the vernacular, with its
modicum of incidental " Lucianizing," we are also inevitably reminded by the " delectable dog-Latin " 104 of the anonymous Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum pitted, on occasion, against the full-dress Latin of Erasmus and Reuchlin. Two hundred years later, per contra, Voltaire, in Les trois empereurs en Sorbonne, resurrects Marcus Aurelius and others to shudder at the Latin of the theologians 1 In these dialogues, at any rate, is reflected Lu
[148]
lucian's creditors and debtors
cian's mastery of the special form of mockery, where would-be defendants, whether gods or men, plead guilty by explaining.
The dramatic dialogue Eckius Dedolatus,10S published anonymously about 1530, is a not wholly negligible addition to this literary form descended from Plato, via Lucian, to the Col- loquia of Erasmus. Its content, also, now reminiscent of Lucian, now anticipating the coarser humour of Rabelais, is germane to our discussion.
The great German 106 humanists knew and used Lucian, whose satire was as flexible as Holy Writ itself for purposes of controversial citation. Johann Reuchlin, erudite linguist and crusader against the Obscurantists, found time to do some translating from the Dialogues of the Dead. 107 The satiric dialogue, with actual Lucianic content, became the most effective weapon for Ulrich von Hutten. 108 He wrote first in Latin but enlarged his audience by a later transfer to the vernacular, such as it then
was. He made use of Lucian's Cataplus (or " Crossing the Bar ") ; later, in his Phalaris- mus, he tipped with venom from Lucian's Tyrant the darts aimed at Duke Ulrich von Wittenberg; he modelled on Lucian's Hireling
[ i49]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND AHTIST
a dialogue against servility to patrons; drew on the Dialogues of the Dead
and notably on the Charon; and left for post humous publication his Arminius, modelled on the favourite twelfth Dialogue of the Dead. Still more to the point, he is generally accred ited with being one of the three joint authors of the Dialogi Virorum Obscurorum.
Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560), the bril liant young Greek scholar, an admirer and friend of Erasmus in his youth but later a partisan of Luther, translated from the Greek Lucian's De Calumnia for his controversy at Wittenberg, just as, conversely, he had Grae- cized his own German name, Schwarzerd.
Among the numerous recruits to Lucianic interpretation Jacob Molsheym of Strasburg deserves especial mention for two reasons. He was a versatile contributor to both Greek and Latin scholarship and, inter alia, published in
1538 a translation of the whole of Lucian. In addition, it is only fair to rescue his personality from the incognito of " Micyllus " under which name, often misspelled, he usually appears, when cited. He owed this name to the fact that he took the role of the cobbler in a dramatization of Lucian's Cock. 109 " Micyllus,"
[ISO]
Professors
lucian's creditors and debtors
it may be noted, is the same impecunious cob bler who won publicity by his attempted ex ploit of swimming the River in his lack of ready money for Charon's fare.
Turning from the German Humanists to France, in the first half of the sixteenth cen tury, we find an abundant menu of Lucianic suggestion and one less highly flavoured with theology.
Guillaume Bude (Budaeus),110 the famous progenitor of the College de France and close contemporary of Erasmus, was inevitably in spired, by attending the lectures of Lascaris, who brought out the editio princeps of Lucian, to make his own translations from the Samosa- tan. These translations, together with those by Erasmus, were soon to be used by Rabelais.
At this period also, in the entourage of Mar garet d'Angouleme, we find the witty Bona- venture Desperiers pressing the Lucianic dia logue into the mould of the French vernacular which, as yet, was not entirely ready for the service. 111 His Cymbalum" Mundi is a direct imitation of Lucian. This in fact," Saints- bury observes, " one of the many proofs of the vast influence which Lucian exercised over the Renaissance. " In his third dialogue, for
is,
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
example, the horse, able, by the intervention of Mercury, to hold a human conversation, re minds us of the Pythagoras-cock chatting with the cobbler and also endowed with the key to the situation by the kindness of the same god.
Just before the death of Erasmus the spirit of Lucianic mischief is reincarnated in Rabe- lais's more lusty Pantagruel and Gargantua. Grotesque as gargoyles his figures nevertheless, as Gildersleeve remarks,112 are " Lucianic in outline. " But though grotesque, Rabelais is not ill-proportioned. He is great in his grossness, his satire and imagination. The numerous comparisons of him with Lucian, Swift and
Voltaire are instructive in so far as the critic is equipped with complete knowledge of all of them and is not deflected from objectivity by partisan preference. When dealing with great virility mere details of imitation concern us, perhaps, as little as the challenge of sources for Homer. An artist, however, may take de tails from more than one model. The extrav
aganza, for example, in Pantagruel (II, Chapt.
is a clever contaminatio of Lucian's account in the True Story11" and the closing
scene in Plato's Republic. Epistemon's account of the Underworld, with its malicious list of
[152]
xxx)
ARTIST
lucian's creditors and debtors
certain eminent immigrants that he had met there, reminds us of how the souls in Plato's
" Vision of Er " instead of always
lives similar to their former incarnations, in some cases perversely fly to the other extreme or to some travesty on their former state. So Rabelais's Helen is courratiere (= courtier e) de chambrieres; Pope Alexander VI is a rat
catcher; pious Aeneas is a miller and shoul ders a bag of meal as handily as if it were the aged Anchises; Commodus is a bag-piper; Darius, instead of cleaning up Greece, is set to a task resembling the fifth labour of Her acles, less imposing, indeed, but a permanent job! The grim democracy, however, and the compulsion are Lucianic enough. The poor have become great; Diogenes plays the grand prelate and lords it over Alexander; Epictetus invites Epistemon to a carousal. With this
compare the item in Lucian's " True Story, where Diogenes in Elysium had so far changed his character as to marry the chummy Lais and would frequently, when in liquor, get up and dance and play drunken tricks. "
Passing over numerous other contributors to the dialogue literature, especially in Germany, mentioned by Rentsch in his invaluable mono
[153]
choosing
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
graph, we come to the charming Hans Sachs, cobbler and mastersinger, who lived nearly a
quarter of a century longer than Rabelais. His Latin source for Lucian seems to have been the version by Vitus Btirler (1516). Though a layman, Sachs could, on occasion, cobble a Latin patch on his honest German sole-leather. His omniverous appetite rejects nothing from the Fall of Man to the contemporary theolog ical pitfalls and, inter alios, he expressly names Lucian with discriminating gusto among the sources for his Judicium Paridis:
Homerus und VergUius,
Ovidius, Lucianus,
Auch andre mehr gar Kunstenreich Doch in beschreybung ungeleich,
and in the third act of this comedy Paris's ap praisal of Juno has lost nothing of vividness in his homely but vigorous German.
In Die Himmelfahrt Margraff Albrechtz Hans Sachs transfers to his Charon the inexor able character of Lucian's Ferryman and his relentless stripping of the proud and rich: " Thou shalt not set foot " in my boat," says Charon to the Margraff, till thou hast laid aside all thy naughtiness and sins. "
[iS4]
lucian's creditors and debtors
And, to take one more illustration, no debtor to Lucian's True Story, in all the goodly com pany from Rabelais to Baron Miinchhausen, pays back a larger interest on his borrowed talents than does Hans Sachs in his quaint Ger man description of his happy Schlaraffenland, where cooks would be but curious superfluities and where sturdy workmen solve the labor problem by dropping like ripe plums, not into the mouths of walking delegates, but each into a pair of working boots.
Before passing to writers, whose dates carry us over into the seventeenth century, mention may be made of the famous Satyre Minippee which appeared in 1594. Apart from the title itself, in which the Lucianic tradition is patent, and beneath the specific allusions to Rabe lais,114 there might be found a diffused, if tacit, adaptation of Lucian's satire to the new jour nalism, so to say, of the time.
After the first decades of the sixteenth cen tury not only was the Greek of Lucian acces sible to scholars but Latin versions of a considerable part of his writings were at the disposal of all who could read Latin.
and merrie dialogues, like those of Lucian " were included in the curriculum recommended
" Quick [iSS]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
for the English school-boy of seven years of age. We are not told specifically whether these were in Greek, Latin, or English, but, at about this time, Lucian was filtering through the Latin into various vernaculars. 115
Christopher Marlowe, whose untimely death in 1593 does not dissociate him from the group which binds the sixteenth and seven teenth centuries together, knew Lucian in Latin or Greek or both, and in his famous line on Helen: "Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships? " recalls the cynical, but not
wholly unsympathetic, remark of Menippus when Helen's skull is identified for him amongst other specimens in the chill museum of Hades: " Was it for this thing, then, that the thousand ships were manned from all Hellas? "
In this same group, for example, are Gabriel Harvey and Thomas Nashe whose mutual scur rilities were finally excluded from the market. They refer easily (if superficially) to Lucian in the frank amenities of their controversy. Thus Harvey, in Foure Lectures (1592), sums up an invective: " I overpasse Archilochus, Aristophanes, Lucian, Julian, Aretine and that whole venemous and viperous brood of old and new Raylers. " In Pierce's Supererogation
[156]
lucian's creditors and debtors
he diagnoses Nashe's writings: "As true, peradventure, as Lucian's true. narrations or the heroicall historyes of Rabelais," etc. etc. Nashe replied with appropriate senti ments. Incidently, it may be noted, Nashe refers to the Syrian Goddess (a piece not often cited), which he had evidently read in the verse translation. In Anatomie
(1593)
of Absurdity (1589), defending fiction, he says: "In his
books De Siria Dea " . . . "Lucian an Hea then Poet wrote of that universall flood that was in the time of Noe. "
Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson, close con temporaries (1570/1573 to 1637), and, on occasion, ardent adversaries, used Lucian freely. Dekker, for example, in the Devil let loose with his Anfwere to Pierce Pennylesse, borrowed with both hands from Lucian's fourth Dialogue of the"Dead, and, as has been
suggested,116 had also certainly read the Me- nippus of Lucian in John RastelPs translation and travestied it in his own fashion in his News front Hell. "
Ben Jonson's reminiscences of Lucian are numerous. Poetaster, for example, Act. IV,
Dek ker noticed this and in his Satiromastix, Act
Scene 5, is based on Lucian's Lexiphanes. [157]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
IV, Scene 2, makes his " Tucca " call the "Horace (-Jonson) " by the name of "Lu- cian. " This also indicates the contemporary pervasiveness of the Samosatan. Scene 5 of Act IV is more or less directly reminiscent of Lu- cian's Assembly of the Gods, and " the funda mental situation in the Silent Woman," as has been pointed out,117 " is Lucianic. " Volpone, an unrestrained satire on legacy hunters, draws
freely from this motif in Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead — and, still more to the point, specifically mentions Lucian's Cock as model for this racy dialogue where 118 " Androgyno " gives the vital statistics of the transmigrations of his soul from Apollo, via Pythagoras, to his present hermaphroditic hostelry.
A tabulation, in parallel columns, of Vol pone and the Cock would show that Ben Jon son, while injecting new quips with coarser wit, has closely followed the framework in Lucian.
Beaumont, Cervantes and Shakespeare all died in 1616. (Beaumont and) Fletcher's 119 Four Plays or Moral Representations in One closes with the Triumph of Time. This is clearly modelled on Lucian's Timon and re tains the Aristophanic epiphany of the god
[158]
ARTIST
lucian's creditors and debtors
Plutus, a vital prelude which is wholly lacking in "Shakespeare's " Timon of Athens. The
(=
For Shakespeare's use of Lucian, either through a Latin or an English version, we now120 have a sufficiently convincing argu ment, not only for Timon of Athens, of prob ably composite 121 authorship, but, more to the point, for the " Grave-scene of Hamlet. "
In the introduction to Don Quixote Cer vantes gives a nearer parallel to Lucian's How to Write History and to the opening of the
True Story than he does in the body of the work itself, with its special crusade against a creed of chivalry outworn, but even here we feel the Lucianic touch in the esoteric satire directed against braggarts and liars. We must, however, repeatedly adjust ourselves to the broadly farcical, whereas in Lucian's True Story all doubts and probabilities alike drop out of sight when once we have cleared the Pillars of Heracles.
Vedo, the brilliant compatriot and [iS9]
little drama closes leaving Anthropos
" Everyman ") famed for his wealth and with " Labour " also as his companion — a very moral though bouleversant addition. The type of Misanthrope is not preserved.
Que
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
younger contemporary of Cervantes, cuts many a sharp Lucianic silhouette, reminiscent of the Dialogues of the Dead, in his Visions (Suenos), published in 1627 — e. g. , the death-dealing physicians; the judges with deaf ears and re ceptive hands; the poets condemned in the Underworld to correct the poems of rivals; Solon as post mortem prosecutor of tyrants, from Pisistratus to Caligula. 122 There are also various less obvious reminiscences of the True
Story.
In France Cyrano de Bergerac, a little later,
continued the vogue of the True Story in his two posthumous pieces: Histoire comique des itats et empires de la lune (1656) and du soleil (1661). In addition to the reminiscences of Lucian's True Story in the Voyage to the Moon the parallels with the Icaromenippus are equally suggestive. For example, Cyrano's " Demon " of Socrates reminds us of the ap
parition of Empedocles in Icaromenippus; so, too, Cyrano's return to the earth in the arms of the " Demon " seems like a combination of Icaromenippus's trip to heaven in his flying-
machine and his return trip, with Hermes holding him by the ear! Cyrano's view of the outspread world recalls Lucian's love for
[160]
ARTIST
lucian's creditors and debtors
aerial panoramas, as in the
Twice Accused, Charon and The Runaways.
Among the occasional close reproductions may be cited Cyrano's Lychnobii, as suggested by the Lychnopolis of the True Story.
Moliere, as we are told, spent five years in company with Cyrano de Bergerac and it would not be surprising to identify in him also some loan material from Lucian, incorporated as nonchalantly as his loot from Lucretius. In Le Misanthrope, however, where one might naturally look for reminiscence, the type set by Lucian in his Timon is so overlaid with the peevishness of the jealous lover that it emerges only dimly at the end of the play.
To attribute to the eagle intellect of Pascal, close contemporary of Moliere and Cyrano, in debtedness to Lucian would be far-fetched. Nevertheless no better parallel could be found for an intimate appraisal of Lucian's attitude towards the Stoic and Epicurean Schools of philosophy than Pascal's chapter Sur Epictete et Montaigne. It solves, so far as is possible, the impasse to which we are brought at the end of the Hermotimus, Lucian's would-be magnum opus. It repeats Lucian's open mock ery, in the Sale of Soul Samples, of the seep
[161]
Icaromenippus,
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
tic's equally balanced scales, yet explains how Lucian could find shelter for his own deep- dyed scepticism under the robe of the Epicu rean. And, in this connection, it may be noted that no one of the modern imitations of Lu- cian's Dialogues of the Dead is more success
ful than Traill's dialogue between Pascal and Lucian in his New Lucian.
Hickes's admirable translations from Lu
cian into English were published in
These were almost certainly not the first, but from this time on Lucian was accessible in the English vernacular and it is a temptation, here and there, to identify as a far-flung ripple of his influence what may be of quite independent origin. As to Butler's Hudibras, for example, it is safe to content ourselves with Saints- bury's 123 juxtaposition of Lucian, Butler and the authors of the Satire Minippke as being alike unrivalled in the adroitness with which they cause their characters to make themselves ridiculous. Such similarity in talent does not prove indebtedness.
In the foreshortened perspective of the cen turies we get the impression of a long, almost unbroken,124 procession of writers who have made more or less use of Lucian's Dialogues of
[162]
1634.
lucian's creditors and debtors
the Dead. Many of these make use of the form only. Some " take the chaff and let the grain lie still. " But with some, as notably Erasmus, the grain fructifies.
Matthew Prior (1664-1672), in his four dialogues of worthy (or unworthy) dead men, makes his own stimulating contribution. His sarcasm on the futilities of philosophy, in the person of Locke, is as superficial as Lucian's own contempt for the exhibits of the " Human Understanding " in his day, though he plays with Montaigne's formula — "Que sais-je? " — with more objectivity than was usual with Lucian, the more serious missionary "agnostic. Cromwell, too, with the help of his porter,"
lays bare, quite in accord with Lucian's method, his own arrogance and greed of power, shel tered within his exterior pomp. Prior, however, as indeed, the general rule with those who make use of this literary form, fails to avail himself of a device characteristic of Lucian's dialogues. The introduction, usual in Lucian's dramatis personae, of some member of the permanent staff — like Aeacus, Clotho, Hermes or Pluto — gave a dramatic vividness and finish that we miss in the society of merely disinterred humans.
[163]
is,
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
" Dryden's " Lucian 126 is a different matter. The translation was not completed until after his death. He did not know the qualifications, nor even the names, of all the large number of translators, some of them very raw recruits, that were afterwards mustered in to fill up his skeleton company. His own contribution was the Life of Lucian which appears in Dry den's collected works. This demands mention here because the author's fame might still give currency to his banal misinterpretations of the formidable array of errors which he has man aged to accumulate at second-hand. Dryden has no sense of perspective for Lucian's times, and the subtler ironies seem to escape him altogether. His preachments on Christianity and morality are on a par with his introduction to his translation of Juvenal whose blast-fur nace he heats, with lascivious
seven times hotter than the Roman satirist was wont to heat it. It was fortunate for Lucian that Dryden, whether by the timely arrival of Death or by a lurking consciousness of his own inadequate acquaintance with the original, was restrained from translating himself the half- dozen, or fewer, passages in all Lucian's vol uminous writings which might have given him
[164]
enthusiasm,
lucian's creditors and debtors
another thin but convenient smoke-screen for expansive wantonness.
The vogue for the dialogue in
towards the end of the seventeenth century is repeated in France. Boileau gave impetus to imitations of Lucian by his Dialogue a la maniere de Lucien: les Hiros de roman. Although the authorized publication of this was delayed till 1 713, it had been privately re
cited much earlier and surreptitious, printed use of it had been made from memory by one of his hearers. This dialogue is no mere imita tion of the Dialogues of the Dead. It has its own originality and is Lucianic in a wider sense. It is from the True Story that Boileau borrows the suggestion for the rebellion of the damned, but this satire directed against the pseudo-heroes has more of the flavour of Lu cian's account, in his Fisher, of the false phi losophers and his summary treatment of the queer fish. Not every glittering goldfish is a Chrysippus, and Boileau's pseudo-heroes are stripped as naked as Lucian's dead and driven forth to punishment. Or, again, in the Frag ment d'un dialogue where Boileau picks flaws in Horace's bad French, — an inverted criti cism on the bad Latin of French poetasters, —
[165]
England
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
we think of Lucian's crusade in his Lexiphanes against the would-be Atticists of his day.
Fontenelle's Dialogues des Morts were pub lished in 1683, dedicated: " A Lucien, aux champs filysiens. " In acknowledging his debt he is somewhat wooden and self-depreciatory but the dialogues themselves contain many a worthy touch, e. g. in his Charles V et £rasme, where Erasmus triumphs over the emperor, now " in reduced circumstances," only to be blighted presently by the discovery that to have "been born " avec un cerveau bien dis pose is just as unmarketable an asset in the " champs Elysiens " as to have had " un pere qui soit roi. " Thus Fontenelle outdoes Lucian's
own withering e'galite' in Hades.
His juxtaposition of the protagonists in his
dialogues is amusing enough. In Lucian's fa mous dialogue where Alexander the Great contends with Scipio and Hannibal for the hegemony there could be no doubt about the verdict, but in Fontenelle Alexander finds him self pitted against a greater and more in vincible conqueror, the famous Phryne! Or Dido complains to her confidante because Virgil has spoiled her reputation by a wholly
unsatisfactory and anachronistic affair with a [166]
lucian's creditors and debtors
passe lover some two hundred and fifty years her senior. Or, again, the shade of the Greek physician, Erasistratus, has new blood pumped into his vacant veins by Dr. Harvey! All this is amusing enough but we are not always con scious, as we are in Lucian, of the grim verities of Pluto's realm. " Not seldom we feel," as Rentsch acutely observes,128 " that these con versations could just as well have taken place in a Paris salon. " Even in his Jugement de Pluton, with Hades in the title-role, Fontenelle still keeps one foot in the world above when the ante mortem trial of his own book takes place in the underworld, with Lucian himself acting as proxy and advocate for the author.
Le Sage early in the eighteenth century em bodies in his famous novels suggestions of Lu cian's influence, derived indirectly, perhaps, through Spanish and Italian intermediaries. In Le Diable Boiteaux he makes use 127 of the cock's tail-feather as a magic key, just as Lu cian does, and reminds us also of the satire on magic in the Lie-Fancier. In this novel and in
Une Journie des Parques, characterized by Saintsbury as "a keen piece of Lucianic satire," the debt, such as it involved spe cifically the satiric element but in his great
[167]
is,
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
novel Gil Bias it is the skill in narrative and incidents that recalls the True Story and, pos sibly through Cervantes, the Asinus of Lucian.
While Fontenelle, in the rapidly swelling flood of imitators of the Dialogues of the Dead, had used the form largely to introduce amusing conversations, his compatriot Fenelon made use of it often with a more serious purpose. One example must suffice. In his admirable dialogue (No. xv), Herodote et Lucien, the Father of History wishes that Lucian, by way of punishment for his superficial raillery, might be forced, in a new reincarnation, to go over Herodotus's itinerary and so verify the truth of all his statements. Lucian, expanding the idea to take in all his criticisms of life, coun ters, in good French: " Cela" seroit bien joli. I should then," he continues, pass from body to body through all the sects of the philos ophers whom I have derided. Thus I should
come to hold, one after another, all the mutu ally exclusive opinions that I have mocked. " This is the very essence of the situation at the end of the Hermotimus. But Fenelon, although he reproduces more vividly than Fontenelle this serious side of their common model, does not rest in Lucian 's negative pessimism. Eu
[168]
lucian's creditors and debtors
ropean ethics in statesmanship, or in daily life, are illustrated by Lucianic parallels and whole somely castigated. For the years immediately preceding Fenelon these dialogues of his might well be used in adjusting the perspective of history.
Nor does Fenelon fail to note the more char acteristic humour of the original. Nothing, perhaps, in Lucian is neater than the meta physical and yet severely biological explana tion by Heracles of his dual post mortem assets. He stoutly maintains that the Heracles in heaven, enjoying conjugal bliss with Hebe, is one and the same, through all eternity, with the desiccated and lonely shade of Heracles in Hades! Fenelon includes this quip also in his second dialogue. Another choice Lucianic scene is recalled, not taken from the Dialogues of the Dead but staged by Lucian in the After- world in his True History, where young Cinyras elopes from heaven with Helen, " das
ewig Weibliche. " So Fenelon, in No. xx, re veals an intrigue between Alcibiades and Proserpine.
In 1726/7 Gulliver's Travels appeared. Swift was openly indebted 128 to Rabelais and, like Fontenelle, borrowed hints, here and there,
[169]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
from Cyrano de Bergerac. In various matters, however, like the interviewing of Homer and Aristotle with their commentators, and still more perhaps in the air of verisimilitude of the details, with which he surrounds the impos sible, we may recognize a more direct influence of Lucian's True Story.
Of all the expert critics who venture de tailed comparison of the four great writers inevitably brought into juxtaposition M. Mau rice Croiset, perhaps, is best entitled to speak
with authority. After brief but incisive words on his own compatriots, Rabelais and Voltaire, he renders129 this quite objective verdict: " Swift est peut-etre celui qui ressemble le plus a Lucien. . . . Seulement l'ecrivain anglais a plus de flegme et de parti pris; il y a quelque chose de plus voulu dans sa fantaisie, et par suite elle a moins de charme et variete. " Swift's bitter satire, we may add, recalls
Juvenal rather than the more genial humour of Lucian,
if we except the latter's more frankly polemical writings, like Alexander the Fake-Prophet.
Ludwig von Holberg, the Norwegian " foun der " of Danish literature, following in Swift's wake, published first in Latin and then in Dan
ish, in 1727, Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum, [170]
lucian's creditors and debtors
a legatee of Lucian's True Story and, by its very title, a forerunner of Jules Verne in his Voyage au centre de la terre. This fantasy not only gained instant popularity in Denmark but
was widely translated from the Latin edition into the other languages. 130 When compared with Lucian, Swift, or other narrators of the impossible, it is not surprising that this work has failed to maintain its hold on readers.