No More Learning

It is not simply the Stoics that have been weighed and found wanting. They are merely one outstanding illustration. " Lycinus " as sures the now disenchanted Hermotimus that it is the same with all creeds — neither
Jew nor Gentile, Stoic churchman nor Cynic dis
senter can guide you up the hill of Virtue. His substitute creed is " Common Sense and scep ticism. " " Keep sober," he says with Epichar- mus, " Keep sober and remember to doubt. "
We may well be sceptical as to how much Lucian actually accomplished for the ethics of
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his own generation; some critics consider his avowed crusade against shams as rhetorical ar rogance; others, inclined to grant, even to great men, a more generous margin of self-deception, may believe that Lucian, in his own estimate of his role, was really an honest Commissioner for repairing the highways and byways of his time.
ARTIST
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VI. THE SUPERNATURAL
i. The Gods
Crusade against Shams, how
ever much or little reasoned conviction
we may be disposed to concede to him, IUC^IAN'S
was not confined to attacks upon the unethical practices of contemporaries who posed as phi losophers. His satire, now bald and bitter, now glowing with iridescent charm, pursued relent lessly all superstitions and manifestations of a belief in the supernatural. The most intransi gent scientists of the middle of the nineteenth century in their consecrated quest for proto plasm were hardly more bitter than he against all belief in " things unseen. " They, to be sure, were " sustained by an unfaltering trust " in their constructive aims, whereas Lucian was cynically destructive, an iconoclast who could set up in the vacated shrines " no good God except good Greek. " 23 A continuous trip with him through the devastated region of his No- gods' land would become depressing were it not
for his unfailing humour that acts as a partial counter-irritant against pessimism.
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LUCIAN,
To illustrate fully his hostility to the old es tablished Greek religion and to current super stitions, we should have to lay under contribu tion ten or twelve, at least, of his best pieces and add, moreover, many of the fifty-six short Dialogues of the Gods and Dialogues of the Dead.
Experts on the novel point out that the num ber of really distinct plots in the nature of things, very limited. Lucian's writings contain
disconcerting number of repetitions, both of ideas and matter. He was not by way of writ ing an orderly Manual of Ethics! When he wrote his " sequels," they were evidently in tended for audiences previously addressed, but, as rule, he could safely count either upon new hearers or upon his own adroitness and wit in presenting shop-worn roles under new mask.
As to his inconsistencies, these are not of character to indicate either moral obliquity or lack of stability. The most striking apparent inconsistency his shift to vitriolic vitupera tion of the Cynics after his earlier cordial, and even partisan, approval of their creed. The or dinary explanation doubtless, the correct one. His frank adherence to the Cynic Menip
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is is,
a a
a
a
is,
THE SUPERNATURAL
pus as a model continued into a part, at least, of his best period. When it came to personal satire, as in the case of the suicide Peregrinus, he was under no bonds to any creed. It does not seem practicable to use this criterion with exactitude, in establishing the chronological sequence of his writings.
Minor inconsistencies are, of course, delib erate artistic devices. Such, for example, is the insouciance of his whim of the moment when Charon, at one time, conducts his ferry-boat on
the " pay-as-you-enter " system and refuses embarcation to a would-be passenger who can not pay down his obol, and rejects the sug gested compromise of allowing him to work out his fare, while, in another dialogue, he willingly permits a stow-away to work his passage by baling bilge-water or by taking a hand at the oar. Quite different from such deliberate de vices is the possible moral deterioration of Lu- cian grown old and submitting to imperial pat
ronage. To those who seek an ethical lesson this may suggest that a philosophy of negation is no safe sheet-anchor.
In his Zeus Cross-questioned he relentlessly annihilates the sovereignty of the gods. " Cy- niscus " (a Menippean incognito) is allowed by
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the Chairman of the gods to ask one thing, after promising that he will not ask for wealth or power. He therefore propounds the leading question : " Do Destiny and the Fates really dispose of all things without appeal? " Zeus, falling into the trap, goes the limit in emphasiz ing, as a cardinal doctrine for all orthodox be lief, that the ultimate decision for gods as well as for men, rests with the Fates. The logical application is easy for the Cynic. On this basis the inequalities of life cannot be relieved by any divine intervention, and the suggestion of any readjustment by rewards and punishments after death is seen to be preposterous. This age-old contradiction between predestination and free-will of course, favourite weapon with Lucian. He uses most artistically, per haps, in one of the Dialogues the Dead, where Minos, the judge, has already passed judgment on certain tyrant and then, out of deference to the legal right of the defendant to show cause why sentence should not be passed
upon him, makes the mistake of allowing the condemned criminal to interpellate the court. Minos has an irreproachably judicial mind and
led to admit that an executioner, for example, no more responsible for carrying out " orders
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is is
a
is,
of
it
a
THE SUPERNATURAL
from above " than is the sword itself with which he beheads the criminal. Sostratus, the tyrant, therefore claims, and receives, from the logical judge the cancellation of his sentence. " But," says Minos, " see to it that you don't put up the rest of the corpses to asking similar questions! "
The Tragical Zeus is an elaboration of the foregoing. Zeus appears, this time in the bosom of the family, voicing the tragic crisis in which he finds himself by declaiming adaptations from Euripides, with some Homer thrown in. In answer to anxious metrical questions from his children and caustic free-prose remarks from his wife — (" / haven't," she says, " swal lowed Euripides whole ") — he reveals how he, disguised as a philosopher, has been listening to a most atheistic attack made by a certain Epi curean — (Lucian's proxy here) — with only very feeble rebuttal from a Stoic philosopher. After some discussion of ways and means, Hermes, in canonical hexameters, calls a panoe- cumenical council of the gods. Not even a nymph fails to heed the summons. An insol uble difficulty develops at once as to the ques tion of seating the delegates. There are all
grades of blue blood and new blood, from the [69]
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Twelve Olympians down through half-gods to foreigners of outside pedigree. More perplex ing still is the case of accredited statues, in volving the question of size, material, and the value of artistic workmanship. If the foreign gold gods are to have front seats then the
marble Cnidian Aphrodite, though one of " The Twelve " and of Praxitelean workmanship, is relegated to the rear — and yet, as she justly urges, Homer had, in so many words, called
her " golden Aphrodite. " Finally, the Colossus of Rhodes, though made of bronze, urges that by mere tonnage displacement he is worth more than many gold statuettes. Zeus realizes that the Colossus in front would take up too much space, no matter if they " sit close," and would, moreover, obstruct the view of a whole wedge of gods behind him. He is told to stand up in the rear. The question of precedence stands over for a future session.
Zeus now puts before the gods the crisis that is upon them — how contemporary atheistic tendencies are to be met. To win the attention of this more exoteric audience and warned, per haps, by his wife's sarcasm, he drops tragedy and takes to Demosthenes. But even his De mosthenes soon gives out and he rehearses —
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probably in the contemporary lingua franca of the Common Greek. — the depressing incident of yesterday, and asks for suggestions. Momus, the official Censor — one of Lucian's numer ous proxies — speaks first and makes matters worse. Poseidon then makes the practical sug gestion that Zeus should take executive action and with his thunderbolt put Damis the Epi curean hors de combat before he can finish his atheistic attack. Zeus, with some irritation, re minds him that only the Fates could authorize the death of Damis. Moreover his death would leave the question itself unsettled. Apollo then suggests that Timocles the Stoic, god-fearing as
he may be, is hardly the person to entrust with the gods' very existence, which is now upon the razor's edge. They should appoint a clear- voiced coadjutor. This gives the Momus-Lu- cian the chance for a double thrust at the Stoics and at the involved oracles of Apollo. He urges Apollo himself to foretell which one will win out in tomorrow's debate. Apollo replies that he can't give a proper oracle, away from his dark-room and his medium at Delphi. None the less he does give, under pressure, an eight- line hexameter oracle which, to say the least, is non-committal. Forcible intervention is again
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suggested by the strenuous Heracles but he too, like Poseidon, is sharply reminded by Zeus that such action lies on the knees, not of the gods, but of the Fates. A vicious Lucianic twist is given by Zeus's careful explanation that Her acles, while alive on earth as a free-will agent, might perhaps have performed his " twelve la bours " but now that he is a mere emeritus god he is no longer able to initiate anything.
At this juncture there arrives from Athens an ectoplasmic Hermes-of-the-Marketplace, the rhetorician Hermagoras, a pro tem, liaison god, to say that the debate is again in full swing. There is nothing for it but to stoop over, listen and hope for the best. Zeus sharply orders the Hours to unbar the Olympian front-door and to remove all intervening clouds so as to secure an unimpeded view and hearing of the debate below.
This paves the way, artistically, for a dia logue within the dialogue, a device used else where by Lucian — most happily, perhaps, in the Charon. The Stoic champion of the gods — arguments, syllogisms, illustrations and all — is of course overwhelmed but, though defeated, he has the courage of his earlier conviction and, not being a mere denatured god, pursues his
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THE SUPERNATURAL
successful opponent with a shower of missiles, giving Hermes the cue for some final words of comfort to his depressed father, selected not from tragedy but this time from Menander's comedy: Never say die! " You've suffered nothing evil, if nothing you admit. " 24
In the Called Assembly of Gods it would seem that Lucian had followed up Zeus's prom ise, made above, to settle questions of prece dence and, still more pressing, of divine eligi bility. Hermes proclaims the opportunity for free discussion as to full-breed gods. The ques tion of the eligibility of resident-aliens and half-breeds is up for consideration.
Momus of course, the first to gain recog nition by the presiding officer, Zeus. He pro ceeds at once to criticize the pedigrees of Di onysus, Pan, et al. Zeus warns him not to say
word about Asclepius or Heracles. Momus then takes up certain ugly reports about Zeus himself — his promiscuous birth-places, meta morphoses and even burial-places. Zeus makes no rebuttal except to warn him against any reference to Ganymede. Momus switches off to catalogue of queer Oriental and Egyptian gods—some of them cannot even speak Greek! He comes around, naturally, to the growing
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a
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menace of the worship of the goddess " Chance," which is upsetting the stock-market of sacri fices. Finally, he proposed an elaborate bill, worded in good Athenian form. This in brief: Whereas numerous and sundry unnatu ralized and polyglot gods have slipped into the registry without establishing title or even pay ing the fee, and whereas the over-populating of heaven has so curtailed the supply of ambrosia and nectar that the latter now costs eighteen dollars the half-pint, be resolved: That Commission be appointed consisting of seven full-breed gods, three of the old Cronus coun cil and four, including the chairman, from " The Twelve," fully empowered to enroll such gods as are proved genuine and to send back to their ancestral tombs and barrows all half- breeds and foreigners. Penalty for non-observ
ance of the Commission's findings: To be
thrown into Tartarus. Incidentally,
to keep to his or her own specialty. Athena,
for example, not to practice medicine; As- clepius not to give oracles; Apollo to cut down his overlapping activities. The philoso phers are to be warned and the statues of all illegitimate gods are to be taken down and replaced by images of Zeus, Hera, Apollo, etc.
[74]
everybody
is
is
is
is
it
a
is,
THE SUPERNATURAL
Zeus, not daring to put the decree to vote in this mixed assembly, arbitrarily announces it as " carried! "
To include here, by way of illustration, ex tracts from the twenty-six Dialogues of the Gods would shift the emphasis from their more important quality as artistic, dramatic pictures. But the satire in them, though veiled, is the more effective because the gods convict them selves of folly and passion. They plead guilty by explaining. Zeus and the others come be fore us in all their chryselephantine pomp, but they lay open their breasts to us with confiding frankness and show their unlovely and wooden interiors. Such testimony admits no rebuttal. The case goes against them by default.
The thirty Dialogues of the Dead transfer Lucian's frontal attack upon the gods and an overruling Providence to a campaign against the superstitions encrusted upon the belief in a life after death. 25 The juxtaposition of things material and immaterial gives Lucian's fancy a welcome opportunity. Men and gods, earth and heaven reappear reflected in the mirror of the Infernal Lake like a landscape inverted in the water, while the shore's edge, dividing the real and the unreal, shrinks to a mathematical
[75]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
line. Charon's boat glides over the unruffled water. It, or its reflected image," will surely make "port. The certainty of death and taxes is exemplified in the person of the Col lector Aeacus checking off the way-bill.
By the very virulence of his satire on " corpse-affairs " Lucian almost seems to be tray a lurking misgiving that there may be a sequel to this life. If so, however, it was an unconscious betrayal. He was consistent in his nonchalant attitude towards a belief in im mortality: now amused, as in his inimitable creation of the Chanticleer-avatar of Pythag oras; now pungently contemptuous at the sight of a pickled mummy; now rollickingly logical, as when Heracles in Hades carefully explains that his immortal half is honeymooning in Heaven; or, finally, pityingly patronizing to wards the misguided worshippers of " the cru cified sophist " who have persuaded themselves that they are to live on through time un ending. 26
His own insistence on the liberti et igaliti et fraternity in Hades, as an antidote to the inequalities of riches and poverty in this life, forces him, as though with an effort, to portray their real unreality. The actors in these brief
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THE SUPERNATURAL
dramas are not clothed upon with unnecessary rhetoric, but the snub-nosed skulls still have " speculation in their eyes," the white femora step out bravely, and the vacant ribs reecho the Cynic's ventriloquism.
Life's futility is presented from various sides. We learn the vanity of riches that yield the Ferryman's fee as their only dividend; we see the frustrated legacy-hunters ; see, too, beauty and kisses, flow of rhetoric and flowing beard of the philosophers, pedigree and patrimony, the fair fame of Socrates — all alike — go by the board and drift astern in the boat's livid wake as the passengers prepare to step ashore with naked bones that need fear no nip of Cerberus. Or, the fancy changes and the dead arrive before the judge still branded with the stigmata of sins for which they are to suffer, in propria persona, most humanly as they deserve.
" Crossing the Bar "
or The Tyrant is a much larger canvas, painted in more lurid
colours, but on the same gray and livid back ground.
The Subway officials, the crew and the pas sengers on Charon's crowded boat are painted in with swift impressionism. Atropos " with
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LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
the abhorred shears " has " slit the thin-spun life " of 1004 persons today. Aeacus, the Rev enue Inspector at the Ferry, finds the shipment one corpse short as per Bill of Lading. The flurried Corpse-conductor, Hermes, with the
aid of the now jovial Cynic, retrieves the Ty rant who has nearly made good his escape up the funicular tunnel. This unprecedented delay to the cable-line of the Fates, usually running on schedule time, angers the Ferryman, who has already lost two trips. He hurries all on
board, except Micyllus,28 the cobbler, who has no obol to pay his fare, and casts loose his mooring. The cobbler, long since eager for his mansion on the ever-gray shore, is in despair but, realizing that he cannot drown since he is dead already, plunges into the Salt Lake whose high specific gravity easily buoys up his now negligible weight. Being in the swim he even offers to race Charon to the landing. This,
however, is not de rigeur. Clotho, the senior Spinster, sailing as special supercargo, salvages the unconventional corpse and, for lack of other accommodations, gives him an upper bunk on the shoulders of the Tyrant. The scene, where Rhadamanthus pronounces judgment, informs us that all previous sins leave stigmata on the
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sinner's body. Under microscopic examination the Cynic is found to have many faint traces of former sins. His strenuous philosophic virtue, however, has entirely obliterated his guilt and he is passed without conditions. The cobbler, whose poverty is apparently counted unto him as righteousness, has a skin as smooth as a baby's and he is at once billed through to the Islands of the Blest. But Megapenthes, the multimillionaire tyrant, is in a parlous state — livid all over with confluent stigmata. His lamp and couch, summoned as eyewitnesses, give il luminating and bed-rock testimony. For such an imperial sinner a special punishment is de vised. He is not allowed to drink of the water of Lethe, the River of Oblivion. His " sorrow's crown of sorrows " shall be the eternal and undimmed recollection of his former life of luxury. For him we may delimit " Hades " and translate the title as The Hell-bent
Voyage.
Two other pieces, the Menippus and the
Icaromenippus are pertinent here and also sug gest how Lucian developed his own negatives. Their inverted mechanism is identical — the preambles; the miraculous trips to Hades and Heaven respectively; the Synod of Corpses
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and the Council of Olympians; the inferences drawn; and even the simplicity of the two short-cuts back to Earth are pendants of each other. In each of them a comedy of Aristoph anes — the Frogs and the Peace — furnishes a happy suggestion. The main difference lies in the relative degree of finish. The Menippus or Necromancy is apparently a mere charcoal sketch, or a snap-shot caught by the help of Persephone's flashlight, of shadows of shades, whereas in the Icaromenippus the artist, work ing en plein air, paints at leisure his finished picture with perfected technique and unfading colours.
This latter is an elaborate satire on Greek religion, in Lucian's most brilliant vein, pref aced by a somewhat detailed and irritable analysis of the net yield of philosophic specu lation and physical investigation, as Lucian chose to appraise them. The transcendental Birdman, with the synthetic name, Icaro menippus, explains why he found it necessary to obtain, by a visit to Heaven 29 itself, first hand information in the hope of coordinating
conflicting statements of contemporary philos ophers. This original purpose is not ignored in the end but is merged in the larger question
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of man's relation to the gods. This question of universal import is asked today. No more deadly comment has ever been made on the immoral futility of the necessarily conflicting petitions raised by embattled nations, each to its Tribal God, than Lucian's witty resume of Zeus's daily office-business.
Daedalus, incidentally the father of flying as well as of other far more important con tributions to progress, had fastened on with wax his own and his son's wings, a device adapted only to a low-altitude flight across the Aegean. Icarus soared high and was lost.
Icaromenippus, however, provides against this by a greatly improved method of attaching his wings — one an eagle's, one a vulture's. This combination, indeed, of the celestial and the terrestrial nearly wrecked the venture. Ham pered by the inferior vulture's wing, he puts in for repairs at the Lunar garage conducted by Empedocles, an emigre from Aetna, in whose crater he had acquired mechanical skill by watching the Olympian blacksmith, Hephaes tus, mending the points of the imperial thunder bolts, broken 30 on the rocks through Zeus's poor marksmanship. After various instructive episodes on the Moon, upward we fly forget
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ting, in the iridescent joys of the open road, all earthly handicaps.
On the traveller's arrival at the front door of the Imperial Palace, Hermes, the heavenly " bell-hop," answers his knock and takes in his name to Zeus. When admitted, he is thunder struck at the Father's loud voice and Titanic glance but is secretly somewhat reassured by observing that the gods are equally alarmed at his own unexpected epiphany. But Zeus is con versant with Homer and the sacred rights of guest-friendship, and before dinner takes his guest for a walk to the most resonant part of Heaven where the sound-waves concentrate and bring up the prayers, day by day, through window-like openings in the floors, covered by lids. But Zeus"was out for information also and he asks: What's the present quotation on wheat in Greece? Was last winter very hard on you? Do the vegetables need more rain? "
— and other questions including more personal matters, such as the likelihood of the comple tion of his great Olympieium in Athens and whether certain temple robbers have yet been apprehended, and, finally and most important: " What opinion do men have about me? " — a question requiring some cleverness to answer
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both respectfully and diplomatically. Zeus, in fact, reveals his own apprehension that the great extension of the elective system, with the consequent inclusion of so many deities in the curriculum, is resulting in a general indifference to all of them.
Arrived at the prayer-precinct, Zeus took off a lid and allowed his guest to bend over with him and hear the various requests, for ex ample:
O Zeus, grant that I may become King! O Zeus, make my onions grow and my garlic! O Gods, grant that my father die soon!
And one and another would say:
Grant that I may fall heir to my wife's money! Grant me that I escape detection in plotting against my brother! God grant that I may win in my law-suit! Grant that I be crowned at the Olympic Games!
And of those who were sailing the seas, one prayed for the north wind to blow, another for the south wind. And the farmer asked for rain; the fuller for sunshine. Zeus, though carefully considering each request, did not grant them all. In fact, he was occasionally at a loss when diametrically opposite requests were accom panied by precisely equal offerings!
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After the prayers, Zeus listened in at other trap-doors, designed for transmitting oracles or the names of those who were making sacrifices, and then gave out his orders for the day to the Winds and Seasons:
Today let it rain in Scythia! Let there be lightning among the Libyans! Let it snow in
Greece! And: North wind, do you blow in Lydia! and do you, Southwind, remain inactive! Let Westwind kick up the waves in the Adriatic! And let, we'll say, about fifteen hundred bushels of hail be scattered over Cappodocia!
The family dinner that follows gives Lucian abundant opportunity — and he seems never to miss a chance — for his cumulative satire. Al though seated with the alien-resident gods of doubtful pedigree, Icaromenippus could see and hear everything. He even had the good- fortune to get a taste, on the sly, of the con ventional nectar on which gods only may get drunk. The cup-bearer, Ganymede, out of sym pathetic loyalty to his own human extraction, would come, whenever the attention of the gods was deflected, and pour out for the guest a
half-pint or so of nectar. The food and drink were all of home production, furnished from the special preserves and cellars of various gods. Nor were the finer intellectual amuse
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ments — music, dancing and poetry — far to seek, the Muses, for example, singing selections from Hesiod's Genesis of the Gods!
Night came on somehow although Helios was present at the table, wearing his ever-blazing halo. A called assembly of the gods next morn ing repeats situations already familiar, but de tails differ and the humour seems new and al luring. On this occasion Zeus does not choose to admit that he is not master of Fate and he promises the excited gods that he will resort to the most drastic measures against all atheists — after the holidays! Just now it would be sacrilegious.
He gives specific directions for"ridding them selves of their unusual guest: Take off his wings so that he may never come here again " — (To construct another airship would doubt less have been treated as an infringement of Zeus's patent on the eagle! ) — "and let Hermes take him down to the Earth today. " " And the " son of Cyllene," Icaromenippus concludes, holding me suspended by my right ear " — (the seat of memory) — " brought me and set me down yesterday at eventide in the
Potters' Quarter. "
Lucian might have rested content with his
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campaign against Zeus and his Olympians, on the one hand, and, on the other, against Pluto, the " nether Zeus," and his realm. His inspec tor Menippus had spied out all the weak points in Hades below and in Heaven above. The debacle of the gods, supernal and infernal, was inevitable. But there still remained a third ap proach to the problem — the viewing of human life through divine binoculars. To effect this,
Lucian presses into temporary service the god Hermes, the busy corpse-conductor, and the god Charon, another proxy for Lucian in place of the discarded Menippus. Although logically, along with the rest of the gods, these two also by Lucian's catholic satire should have lost their standing, they had, in fact, only taken on a new lease of life. Lucian's audiences were
now, more than ever, on familiar speaking terms with them.
The Charon or The Inspectors is usually grouped with the Dialogues of the Dead and contains, indeed, many superficial points of contact with them. But its tone is different. Scathing satire and even harsh invective against tyrants are tempered by a finer humour and by more than a touch of pity for men dangling helplessly from the spindles of the
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Fates. Not even in Lucian's bitter mind is Death always a subject for ridicule. Its in- evitableness seems to set free for once, a more human sympathy lurking beneath his polished cynicism.
Comic actors do not necessarily laugh behind their masks and, in reading the Charon, we are even tempted to consider genu ine an epigram, replete with feeling, that is attributed to Lucian. It is on the death of a
child, named Callimachus:
Me unpitying Death has taken,
Me a child of five years old, — Me whose soul no grief has shaken Small time, true, my life had doled, Small ills, too, my life did see,
Weep not, therefore — not for me.
Whether written by Lucian or no, this attitude towards the death of the very young, while delicate in its sympathy, is highly antiseptic and not out of keeping with the nobler " imperturbability " (arapa^ia) of Epicurus 31 himself which was, perhaps, Lucian's best ideal. Be that as it may, this dialogue, which in ar tistic conception and execution has few equals,
rises above Menippean cynicism. The " Inspec tors," Charon and Hermes, meet on neutral
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ground and the result of their review of human life is unexpectedly non-partisan. Charon, to be sure, newly arrived on a furlough from the Underworld, at the opening of the dialogue is convulsed with laughter at hearing a man eagerly accept a dinner invitation, only to be killed the next moment by a falling tile. This reminds him pleasantly of his ferry business and, indeed, before the end of the dialogue, he
insists, out of purely professional curiosity, upon seeing the terrestrial cold-storage plants which serve as terminal depots for the shipping of his daily cargoes. But the illuminating dis cussion with Hermes concerning the panorama of human history unrolled before them cul minates in an unconscious parallel to the altru ism of the rich man in Hell's torment who is fain to have Lazarus, whilom beggar but
now ensconced in Abraham's bosom, sent as a missionary to his surviving brothers to urge them to timely repentance. But, like the rich man's unselfish thought for the living, Charon's generous impulse to cry out and warn men of their folly is suppressed by Hermes with sim ilar finality. The Fates are in control and men would not, and could not, " be
persuaded, though one rose from the dead. " We see, in
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effect, the Fates floating above us. We see the shadowy phantoms with which they mock us: hopes, fears, ambitions, jealousy, wrath and
covetousness. Chilling, in spite of its comic reminiscence, falls upon our ears the swift resume at the end: "Lord, what fools these mortals be! Kings, golden ingots, funeral rites, battles, but never a word about Charon! "
2. Applied Superstition
The Charon makes a natural transition to Lucian's crusades against contemporary ap plied superstition. Superstition did not die out with the advent of Christianity. It is not dead yet. The classic curtsy to Nemesis survives un disguised in our apologetic: " Knock on wood," and the very vigour of the well-groomed twen tieth-century intellect seems to furnish surplus energy for the rank fungus growth of Spiritism.
In this brilliant Age of the Antonines super stitions, home-made and oriental, flourished under the genial sunlight of the Roman Em pire alongside the noble philosophy inculcated by Imperial example. Here also Lucian found his opportunity for asserting his ethics of ne gation and also for covert or open attacks upon contemporaries.
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His Lie-Fancier 32 is a round-trip ticket for a journey through the bog-lands of the human mind, ancient and modern, guided by the self- lighting ignes fatui of the generations.
Tychiades, Lucian himself, pays a visit of condolence to a sufferer from gout. His advent momentarily interrupts, but does not dam up, a flood of supernatural incidents which are being exchanged between the sick man and a coterie of distinguished friends, including reverend heads of philosophic schools, among them a Platonic D. D. , and the " scientific " family doctor. These authentic experiences include, first of all, sure cures for gouty feet. For ex ample, the tooth of a field mouse, killed in a specific manner and picked up with the left hand and wrapped in the newly-skinned pelt of a lion or that of a female deer, still virgin, will stop the pain instanter. A dispute arose as to which skin is the more efficacious for a crippled foot. In the opinion of the majority the lion took the pas, so to say, because a lion is swifter than even a deer. Ten distinct mir acles follow, giving Lucian his chance for his
choicest art as a raconteur. Snakes and dragons are exorcised; a flying Hyperborean magician assists in a love-affair, calling up Hecate and
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THE SUPERNATURAL
bringing the Moon down, and, finally, fetching the by no means reluctant pretty-lady; a Syr ian drives out a demon from one possessed — the tenant departing " all black and smoke- complexioned "; statues, accurately described, take an active part in the family menage; all " Hell " and its contents gape open; the con ventional ghost is laid; in a sick man's vision the death of a neighbour is predicted, and im mediately comes true; household implements are metamorphosed by magic formulae into efficient valets. Incidentally, two 33 of these tales are securely embedded in European lit
erature.
When the interchange of experiences touches
upon oracles the doubting Tychiades withdraws from the seance. It may be significant that the Tychiades-Lucian, while defending his scepti cism, rejects the inference that he is necessarily an atheist. It is also interesting to note that the
host calls upon his servant, Pyrrhias, to con firm his account of the thirteen-hundred-foot- high Hecate accompanied by " dogs taller than Indian elephants " and of his detailed inspec tion, in the sudden chasm, of the denizens of the Underworld. Pyrrhias had arrived on the scene only as the chasm was closing, but he
[9i]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
readily confirms his master's story and adds that he had actually heard Cerberus barking. Thus the host's story is as well buttressed as that of any pseudo-psychist of today, citing concurrent testimony with a show of reason ableness.
Alexander the Fake-Prophet? 4. though ex posing Lucian at his low-water mark of per sonal acrimony, is a useful milestone on the winding road of human credulity, essentially unchanged in eighteen hundred years. Granted our new scientific devices for staging, or for detecting ocular deceptions, any particular brand of imposture is merely a matter of detail.
But even some of the details, as narrated by
Lucian, have a modern air. The new
neatly hatched before the very eyes of the gap ing spectators from a goose-egg planted in the temple-foundation, grows in a few days into the huge tame snake which coiled affectionately around the prophet's body in a light as reli giously dim as the beneficent darkness affected by contemporary mediums. The snake's own docile head was tucked under Alexander's arm pit, and a counterfeit mouthpiece, worked by a skilful mechanism, protruded from the proph et's long beard.
[92]
ARTIST
god,35
THE SUPERNATURAL
The devices employed for discovering and
answering the questions, submitted in sealed
scrolls, were risky but, in spite of some awk
ward slips, yielded a large income. The crux
of a growing, paying business in oracles was
to deliver as few absurd ambiguities and as
many plausible answers as possible. Although
there was no "Who's Who in Paphlagonia "
to furnish biographic clues, the clients were
somewhat less sophisticated than our twentieth-
century dupes, and shrewd guessing, aided, per
haps, by hypnotic suggestion and mind-reading,
could accomplish much. The usual procedure,
however, was to open the scrolls, keeping, by
the help of a hot needle, the seal intact or, when
necessary, skilfully forging new seals. The
highest-priced oracular responses were " auto-
36
phones " delivered by a concealed assistant
through a speaking tube debouching into the jaws of the counterfeit linen head of the snake. One difference between then and now entitles
us to some optimism. Lucian's injudicious un masking of Alexander nearly cost him his life and necessitated an ignominious, though tem porary, recantation. Now-a-days exposure pro ceeds in a scientific and progressive manner.
Physicists and psychologists have responded to [93]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
ARTIST
the challenge made by a recrudescence of cre dulity and have laid bare many of the trickeries of " levitation " and of messages from the dead,
made " evidential " by proleptic cramming of biographic details. Even the pathetic frauds of alleged " spirit " photographs have been, on occasion, betrayed by the tell-tale lines of the real newspaper original faithfully reappearing
on the lantern-slide. Finally, a scientist, him self a whilom dupe, has identified the ectoplas- mic stuff that dreams were made of as the ac tual material output from a local manufactory. Nor can we afford to be too contemptuous of ancient superstition, for, while Alexander's henchmen deceived high Imperial officials, our
own anachronistic credulity has not been al together confined to the lowest order of in telligence. It has found lodgment in the brains of well-known litterateurs or even, sporadically, of a scientist deflected from sound reasoning by personal bereavement.
3. Christianity
Lucian's references to Christianity have been adequately discussed by commentators 37 and there can be little difference of opinion as to his attitude of kindly, though patronizing,
[94]
THE SUPERNATURAL
superiority towards one more set of contempo raries, misguided enough to believe in immor tality. Apart from the two genuine works in
which specific mention is made of the Chris tians there are a number of allusions, up and down his satires, which the supersensitiveness of the early church took as conscious slurs on the New or the Old Testament. Practically all of these are susceptible of another and easier interpretation.
Although Lucian was a Syrian by birth and evidently acquainted, by hearsay at least, with some of the facts of the crucifixion of Christ, the canon of the New Testament was not as yet established nor were its contents publicly cir culated. Satire upon its tenets would not have made the wide and instant appeal to Lucian's audiences which was requisite for his purpose. His detailed description of the Islands of the Blest in the True Story, for example, would awaken welcome echoes of Pindar's second Olympic Ode or of the marvellous garden of Alcinous in the Odyssey. The detail of the vines which produce twelve crops annually and " yield fruit every month " seems now, to any reader of the New Testament, like an obvious loan from the Apocalypse, and it would be
[9Sl
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
risky to assert that this item could not have
been overheard by our Syrian at some
tian gathering. But, as a matter of reminiscence, it would develop naturally, by Lucian's favourite method of
details to give the effect of autopsy, from
Homer's own words:38 " Of these the fruitage never perishes nor even fails of winter or of summer the whole year through; but aye and ever does the Westwind blowing quicken these,
ARTIST
particularizing
Chris literary
and ripen those; pear on pear grows ripe and full, apple upon apple, clustered grape on grape succeeding, fig on fig. " He makes, for example, in the interest of telling the whole truth, one
addition: " They said, however, that the pome granates, apple and other fruit trees produce thirteen crops annually, for in one of their cal
endar months, the month ' Minos,' they yield two crops. " 39 The " casting out of devils," also an apparent slur on the New Testament, was more probably a generic reference to the thriving practitioners of magic.
As to hits at Old Testament stories, the chronological margin is elastic enough but the supposed references are not convincing. Lu- cian, in the True Story, did not have to enlarge the acreage of the interior of Jonah's " whale "
[96]
THE SUPERNATURAL
to make room for the truck-garden of Skin- tharos within his big sea-monster; and, again, the sudden chasm of air that interrupts his boat's course comes from his own brilliant fancy, not from the book of Exodus. The Bib lical crossing of the Red Sea would be, at best,
a very incomplete parallel.
Whatever degree of possibility, or probabil
ity, may be assigned to such covert reminis cences, the actual references to the Christians make Lucian a favourable, because uninten tional, witness. In the Alexander, the charlatan " prophet " includes the Christians with the Epicureans in his most bitter anathemas: "Away with the Christians! Away with the Epicureans! " But it is precisely in the Alex ander that Lucian most openly lauds Epicurus and the Epicureans, and contrasts their un compromising opposition to shams and super stitions with the perfect harmony existing be tween Alexander and the Stoic, Pythagorean and Platonic schools! The Christians, there fore, were in the best company that he could offer.
In the Life's End of Peregrinus, the Cynic philosopher, craving notoriety and needing fi nancial support, is represented as having joined
[97]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
the Christian sect after all other means of self- advertisement had grown stale and unremuner- ative. A certain real ability — for he was, after all, an accredited Cynic — raised him rapidly to prominence among the simpler folk of the Christian brotherhood. He expounded and, ac cording to Lucian, even wrote some of their
"
He was called a New Soc
sacred books !
rates " and his wants were well supplied. When cast into prison as too noisy a propagandist, he fairly lived "in clover. These " non-profes sionals," who hold all things in common," were easily duped by a professional charlatan like Peregrinus. " At short notice," says Lu cian, " they contribute everything without re serve. " " For," he continues, " these misguided persons have persuaded themselves that they are going to be altogether immortal and are going to live through time unending. In com
parison with this the most of them despise death and voluntarily give themselves up to it. Then, too, their first lawgiver persuaded them that they are all brothers, one of the other, after they have once thrown over and denied the gods of Greece and have done reverence to that crucified sophist himself and live accord
ing to his laws. "
[98]
THE SUPERNATURAL
Neither here nor elsewhere is Lucian making an attack on the Christians per se. Indeed, he poses almost as their partisan in his indignation against Peregrinus and his successful use of their simplicity. His patronizing contempt for their gullibility (as he saw it), led him to im mortalize some of the most lovable and charac teristic traits of the early brotherhood, and the church authorities of the sixteenth century seem short-sighted in placing on the Index librorunt prohibitorum a tractate that might have been exploited as impartial testimony in their favour.
[99]
VII. OTHER DRAMATIC DIALOGUES: POLEMICS: NARRATIONS
than twenty other writings of Lucian offer contributions necessary for an estimate both of his defects
MORE
and of his versatile interest in the " passing
show " — the human comedy. He was neither a master intelligence like Aristotle — expert in several of the many subjects to which he ad dressed himself — nor was he a mere polymath like Pliny the Elder or Aelian. In spite of his jaunty treatment of philosophy and exact sci ence, Lucian at least takes cognizance of the chief components of contemporary life and with his mordant wit etches the portraiture of a great century. This is not mere caricature.
(a) DRAMATIC DIALOGUES
Under this rubric might be included the ma jority of the dialogues cited above to illustrate specific objectives of Lucian's satire. Some of the best dialogues, however, fall outside of the
[ 100]
OTHER DRAMATIC
DIALOGUES
previous classification. To emphasize outstand
ing merit three titles are here treated rately.
The Cock
This is second to none of Lucian's dialogues in dramatic vigour. The flashes of wit and the sustained and entrancing humour of the situa tion are hardly equalled even in the Icaro- menippus. The interjected sermonizing may be tedious, perhaps, to the mercurial modern, craving his " quick lunch," but so are the long, brilliant speeches of the messenger in Greek tragedy — and, for that matter, much of Shakespeare himself.
The general theme of the Cock or the Dream is contentment. Micyllus the cobbler, with whom we become intimate elsewhere, supports the role of righteous poverty. The account of his first and only dinner at a rich man's table contrasts the inequalities in human conditions. He in dream, living over again the fleeting splendour of this banquet when he awakened by the crowing of his officious cock who replies to his master's angry reproaches by perfectly
reasonable remark, made in excellent Greek. Indignation naturally gives place to amaze ment as the bird calmly explains his possession
[IOI]
sepa
a
is
is, a
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
of human speech. He is Pythagoras, it seems, in addition to many other aliases. His soul, in fact, has lived through many transmigrations, brute and human, man and woman, with powers unimpaired. As Euphorbus, in the time of the Trojan War, he knew much more about Helen than did Homer who, at the time, was a mere Bactrian camel! After Pythagoras he was Aspasia, but admits that the role of Chan ticleer is preferable to that of a mother-hen, so to say. Next he was the Cynic Crates, an ex pert pick-lock. This fact doubtless accounts for the special form of magic which he pres
ently exhibits, albeit his inbred piety ascribes this power to Hermes, the Lord of Looting. The cock, as it transpires, can at will turn his long, curved, right-hand tail-feather into a mas ter-key and this same night, before dawn, he takes the cobbler unseen through three rich men's houses. The cock, in various rebirths, had played many parts — rich man, poor man, king, horse, jackdaw et al. His experience of life is all-embracing. He tells the cobbler that, as a matter of fact, he has never seen anyone living more happily than Micyllus himself. " Than I, Cock? " the cobbler exclaims, " I wish you the same! Excuse me, please, but you
[102]
ARTIST
OTHER DRAMATIC DIALOGUES
forced out this curse. " In the end, however, Micyllus is convinced. He learns the lesson of contentment.
When they start on their rounds the cobbler plucks out both the curving tail-feathers, ex plaining to the bereaved rooster that he wishes to make doubly sure of the key to the situation, adding that this precaution will also prevent the cock from being lop-sided. In the first house entered Simon, his nouveau riche neigh bour, is seen, sleepless from fear of burglars, uncovering and counting and burying again his gold — a pale, worn miser. After a brief visit to a rich Shylock's house the magic feather next unlocks the door of Eucrates. Here the cobbler dined a few hours ago and all this gold- plate and other magnificence he had just in herited in his dream when awakened prema turely by the cock. As Micyllus enters the house he is once more dazzled by the splendour and exclaims: " All this was mine a little while ago! " Presently, however, he sees Eucrates, here betraying himself by his own passions, and here betrayed by his unfaithful wife. It is enough. The breaking dawn curtails the feather's magic and irradiates the beauty of the honest cobbler's daily toil.
[103]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
Timon the Misanthrope
In this dialogue Lucian rehearses his familiar attacks on parasites, philosophers, rhetoricians, and the futility of the shopworn gods them selves. The Timon is accounted by some com petent critics as Lucian's masterpiece, though he allows the caricature of the orator Demeas to become farcical, thus marring the artistic verisimilitude of the piece and, to this extent, putting it on a lower level than the Charon, or the Cock. But the dialogue marches to its goal —the creation 40 in literature of the typical
Misanthropist. This involves, along with the dramatic, though incidental, punishment of the ungrateful parasites, the far greater punish ment of Timon himself in becoming a full- fledged Egoist. To this egoism both poverty and riches contribute.
Lucian ignored Plutarch's data, if he knew them, and is not diverted from his main pur pose by attributing any real virtue to Timon that could stand the strain of either riches or poverty. In the revamped Shakespearian play the centre of gravity is shifted to Timon's earlier days of prosperity and his good-natured prodigality is half confused with philanthropy,
[ 104]
OTHER DRAMATIC DIALOGUES
as reflected in the sympathy of the loyal and lovable Flavius. One of the " authors " of the Timon of Athens, indeed, outdoes Lucian by
the cynical touch of subventions to the poison ous harlots, but he shuffles Timon off the stage, before he is fairly established as a practising misanthrope, and then deflects our attention to extraneous matter.
Lucian's neatest bit of satire, perhaps, is the egoism of Zeus, who rewards Timon simply and solely for his generous offerings, on Thanks giving days, of fat bulls and "goats. " Their savour," he naively remarks, is still in my nostrils. " The punishment of the ungrateful parasites must wait till he can have his thunder bolt repaired. Two of its tines were broken re cently by striking the rock at the " Anaceum " temple instead of a sinner. For very bull-head- edness Zeus never could hit the bull's-eye.
The personification of the blind god, Wealth, gives Lucian a grateful opportunity both for ethical observations and for picturesque geo graphical details, and his open and skilful use of the Plutus of Aristophanes only enhances his own dramatic creation.
[105]
LUCIAN,
The Dialogues of the Sea
In these fifteen aquarelles satirist and artist blend. Our ductile vision is refracted by the shining water and everything is credible within its magic depths. The artistic charm is perme ated, but never marred, by a delicate satire, less obvious than the grim derision in the Dia
logues of the Dead. While mocking at canoni cal mythology Lucian here reaches his end by no crass caricature but, ever and anon, Fancy astride a dolphin rises from the blue sea that holds the unnoticed satire in solution.
Several of these dialogues were pretty cer tainly suggested 41 by works of art extant in Lucian's time. Others would probably find their motive, or parallel, in paintings or sculpture now lost. Here, as elsewhere, Lucian illustrates the freemasonry of the brush, the chisel and the pen.
Within each tiny dialogue there is condensed a nucleus. Sometimes there are two centres of interest. Now, it is Polyphemus's brute strength succumbing to intellectual cunning and, inlaid upon the mimicry of Homer's ram; now, the cool bubbling fountain, worthy of Horace; now, the statuesque beauty of the
[106]
SATIRIST AND AKTIST
it,
OTHER DRAMATIC DIALOGUES
girl with her water jar; now, the rescue of An dromeda, with the inimitable detail of the sea- monster's bi-focal death — some of him slain outright by the falchion of Perseus, and " as much of him as had seen the Medusa " petri fying independently! Again, we have two pic tures of Europa carried off by Zeus, incognito as milk-white bull — a favourite model from Ovid to Titian and Tennyson. Lucian's setting is his own. The unlucky Southwind, assigned that day to the Indian ocean, has missed this lovely Mediterranean spectacle — the most " magnificent sea-processional," Westwind tells him, " that I have ever seen since I live and have my blowing! "
The attention first centres on Europa, bullied into an unwitting elopement. Then comes the wedding-march. Only the more attractive sub marine life, such as tritons, dolphins and half- naked Nereids, is allowed to show even a peri scope above the glassy surface. Poseidon, as best man, convoys his swimming brother, and Aphrodite, quite in her element, lolls back in her sea-car, the fairest and most nonchalant
flower-girl that ever scattered roses from near by Rhodes. As the handsome bull's front hooves strike the beach he changes into the
[107]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
divine bridegroom and the marines circum spectly submerge, setting the water a-boil. " And I," says the envious Southwind, " was looking at griffins, elephants, and black-a- moors! "
In the Danae seascape, finally, is a picture that Simonides himself cannot blur from our memory — the blue Aegean; the little ark; the fair and smiling child; the fairer mother; the brawny, gentle fishermen. Thetis, in a sub marine chat with Doris, tells how Danae put up no prayer for herself, when exposed on the sea with Perseus, " but tried to beg off her baby from death by shedding tears, as she holds it out to its grandfather, and it was just the prettiest little thing! And the baby, uncon scious of ills, breaks into smiles at the sight of the sea. ' Why my eyes are filled again " with tears, Doris, as I but remember them! '
bitter polemics in which Lucian openly names the person attacked. This has already been dis cussed in the chapter on the " Supernatural. " The piece, however, contains much additional matter of interest. This, at least, should be
[108]
POLEMICS
(b)
Alexander the Fake-Prophet is one of two
in
From bronze statuette and cast of Boston Museum
coin, struck under Lucius Verus, the of Fine Arts.
EEE EAGGK
GGKA
See
Note
35.
POLEMICS
added. After due allowance is made for per sonal animosity the account does not seem to be a caricature and is partially confirmed by extant medals and a bronze-figure. 42 It may be used as furnishing data, essentially credible, for the diagnostician of human credulity.
The Life's-End of Peregrinus is also an at tack upon a contemporary whose name is given
and whose spectacular suicide is recorded several unimpeachable authorities. 43 It is note worthy not only for the allusions to the Chris tians, cited above, but also for the diagnosis of a man possessed with the demon of self-adver tisement; for the psychology of the deceiving philosophers and their deceived contempora ries; for archaeological data — the picturesque references to the Games and to the terrain of Olympia should be read on the spot —; and, finally, the vivid narration, including the death- scene, the construction of the pyre, the sor rowing but self-possessed disciples, the pale philosopher, stripped to his shirt (" decidedly dirty " according to Cynic convention), weak ening at the last moment but spurred on to the irrevocable act by the relentless admonition: "Go on with your programme! " This fling comes from one of the brotherhood who is al
[ 109]
by
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
ready banking on the marketable value to the Cynic sect of the canonization of a self-im molated martyr. Lucian, indeed, anticipates the hatching of their chicken by letting an anapaestic vulture fly up in advance from the Cynic's ashes, chanting:
The Earth I have left, to Olympus I fare!
One thing only in this whole portrayal is open to question but that, unfortunately, is a matter of major importance. The self-immo lation is amply attested by others but the char acter of Peregrinus is lauded by Aulus Gellius. Was he, at worst, only a fanatic or was he an imposter bitten by greed for glory? Is Lucian repeating unsupported gossip or even actual calumnies when he refers nonchalantly to vari ous unsavoury episodes, including his murder of his father and his parasitical connection with the Christians? We cannot say, although it is an important factor in our estimate of Lucian
himself. But the amiable assumption of Gel lius, the myopic grammarian, is not demonstra tion. It does not prove either for his day or for our own that lofty sentiments must necessarily be sincere. Our golden idol may have feet of clay. Lucian, on the other hand, seldom identi
[no]
POLEMICS
fies himself with Charity that " thinketh no evil. "
Lucian, in fact, was not properly a biog rapher. The Life of Demonax, for example, if written by him, is dull. From Plutarch, whose honest shade had joined his mighty dead about the time of Lucian's birth, he may have drawn various hints but he made no nearer approach to his biographies than occasional juxtaposi
tions like that of Alexander with Hannibal and Scipio in the Dialogues of the Dead. Nor need we count" as biography the rhetorical " white washing of the infamous Phalaris. The story, too, about Herodotus, retailed in the " curtain- raiser " that bears his name, is an isolated, though interesting, item that reenforces Lu cian's undisguised admiration for the " incom parable charm of the incorrigible Story teller. "
The Coach in Rhetoric
This diatribe is apparently directed against a real person. His actual name is suppressed but the reference to Castor and Pollux is al most sufficient 44 identification. Julius Pollux, a cheap but self-confident rhetorician, would seem, as appointee of the Emperor Commodus to the official Chair of Rhetoric in Athens, to
[in]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
have aroused the contempt of the intelligentsia. It is unnecessary to assume that Lucian him self was an unsuccessful rival for the place. If half of the caricature were essentially represen tative it would justify his indignation as a sin cere lover of good language and literature even if the frank personalities were as untrue as they are unnecessary.
The Coach in Rhetoric purports to be the advice given gratis by a charlatan " professor " to a neophyte seeking a short-cut to the same showy success. Condensed from Lucian's bitter gibing his advice, in fine, is to ignore the old- fashioned, out-of-date disciplinary training. None of that is needed or even desirable. The easy road is also the shortest.