Southern Branch 
 of the 
 
 University of California 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 Form L I 
 
 ?A 
 
 3kOC 
 
 AU6
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
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 i JUL ^ 
 
 J/ 
 
 S 1981 \ 
 
 JUL 2 193* 
 
 m 
 
 Urn 4 1940 
 
 IJAN 5 
 
 APR 2 3 1962 
 
 Form L-9-15m-8'24
 
 ,
 
 6 
 
 STATE KOitMAi. MnuuL, 
 Los Angete, CaJ.
 
 Los Angeles, Cal. 
 
 Ancient Classics for English Readers 
 
 EDITED BY THE 
 
 REV. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A. 
 
 LUCIAN
 
 CONTENTS OF THE SERIES. 
 
 HOMER : THE ILIAD, 
 
 HOMER: THE ODYSSEY, 
 
 HERODOTUS, 
 C/ESAR, . 
 
 VIRGIL, 
 
 HORACE, 
 
 ^ESCHYLUS, By 
 
 XENOPHON, 
 
 CICERO, 
 
 SOPHOCLES, 
 
 PLINY, By A. 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 JUVENAL, . 
 
 ARISTOPHANES, 
 
 ... By the Editor. 
 
 By the Same. 
 
 By George C. Swayne, M.A. 
 
 ... By Anthony Trollope. 
 
 By the Editor. 
 
 . By Theodore Martin. 
 
 the Right Rev. the Bishop of Colombo. 
 
 . By Sir Alex. Grant, Bart., LL.D. 
 
 By the Editor. 
 
 By Clifton W. Collins, M.A. 
 Church, M.A., and W. J. Brodribb, M.A. 
 By William Bodham Donne. 
 By Edward Walford, M.A. 
 By the Editor. 
 HESIOD AND THEOGNIS, By the Rev. James Davies, M.A. 
 PLAUTUS AND TERENCE. ... By the Editor. 
 
 TACITUS By William Bodham Donne. 
 
 LUCIAN By the Editor. 
 
 PLATO, By Clifton W. Collins. 
 
 THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY, ... By Lord Neaves. 
 
 LIVY By the Editor. 
 
 OVID By the Rev. A. Church, M.A. 
 
 CATULLUS, TIBULLUS, & PROPERTIUS, ByJ. Davies, M.A. 
 DEMOSTHENES, . . By the Rev. W. J. Brodribb, M.A. 
 ARISTOTLE, ... By Sir Alex. Grant, Bart., LL.D. 
 
 THUCYDIDES By the Editor. 
 
 LUCRETIUS By W. H. Mallock, M.A. 
 
 PINDAR, ... By the Rev. F. D. Morice, M.A.
 
 LTTCIAN 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. VV. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A. 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 'ETONIAN A,' *THK PUBLIC SCHOOLS,' ETC. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO, 
 
 1875.
 
 A t, L^ 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. I. BIOGRAPHICAL, .... 
 
 " H. LUCIAN AND THE PAGAN OLYMPUS, 
 
 " III. DIALOGUES OP THE DEAD, 
 
 " IV. LUCIAN AND THE PHILOSOPHERS, 
 
 " V. SATIRES ON SOCIETV, . . 
 
 " VI. LUCIAN AS A ROMANCE-WRITER, 
 
 " VII. LUCIAN AND CHRISTIANITY, • 
 
 Page 
 1 
 
 12 
 
 50 
 
 83 
 
 138 
 
 158 
 
 167
 
 L U I A K 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
 Lucian (Lucianus, or Lychnis, as he sometimes calls 
 himself) was born about a.d. 120, or perhaps a few 
 years later, at Samosata, on the bank of the Euphrates, 
 at that time the capital city of Commagene, and per- 
 haps better known a century later from its heresiarch 
 bishop, Paul. What we know of our author's life 
 is chiefly gathered from incidental notices scattered 
 through his numerous writings. Of his youthful 
 days he has given what is probably a truthful account 
 in a piece which he has entitled " The Dream." This 
 appears to have been written in his successful later 
 years (when men are most disposed to be open and 
 honest about their early antecedents), and recited as 
 a kind of prologue to his public readings of his works, 
 before his fellow-citizens of Samosata. He tells us that 
 his parents, who seem to have been in humble circum- 
 stances, held a council of the friends of the family to 
 consult what should be done Avith their boy. They 
 a. c. vol. xviii. a
 
 2 L UCIA N. 
 
 came to the conclusion that a liberal education was not 
 to be thought of, because of the expense. The next 
 best thing, for a lad who had already no doubt given 
 token of some ability, was to choose some calling 
 which should af.ill Vc of an LiteUeotua.' rather than a 
 servile character. This is his own account of what 
 took place in the family council : — ■ 
 
 "When one proposed one thing and one another, 
 according to their fancies or experience, my father 
 turned to my maternal uncle — he was one of the 
 party, and passed for an excellent carver of Mer- 
 curies * — ' It is impossible,' said he, politely, ' in your 
 presence, to give any other art the preference. So take 
 this lad home with you, and teach him to be a good 
 stone-cutter and statuary : for he has it in him, and 
 is clever enough, as you know, with his hands.' He 
 had formed this notion from the way in which I used 
 to amuse myself in moulding wax. As soon as I left 
 school, I used to scrape wax together, and make figures 
 of oxen and horses, and men too, with some cleverness, 
 as my father thought. This accomplishment had 
 earned me many a beating from my schoolmasters ; 
 but at this moment it was praised as a sign of natural 
 talent, and sanguine hopes were entertained th.it I 
 should speedily become master of my new profession, 
 from this early plastic fancy. So, on a day which was 
 counted lucky for entering on my apprenticeship, to 
 
 * The figures of Mercury so commonly set up in the streets 
 and at the gates of houses were mere busts without arms, and 
 could not have required any very great amount of art in their 
 production.
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL. 3 
 
 my uncle I was sent. I did not at all object to it my- 
 self : I thought I should find the work amusing enough, 
 and be very proud when I could show my playmates 
 how I could make gods, and cut out other little figures 
 for myself and my special friends. But an accident 
 happened to me, as is not uncommon Avith beginners. 
 My uncle put a chisel in my hand, and hid me work 
 it lightly over a slab of marble that lay in the shop, 
 quoting at the same time the common proverb, ' Well 
 begun is half done.' But, leaning too hard upon it, in 
 my awkwardness, the slab hroke ; and my uncle, seiz- 
 ing a whip that lay at hand, made me pay my footing 
 in no very gentle or encouraging fashion ; so the first 
 wages I earned were tears." 
 
 " I ran off straight home, sobbing and howling, 
 with the tears running down my cheeks. I told them 
 there all about the whip, and showed the wheals ; and 
 with loud complaints of my uncle's cruelty, I added 
 that he had done it all out of envy, — because he was 
 afraid I should soon make a better artist than himself. 
 My mother was extremely indignant, and vented bitter 
 reproaches against her brother." * 
 
 Of course, with the mother in such mood, we readily 
 understand that young Lucian never Avent back to the 
 shop. " I went to sleep," he says, " with my eyes full 
 of tears, and that very night I had a dream." This 
 dream, which the author goes on to relate, is a repro- 
 duction, adapted to suit the circumstances, of the well- 
 known " Choice of Hercules." How far Lucian 
 
 * " The Dream," 2-4.
 
 4 LUC IAN, 
 
 actually dreamed it, or thought he dreamed it, is 
 impossible to say. He was imaginative enough, no 
 doubt, to have pictured it all to himself in his sleep ; 
 or a youth who had hit upon so ingenious an explana- 
 tion of his uncle's beating him was equally capable of 
 inventing a dream for the family edification ; or (and 
 tins is the most likely supposition) the practised 
 fabulist might have only adopted it as an appo- 
 site parable for the audience before whom he re- 
 lated it. The dream was this : Two female figures 
 seemed to have laid hold of him on either side, 
 and struggled so fiercely for the possession that he felt 
 as if he were bein^ torn in two. " The one figure was 
 of coarse and masculine aspect, with rough hair and 
 callous hands, with her robe high-girt, and covered with 
 dust — very like my uncle the stone-cutter when he was 
 polishing his work; the other had a lovely face and 
 graceful bearing, and was elegantly dressed." The 
 first is " Statuary," who offers him, if he will follow 
 her, an ample maintenance, good health, and possibly 
 fame. He is not to be discouraged at her rough ap- 
 pearance ; such, at first starting in life, were Phidias, 
 Myron, and Praxiteles. The other graceful lady is 
 " Liberal Education." She reminds him that he had 
 already made some slight acquaintance with her : but 
 much is still wanting- She will make her votary 
 acquainted with all the noblest things which the 
 noblest men in all times have done, and said, and 
 written ; she will adorn his soul with temperance, jus- 
 tice, gentleness, prudence, and fortitude ; with the love 
 of the beautiful, and the thirst for knowledge. Nay, 

 
 BIOGRAPHICAL. 5 
 
 she -will give him that which all men covet — immor- 
 tality. Her rival can but offer him the work and 
 position of a mere labourer, earning his living by his 
 hands, one of the vulgar herd, obliged to bow before 
 his superiors, and working according to his patrons' 
 taste.* 
 
 Lucian hardly waited, he says, for the termination 
 of this divine creature's speech, before he sprang up, 
 turned his back upon her rival, and threw himself into 
 her embraces. " No doubt," he slyly observes, " the 
 recollection of the flogging which my brief acquaintance 
 with the other lady had got me the day before contri- 
 buted not a little to my choice." The rejected claim- 
 ant gnashed upon him savagely with her teeth, and 
 then, "stiffening like a second Niobe," she was — very 
 appropriately — turned into stone.t 
 
 Whatever truth there might be in the vision, Lucian's 
 choice was made. How he found the means for the 
 further education that was needful, we are not told; 
 but he got himself trained in some way as a Rhetori- 
 cian. That science was not only very popular, but its 
 professors, when once they had made themselves a 
 name, were pretty well paid. The Emperor Marcus 
 Aurelius was himself a most liberal patron of this as of 
 other sciences, and j^untaincd public lectures on juris- 
 prudence, with which "rhetoric was directly connected, 
 both at Rome and in the provinces. 
 
 * Wieland well remarks that the art of sculpture must have 
 been very much on the decline, both in point of merit and repu- 
 tation, to lead the writer to speak of it in such slighting temis. 
 
 + "The Dream," 6-14.
 
 6 LUC I AN. 
 
 For some time after his education was completed, 
 he seems to have wandered up and down Ionia, with 
 very precarious means of support, exercising his profes- 
 sion, among other places, at Antioch, where he must 
 have come into contact more or less with the new sect 
 called " Christians," — with what result we shall partly 
 see hereafter. By degrees he got into some practice as 
 an advocate : hut not meeting with the success which 
 he hoped for in that line, he took to composing orations 
 for others to deliver, and to giving lectures upon 
 rhetoric and the art of public speaking. In this latter 
 capacity he travelled a good deal, as was the custom for 
 all professors in those days, and delivered his lectures 
 and declamations in the towns of Syria, Greece, Italy, 
 and Gaul. It was in the last-named country — always 
 h rich harvest-field, as Ave gather from Juvenal,* for 
 travelling orators and lecturers on law — that he seems 
 to have been most successful, and he continued there 
 for ten years. 
 
 "Whether he eventually grew tired of his profession, 
 as some, expressions in his writings would lead us to 
 think, or whether he had made enough money by it to 
 enable him to devote himself to the more strictly lite- 
 rary life to which his tastes and abilities alike pointed, 
 — he gave up the study and the practice of Rhetoric in 
 about his fortieth year. He cast off' his old mistress, 
 he says, because he had grown tired of her false 
 ways : " she was always painting her face and tiring 
 her head," and otherwise misbehaving herself, and he 
 
 * See his Satires, vii. 175, and xv. 111.
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL. 7 
 
 would endure it no longer. She had led him a very- 
 unquiet life of it, he declares, for some years. He 
 makes poor Rhetoric, indeed, say in her defence in 
 the same Dialogue, and with at least some degree of 
 truth, that she had taken him up when he was young, 
 poor, and unknown, had brought him fame and repu- 
 tation, and lastly in Gaul had made him a wealthy 
 man.* It is possible that the declining reputation 
 in which the science, owing to the abuses introduced 
 by unworthy professors, was beginning to be held 
 throughout Greece, may have been one great reason 
 for his withdrawing from it. 
 
 He delivered his last lecture on the subject at 
 Thessalonica, — where he would again meet with, or at 
 least hear something of, the members of the Christian 
 Church. Thence he returned to his native town of 
 Samosata, found his father still alive there,t and soon 
 removed him and his whole family into Greece. He 
 devoted the rest of his life to the study of philosophy 
 and to his literary work, living in good style at Athens. 
 It was here, as he tells us himself, that he got rid of 
 his " barbarous Syrian speech," and perfected himself 
 in that pure Attic diction which is marvellous in a 
 writer who was virtually a foreigner. For such Greek 
 as was spoken in Syria during the Empire was, as 
 Lucian confesses, little better than a 'patois. To these 
 years of his life at Athens are naturally assigned those 
 Dialogues of his which have in them so much of the 
 Aristophanic spirit and manner. There also he enjoyed 
 
 * " The Double Accusation," 27 and 31. 
 t "Alexander," 56.
 
 8 LUCIA If. 
 
 the friendship of Demonax of Cyprus, who, if we may 
 trust the character which his friend gives of him in 
 the little biographical sketch which bears his name, 
 well deserved to be called an eclectic philosopher. 
 His philosophy, combining some of the highest tenets 
 of the Socratic school with the contempt of riches and 
 luxury affected by the Cynics, was, says Lucian, 
 " mild, cheerful, and benevolent," and he lived re- 
 spected to the end of his long life, " setting an example 
 of moderation and wisdom to all who saw and heard 
 him." * 
 
 Lucian still travelled occasionally, and on one occa- 
 sion paid a visit to the reputed oracle of the arch- 
 impostor Alexander, at Abonoteiehos in Paphlagonia, 
 of which he gives a very graphic account. This man 
 exercised an extraordinary influence over the credu- 
 lity not only of his own countrymen but of strangers 
 
 * Lucian gives us a number of conversational anecdotes of 
 Demonax, — one of the tew collections of classical ana. Perhaps 
 tlie best is this. A certain sophist from Sidon, very fond of 
 praising himself, was bonsting that he understood all systems 
 of philosophy. " If Aristotle calls me to the Lyceum, I can 
 follow him : if Plato invites me to the Academy, I will meet 
 him there : if Zeno to the Porch, I am ready : if Pythagoras 
 calls upon me, I can be silent." Rising up quietly among the 
 audience — " Hark !" said Demonax, addressing him — " Pytha- 
 goras calls you." There was evidently something in common 
 between the two friends in their views upon religious questions. 
 When a neighbour asked Demonax to accompany him to the 
 temple of iEsculapius to pray for the recovery of his son, the 
 philosopher replied— "Do you suppose that the god is deaf, 
 that he cannot hear us where we are?" — Life of Demonax, 
 14, 27.
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL. 9 
 
 also. Lucian's zeal against such sham pretenders here 
 brought him into some trouble, and went near to cost 
 him his life. Alexander, who had specially invited 
 him to an audience, held out his hand, according to 
 custom, for his visitor to kiss ; whereupon Lucian, by- 
 way of active protest against an imposture which he 
 had already denounced, bit it so hard as actually to 
 lame him for some time. The Prophet affected to treat 
 the thing as a practical joke, but, when Lucian was 
 leaving the country, gave private orders to the captain 
 and crew of the vessel to fling the malicious unbeliever 
 overboard — a fate Avhicli he only escaped through the 
 unusual tenderheartedness of the Asiatic captain. 
 
 He seems to have become poorer again in his later 
 years, and to have occasionally taken up his old pro- 
 fession. But at last the Emperor Marcus Aurelius 
 (or, as Wieland rather thinks, Commodus) offered him 
 an official appointment (something like that of Re- 
 corder, or Clerk of the Courts) at Alexandria in Egypt. 
 His chief duties were, as he tells us, to preside 
 over the courts of justice and to keep the records.* 
 He thought it necessary to write an "Apology" for 
 accepting this position ; for it happened that he had 
 just put forth an essay (which will come under notice 
 hereafter) on the miseries uf a state of dependence on 
 great men, and was conscious that his enemies might 
 take occasion to sneer at so stout a champion of inde- 
 pendence thus consenting to sell himself for office. He 
 must have felt like Dr Johnson when he consulted 
 his friends as to the propriety of his accepting the 
 * "Apology," 12.
 
 10 LUC I AN. 
 
 pension offered by Lord Bute, after the Litter defini- 
 tions of the words " pension " and " pensioner " which 
 he had given in the first edition of his Dictionary. 
 The promotion did not come until, as he says, he 
 " had one foot already in Charon's boat," for he must 
 have been above seventy years old when he received 
 it : but the emoluments were iaiily good ; he was 
 allowed to perform the office by deputy, so that it did 
 not interfere with his busy literary leisure at Athens, 
 and he lived many years to enjoy it. He is said to have 
 been a hundred years old when he died, but nothing 
 certain is known of the date or manner of his death. 
 It has been conjectured with much probability that in 
 his later years he was troubled with the gout, a dis- 
 order to which he more than once makes allusion in 
 his writings, very much in the tone of one who spoke 
 from painful experience ; and he has left two humor- 
 ous mock-tragic dramatic scenes in which Gout is per- 
 sonified as the principal character. The torments of 
 which she is the author to mankind are amusingly 
 exaggerated. Philoctetes is made out to have been a 
 sufferer, not from the bite of the snake or from the 
 poisoned arrow, but simply from gout in his foot 
 — enough to account for any amount of howls 
 and lamentations, such as are put in his mouth by 
 Sophocles ; and Ulysses must have died by the same 
 enemy, and not, as was fabled, by the poisonous spine 
 of a sea-urchin. 
 
 It has been impossible, in the compass of this 
 volume, even to notice all the works of this active and
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL. 11 
 
 versatile writer, a descriptive catalogue of which would 
 alone fill some pages. Nor has the common order of 
 arrangement been here followed, hut the Dialogues 
 and other pieces have been grouped as seemed most 
 convenient. 
 
 Though Lucian was always a popular writer, he has 
 not found many modern translators. The formid- 
 able number of his works has no doubt been one 
 reason fortius. Spence's translation (1C84) is termed 
 by Dryden " scandalous." The version by " Eminent 
 Hands," published in 1711, to which is prefixed a 
 " Life " by Dryden, is very incorrect, though some of the 
 pieces are rendered with considerable spirit. Tooke's 
 translation (1820) is also full of the blunders of 
 imperfect scholarship, though the English is often 
 racy and good. Dr Franklin's is, on the whole, that 
 which does most justice to the original. But no Eng- 
 lish translator approaches in point of excellence the 
 admirable German version by "VVieland.
 
 CnAPTER IL 
 
 LUCTAN AND THE PAGAN OLYMPUS. 
 
 The best known and the most popular of our author's 
 multifarious writings are his " Dialogues," many of 
 which would form admirable dramatic scenes, contain- 
 ing more of the spirit of comedy, as we moderns 
 understand it, than either the broad burlesque of 
 Aristophanes or the somewhat sententious and didactic 
 tone of Terence. The " Dialogues of the Gods," in 
 which the old mythological deities are introduced 
 to us as it were in undress, discussing their family 
 affairs and private quarrels in the most familiar style, 
 were composed with a double purpose by their writer. 
 He not only seized upon the absurd points in religious 
 fable as presenting excellent material for burlesque, 
 hut he indulged at the same time in the most caustic 
 form of satire upon the popular belief, against which, 
 long before his day, the intellect of even the heathen 
 world had revolted. It is possible that his apprentice- 
 ship, brief as it was, to the manufacture of stone 
 Mercuries helped to make him an iconoclast. The 
 man who assists in the chiselling out of a god must 
 know more or less that he " has a lie in his right
 
 THE PAGAN OLYMPUS. 13 
 
 hand." The unhesitating faith in which (apparently) 
 he accepts the truth of all the popular legends about 
 Jupiter and his court, treating them in the most 
 matter-of-fact and earnest way, and assuming their 
 literal truth in every detail, makes the satire all the 
 more pungent. To have sifted the heap of legends 
 into false and true, or to have explained that this was 
 only a poetical illustration, or that an allegorical form 
 of truth, would not have damaged the popular creed 
 half so much as this representation of the Olympian 
 deities under all the personal and domestic circum- 
 stances which followed, as necessary corollaries, from 
 their supposed relations to each other. We need 
 not wonder that the charge of atheism was hurled 
 against him by all the defenders, honest or dishonest, 
 of the national worship. Many as had been the blows 
 struck against it by satirists and philosophers, Lucian's 
 was, if not the hardest, the most deadly of all. 
 
 The Dialogue called " Prometheus," though it stands 
 alone, and is not classed among the " Dialogues of the 
 Gods," is quite of the same character with these, 
 and may be regarded as a kind of prologue to the 
 series. As a punishment for the offence which he has 
 given to Jupiter, Prometheus is being chained down 
 upon Mount Caucasus, the idea of the scene being 
 borrowed undoubtedly from the tragedy of -ZEschylus. 
 The executioners of the punishment, however, in this 
 case, are Vulcan and Mercury alone, without the aid of 
 Strength and Force. The victim protests against the 
 cruelty and injustice of his doom, and the mean and
 
 14 LUCIAN. 
 
 petty revenge taken by Jupiter (upon a deity of much 
 older family than himself, too), just because he had been 
 outwitted in the division of the sacrifice : for this he 
 believes to have been the head and front of his offend- 
 ing.* What would be said of a mortal who should 
 crucify his cook for tasting the soup, or cutting a bit 
 off the roast ? As for his creation of men, — the gods 
 ought to be very much obliged to him : for where 
 would be their temples, their honours and their sacri- 
 fices, if the earth had remained untenanted 1 Even the 
 beauty of the universe would have had no admirers.t 
 If it be said that these same mortals are wicked, — 
 murderers, adulterers, and so forth, — the gods had 
 better hold their tongues on that point, considering 
 the examples set by themselves. Then, as to his gift 
 of fire to men — it is mere envy in Jupiter to grudge 
 it them ; and gods ought surely to be widely benefi- 
 cent, not envious and selfish. And, if the gods do not 
 like to see fire used upon earth, at least they seem 
 very much delighted with the smoke, when it comes 
 up to them in the shape of incense. Mercury admits 
 that his defence is, to say the least, very clever \ but, 
 
 * Prometheus had cut up a victim, and divided the portions 
 into two he:tps, of which he gave Jupiter his choice. Jupiter 
 chose that which seemed to have the best share of fat at the 
 top, hut found that beneath there was nothing but bones. 
 
 + " ' What use could the Deity have for man,' said Epicurus, 
 ' that He should create him ?' Surely, that there might be a 
 being that could understand His works; that could have sense 
 to admire and voice to proclaim His providence in arrange- 
 ment, His plan of operation, His perfection in completing all." 
 ■ — Lactantius, Div. Instit, b. vii. c. 5.
 
 THE PAGAN OLYMPUS. 15 
 
 he remarks, " you may think yourself very fortunate 
 that Jupiter does not hear what you say, for he would 
 surely send down a hundred vultures upon you instead 
 of one." 
 
 The change of dynasty in heaven presents of course 
 a salient point, here and elsewhere, to the satirist. He 
 makes Prometheus in his agony appeal to the ancient 
 deities, — Saturn, Jupiter, and Earth, — not recognising 
 any of the new introductions. In this, too, he has 
 followed yEschylus, who makes the great Titan call 
 upon Earth and Sea and Air, to witness his treatment 
 at the hands of a usurper. 
 
 Some of the shorter and more amusing of these 
 " Dialogues of the Gods " are here given entire, and 
 are a fair specimen of the humour of the rest. 
 
 JUPITER AND CUPID. 
 
 Cupid. Well, even if I have done wrong, pray for- 
 give me, Jupiter; I am only a child, you see, and don't 
 know any better. 
 
 Jupiter. Child, indeed, Master Cupid ! you who are 
 older than Iapetus ! Because you don't happen to have 
 grown a beard yet, and because your hair isn't grey, 
 you are to be considered a child, I suppose — old and 
 crafty as you are. 
 
 Cup. Why, what great harm have I done you — 
 old as you say I am — that you should think of putting 
 me in the stocks'? 
 
 Jup. Look here, then, you mischievous imp ! is this 
 a trifle — the way in which you have disgraced me?
 
 16 LVCIAN. 
 
 There is nothing you have not turned me into — satyr, 
 bull, gold pieces, swan, eagle ; but you never yet have 
 made a single woman fall in love with me for myself, 
 nor have I ever been able to make myself agreeable 
 in any quarter in my own person, but I have to use 
 magic in all such affairs, and disguise myself. And 
 after all, it's the bull or the swan they fall in love 
 with ; if they see me, they die of terror. 
 
 Cap. Yes, no wonder; they are but mortal, you 
 know, Jupiter, and can't endure your awful person. 
 
 J a p. How is it, then, that Apollo gets them to 
 fall in love with him % 
 
 Cap. Well — Daphne, you know, ran away from 
 him, for all his flowing locks and smooth face. But if 
 you want to make yourself attractive, you mustn't shake 
 your aegis, and carry your thunderbolt about with you, 
 but make yourself look as pleasant as you can, — let 
 your hair hang down on both sides of your face in 
 curls, — put a fillet round it, — get a purple dress, — put 
 on gdded sandals, — walk with the fashionable step, 
 with a pipe and timbrel before you : you'll see, the 
 women will run after you then, faster than the 
 Moenads do after Bacchus. 
 
 Jup. Away with you — I couldn't condescend to 
 be attractive by making myself such a fool as that. 
 
 Cap. Very well, Jupiter, then give up love-making 
 altogether ; [looking slyly at him) — that's easy enough, 
 you know. 
 
 Jap. Nay, I must go on with my courting, but you 
 must find me some less troublesome fashion than that. 
 And upon tins sole condition, I let you off once more.
 
 TEE PAGAN OLYMPUS. 17 
 
 VULCAN AND APOLLO. 
 
 Vulcan. I say, Apollo — have you seen this young 
 bantling that Maia has just produced 1 What a line 
 child it is ! — smiles at everybody, and gives plain token 
 already that it will turn out something wonderful — 
 quite a blessing to us all. 
 
 Apollo. A blessing, you think, eh, Vulcan 1 that 
 child — who is older, in point of wickedness, than old 
 father Iapetus himself! 
 
 Vul. Why, what harm can a baby like that do 
 to anybody ? 
 
 Ap. Just ask Neptune, — he stole his trident. Or 
 ask Mars, — the brat slipped his sword out of its sheath 
 as quickly as you please ; to say nothing of myself, and 
 he has gone off with my bow and arrows. 
 
 Vul. What ! that infant 1 who can hardly stand ] 
 the one in the cradle there 1 
 
 Ap. You'll soon find out for yourself, Vulcan, if he 
 pays you a visit. 
 
 Vul. Why, he has paid me a visit, just now. 
 
 Ap. Well, have you got all your tools safe? none 
 of them missing, is there 1 
 
 Vul. (looking round). No — they are all right, 
 Apollo. 
 
 Ap. Nay, look carefully. 
 
 Vul. By Jove ! I can't see my anvil ! 
 
 Ap. You'll find it somewhere in his cradle, I'll be 
 bound. 
 
 Vul. Why, he's as handy with his fingers as if ho 
 had studied thieving before he was horn ! 
 
 a. c. vol. xviii. B
 
 18 LUCIAN. 
 
 Ap. Ah ! you haven't heard him yet talking, as pert 
 and as glib as may he. Why, he wants to run errands 
 for us all ! Yesterday, he challenged Cupid to wrestle 
 with him, and tripped up both his legs in some way, 
 and threw him in a second. Then, when we were all 
 applauding him, and Venus was hugging him after his 
 victory, he stole her cestus ; and while Jupiter was 
 laughing at that, he was off with his majesty's sceptre. 
 Ay, and if the thunderbolt did not happen to be 
 heavy, and considerably hot withal, he would have 
 stolen that too. 
 
 Vul. You make the child out to be a prodigy. 
 
 Ap. Not only that — he knows music already. 
 
 Vul. How did he find that out? 
 
 Ap. He got hold of a dead tortoise somewhere, and 
 made its shell into an instrument : fitted it with pins, 
 and put a bridge to it, and stretched seven strings 
 across it. Then he sang to it, — something really quite 
 pretty, Vulcan, and in good tune : I was absolutely 
 jealous of him, though, as you know, I have practised 
 the lyre some time. Maia declares, too, that he never 
 stays in heaven at night, but goes down into the 
 Shades, out of curiosity — or to steal something there, 
 most likely. He has got wings, too, and has made 
 himself a rod of some miraculous power, by which he 
 <uiides and conducts the dead below. 
 
 Vul. Oh, I gave him that, myself, for a toy. 
 
 Ap. So, in return, to show his gratitude, your 
 anvil 
 
 Vul. By the by, you remind me. I must go and look 
 if I can find it, as you say, anywhere in his cradle.
 
 THE rAGAN OLYMPUS. 19 
 
 JUPITER, AESCULAPIUS, AND HERCULES. 
 
 Jupiter. Be quiet, do, both of you — Hercules and 
 iEsculapius — quarrelling with one another, just like 
 mortals. It's really quite unseemly, this kind of con- 
 duct ; not at all the thing in Olympian society. 
 
 Hercules. But do you mean to say, Jupiter, this 
 apothecary fellow is to sit above me ? 
 
 jEsculapius. Quite fair I should ; I'm the better 
 deity. 
 
 Here. In what way, you staring ass? Because 
 Jupiter struck you with his lightning for doing what 
 you had no right to do, and now out of sheer pity 
 has made you into an immortal? 
 
 uEsc. Have you forgot, Hercules, the bonfire that 
 you made of yourself upon Mount QEta, that you 
 taunt me with having been burnt? 
 
 Here. Our lives were considerably different. I, the 
 son of Jove, Avho undertook all those labours to bene- 
 fit my generation, conquering monsters and punishing 
 tyrants : while you went about like a vagabond, col- 
 lecting roots, of some little use perhaps to dose a few 
 sick folk, but never having done a single deed of 
 valour. 
 
 JEsc. All very fine ; when I healed your sores, sir, 
 when you came up here the other day half roasted 
 between the effects of the tunic and the fire together. 
 Well, if I haven't done much, at least I was never 
 a slave, as you were — never carded wool in Lydia 
 in a woman's dress — never had my face slapped by
 
 20 LUCIAN. 
 
 Omphale with her gilt slipper : and never went mad 
 and killed my wife and children. 
 
 Here. If you don't stop that abuse, sir, you'll 
 pretty soon find out that your immortality is not of 
 much use to you. I'll take and pitch you head-first 
 out of heaven ; and it will he more than Paean him- 
 self can do to mend you when your skull's broken. 
 
 Jap. Stop ! I tell you both again, and don't annoy 
 the company, or I'll turn you both out of the hall. 
 But it's quite fair, Hercules, that ^Esculapius should 
 sit above you — because he died first. 
 
 JUNO AND LATONA. 
 
 Juno (meeting Iter rived with a disdainful half- 
 bow). A lovely pair of brats indeed, Latona, you 
 have presented Jupiter with ! 
 
 Latona {with a sweeping curtsey). Oh, we cannot 
 all of us be expected, your majesty, to produce such 
 a beauty as Vulcan ! 
 
 Ju. (rather disconcerted). "Well, lame as he is, 
 he is very useful. He's a charming artist, and has 
 decorated heaven for us with excellent taste. Then 
 lie has married Venus, and she is wonderfully fond 
 of him too. But those children of yours — why, 
 that girl's quite a masculine creature, only fit for the 
 country. And now this last expedition of hers into 
 Scythia — everybody knows her horrible way of living 
 there — killing her visitors and eating them — as bad 
 as those cannibals, the Scythians themselves. Then 
 Apollo, — he pretends, I'm told, to know everything
 
 THE PAGAN OLYMPUS. 21 
 
 — archery, and music, and medicine, and magic to 
 boot; and lias set up Ins prophecy-shops, one at 
 Delphi, and one in Claros, and one at Didymoe ; ami 
 cheats the people who come to consult him, with his 
 enigmas and double-en tendrea, which can be tinned 
 into answers to the question both ways, so that he can 
 never be proved wrong. lie makes it pay, no doubt ; 
 there are always fools enough in the world ready to 
 be cheated by a fortune-teller. But wiser persons 
 see through him well enough, for all his humbugging 
 prodigies. Prophet as he is, he could not divine that 
 he was to kill his favourite with a quoit; or foresee 
 that Daphne would run away from him, in spite of 
 his pretty face and his curls. I don't see, for my 
 own part, how you could have been considered more 
 fortunate in your children than poor Niobe. 
 
 La. Oh yes ; I know how you hate to see my two 
 darlings — the cannibal and the charlatan, as you are 
 pleased to call them — in the company of the gods : 
 especially when her beauty is the subject of remark, 
 or when he plays after dinner, to the admiration of 
 everybody. 
 
 Ju. Really, Latona, you make me laugh. Admire 
 his playing indeed ! Why, if the Muses had only 
 thought proper to decide fairly, Marsyas ought to 
 have skinned him, for he was unquestionably the 
 better musician of the two. As it was, poor fellow, 
 he was cheated, and lost his life by their unjust 
 verdict. And as for your beautiful daughter, — yes, 
 she was so beautiful, that when she knew she had 
 been spied by Actteon, for fear that the young man
 
 22 LUCIAN. 
 
 should publish her ugliness, she set the dogs at him. 
 And I might add that her occupation as a midwife 
 is not over-maidenly. 
 
 La. You are mighty proud, Juno, because you aie 
 the consort of Jove, and so think you can insult us 
 all as much as you please. But it will not be very 
 long before I shall see you in your usual hysterics, 
 when his majesty goes down to earth in disguise upon 
 one of his intriguing rambles. 
 
 VENUS AND CUPID. 
 
 Venus. How in the world is it, Cupid, that you, 
 who have mastered all the other gods, Jupiter and 
 Neptune and Apollo and Rhea — and even me, your 
 mother — yet you never try your hand upon Minerva? 
 In her case, your torch seems to lose its fire, your 
 quiver has no arrows, and your skill and cunning is 
 all at fault. 
 
 Cupid. I am afraid of her, mother ; she has such a 
 terrible look, and such stern eyes, and is so horribly 
 manlike. Whenever I bend my bow and take aim 
 at her, she shakes her crest at me and frightens me so 
 that I absolutely shake, and the arrow drops out of 
 my hands. 
 
 Ven. But was not Mars even more terrible? Yet 
 you disarmed and conquered him. 
 
 Cup. Oh, he gives in to me of his own accord, and 
 invites me to attack him. But Minerva always eyes 
 me suspiciously, and whenever I fly near her with my 
 torch, " If you dare to touch me," she says, " I swear 
 by my father, I'll run my spear through you, or take
 
 THE PAGAN OLYMPUS. 23 
 
 you by the leg and pitch you into Tartarus, or tear you 
 limb from limb." She has often threatened me so ; 
 and then she looks so savage, and has got a horrible 
 head of some kind fixed upon her breast, with snakes 
 for hair, which I am dreadfully afraid of. It terrifies 
 me, and I run away whenever I see it. 
 
 Ven. You are afraid of Minerva and her Gorgon, 
 you say — you, who are not afraid of Jupiter's thunder- 
 bolt ! And pray, why are the Muses still untouched, 
 as if they were out of the reach of your arrows 1 Do 
 they shake their crests too, or do they display any 
 Gorgon's heads] 
 
 Cup. Oh, mother ! I should be ashamed to meddle 
 with them — they are such respectable and dignified 
 young ladies, always deep in their studies, or busy 
 with their music ; I often stand listening to them till 
 I quite forget myself. 
 
 Ven. Well, let them alone ; they are very respect- 
 aide. But Diana, now — why do you never aim a 
 shaft at her 1 
 
 Cup. The fact is, I can't catch her ; she is always 
 flying over the mountains ; besides, she has a little 
 private love-affair of her own already. 
 
 Ven. With whom, child 1 
 
 Cup. With the game — stags and fauns — that she 
 hunts and brings down with her arrows ; she cares for 
 nothing else, that I know of. But as for that brother 
 of hers, great archer as he is, and far as he is said to 
 shoot 
 
 Ven. (laughbig). Yes, yes, I know, child — you've 
 hit him often enough.
 
 24 LUC I AN. 
 
 As a pendant to these " Dialogues of the Gods," 
 though it is not one of the pieces which hear that 
 name, we have an amusing satire, conceived in the 
 same daring spirit of iconoelasm, called 
 
 JUPITER IX HEROICS. 
 
 The speculations of the rationalists of the day as 
 to the existence or non-existence of the Olympian 
 deities have reached the ears of Jupiter himself, and 
 he enters upon the scene in a state of considerable 
 excitement and indignation, marching up and down, 
 and muttering, with a pallid face, and his skin the 
 colour of a philosopher, to the great bewilderment of 
 his family. He finds it impossible to give expression 
 to his feelings in sober prose, but addresses Minerva 
 in tragic verse, compounded from his recollections of 
 Euripides. " Good heavens," says his goddess-daughter 
 to herself, "what an awful prologue !" Xot to show 
 herself wanting in poetical taste, however, as indeed 
 was due to her own reputation, she answers him in his 
 own vein, in a cento from Homer. But, as the kin" 
 (<f the gods is proceeding in the same strain, Juno 
 comes upon the scene, and, like some mortal wives, 
 has little sympathy with her husband's poetical vein. 
 She begs him, for the suke of ordinary comprehensions, 
 o (-online himself to prose. "Remember, Jupiter," 
 ,vs she, " that sll of us have not devoured Euripides 
 "lily, as you have, and do not be angry if we are un- 
 able to keep up with you in this extempore tragedy." 
 >She draws her own conclusion at once as to the cause 
 of this excitement. Plainly it is nothing more or less
 
 THE PAGAN OLYMPUS. 25 
 
 than a new love-affair. Jupiter scornfully assures her 
 that this is quite a different matter. It is a question 
 which concerns the honour and status of all the court 
 of Olympus ; men are actually discussing among them- 
 selves upon earth whether they shall hereafter do 
 worship and sacrifice to the gods at all. A council of 
 the immortals must be held at once on urgent affairs; 
 although Minerva, with a cautious prudence which 
 will always lind imitators, suggests that it would be 
 better to leave such questions to settle themselves, and 
 that the safest way to treat scepticism is to ignore it. 
 l>ut her counsel is overruled, and Mercury has orders 
 to summon a general assembly of the gods forthwith. 
 
 Mercury. yes, yes ! the gods are to come to 
 council immediately ! No delay — all to be present — 
 come, come ! upon urgent affairs of state. 
 
 Jupiter. What ! do you summon them in that bald, 
 inartificial, prosaic fashion, Mercury— and on a business 
 of such high importance? 
 
 Merc. Why, how would you have it done, then ? 
 
 Jup. How would I have it done 1 I say, proclama- 
 tion should be made in dignified style — in verse of 
 some kind, and with a sort of poetical grandeur. They 
 would be more likely to come. 
 
 Merc. Possibly. But that's the business of your 
 epic poets and rhapsodists — I'm not at all poetical 
 myself. T should infallibly spoil the job, by putting 
 in a foot too much or a foot too little, and only get 
 myself laughed at for my bungling poetry. I hear 
 even Apollo himself ridiculed for some of his poetical
 
 26 LVCIAN. 
 
 oracles — though in his case obscurity covers a multi- 
 tude of sins. Those who consult him have so much 
 to do to make out his meaning that they haven't much 
 leisure to criticise his verse. 
 
 Jup. Well, but, Mercury, mix up a little Homer in 
 your summons — the form, you know, in which he 
 used to call us together ; you surely remember it. 
 
 Merc. Not very readily or clearly. However, I'll 
 try:— 
 
 " Now, all ye female gods, and all ye male, 
 And all ye streams within old Ocean's pale, 
 And all ye nymphs, at Jove's high summons, come, 
 All ye who eat the sacred hecatomb ! 
 Who sit and sniff the holy steam, come all, 
 Great names, and small names, and no names at all"* 
 
 Jup. Well done, Mercury ! a most admirable pro- 
 clamation. Here they are all coming already. Now 
 take and seat them, each in the order of their dignity 
 — according to their material or their workmanship ; 
 the golden ones in the first seats, the silver next to 
 them ; then in succession those of ivory, brass, and 
 stone, — and of these, let the works of Phidias, and 
 Alcamenes, and Myron, and Euphranor, and suchlike 
 artists, take precedence ; but let the rude and inartistic 
 figures be pushed into some corner or other, just to fill 
 up the meeting — and let them hold their tongues. 
 
 Merc. So be it ; they shall be seated according to 
 their degree. But it may be as well for me to under- 
 stand, — supposing one be of gold, weighing ever so 
 
 * A burlesque of sundry passages in Homer.
 
 THE PAGAN OLYMPUS. 27 
 
 many talents, but not well executed, and altogether 
 common and badly finished, is he to sit above the 
 brazen statues of Myron' and Polycleitus, or the 
 marble of Phidias and Alcamenes 1 Or must I count 
 the art as more worthy than the material 1 
 
 Jup. It ought to be so, certainly; but we must give 
 the gold the preference, all the same. 
 
 Merc. I understand. You would have me class them 
 according to wealth, not according to merit or excel- 
 lence. Now, then, you that are made of gold, here — 
 in the first seats. (Turning to Jupiter.) It seems to 
 me, your majesty, that the first places will be filled up 
 entirely with barbarians. You see what the Greeks 
 are — very graceful and beautiful, and of admirable 
 workmanship, but of marble or brass, all of them, or 
 even the most valuable, of ivory, with just a little gold 
 to give them colour and brightness ; while their in- 
 terior is of wood, with probably a whole common- 
 wealth of mice established inside them. Whereas 
 that Bendis, and Anubis, and Atthis there, and Men, 
 are of solid gold, and really of enormous value.* 
 
 Neptune {coming forward). And is this fair, Mer- 
 cury, that this dog-faced monster from Egypt should 
 sit above me — me — Neptune? 
 
 Merc. That's the rule. Because, my friend Earth- 
 shaker, Lysippus made you of brass, and consequently 
 p 0or — the Corinthians having no gold at that time ; 
 
 * Bemlis was a Thracian goddess, in whom Herodotus recog- 
 nises Diana. The Athenians had introduced her, and held a 
 festival in her honour. Atthis and Men (Lunus) were Phrygian 
 deities: Mithras was the Persian sun-god.
 
 28 LUC I AN. 
 
 Avhereas that is the most valuable of all metals. You 
 must make up your mind, therefore, to make room for 
 him, and not he vexed about it; a god with a great 
 gold nose like that must needs take precedence. 
 
 (Enter Vends.) — Ven. (coaxingly to Mercury). Now 
 then, Mercury dear, take and put me in a good place, 
 please ; I'm golden, you know. 
 
 Mere. Not at ail, so far as I can see. Unless I'm 
 very blind, you're cut out of white marble — from Pen- 
 telicus, I think — and it pleased Praxiteles to make a 
 Venus of you, and hand you over to the people of 
 Cnidus. 
 
 Ven. But I can produce a most unimpeachable 
 witness — Homer himself. He continually calls me 
 "golden Venus" all through his poems. 
 
 Merc. Yes ; and the same authority calls Apollo 
 " rich in gold " and " wealthy ; " but you can see him 
 sitting down there among the ordinary gods. He was 
 stripped of his golden crown, you see, by the thieves, 
 and they even stole the strings of his lyre. So you 
 may think yourself well off that I don't put you down 
 cpiite amongst the crowd. 
 
 (Enter the Colossus o/Phodes.) — Col. Now, who 
 will venture to dispute precedence with me — me, who 
 am the Sun, and of such a size to boot 1 ? If it had not 
 been that the good .people of Phodes determined to 
 construct me of extraordinary dimensions, they could 
 have made sixteen golden gods for the same price.* 
 Therefore I must be ranked higher, by the rule of 
 
 * Sixteen was the recognised number of legitimate gol>.
 
 THE PAGAN OLYMPUS. 29 
 
 proportion. Besides, lool;: at the art and the work- 
 manship, — so correct, though on such an immense 
 scale. 
 
 Merc. What's to he done, Jupiter? It's a very hard 
 question for me to decide. If I look at his material, 
 he's only brass ; but if I calculate how many talents' 
 weight of brass he has in him, he's worth the most 
 money of them all. 
 
 Jap. (testily). What the deuce does he want here at 
 all — -dwarfing all the rest of us into insignificance, as 
 he does, and blocking up the meeting besides 1 ? (Aloud 
 to Colossus.) Hark ye, good cousin of Rhodes, though 
 you may be worth more than all these golden gods, 
 how can you possibly take the highest seat, unless 
 they all get up and you sit down by yourself? Why, 
 one of your thighs would take up all the seats in the 
 Pnyx ! You'd better stand up, if you please, — and 
 you can stoop your head a little towards the company. 
 
 Mere. Here's another difficulty, again. Here are 
 two, both of brass, and of the same workmanship, 
 both from the hands of Lysippus, and, more than all, 
 equal in point of birth, both being sons of Jupiter — 
 Bacchus, here, and Hercules. Which of them is to sit 
 first? They're quarrelling over it, as you see. 
 
 Jup. We're wasting time, Mercury, when we ought 
 to have begun business long ago. So let them sit 
 down anyhow now, as they please. We will have 
 another meeting hereafter about this question, and 
 then I shall know better what regulations to make 
 about precedence. 
 
 Merc. But, good heavens ! what a row they all
 
 30 l ucia nr. 
 
 make, shouting that perpetual cry, as they do, — 
 " Divide, 'vide, 'vide the victims ! " " Where's the 
 nectar? where's the nectar? " " The amhrosia's all out ! 
 the ambrosia's all out ! " " Where are the hecatombs ? 
 ■where are the hecatombs ? " " Give us our share ! " 
 
 Jup. Bid them hold their tongues, do, Mercury, 
 that they may hear the object of the meeting, and let 
 such nonsense alone. 
 
 Merc. But they don't all understand Greek, and I 
 am no such universal linguist as to make proclamation 
 in Scythian, and Persian, and Thracian, and Celtic. 
 It will be best, I suppose, to make a motion with 
 my hand for them to be silent. 
 
 Jup. Very well — do. 
 
 Merc. See, they're all as dumb as philosophers. 
 Now's your time to speak. Do you see? they're all look- 
 ing at you, waiting to hear what you're going to say. 
 
 Jup. {clearing his throat). Well, as you're my own 
 son, Mercury, I don't mind telling you Iioav I feel. 
 You know how self-possessed and how eloquent I 
 always am at public meetings? 
 
 Merc. I know I trembled whenever I heard you 
 speak, especially when you used to threaten all that 
 about wrenching up earth and sea from their foun- 
 dations, you know, gods and all, and dangling that 
 golden chain * 
 
 * Lucian repeatedly brings forward, in these Dialogues, the 
 gasconade which Homer put into the mouth of Jupiter, II. 
 viii. 18— 
 
 " A golden chain let down from heaven, and all, 
 Both gods and goddesses, yo *r strength apply ;
 
 STATE NORMAL SUrtUOl, 
 Lm Anf eks, Cai. 
 
 THE PAGAN OLYMPUS. 31 
 
 Jup. (interrupting him). But how, my son, — I can't 
 tell whether it's the importance of the subject, or the 
 vastness of the assembly (there are a tremendous lot 
 of gods here, you see) — my ideas seem all in a whirl, 
 and a sort of trembling has come over me, and my 
 tongue seems as though it were tied. And the most 
 unlucky thing of all is, I've forgotten the opening 
 paragraph of my speech, which I had all ready pre- 
 pared beforehand, that my exordium might be as 
 attractive as possible. 
 
 Merc. Well, my good sir, you are in a bad way. 
 They all mistrust your silence, and fancy they are to 
 hear something very terrible, and that this is what 
 makes you hesitate. 
 
 Jup. Suppose, Mercury, I were to rhapsodise a 
 little, — that introduction, you know, out of Homer 1 
 
 Merc. Which? 
 
 Jup. (declaiming) — 
 
 " Now, hear my words, ye gods and she-gods all " 
 
 Merc. No — heaven forbid ! you've given us enough 
 of that stuff already. No — pray let that hackneyed 
 style alone. Rdther give them a bit out of one of the 
 Philippics of Demosthenes — any one you please ; you 
 
 Yet would ye fail to drag from heaven to earth, 
 
 Strive as ye may, your mighty master Jove : 
 
 But if I choose to make my power be known, 
 
 The earth itself and ocean I could raise, 
 
 And binding round Olympus' ridge the cord, 
 
 Leave them suspended so in middle air." — (Lord Dertjy.) 
 
 jupiter here dislikes Mercury's allusion to it.
 
 32 LUC IAN. 
 
 can alter and adapt it a little. That's the plan most 
 of our modern orators adopt. 
 
 His Olympian majesty begins his oration, accord- 
 ingly, with an adaptation of the opening of the First 
 Philippic. But he presently descends to his own 
 matter-of-fact style ("here," he says, "my Demos- 
 thenes fails me "), and relates how he had been present 
 the day before, with some other gods, at a sacrifice of 
 thanksgiving offered by a merchant-captain for his 
 preservation from shipwreck — a very shabby affair, he 
 complains it was, a single tough old cock for supper 
 among sixteen gods. On his way home, he had heard 
 two philosophers disputing, and, wishing to listen to 
 their arguments, assumed a cloak and a long beard, 
 and might, he declares, have very easily, for the nonce, 
 passed for a philosopher himself. It was that rascal 
 Damis the Epicurean, disputing with Timocles the 
 Stoic, asserting that the gods took no heed to mortals or 
 their affairs — in fact, practically denying their exist- 
 ence. Poor Timocles had been making a stout fight of it 
 on the other side, but was so hard pressed by his oppo- 
 nent that Jupiter found him all in a perspiration and 
 almost exhausted; he had therefore thrown the shadows 
 of night round the disputants at once, and so put an 
 end to the discussion. Following the crowd on their 
 way home, he had been shocked to find that the ma- 
 jority~were on the side of the atheistical Damis ; and 
 lie had now summoned this assembly to take into 
 their serious consideration the terrible results that 
 would ensue if this opinion became the popular one.
 
 THE PAGAN OLYMPUS. 33 
 
 No more victims, and gifts, and incense-offering, — " the 
 gods may sit in heaven and starve." Damis and 
 Timocles are to meet again, he understands, for public 
 discussion, and Jupiter verily fears that unless the 
 gods give some help to their own champion, the other 
 will get the best of it. lie begs that some one of 
 the assembly will get up hi his place and offer some 
 advice. Mercury invites any " who are of the legal 
 standing in point of age " (we are to understand there 
 are a great many newly-introduced deities in the 
 council) to rise and deliver his opinion. 
 
 To make the burlesque more complete, it is Momus, 
 the jester of the Olympian conclave, who first rises 
 in reply to Jupiter's invitation.* He has long ex- 
 pected this, and is not surprised at it. The gods have 
 brought it upon themselves, by neglecting their duties 
 notoriously. Here, among friends and gods,- with no 
 mortal to hear, he may venture to speak openly. Has 
 Jupiter himself been careful to make distinction be- 
 tween the good and the evil upon earth 1 Has virtue 
 found any reward, or vice any punishment 1 What have 
 any of them been caring for but their victims and their 
 dues 1 "What shameful stories they have allowed the 
 poets to tell of their private life ! — stories which, he 
 
 * Lord Lyttelton, in his " Dialogues of the Dead," makes 
 Lucian give his own explanation of this passage to Rabelais, 
 who does not quite understand the introduction of Momus. " I 
 think our priests admitted Momus into our heaven as the 
 Indians are said to worship the Devil, — through fear. They 
 had a mind to keep fair with him. For we may talk of the 
 Giants as we will, but to our Gods there can he no enemy so 
 formidable as he. Ridicule is the terror of all false religions." 
 
 A. c. vol. xviii.
 
 34 LUC1AN. 
 
 admits, may possibly be true enough, yet not meet to 
 be told to mortal hearers. And then the oracles, Avorse 
 than vague, positively deceptive — witness those noto- 
 rious productions of Apollo's about the empire which 
 Crcesus was to destroy by crossing the Halys, and the 
 sons of women who were to meet their fate at Salamis. 
 No marvel if, when the gods are so remiss in their 
 duties, men begin to grow tired of worshipping them. 
 
 Jupiter protests against such ribald language. He 
 quotes his Demosthenes to the effect that it is much 
 more easy to abuse and to find fault than to offer sug- 
 gestions under difficulties. » 
 
 Then Neptune asks leave to say a feAV words. He 
 lives, indeed, at the bottom of the sea, and is not in 
 the habit of interfering much in affairs on land, but 
 lie strongly advises that this Damis shall be silenced 
 at once — by lightning, or some such irresistible argu- 
 ment. But Jupiter replies, very fairly, that this 
 would only be a tacit admission on the part of the 
 gods that they had no other kind of argument to 
 offer. Apollo gives it as his opinion that the fault lies 
 in Timocles himself, who, though a very sensible man, 
 has not the knack of putting an argument clearly. 
 Upon which Momus remarks that the recommendation 
 of clearness and perspicuity certainly comes with a 
 curious kind of propriety from Apollo, considering 
 the style of his own oracular utterances. He invites 
 him to give them an oracle now, — which of the two 
 disputants will get the better in this contest 1 Apollo 
 tries to excuse himself, on the ground that he has no 
 tripod or incense, or other appliances at hand, and
 
 THE PAGAN OLYMPUS. 35 
 
 that he can do this kind of thing in much hetter style 
 at Colophon or at Delphi. At last, urged by Jupiter 
 to prove his art, and so put a stop to the jeers of Momus, 
 he proceeds, with some apology for extempore versi- 
 fying, to deliver an utterly incomprehensible oracle, 
 which fully justifies the criticisms of his brother deity. 
 Hercules offers to pull down the whole portico on the 
 head of Damis, if the controversy should seem to be 
 taking a turn unfavourable to the Olympian interests. 
 But now a messenger arrives from earth, no other 
 than the brazen statue of Hermagoras — Mercury of the 
 Forum — who stands in front of the Pcecile at Athens. 
 He comes to announce — adopting the new fashion of 
 heroics set by Jupiter — that the duel of the philoso- 
 phers has been renewed. The gods agree to go down 
 to see the battle, and the scene of the dialogue is 
 supposed to change at once to Athens. There Ti- 
 mocles is trying to argue with his infidel opponent. 
 He wonders, he says, that men do not stone him for 
 his impious assertions. Damis docs not see why 
 men should take that trouble : the gods, if gods they 
 be, can surely take their own part ; they hear him, 
 and yet they do not strike. But they will, replies 
 Timocles ; their vengeance is sure though slow. They 
 are otherwise occupied, retorts the scer)tic — gone out 
 to dinner, perhaps, with those " blameless Ethiopians " 
 — they often do, according to Homer ; possibly, some- 
 times, even without waiting for an invitation. In vain 
 dues his opponent argue from the harmony and order 
 of creation, and from the general consent of mankind : 
 the very diversities of national worship, the many
 
 3G LUCIAN. 
 
 absurd forms of superstition, are claimed by his oppo- 
 nent as arguments on the other side. Timocles com- 
 pares the world to a ship, which could not keep its 
 course without a steersman. Damis replies that if 
 there were, indeed, a divinity at the helm of this 
 world's affairs, he would surely parcel out the duties 
 of his crew better than he appears to do — putting the 
 rascals and lubbers in command, and letting the best 
 men be stowed away in holes and corners, and kept on 
 short rations besides. Timocles, as a last resource, 
 threatens to break the head of his opponent, who runs 
 away laughing. Jupiter is in doubt, however, on 
 which side the real victory lies. Mercury consoles 
 him that the gods have still the majority on their side 
 ■ — three-fourths of the Greeks, all the rabble, and all 
 the barbarians. " ISay, my son," replies Jupiter, "but 
 that saying of Darius had much truth, which he 
 uttered of his faithful general Zopyrus : I, too, had 
 rather have one man like Damis on my side than ten 
 thousand Babylonians." * 
 
 The satire, in its bold scepticism, seems to go much 
 beyond the " Dialogues of the Gods." In those, it is 
 but the absurdities of the popular mythology — always 
 incredible, one cannot but think, to the educated in- 
 telligence — which he ridicules and exposes ; a creed 
 which, if it could be supposed to have any influence 
 upon the moral conduct of men, could only have had 
 an influence for evil. But in that which has now been 
 sketched, he attacks the belief in a divine providence 
 
 * The story is told by Ht-rodotus, iii. 154.
 
 THE PAGAN OLYMPUS. 37 
 
 altogether : and though most of the arguments against 
 such government of the world are chielly taken from 
 the manifest falsehood of certain items of the Greek 
 popular creed, still the tone is too much that of pure 
 materialism. 
 
 THE COUNCIL OF THE GODS. 
 
 In this amusing scene the ahsurdities of polytheism 
 are put in the broadest light, and treated with the most 
 admirable humour. The object of the Council, which 
 is summoned by Jupiter's orders, is to institute a strict 
 scrutiny into the right and title of the new gods — 
 aliens and foreigners of all kinds and shapes — to a seat 
 in the house of Olympus. They have lately found 
 their way into heaven in such numbers that they are 
 becoming quite a nuisance, as Ave have seen in the com- 
 plaint made both by Neptune and Mercury in the 
 dialogue just preceding. 
 
 Momus is again the chief spokesman ; freedom of 
 speech is, as he says, one of his main characteristics, and 
 he is in the habit of giving his opinion without fear or 
 favour. So, with Jupiter's permission, he will name some 
 of what he considers the most gross cases of intrusion. 
 
 Momus. First, there is Bacchus ; a grand pedigree 
 his is ! — half a mortal, not even a Greek by his mother's 
 side, but the grandson of some Syro-Phcenician merchant- 
 captain, Cadmus. Since he has been dignified with im- 
 mortality, I shall say nothing about himself, — his stylo 
 of head-dress, his drinking, or his unsteady gait. You 
 can all see what he is, I suppose — more like a woman
 
 38 LUC IAN. 
 
 than a man, half crazy, and stinking of wine even be- 
 fore breakfast. But he has brought in his whole tribe 
 to swell our company, and here he is with all his rout, 
 whom he passes off as gods — Pan, and Silenus, and the 
 Satyrs, a lot of rough country louts, goat-herds most of 
 them, dancing-fellows, of all manner of strange shapes; 
 one of them has horns, and is like a goat ail below 
 his waist, with a long beard — you hardly can tell him 
 from a goat ; another is a bald fellow with a flat nose, 
 generally mounted on an ass — a Lydian, he is. Then 
 there are the Satyrs with their little prick ears, bald too, 
 they are, and with little budding horns like kids — Phry- 
 gians, I believe ; and they've all got taiis besides. You 
 see the sort of gods my noble friend provides us with. 
 And then we are surprised that men hold us in con- 
 tempt, when they see such ridiculous and monstrous 
 guds as these ! I say nothing of his introducing two 
 Avomen here — one his mistress Ariadne (whose crown, 
 too, he has put among the stars, forsooth !), and the 
 other a farmer's daughter, Erigone. And what is 
 more absurd than all, brother deities, he has brought 
 her dog in too : for fear, I suppose, that the girl should 
 cry if she hadn't her darling pet to keep her company 
 in heaven. Now, don't you consider all this an insult, 
 — mere drunken madness and absurdity 1 And now 
 I'll tell you about one or two more. 
 
 Jupiter (interrupting him). Don't say a word, if you 
 please, Momus, either about Hercules or vEsculapius — 
 I see what you're driving at. As to those two, one is 
 a physician, and cures diseases, and, as old Homer says, 
 you know — "is worth a host of men;" and as to
 
 THE PAGAN OLYMPUS. 39 
 
 Hercules, — why, he's my son, and earned his immortal- 
 ity hy very hard work ; so say no Avord against him. 
 
 Mom. "Well, I'll hold my tongue, Jupiter, though I 
 could say a good deal. They're both as black as cin- 
 ders still, from the fire. If you would only give me 
 leave to speak my mind freely, I've a good deal to say 
 about you. 
 
 Jup. Oh, pray speak out, as far as I am concerned! 
 Perhaps you charge me with being a foreigner too ? 
 
 Mom. Well, in Crete they do say that, you know ; 
 and more than that, they show the place where you 
 were buried. I don't believe them myself — any more 
 than I do what the people of iEgium say, — that you 
 are a changeling. But I do say this, that you've 
 brought in too many of your illegitimate children here. 
 
 Momus goes on to tell the royal chairman some 
 home truths, which Jupiter hears with great equanim- 
 ity. Then he inveighs against the monstrous forms 
 introduced from Eastern mythology ; Phrygians and 
 Medes like Atthis and Mithras, who cannot even 
 talk Greek ; the dog-faced Anubis, and the spotted 
 bull from Memphis, apes and ibises from Egypt. And 
 how can Jupiter himself have allowed them to put 
 rani's horns on his head at Amnion? No wonder 
 that mortals learn to despise him. 
 
 A solemn decree is drawn up by Momus, in strict legal 
 form, beginning as follows : " Whereas divers aliens, 
 not only Greeks but Barbarians, who are in no wise 
 entitled to the freedom of our community, have got 
 themselves enrolled as gods, and so crowded heaven
 
 40 LUCIAX. 
 
 that it has become a mere disorderly mob of all nations 
 and languages : and whereas thereby the ambrosia and 
 the nectar runs short, so that the latter is now four 
 guineas a pint, because there are so many to drink it ; 
 and whereas these new-comers, in their impudence, 
 push the old and real gods out of their places, and 
 claim precedence for themselves, against all our ancient 
 rights, and demand also priority of worship on earth ; 
 it seemed good, therefore, to the Senate and Commons 
 of Olympus, to hold a High Court at the winter equi- 
 nox, and to elect as Commissioners of Privileges seven 
 of the greater gods, — three from the ancient council of 
 the reign of Saturn, and four from the twelve gods, of 
 whom Jupiter to be one." 
 
 The business of the Commission is to be the ex- 
 amination of all claims to a seat in Olympus. Claim- 
 ants are to bring their witnesses, and prove their pure 
 descent ; and they who cannot make good their claims 
 are to be sent back to the tombs of their fathers. 
 Moreover, from this time forth every deity is to mind 
 his or her proper business, and none to pursue more 
 than one art or science ; Minerva is not to practise 
 physic, nor iEsculapius divination ; and Apollo is to 
 make his election, and either be a seer, or a musician, 
 or a doctor — but not all three. 
 
 Jupiter had intended to put this decree to the vote ; 
 but, foreseeing that a great many who were there 
 present would probably vote against it, he took the 
 easier course of issuing it on his own royal authority. 
 
 The dramatic sketch entitled " Timon " handles the
 
 THE PAGAN OLYMPUS. 41 
 
 Olympian Jupiter in the same free spirit as the pre- 
 ceding Dialogues, and is by some considered as the 
 author's masterpiece. The character of Plutus, the 
 god of Riches, introduced into the piece, is obviou.sly 
 borrowed from Aristophanes's comedy of that name. 
 T-imon is introduced after he has forsaken society, 
 and is digging for his livelihood. 
 
 TIMON. 
 
 Timon (stopping his work, and leaning on his 
 spade). O Jupiter ! — god of Friendship, god of Hos- 
 pitality, god of Sociality, god of the Hearth, Lightning- 
 flasher, Oath-protector, Cloud-compeller, Thunderer, — 
 or by Avhatever name those moon-struck poets please 
 to call you (especially when they have a hitch in the 
 verse, for then your great stock of titles helps to prop 
 a lame line, or fill a gap in the metre), — where be your 
 flashing lightnings now, and your rolling thunders, and 
 that terrible levin-bolt of yours, blazing and red-hot 1 
 Plainly all these are nonsense, — a mere humbug of the 
 poets, nothing but sonorous words. That thunderbolt 
 which they are always singing of, that strikes so far 
 and is so ready to hand, — it's quenched, I suppose ] 
 got cold, and hasn't a spark of fire left in it to scorch 
 rascals. A man who has committed perjury is more 
 afraid, now, of the snuff of last night's lamp than of 
 your invincible lightning. 'Tis just as if you were 
 to throw the stump of a torch among them, — they 
 would have no fear of the fire or smoke, but only of 
 getting besmirched with the black from it. 
 
 Ah, Jupiter ! in your youthful days, when you were
 
 f 
 
 42 LUCIAN. 
 
 hot-blooded and quick-tempered, then you used to deal 
 summary justice against knaves and villains : never 
 made truce with them for a day : but the lightning 
 was always at work, and the aegis always shaking over 
 them, and the thunder rolling, and the bolts continu- 
 ally launched here and there, like a skirmish of sharp- 
 shooters : and earthquakes shook us all like beans in 
 a sieve, and snow came in heaps, and hail like pebbles, 
 and — for I'm determined, you see, to speak my mind 
 to you — then your rain was good strong rain, — each 
 drop like a river. Why, in Deucalion's days, there 
 rose such a deluge in no time, that everything was 
 drowned except one little ark that stuck on Mount 
 Lycoris, and preserved one little surviving spark of 
 human life, — in order, I suppose, to breed a new 
 generation worse than the other. 
 
 Weil — you see the consequences of your laziness, 
 and it serves you right. No man now offers you a 
 sacrifice, or puts a garland on you, except at odd times 
 the winners at Olympia ; and they do it not because 
 they feel under any obligation to do it, but merely in 
 compliance with a kind of old custom. They'll very 
 soon make you like Saturn, and take all your honours 
 from you, though you think yourself the grandest of 
 the gods. I say nothing as to how often they have 
 robbed your temples — nay, some fellows, I hear, actu- 
 ally laid hands on your sacred person at Olympia ; 
 while you, — the great thunder-god, — did not even 
 trouble yourself to set the dogs at them, or rouse the 
 neighbours, but sat there quiet, — you, the celebrated 
 Giant-killer and Titan-queller, as they call you, — while
 
 THE PAGAN OLYMPUS. 43 
 
 they cut your golden locks off your royal head, though 
 you had a twenty-foot thunderbolt in your hand all 
 the while. When does your High Mightiness mean 
 to put a stop to all this which you are allowing to go 
 on 1 ? How many conflagrations like Phaeton's, how 
 many deluges like Deucalion's, does such a world as 
 this deserve'? 
 
 To pass now from public iniquities to my own 
 case. After raising so many Athenians from poverty 
 to wealth and greatness, — after helping every man 
 that was in want — or rather, pouring my riches out 
 wholesale to serve my friends, — when I have brought 
 myself to poverty by this, these men utterly refuse to 
 know me ; men who used to honour me, worship me, 
 hang on my very nod, now will not even look at me. 
 If I meet any of them as I walk, they pass me without a 
 glance, as though I were some old sepulchral stone fallen 
 down through lapse of years : while those who see me in 
 the distance turn into another path, as if I were some ill- 
 omened vision which they feared to meet or look upon 
 — I, who was so lately their benefactor and preserver ! 
 
 So, in my distress, I have girt myself with skins, 
 and retreated to this far corner ; and here I dig the 
 ground for four obols a day, — and talk philosophy to 
 my spade and myself. One point I think T gain here; 
 I shall no longer see the worthless in prosperity — for 
 that were worse to bear than all. Now then, Son of 
 Saturn and Ehea, wake up at last from this long deep 
 slumber — for you've slept longer than Epimenides * — 
 
 * The Rip van Winkle of classic story. He is said to have 
 sought shelter in a cave from the heat of the sun, while keep-
 
 44 LUCIA N. 
 
 and blow your thunderbolt hot again, or heat it afresh 
 in iEtna, and make it blaze lustily, and show a little 
 righteous wrath, worthy of the Jove of younger days ; 
 unless, indeed, that be a true story which the Cretans 
 tell, and you be dead and buried too. 
 
 Jupiter (in Olympus, disturbed by Timon's clamorous 
 expostulations below). Who in the world, Mercury, is 
 this fellow that's bawling so from Attica, down at the 
 foot of Hymettus, — a perfect scarecrow, he looks, in a 
 dirty goat-skin? Digging, I think he is, by his stoop- 
 ing posture. He's a very noisy impudent fellow. 
 Some philosopher, I fancy, or he wouldn't use such 
 blasphemous language. 
 
 Mercury. What do you say, father? don't you 
 know Timon of Athens ? He's the man who so often 
 used to treat us with such magnificent sacrifices ; that 
 nouveau riclte, you know, who used to offer whole heca- 
 tombs ; at whose expense we were so splendidly enter- 
 tained at the Diasia. 
 
 Jup. What a sad reverse of fortune ! That fine, 
 handsome, rich fellow, who had used to have such 
 troops of friends round him ! What has brought him 
 to this ? — so squalid and miserable, and having to dig 
 for his bread, I suppose, by the way he drives his 
 spade into the ground 1 
 
 Mercury proceeds to inform his father that Timon's 
 reckless generosity has reduced him to poverty, and 
 that all the friends who shared his bounty have now 
 
 ing liis father's sheep, and to have slept there for fifty-seven 
 years.
 
 THE PAGAN OLYMPUS. 45 
 
 deserted him. Ho has left the ungrateful city in 
 disgust, and hired himself out as a day-labourer 
 in the country. Jupiter, however, is not going to 
 follow the example of mankind, and neglect the man 
 from whom, in his day of prosperity, he has received 
 so many favours. He is sorry that his case has 
 hitherto escaped his notice; but really the noise and 
 clamour those Athenians make with all their philoso- 
 phical disputes has so disgusted him, that for some 
 time he has not turned his eyes in their direction. 
 " Go down to him at once," he says to Mercury, "and 
 take Plutus with you, with a good supply of money ; * 
 and let Plutus take care not to leave him again so 
 easily as he did before. As for those ungrateful friends 
 of his, they shall have their deserts, as soon as ever I can 
 get my lightning mended. I broke two of my strong- 
 est bolts the other day, launching them in a passion 
 against Anaxagoras the Sophist, who was teaching his 
 followers that Ave gods were an utter impossibility in 
 the nature of things. I missed him (Pericles put his 
 hand in the way),t and the lightning struck the tem- 
 ple of Castor, I am sorry to say, and destroyed it ; 
 but my bolt was all but shivered itself against the 
 
 * " Plutus, the god of gold, 
 Is but his steward." 
 
 — Shaksp., "Timon," act i. sc. 1. 
 
 The introduction of Plutus's name into this tragedy makes one 
 curious to know whether the author was acquainted (through 
 any translation) either with this dialogue of Lucian's or with 
 the " Plutus " of Aristophanes. 
 
 t Anaxagoras, when accused of impiety and brought to trial, 
 was protected by Pericles, who had been his pupil.
 
 46 L TJC1A N. 
 
 rock there. However, those rascals will be punished 
 enough for the present, when they see Timon grown 
 rich again." 
 
 Merc. See now, what a thing it is to make a 
 clamour, and to be impudent and troublesome ! I 
 don't mean for lawyers only, but for those who put up 
 prayers to heaven. Here's Timon going to be set up 
 again as a rich man out of the extreme of poverty, all 
 because of his noise and bold words attracting Jupiter's 
 notice ! If he had bent his back to his digging in 
 silence, he might have dug on till doomsday without 
 Jupiter's noticing him. (He goes off, and returns icith 
 Plutus.) 
 
 Pluhis. I shan't go near that fellow, Jupiter. 
 
 Jnp. How, my good Plutus, — not when I bid you ? 
 
 Phi. No. He insulted me — turned me out of his 
 house, and scattered me in all directions — me, the 
 old friend of the family — all but pitched me out of 
 doors, as if I burnt his fingers. What ! go back to 
 him, to be thrown to his parasites, and toadies, and 
 harlots? No: send me to those who value the gift, 
 who will make much of me, who honour me and desire 
 my company ; and let all those fools keep house still 
 with Poverty, who prefer her to me. Let them get 
 her to give them a spade and an old sheep-skin, and go 
 dig for their twopence a-day, after squandering thou- 
 sands in gifts to their friends. 
 
 Jup. Timon will never behave so to you again. 
 His spadedmsbandry will have taught him pretty well 
 (unless his back's made of stuff that can't feel) that 
 you are to be preferred tn Povertv. You're rather a
 
 TIIE PAGAN OLYMPUSt. 47 
 
 discontented personage, too : you blame Timon because 
 be opened bis doors and let you go where you liked, 
 and neither locked you up nor watched you jealously ; 
 whereas at otber times you cry out against tbe rich, 
 saying that they confine you with bolts and bars, and 
 put seals on you, so that you never get so much as a 
 glimpse of daylight. You used to complain to me 
 that you were suffocated in the dark holes they kept 
 you in ; and I must say you used to look quite pale 
 and careworn, and your fingers quite contracted from 
 the constant habit of counting ; and you often threat- 
 ened to escape from such confinement the moment you 
 had a chance. 
 
 Plutus replies to Jupiter with some sensible remarks 
 as to there being a mean between the prodigal and the 
 miser; but ho consents to pay Timon a visit at Jupi- 
 ter's command, though feeling, as he says, that he 
 might as well get into one of the Danaids' leaky water- 
 jars, so sure is he to filter rapidly through the hands of 
 such a master. The god of Eiches, we must remember, 
 is blind; and Mercury, who has to escort him to 
 Athens, recommends him to hold fast by his coat-tail 
 all the way down. Jupiter desires his messenger to 
 call at iEtna on his way, and send up the Cyclops to 
 mend his broken thunderbolt. 
 
 They find Timon hard at work, in the company of 
 Poverty. But she has brought with her a band of 
 other companions — Labour, and Perseverance, and 
 "Wisdom, and Fortitude, This is a stronger body- 
 guard, as Mercury observes, than Plutus ever gathers 
 round him. The god of Eiches confesses it ; he can
 
 48 LUC1AN. 
 
 be of no service to a man who has such friends about 
 him, and he offers to begone at once. But Mercury 
 reminds him of the will of Jove. Poverty pleads ill 
 vain that she has rescued him from his old associates, 
 Sloth and Luxury, and is now forming him to virtue 
 in her own more wholesome school ; and though Timon 
 asks with some roughness to be left still under her 
 instruction, and bids Plutus begone " to make fools of 
 other men as he has once of him," he is overruled by 
 Mercury's appeal to his sense of gratitude to Jupiter, 
 who has taken so much trouble to help him. Poverty 
 reluctantly takes her leave, and with her depart Labour 
 and Wisdom and the rest of her company. 
 
 Digging on in the earth b} r direction of Plutus, 
 Timon finds an immense buried treasure, and the sight 
 at once reawakens his love of riches. But it now 
 takes another and more selfish form. Henceforth he 
 will live for himself and not for others, and become 
 the enemy of men as he had formerly been their in- 
 judicious friend. The name which he desires to be 
 known by is that of " The Misanthrope." * The com- 
 panions of his former days of splendour — who had 
 been treated by him with such munificence, and had 
 repaid him with such ingratitude — hear of his new 
 wealth, and flock to him to make their excuses and 
 apologies, to tender him all kinds of services, and to 
 offer him public honours, if he will only give them a 
 little of his new riches. Blows from his spade, and 
 showers of stones, are his only answer. And in this 
 
 * " 1 am Misanthropos, and hate mankind." 
 
 — Shaksp., "Timon," act iv. sc. 3.
 
 TEE PAGAN OLYMPUS. „ 49 
 
 spirit the Dialogue (which concludes somewhat ab- 
 ruptly) leaves him. 
 
 Timon the Misanthrope was probably a real personage, 
 round whose name many fictitious anecdotes gathered. 
 Aristophanes refers to him more than once in his 
 comedies as a well-known character ; Plato mentions 
 him, and, if we may trust Plutarch, he lived about the 
 time of the Peloponnesian war. This latter writer speaks 
 of his intimacy with the Cynic Apemantus, introduced 
 in Shakspeare's play,* and gives us an anecdote of him 
 in connection with Alcibiades. Apemantus, we are 
 told, asked Timon why he so much affected the com- 
 pany of that young gallant, hating all other men as ho 
 professed to do 1 " Because," replied Timon, " I fore- 
 see that he shall one day become a great scourge to 
 those I hate most — the Athenians." 
 
 * Shakspeare's play is founded chiefly on the twenty-eighth 
 novel in Painter's 'Talace of Pleasure." 
 
 A. C. vol. xviii.
 
 CHAPTER IH 
 
 DIALOGUES OP THE DEAD. 
 
 Less original than the Olympian Dialogues, — for their 
 idea must he allowed to he "borrowed from Homer, 
 while the inclination to moralise upon the vanity of 
 earthly riches, and honours, and beauty, and the work 
 of that great leveller Death, is common enough, — these 
 have perhaps heen even more popular. An imitation 
 in great measure themselves, they have found imitators 
 amongst the moderns, in their turn, who have shown 
 considerable ability. The " Dialogues of the Dead '' of 
 Fontenelle and of Lord Lyttelton still find readers, 
 and these imitations have charmed many to Avhom the 
 original was unknown in any other way than by name.* 
 The Dialogues of Fenelon, composed for the instruc- 
 tion of his pupil the Duke of Burgundy, were, again, 
 an imitation of those of Fontenelle, hut are somewhat- 
 more didactic, as we should expect, and less lively. 
 Eut perhaps the most striking modern work for the 
 
 * "The dead," says Fontenelle in his preface, "ought to 
 speak wisely, from their longer experience and greater leisure; it 
 is to he hoped that they take rather more time to think than is 
 usual with the living."
 
 DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD. 51 
 
 idea of ■which we are indebted to the Greek satirist 
 is the ' Imaginary Conversations ' of Walter Savage 
 Landor. 
 
 Some three or four of the most striking of this 
 series must content our readers here. The following, 
 although it does not stand first in the common order 
 of arrangement, seems to form the hest introduction to 
 the series. 
 
 CHARON AND HIS TASSENGERS. 
 
 Clmron. Now listen to me, good people — I'll tell 
 you how it is. The boat is hut small, as you see, and 
 somewhat rotten and leaky withal: and if the weight 
 gets to one side, over we go: and here you are crowd- 
 ing in all at once, and with lots of luggage, every one of 
 you. If you come on hoard here with all that lumber, 
 I suspect you'll repent of it afterwards — especially those 
 who can't swim. 
 
 Mercury. What's best for us to do then, to get safe 
 across ? 
 
 Cha. I'll tell you. You must all strip before you 
 get in, and leave all those encumbrances onshore: and 
 even then the boat will scarce hold you all. And you 
 take care, Mercury, that no soul is admitted that is 
 not in light marching order, and who has not left all 
 his encumbrances, as I say, behind. Just stand at 
 the gangway and overhaul them, and don't let them 
 get in till they've stripped. 
 
 Marc. Quite right; I'll see to it. — Now, who comes 
 first here '] 
 
 Menippus. I — Menippus. Look — I've pitched my
 
 52 LUCIAN. 
 
 wallet and staff into the lake ; my coat, luckily, I didn't 
 bring with me. 
 
 Merc. Get in, Menippus — you're a capital fellow. 
 Take the best seat there, in the stern-sheets, next the 
 steersman, and watch who gets on board. — Now, who's 
 this fine gentleman 1 
 
 Charmolaus. I'm Charmolaus of Megara — a general 
 favourite. Many a lady would give fifty guineas for a 
 kiss from me. 
 
 Merc. You'll have to leave your pretty face, and 
 those valuable lips, and your long curls and smooth 
 skin behind you, that's all. Ah ! now you'll do — 
 you're all right and tight now : get in. — But you, sir, 
 there, in the purple and the diadem, — who are you 1 
 
 Lampichus. Lampichus, king of Gelo. 
 
 Merc. And what d'ye mean by coming herewith all 
 that trumpery ? 
 
 Lamp. How ? "Would it be seemly for a king to 
 come here unrobed 1 
 
 Merc. Well, for a king, perhaps not — but for a dead 
 man, certainly. So put it all off. 
 
 Lamp. There — I've thrown my riches away. 
 
 Merc. Yes — and throw away your pride too, and 
 your contempt for other people. You'll infallibly 
 swamp the boat if you bring all that in. 
 
 Lamp. Just let me keep my diadem and mantle. 
 
 Merc. Impossible — off with them too. 
 
 Lamp. Well — anything more? because I've thrown 
 them all off, as you see. 
 
 Merc. Your cruelty — and your folly — and your in- 
 solence — and bad temper— off with them all !
 
 DIALOGUES OF THE BEAD. 53 
 
 Lamp. There, then — I'm stripped entirely. 
 
 Merc. Very well — get in. — And you fat fellow, who 
 are you, with all that flesh on you? 
 
 Damasias. Damasias, the athlete. 
 
 Merc. Ay, you look like him : I rememher having 
 seen you in the games. 
 
 Dam. (smiling). Yes, Mercury; take me on board 
 — I'm ready stripped, at any rate. 
 
 Merc. Stripped? Nay, my good sir, not with all 
 that covering of flesh on you. You must get rid of 
 that, or you'll sink the boat the moment you set your 
 other foot in. Ami you must take off your garlands 
 and trophies too. 
 
 Dam. Then — now I'm really stripped, and not 
 heavier than these other dead gentlemen. 
 
 Merc. All right — the lighter the better : get in. 
 
 [In like manner the patrician has to lay aside his 
 noble birth, his public honours, and statues, and tes- 
 timonials — the very thought of them, Mercury de- 
 clares, is enough to sink the boat ; and the general 
 is made to leave behind him all his victories and 
 trophies — in the realms of the dead there is peace. 
 Next comes the philosopher's turn. J 
 
 Merc. Who's this pompous and conceited person- 
 age, to judge from his looks — he with the knitted 
 eyebrows there, and lost in meditation — that fellow 
 with the long beard 1 
 
 Men. One of those philosophers, Mercury — or rather 
 those cheats and charlatans : make him strip too ; 
 you'll find some curious things hid under that cloak 
 of his.
 
 54 lucia jr. 
 
 Merc. Take your habit off, to begin with, if you 
 please — and now all that you bave there, — great 
 Jupiter ! what a lot of humbug he was bringing 
 with him — and ignorance, and disputatiousness, and 
 vainglory, and useless questions, and prickly argu- 
 ments, and involved statements, — ay, and wasted 
 ingenuity, and solemn trilling, and quips and quirks 
 of all kinds! Yes — -by Jove! and there are gold 
 pieces there, and impudence and luxury and de- 
 bauchery — oh ! I see them all, though you are try- 
 ing to hide them ! And your lies, and pomposity, 
 and thinking yourself better than everybody else — 
 away with all that, I say ! Why, if you bring all 
 that aboard, a fifty-oared galley wouldn't hold you ! 
 
 Philosopher. Well, I'll leave it all behind then, if 
 I must. 
 
 Men. But make him take his beard off too, Master 
 Mercury ; it's heavy and bushy, as you see ; there's 
 five pound weight of hair there, at the very least. 
 
 Merc; You're right. Take it off, sir ! 
 
 Phil. But who is there who can shave me 1 
 
 Merc. Menippus there will chop it off with the 
 boat-hatchet — he can have the gunwale for a chop- 
 ping-block. 
 
 Men. Nay, Mercury, lend us a saw — it will be more 
 fun. 
 
 Merc. Oh, the hatchet will do ! So — that's well ; 
 now you've got rid of your goatishness, you look 
 something more like a man. 
 
 Men, Shall I chop a bit off his eyebrows as Avell 1 
 
 Merc, By all means ; he has stuck them up on his
 
 DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD. „ 55 
 
 forehead, to make himself look grander, I suppose. 
 What's the matter now? You're crying, you rascal, 
 are you — afraid of death ? Make haste on board, will 
 you ? 
 
 Men. He's got something now under his arm. 
 
 Merc. What is it, Menippus ? 
 
 Men. Flattery it is, Mercury — and a very profitable 
 article he found it, while he was alive. 
 
 Philosopher (in a fury). And you, Menippus — 
 leave your lawless tongue behind you, and your 
 cursed independence, and mocking laugh ; you're tho 
 only one of the party who dares laugh. 
 
 Merc, (laughing). No, no, Menippus — they're 
 very light, and take little room ; besides, they are 
 good things on a voyage. But you, Mr Orator there, 
 throw away your rhetorical flourishes, and antitheses, 
 and parallelisms, and barbarisms, and all that heavy 
 wordy gear of yours. 
 
 Orator. There, then — there they go ! 
 
 Merc. All right. Now then, slip the moorings. 
 Haul that plank aboard — up anchor, and make sail. 
 Mind your helm, master ! And a good voyage to 
 us t — What are you howling about, you fools ? You, 
 Philosopher, specially? Now that you've had your 
 beard cropped? 
 
 Phil. Because, dear Mercury, I always thought the 
 soul had been immortal. 
 
 Men. He's lying ! It's something else that troubles 
 him, most likely. 
 
 Merc. What's that? 
 • Men. That he shall have no more expensive suppers
 
 56 LUCIAN. 
 
 — nor, after spending all the night in debauchery, pro- 
 fess to lecture to the young men on moral philosophy 
 in the morning, and take pay for it. That's what 
 vexes him. 
 
 Phil, And you, Menippus — are j r ou not sorry to die? 
 
 Men. How should I he, when I hastened to death 
 without any call to it? But, while Ave are talking, 
 don't you hear a noise as of some people shouting 
 on the earth? 
 
 Merc. Yes, I do — and from more than one quarter. 
 There's a public rejoicing yonder for the death of 
 Lampichus ; and the women have seized his wife, 
 and the boys are stoning his children ; and in Sicyon 
 they are all praising Diophantus the orator for his 
 funeral oration upon Crato here. Yes — and there 
 is Damasias's mother wailing for him amongst her 
 women. But there's not a soul weeping for you, 
 Menippus — you're lying all alone. 
 
 Men. Not at all — you'll hear the dogs howling 
 over me presently, and the ravens mournfully flapping 
 their wings, when they gather to my funeral. 
 
 Merc. Stoutly said. But here Ave are at the land- 
 ing-place. March off, all of you, to the judgment- 
 seat straight ; I and the ferryman must\go and fetch 
 a fresh batch. \ 
 
 Men. A pleasant trip to you, Mercury. So we'll be 
 moving on. Come, what are you all dawdling for? 
 You've got to be judged, you know ; and the punish- 
 ments, they tell me, are frightful — wheels, and stones, 
 and vultures. Every man's life will be strictly in- 
 quired into, I can tell you.
 
 DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD. 57 
 
 The Cynic Menippus, introduced to us in this 
 amusing dialogue, — "a dog of the real old breed," as 
 Lucian calls him, "always ready to hark and 
 bite "* — is a great favourite with the author, .and re- 
 appears very frequently in these imaginary conversa- 
 tions. He was a disciple of Diogenes, and had been 
 a usurer in earlier life, but having lost his wealth 
 by the roguery of others, at last committed suicide. 
 The banter with which he treats Charon in the little 
 dialogue which follows is very humorous. 
 
 CHARON AND MENIPPUS. 
 
 Cliaron (calling after Menippus, who is walking off). 
 Pay me your fare, you rascal ! 
 
 Menippus. Bawd away, Charon, if it's any satisfac- 
 tion to you. 
 
 Cha. Pay me, I say, for carrying you across ! 
 
 Men. You can't get money from a man who hasn't 
 got ifc-=~-- --' 
 
 Cha. Is there any man who has not got an obolus? 
 
 Men. I know nothing about anybody else ; I know 
 I haven't. 
 
 Cha. (catching hold of him). I'll strangle you, you 
 villain ! I will, by Pinto ! if you don't pay. 
 
 Men. And I'll break your head with my staff. 
 
 Cha. Do you suppose you are to have such a long 
 trip for nothing] 
 
 * The term " Cynic," applied to that school of philosophy, is 
 derived from the Greek for "dog."
 
 58 L UCIA N. 
 
 Men. Let Mercury pay for me, then ; it was lie put 
 rue on board. 
 
 Mercury. A very profitable job for rne, by Jove ! if 
 I'm to pay for all the dead people. 
 
 Clia. (to Men). I shan't let you go. 
 
 Men. You can haul your boat ashore, then, for that 
 matter, and wait as loug as you please ; but I don't see 
 how you can take from me what I don't possess. 
 
 Cha. Didn't you know you had to pay it % 
 
 Men. I knew well enough ; but I tell you I hadn't 
 got it. Is a man not to die because he has no money 1 
 
 Cha. Are you to be the only man, then, who can 
 boast that he has crossed the Styx gratis 1 ? 
 
 Men. Gratis 1 Not at all, my good friend, — when I 
 baled the boat, and helped you with the oar, and was 
 the onty man on board that didn't howl. 
 
 Cha. That has nothing to do with the passage- 
 money ; you must pay your obolus. It's against all 
 our rules to do otherwise. 
 
 Men. Then take me back to life acrain. 
 
 Cha. Yes — a fine proposal — that I may get a whip- 
 ping from iEacus for it. 
 
 Men. Then don't bother. 
 
 Cha. Show me what you've got in your -scrip there. 
 
 Men. Lentils, if you please, and a bit of supper for 
 Hecate. 
 
 Cha. (turning to Mercury in despair). Where on 
 earth did you bring this dog of a Cynic from, Mercury? 
 — chattering, as he did, all the way across, cutting his 
 jokes and laughing at the other passengers, and sing- 
 ing while they were all bemoaning themselves.
 
 DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD. 59 
 
 Mere. Didn't you know, Charon, who your passenger 
 wus 1 ? A most independent fellow, who cares for no- 
 body. That's Menippus. 
 
 Cha. {shaking his fist at him as he moves off). Well, 
 let me only catch you again ! 
 
 Men. (looking bach and laughing). Ay, if you catch 
 me ; but 'tis hardly likely, my good friend, that you'll 
 have me for a passenger twice. 
 
 MKUCURY AND CHARON SQUARING ACCOUNTS. 
 
 Mercury. Let us have a reckoning, if you phase, 
 Mr Ferryman, how much you owe me up to this 
 present date, that we mayn't have a squabble here- 
 after ahout the items. 
 
 Charon. By all means, Mercury — nothing like being 
 correct in such matters; it saves a world of unpleasant- 
 ness. 
 
 Merc. T supplied an anchor to your order — twenty- 
 five drachmae. 
 
 Cha. That's very dear. 
 
 Mi re. I vow to Pluto I gave five for it. And a 
 rowdock thong — two obols. 
 
 Cha. Well, put down five drachma} and two obols. 
 
 Merc. And a needle to mend the sail. Tive obols 
 I paid for that. 
 
 Cha. Well, put that much down too. 
 
 Mere. Then, there's the wax for caulking the seams 
 of the boat that Avere open, and nails, and a rope to 
 make halyards of,— -two drachma? altogether. 
 
 Cha. Ay ; you bought those worth the money. 
 
 Merc. That's all, if I've not forgotten something in
 
 GO LUCIAX. 
 
 my account. And now, when do you propose to pay 
 me? 
 
 Cha. It's out of my power, Mercury, at this mo- 
 ment ; hut if a pestilence or a war should send people 
 down here in considerable numbers, you can make a 
 good thing of it then hy a little cheating in the pass- 
 age-money. 
 
 Merc. So I may go to sleep at present, and put up 
 prayers for all kinds of horrible things to happen, that 
 I may get my dues thereby ? 
 
 Cha. I've no other way of paying you, Mercury, 
 indeed. At present, as you see, very few come our 
 way. It's a time of peace, you know. 
 
 Merc. Well, so much the better, even if I have to 
 wait for my money a while. But those men in the 
 good old times — ah ! you remember, Charon, what fine 
 fellows used to come here, — good warriors all, covered 
 with blood and wounds, most of them! Now, 'tis 
 either somebody who has been poisoned by his son 
 or his wife, or with his limbs and carcase bloated by 
 gluttony, — pale spiritless wretches all of them, not a 
 whit like the others. Most of them come here owing 
 to their attempts to overreach each other in money 
 matters, it seems to me. 
 
 Cha. Why, money is certainly a very desirable 
 thing. 
 
 Merc. Then don't think me unreasonable, if you 
 please, if I look sharp after your little debt to me. 
 
 When the Cynic philosopher has been admitted
 
 DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD. Gl 
 
 into the region of shadows, lie makes himself very 
 much at home there. In another of these dialogues 
 he cross-examines all the officials whom he meets, 
 with the air of a traveller anxious for information ; 
 and his caustic wit does not spare the dead a whit 
 more than it had spared the living. He hegs iEacus 
 to show him some of "the lions" in this new region. 
 He professes great surprise at seeing the figures which 
 once were Agamemnon, Ajax, and Achilles, now mere 
 hones and dust ; and asks to be allowed just to give 
 Sardanapalus, whom the Cynic hates especially for his 
 luxury and debauchery, a slap in the face ; but iEacus 
 assures him that his skull is as brittle as a woman's. 
 Even the wise men and philosophers, he finds, cut no 
 better figure here. " Where is Socrates 1 " he asks his 
 guide. " You see that bald man yonder 1 " says ^acus. 
 " Why, they are all bald alike here," replies Menippus. 
 "Him with the flat nose, I mean." "They've all Hat 
 noses," replies Menippus again, looking at the hollow 
 skulls round him. But Socrates, hearing the inquiry, 
 answers for himself ; and the new-comer into the lower 
 world is able to assure the great Athenian that all men 
 now admit his claim to universal knowledge, which 
 rests, in fact, on the one ground of being conscious 
 that man knows really nothing. But he learns some- 
 thing more about the Master of the Sophists from a 
 little dialogue which he has with Cerberus. 
 
 MENIl'PUS AND CEKBEItUS. 
 
 Menippns. I say, Cerberus (I'm a kind of cousin
 
 62 LUC IAN. 
 
 of yours, you know — they call me a dog), tell me, "by 
 the holy Styx, how did Socrates behave himself when 
 he came down among ye? I suppose, as you're a di- 
 vinity, you can not only hark, but talk like a human 
 creature, if you like ? 
 
 Cerberus {growling). Well, when he was some way 
 off, he came on with a perfectly unmoved countenance, 
 appearing to have no dread at all of death, and to wish 
 to make that plain to those who stood outside the 
 gates here. But when once he got within the archway 
 of tbe Shades, and saw the gloom and darkness; and 
 when, as he seemed to be lingering, I bit him on the 
 foot (just to help the hemlock), and dragged him down, 
 he shrieked out like a child, and began to lament over 
 his family and all sorts of things. 
 
 Men. So the man was but a sophist after all, and 
 had no real contempt for death 1 
 
 Cerb. Xo; but when he saw it must come, he steeled 
 himself to meet it, professing to suffer not unwillingly 
 what he must needs have suffered anyhow, that so he 
 might win the admiration of the bystanders. In short, 
 I could tell you much the same story of all those kind 
 of people : up to the gate they are stout-hearted and 
 bold enough, but it is when they get within that the 
 trial comes. 
 
 Men. And how did you think I behaved when I 
 came down? 
 
 Cerb. You were the only man, Menippus, who be- 
 haved worthy of your profession — you and Diogenes 
 before you. You both came here by no force or com- 
 pulsion, but of your own accord, laughing all the way,
 
 DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD, 63 
 
 and bidding the others who came with you howl and 
 be hanged to them. 
 
 The reflections which Lucian has put into the mouth 
 of the Cynic in the following brief dialogue are of a 
 graver kind. 
 
 MENIPPUS AND MERCURY. 
 
 Menlppus. I say, Mercury, where are all the hand- 
 some men and women? Come — show me about a 
 little, I am quite a stranger here. 
 
 Mercury. I haven't time, really. But look yonder, 
 on your right ; there are Hyacinthus, and Narcissus, 
 and Nireus, and Achilles, — and Tyro, and Helen, and 
 Leda ; and, in short, all the celebrated beauties. 
 
 Men. I can see nought but bones and bare skulls, — 
 all very much alike. 
 
 Merc. Yet all the poets have gone into raptures 
 about those very bones which you seem to look upon 
 with such contempt. 
 
 Men. Anyway, show me Helen; for I shoidd never 
 be able to make her out from the rest. 
 
 Merc. This skull is Helen.* 
 
 Men. And it was for this that a thousand ships 
 were manned from all Greece, and so many Greeks and 
 Trojans died in battle, and so many towns were laid 
 waste ! 
 
 * "Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her 
 paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come." — Hamlet, 
 act v. sc. 1
 
 G4 v. LUC I AX. 
 
 Merc. Ay, "but you never saw the lady alive, Men- 
 ippus, or you would surely have said Avith Homer,— 
 
 " No marvel Trojans and the well-armed Greeks 
 For such a woman should long toils endure : 
 Like the immortal goddesses is she." * 
 
 If one looks at withered flowers which have lost 
 their colour, of course they seem to have no beauty ; 
 hut when they are in bloom, and have all their natural 
 tints, they are very beautiful to see. 
 
 Men. Still I do wonder, Mercury, that the Greeks 
 should never have bethought themselves that they were 
 quarrelling for a thing that was so short-lived, and 
 would perish so soon. 
 
 Merc. I have really no leisure for moralising, my 
 good Menippus. So pick out a spot for yourself, and 
 lay yourself down quietly ; I must go and fetch some 
 more dead people. 
 
 DIOGENES AND MAUSOLTJS. 
 
 Diogenes. Prithee, my Carian friend, why do you give 
 yourself such airs, and claim precedence of all of us ] 
 
 Mausolus. In the first place, my friend of Sinope, 
 "by reason of my royal estate ; I was king of all Caria, 
 ruled over much of Lydia, reduced several of the 
 islands, advanced as far as Miletus, and subdued most 
 part of Ionia. Then, because I was handsome and 
 tall, and a good warrior. Most of all, because I have 
 a magnificent monument set up over me at Halicar- 
 
 * Horn., II. iii. 156. 

 
 DIALOGUES OF TEE DEAD. 65 
 
 nassus, — no man that ever died has the like ; so beau- 
 tifully is it finished, men and liorses sculptured to the 
 life out of the finest marble : you can scarce find even 
 a temple like it. Don't you think I have a right to be 
 proud of all this 1 
 
 Diog. Because of your kingdom, you say ? — and your 
 fine person, — and the great weight of your tomb? 
 
 Maus. Yes; that is what I am proud of. 
 
 Diog. But, my handsome friend (ha-ha!), you haven't 
 much left of that strength and beauty that you talk 
 about. If we asked any one to decide between our 
 claims to good looks, I don't see why they should pre- 
 fer your skull to mine. Both of us are bald and naked, 
 — both of us show our teeth a good deal, — neither of 
 us have any eyes, — and our noses are both rather flat. 
 The tomb, indeed, and the marble statues, the men of 
 Halicarnassus may show to their visitors, and boast of 
 them as ornaments of their land ; but as to you, my 
 good friend, I don't see what good your monument 
 does you : unless you may say this — that you bear a 
 greater weight upon you than I do, pressed down as 
 you are by all those heavy stones. 
 
 Maus. Are none of my glories to profit me, then? 
 And are Mausolus and Diogenes to stand here on equal 
 terms 1 
 
 Diog. No ; not exactly equal, most excellent sir ; 
 not at all. Mausolus has to lament when he remem- 
 bers his earthly lot, how happy he was, — and Diogenes 
 can laugh at him. And Mausolus can say how he 
 had the tomb built for him at Halicarnassus by his 
 wife and sister ; while Diogenes does not know — and 
 
 a. c. vol. xviii. E
 
 66 L UCIA N. 
 
 does not care — -whether his hody had any "burial at all, 
 but can say that he left behind him the reputation 
 among the wise of having lived a life worthy of a man, 
 — a loftier monument, base Carian slave, than yours, 
 and built on a far safer foundation. 
 
 In another dialogue Diogenes talks in the same strain 
 to Alexander, and recommends the "waters of Lethe as 
 the only remedy for the sad regrets -which those must 
 feel, who have exchanged the glories of earth for the 
 cold and dreary equality which reigns among the dead 
 below — a passionless and objectless existence, in which 
 none but the bitterest Cynic, who rejoices in the dis- 
 comfiture of all earthly ambitions, can take any plea- 
 sure. So also Achilles, in a dialogue with the young 
 Antilochus — a premature visitor to these gloomy re- 
 gions — repeats the melancholy wish which Homer has 
 put into his mouth in the Odyssey — 
 
 \ l Rather would I in the sun's warmth divine 
 ' Serve a poor churl who drags his days in grief, 
 Than the whole lordship ol the dead were mine." * 
 
 Such is the tone of these Dialogues throughout, — a 
 grim despair disclosing itself through their cynical 
 levity. Whatever the " Elysian Fields " of the poets 
 might be, the satirist gives us no glimpse of them. 
 All whom the new visitors meet are in tears, — except 
 the infants. In one scene, Diogenes remarks a poor 
 decrepit old man weeping bitterly. To him, one 
 
 * Horn., Odyss. xi. (Worsley).
 
 DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD. 67 
 
 would think, the change could have been not so very 
 sad. Was he a king on earth ? No. Or a man of 
 rank and wealth? "No," is the reply; "I was in 
 my ninetieth year, and miserably poor ; I had to earn 
 my bread by fishing. I had no children to succour 
 me, and I was lame and blind." "What!" says the 
 philosopher, " in such a case, could you really -wish to 
 have life prolonged?" " Ay," replies the old fisher- 
 man, echoing the thought of the great Achilles — " Ay, 
 life is sweet, and death terrible." 
 
 THE TYRANT. 
 
 Although this is not classed amongst the " Dialogues 
 of the Dead," there seems no reason why it should not 
 find a place among them. Charon and his ghostly 
 freight are a favourite subject for Lucian's satire, and 
 he has here introduced them again in a dramatic scene 
 of considerably more length than any of the preceding. 
 The sparkling humour of the introduction gives addi- 
 tional force to the serious moral of the close. 
 
 CHARON, CLOTHO, MERCURY, ETC. 
 
 Charon. Well, Clotho, here's the boat all a-taut, and 
 everything ready for crossing ; we've pumped out the 
 water, and stepped the mast, and hoisted the sail — the 
 oars are in their row-locks, and, so far as I am con- 
 cerned, nothing hinders us from weighing anchor and 
 setting ofF. And that Mercury is keeping me waiting — 
 he ought to have been here long ago. The boat lies here 
 empty still, you see, when we might have made three 
 trips already to-day ; and now it's almost evening, and
 
 68 LVCIAN. 
 
 we haven't earned a penny yet. And I know Pluto 
 will think it's all my laziness, whereas the fault lies in 
 quite another quarter. That blessed ghost-conductor 
 of ours has been drinking the waters of Lethe himself, 
 I suppose, and has forgot to come back. He's most 
 likely wrestling with the young men, or playing on his 
 lyre, — or holding an argument, to show his subtle wit. 
 Or very possibly my gentleman is doing a little thieving 
 somewhere on the road, for that's one of his many ac- 
 complishments. He takes considerable liberties with us, 
 I must say, considering that he's half our servant. 
 
 Clotho. You don't know, Charon, but that he has 
 been hindered in some way ; Jupiter may have wanted 
 him for some extra work up above ; lie's his master 
 too, you see.* 
 
 Clia. But he has no right to get more than his share 
 of work out of our common property, Clotho : / never 
 keep him, when it's his time to go. But I know what 
 it is ; with us he gets nothing but asphodel, and liba- 
 tions, and salt-cake, and such funeral fare — all the rest 
 is gloom, and fog, and darkness ; while in heaven 'tis all 
 brightness, and lots of ambrosia, and nectar in abund- 
 ance ; so I suppose he finds it pleasanter to spend his 
 time up there. He flies away from here fast enough, as 
 if he were escaping out of prison ; but when the hour 
 comes for him to return, he moves very leisurely, and 
 takes his time on the road down. 
 
 * The many offices of Mercury were a favourite subject of 
 jest with Aristophanes as well as with Lucian. Some figures of 
 the god represented him witli his face painted half black and 
 hall' white, to signify his double occupation, above and below.
 
 DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD. GO 
 
 Clo. Don't put yourself in a passion, Charon ; look, 
 here he comes, close by, bringing a large company with 
 him — driving them before him, I should rather say, 
 with his rod, like a flock of goats. But what's this? 
 I see one of the party with his hands tied, and another 
 laughing, and another with a wallet on his back and a 
 club in his hand, looking very savage, and hurrying 
 the rest on. And don't you see how Mercury himself 
 is actually running down with sweat, and how dusty 
 his feet are ; he's quite out of breath, panting, with 
 his mouth open. — What's the matter, Mercury ? 
 What are you so hurried about? You seem quite 
 done up. 
 
 {Enter Mercury, very hot, with a large comjjany 
 of Ghosts.) 
 
 M<tc. Matter, Clotho ? Why, I've been hunting this 
 runaway here, till I suppose you thought I had run 
 away myself to-day, and deserted my ship. 
 
 Clo. Who is he? and what did he want to run 
 away for? 
 
 Merc. That's plain enough — because he wanted to 
 live a little longer. He's a king or a tyrant of some 
 sort, and from what I can make out from his bowlings 
 and lamentations, he complains that he is being taken 
 away from a position of great enjoyment. 
 
 Clo. So the fool tried to run away, did he? — when 
 the thread of his life Avas already spun out ! 
 
 Merc. Tried to run away, did you say ? Why, unless 
 that stout fellow there, he with the club, had helped 
 me, so that we contrived between us to catch him and
 
 70 LUCIAN. 
 
 tie him, he would have got clean off. From the mo- 
 ment that Atropos handed him over to me, he did 
 nothing hut kick and struggle all the way, and stuck 
 his heels in the ground, so that it was very hard to 
 get him along. Then sometimes he would heg and 
 pray me to let him go — just fur a little hit — offering 
 me ever so much money. But I, as was my duty, re- 
 fused — especially as it was impossible. But Avhen we 
 got just to the entrance, and I was counting over the 
 dead, as usual, to iEacus, and he was checking them 
 off by the list which your sister had sent him, lo and 
 behold ! this rascal had got off somehow or other, and 
 was missing. So there was one dead man short of the 
 count. yEacus frowned at me awfully. " Don't try 
 your cheating game here, Mercury," says he, — " it's 
 quite enough to play such tricks up above ; here in 
 the Shades we keep strict accounts, and you can't hum- 
 bug lis. A thousand and four, you observe, my list 
 has marked on it ; and you come here bringing me one 
 too few — unless you please to say that Atropos cheated 
 you in the reckoning." I quite blushed at his words, 
 and recollected at once what had happened on the road ; 
 and when I cast my eyes round and couldn't see that 
 wretch, I knew he had escaped, and ran back after him 
 all the way, towards daylight, and that excellent fellow 
 there went with me, of his own accord ; and by run- 
 ning like race-horses we caught him just at Tamarus* 
 — so near he was getting away. 
 
 * At which spot there was one of the reputed descent* 
 to the Shades.
 
 DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD. 71 
 
 The Ferryman desires them to waste no more time 
 now in chattering, and proposes to start at once. Clo- 
 tho and Mercury count the dead into the boat. First, 
 three hundred infants, — including those who have been 
 deserted and exposed. Charon (who is still very 
 cross) complains of them as "a cargo of very unripe 
 fruit." Mercury next hands him in four hundred old 
 people ; " they are ripe enough," he observes, " at any 
 rate — and some rotten." Seven have died for love — 
 besides a great philosopher, who has killed himself for / 
 the sake of a good-for-nothing woman. Several have 
 died of a fever — including the physician who attended 
 them. Cyniscus, too, is there, the Cynic philosopher, 
 who has been eating some of Hecate's supper, and a 
 quantity of raw onions besides, and has died of indiges- 
 tion. His only complaint is tbat he has been forgotten 
 by the Fates, and allowed to live on earth so long. 
 
 Megapenthes, the tyrant, who has made such a deter- 
 mined attempt to escape on the road, entreats Clotho to 
 let him go back to life — only for a little while, if it were 
 but five days, just to finish his new house, and to give 
 some directions to his wife about some money, — he will 
 be sure to come down again soon. He tries in vain to 
 bribe the Inexorable by offers of gold. Or, he will 
 give his son, his only son, as a hostage. Clotho 
 reminds him that his prayer used to be that this son 
 might survive him. That had been his wish, be con- 
 fesses ; but now he knows better. Clotho bids him 
 take comfort ; his son will follow him here speedily ; 
 he will be put to death by the tyrant who succeeds. 
 At least he desires to know how things will go after
 
 72 LUCIA N. 
 
 his death. He shall hear, though the information will 
 hardly he pleasant. His statues will he thrown down 
 and trampled on : his wife, who has already "been faith- 
 less to him, will marry her lover: his daughter will go 
 into slavery. In vain he hegs for life, though the life 
 he that of a slave. Mercury, with the help of Cyniscus, 
 drives him into the boat, and threatens to tie him to 
 the mast. At this moment a little figure rushes for- 
 ward, and hegs not to he left behind. It is Micyllus, 
 a poor cobbler. He has not found life on earth alto- 
 gether so pleasant, that he cares to continue it. " At 
 the very first signal of Atropos," says he, " I jumped 
 up gladly, threw away my knife and leather, and an 
 old shoe I had in my hand, and without stopping even 
 to put on my slippers or wash off the black from my 
 face, followed her at once — or rather led the way. 
 There was nothing to call me back. I had no tie to 
 life, — neither land, nor houses, nor gold, nor pTecious 
 furniture ; no glory and no statues had I to leave 
 "behind. Indeed I like all your ways down below 
 very much ; there's equality for all, and no man is 
 hetter than his neighbour ; it all seems to me uncom- 
 monly pleasant. I suppose nobody calls in dehts here, 
 or pays taxes : above all, there is no cold in winter, no 
 sickness, and no beatings from great people. Here all 
 is peace, and conditions seem quite reversed ; we poor 
 laugh and are merry, Avhile your rich men groan and 
 howl." He is eager to be ferried over at once to thai 
 further shore; and when Charon sulkily declares there 
 is no room in the boat for him, he strips and proposes 
 to swim across the Styx ; he shall get over that way
 
 DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD. 73 
 
 perhaps as fast as they will. At last it is settled that he 
 is to sit on the tyrant's back ; " and kick him well," 
 says Clotho. The Cynic now takes up the dialogue. 
 He, like his fellow-philosopher Menippus,has no money 
 to pay his passage. 
 
 Cyn /'sens. I'll tell yon the plain truth, Charon — I 
 haven't a penny to pay for my passage : nothing in the 
 world but my scrip and staff here. But I'm quite 
 ready to pump or to row : you shall have no reason to 
 complain, if you can find me a good strong oar. 
 
 Charon. Pull away, then. I must be content to get 
 that much out of you. 
 
 Cyn. Shall I give you a song? 
 
 Cha. Well, do ; if you know a good sea-stave. 
 
 Cyn. I know plenty, Charon. But these fellows are 
 blubbering so loud, they'll drown my voice. 
 
 Dead men, in discordant chorus. my riches ! — O 
 my lands ! — Oh, what a beautiful house I've left be- 
 hind me ! — Alas ! for all the money my heir will 
 squander ! — Alas, my poor dear children ! — Ah ! who'll 
 gather the grapes from those vines I planted last year? 
 
 Merc. Have you nothing to lament, Micyllus 1 In- 
 deed it's against all rule for any one to make this voy- 
 age without a few tears. 
 
 Micyllus. Nonsense ! I've nothing to cry for, on 
 such a pleasant voyage. 
 
 Merc. Nay, just cry a little, do — just to keep up 
 the custom. 
 
 Mic. Very well, if you wish it, Mercury — here 
 goes. — my leather-parings ! my old shoes ! Alas !
 
 74 LUC I AN. 
 
 i 
 
 no longer shall I go from dawn till evening without 
 food, nor walk barefoot and half-clad all the winter, 
 with my teeth chattering for cold ! And, oh dear ! 
 who will inherit my old awl and scraper 1 
 
 Merc. There, that'll do ; we've almost got across. 
 
 Cha. Now, pay your fares, all of you, the first 
 thing. You there, fork out ! And you ! Now I've got 
 all, I think. — Micyllus, where's your penny 1 
 
 Mic. You joke, my friend ; you might as well try 
 to get blood out of a turnip, as they say, as money out 
 of Micyllus. Heaven help me if I know a penny by 
 sight — whether it's round or square ! 
 
 The scene which follows, satire though it be, has a 
 terrible amount of truth in it. The tone of burlesque 
 passes almost into that of tragedy. It reads like a 
 passage from some dramatic mediaeval sermon. The 
 dead are summoned one by one before the tribunal of 
 Ehadamanthus. Each has to strip for examination : 
 for, burnt in upon the breast of every man, patent now 
 to the Judge of Souls, though invisible to mortal eyes, 
 will be found the marks left by the sins of his past 
 life.* Cyniscus presents himself first, cheerfully and 
 confidently. Some faint indications there are upon 
 
 * This is from Plato. In his ' Gorgias ' (524) Ehadamanthus 
 finds the soul of the tyrant " full of tho. prints and scars of 
 perjuries and wrongs which have been stamped there by each 
 action." Tacitus (Ann. vi. 6), speaking of Tiberius, introduces 
 the idea as that of Socrates : "If the minds of tyrants could 
 be laid open to view, scars and wounds would be discovered 
 upon them : since the mind is lacerated by cruelty, lust, and 
 evil passions, even as the body is by stripes and blows."
 
 DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD. 75 
 
 his person of scars, healed over and almost obliterated. 
 He explains that these are the traces of great faults 
 committed in his youth through ignorance, Avhich by 
 the help of philosophy he has amended in his maturer 
 years. lie is acquitted, and bid to take his place among 
 the just, after he shall have given evidence against the 
 tyrant Megapenthes. Micyllus, the poor cobbler, who 
 has had few temptations, shows no marks at all. But 
 when Megapenthes, hanging back in terror from the 
 scrutiny, is hurled by Tisiphone into the presence of 
 the judge, Cyniscus has a terrible list of crimes to 
 charge against him. He has abused his power and 
 wealth to the most atrocious deeds of lust and cruelty. 
 In vain he tries to deny the accusations : his Bed and 
 his Lamp, the unwilling witnesses of his debaucheries, 
 are summoned, by a bold and striking figure of imper- 
 sonation, to bear their evidence against him ; and when 
 he is stripped for examination, his whole person is 
 found to be livid with the marks imprinted on it by 
 his crimes. The only question is what punishment 
 shall be assigned him. The Cynic philosopher begs to 
 suggest a new and fitting one. 
 
 Cyniscus. It is the custom, I believe, for all your 
 dead here to drink the. water of Lethe? 
 
 Rhadamanthus. Certainly. 
 
 Gyn. Then let this man alone not be permitted to 
 taste it. 
 
 Jihad. And why so ? 
 
 Cyn. So shall he suffer the bitterest punishment 
 in the recollection of all that he has been and done,
 
 76 LUC I AN. 
 
 and all the power he had while on earth, and in the 
 thought of his past pleasures. 
 
 Rltad. Excellently well advised ! Sentence is passed. 
 Let him he fettered and carried away to Tartarus, 
 there to rememher all his past life. 
 
 The keen intellect which rejected, as some of the 
 greatest minds of antiquity had done before him, the 
 inventions of poet and mythologist as to the future 
 state, could appreciate the awful truth of a moral hell 
 which the sinner carried always within him. Lucian 
 would have said, Avith that great Roman poet who found 
 no refuge from superstition hut in materialism, — 
 
 " No vultures rend the breast of Tityos, 
 As his vast bulk lies tost on Acheron's wave ; 
 
 But lie is Tityos, whose prostrate soul 
 The fani^s of guilty love and vain regret, 
 And fruitless longings ever vex and tear." * 
 
 In that thought, at least, the Christian poet is in 
 accord with the heathen. It is the punishment which 
 Milton imagines for the Great Tempter himself : — 
 
 " Horror and doubt distract 
 His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir 
 The Hell within him ; for within him Hell 
 He brings, and round about him now from Hell 
 One step, no more than from himself, can fly 
 By change of place ; now conscience works despair 
 That slumhered, — wakes the bitter memory 
 Of what he was, what is, and what must he." t 
 
 * Lucretius, iii. 997. + Par. Lost, iv. 18.
 
 CHARON'S VISIT TO THE WORLD. 77 
 
 charon's visit to the upper world. 
 
 This is one of the author's best pieces, and though 
 classed amongst the miscellaneous Dialogues, may 
 very well find a place here. The dramatis persona: 
 are the same, and the contrast between the world 
 of the living and the world of ghosts is still the 
 theme. 
 
 MERCURY AND CHARON. 
 
 Mercury. "What are you laughing about, Charon? 
 And what has made you leave your boat and come up 
 here into our parts 1 You don't very often favour us 
 with a visit. 
 
 Charon. Well, I had a fancy, Master Mercury, to 
 see what kind of a thing human life was, and what 
 men do in the world, and what it is that they have to 
 leave behind them, that they all bemoan themselves so 
 when they come down our way. For you know that 
 never a one of them makes the voyage without tears. 
 So I begged leave of absence from Pluto, just for a 
 day, like Protesilaus, and came up here into the day- 
 light. And I think myself very lucky in falling in 
 with you ; you'll be good enough to act as my guide, I 
 know, and go round with me and show me everything 
 . — you knoAV all about it. 
 
 Merc. Really, Mr Ferryman, I can't spare time. I 
 have to go off to do an errand for Jupiter upon earth. 
 He's very irascible, and if I loiter on the road, I fear he 
 may banish me entirely into your dark dominions, or 
 do to me as he did to Vulcan lately, — take me by the
 
 78 LUCIAN. 
 
 foot and pitch me down from heaven, and so I shall 
 have to go limping round with the wine, like him. 
 
 Cha. And will you let me go wandering about the 
 earth and losing my way — you, my old friend and 
 messmate ? It wouldn't be amiss for you to remember, 
 my lad, how I have never made you bale the boat, or 
 even pull an oar, but you lie snoring on the deck, for 
 all those great broad shoulders ; or if you find any talk- 
 ative fellow among the dead men, you chatter with him 
 all the way over, leaving a poor old fellow like me to 
 pull both oars myself. By your father's beard, now, 
 my good Mercury, don't go away ! Show me round 
 this upper world, that I may see something before I go 
 home again. Why, if you leave me here by myself, I 
 shall be no better than the blind men. Just as they 
 go stumbling about in the darkness, so do I in this 
 confounded light. Oblige me now, Mercury, do — and 
 I'll never forget the favour. 
 
 Merc. This job will cost me a beating, I plainly fore- 
 see — all the wages I shall get for acting as guide will 
 be blows. But I suppose I must oblige you : what 
 can a fellow do when a friend presses him 1 But as 
 to seeing everything thoroughly, Mr Ferryman, that's 
 impossible — it would take a matter of years. There 
 would have to be a hue and cry sent after me by 
 Jupiter, as a runaway ; and it would stop your busi- 
 ness in the service of Death, and Pluto's empire would 
 suffer, by your stopping all transportation there for 
 some time ; and then iEacus woidd be in a rage about 
 his fees, when he found not an obol coming in. But 
 I'll manage to let you sec what's best worth seeing.
 
 CHARON'S VISIT TO THE WORLD. 79 
 
 Cha. You know "best, Mercury ; I'm a perfect 
 stranger here, and know nought about this upper 
 world. 
 
 Merc. First, then, Ave must find some commanding 
 spot, where you can see everything from. If you could 
 have got up into heaven, now, there would have been 
 no trouble — you might see it all from there, as from a 
 watch-tower. However, since your ghostly functions 
 are a bar to your admittance into Jove's dominions, 
 we must look out for a good high mountain. 
 
 Cha. You know what I used to say when Ave Avere 
 aboard my boat. Whenever the wind took us on the 
 quarter, and the waves rose high, then you, in your ig- 
 norance, Avould be calling to me to shorten sail, or let go 
 the sheet, or run before the wind, — and I always bid 
 you all sit still and hold your tongues — I knew what 
 Avas best to be done. So noAV do you just take Avhat 
 course you think best : you are captain uoav ; and I, as 
 all passengers should do, Avill sit still and do as you 
 tell me. 
 
 Merc. Very right. I know the "best plan, and I'll 
 soon find a good look-out place. Would Caucasus do 1 ? 
 or is Parnassus higher — or Olympus higher still] 
 When I look at Olympus, a bright idea comes into my 
 head ; but you must help me, and do your fair share 
 of the Avork. 
 
 Cha. Give your orders — I'll help as far as I 
 can. 
 
 Merc. The poet Homer says that the sons of Aloeus 
 — they Avere but two, and they were only youths — 
 designed once upon a time to wrench up Ossa and put
 
 80 LUCIAN. 
 
 it on. Olympus, and then Pelion on top of that — think- 
 ing so to get a good ladder to climb into heaven by. 
 Now those lads suffered for it, and it served them right, 
 for it was a very insolent trick. But you see we are 
 not scheming anything against the gods, so why should 
 not we two roll these mountains one on top of the 
 other, so as to get a good view from a commanding 
 position ? 
 
 Cha. And could we two by ourselves lift and carry 
 Pelion or Ossa? 
 
 Merc. Why not, Charon? you don't mean to say 
 that we are weaker than those two boys, — we, who are 
 divinities? 
 
 Cha. No ; but the thing itself seems, to my mind, 
 impossible. 
 
 Merc. Very likely ; because you're so illiterate, 
 Charon, and destitute altogether of the poetic faculty. 
 Eut that grand Homer makes a road into heaven in 
 two lines — he claps the mountains together so easily. I 
 wonder, too,, that this should seem to you such a pro- 
 digy, when you know how Atlas bears the weight of 
 the whole globe himself, and carries us all on his back. 
 I suppose you've heard, too, of my brother Hercules, 
 how he supplied Atlas's place once, just to allow him 
 a little rest, while he took the weight upon his own 
 shoulders ? 
 
 Cha. Yes, I've heard all about it ; but whether it 
 be true or not, you and the poet only know. 
 
 Merc. Quite true, I assure you, Charon : why shoidd 
 such clever men tell lies 1 So let's set to work upon 
 Ossa first, as the poet and his verse recommend ;
 
 CUARO.VS VISIT TO THE WORLD. _ 81. 
 
 "And on Ossa's top 
 They rolled the leafy Pelion." * 
 
 Do you see how easy it is 1 We've done it capitally 
 ■ — and most poetically. Now let me get up and see 
 whether it will do, or whether we must "build a little 
 higher yet. Ah ! we are still under the shadow of 
 Olympus, I see. Only Ionia and Lydia are visible 
 yet on the east : on the west, Ave can't see further than 
 Italy and Sicily : on the south, only this side the 
 Danube, — and Crete only indistinctly down here. I 
 say, Ferryman, we shall have to move 02ta too, and 
 then clap Parnassus on top of all. 
 
 Cha. So be it ; only take care we don't attempt 
 too much, — I mean, beyond what poetical probability 
 allows. Homer will prove a very unlucky architect 
 for us, if we tumble down with all this weight upon 
 us and break our skulls. 
 
 Merc. Never fear — it's all quite safe. Move OEta 
 now — now up with Parnassus. There — now I'll get 
 up and look again. All right — I can see everything. 
 Now you come up too. 
 
 Cha. Lend us a hand then, Mercury — it's no joke 
 getting up such a place as this. 
 
 Merc. Well, if you want to see everything, you 
 know, Charon, you can't expect to gratify your curiosity 
 and never risk your neck. But take fast hold of my 
 hand — and take care you don't put your foot upon a 
 slippery stone. Well done ! — now you're safe up. 
 Parnassus, luckily, has two tops, so you can sit upon 
 
 * Horn., Odyss. xL 
 A. c. vol. xviii. »
 
 82 LUC I AN. 
 
 one and I on the other. Now look all round you and 
 see what you can see. 
 
 Cha. I see a large extent of land, and as it were a 
 great lake all round it, and mountains and rivers bigger 
 than Cocytus or Phlegethon, — and men, — oh! such 
 little creatures ! and some kind of hiding-places or 
 "burrows they have. 
 
 Merc. Those are cities, -which you call burrows. 
 
 Cha. Do you know, Mercury, we seem to have done 
 no good, after all, in moving Parnassus, and (Eta, and 
 these other mountains ? 
 
 Merc. Why so 1 
 
 Cha. Because I can see nothing distinctly from 
 this height. I wanted not merely to see cities and 
 hills, as one does in a picture, hut men themselves, 
 and what they do, and what they talk about, — as 
 I did when you met me first and found me laugh- 
 ing ; I had just been uncommonly amused at some- 
 thing. 
 
 Merc. And what was that, pray 1 
 
 Cha. Some man had been invited by one of his 
 friends to dinner, I conclude, for to-morrow. " I'll be 
 sure to come," says he — and just as he was speaking, 
 down comes a tile from the roof somehow, and kills 
 him. So I laughed to think he couldn't keep his 
 appointment. And now I think I had better get down 
 again, that I may see and hear better. 
 
 Merc. Stay where you are. I've a remedy for this 
 difficulty too. I can make you marvellously keen- 
 sighted, by using a certain incantation from Homer, 
 invented for this special purpose. The moment I say
 
 CHARON'S VISIT TO THE WORLD. 83 
 
 the words, you'll find no more difficulty as to vision, 
 but will see everything quite plain. 
 
 CJia. Say them, then. 
 
 Merc. 
 
 " Lo ! from this earthly mist I purge thy sight, 
 
 That thou may'st know both gods and men aright."* 
 
 How now 1 Can you see better 1 
 
 Clia. Wonderful ! Lynceus himself would be blind 
 in comparison ! Now explain things to me, and answer 
 my questions. But first, would you like me to ask you 
 a question out of Homer, that you may see I'm not 
 quite ignorant of the great poet? 
 
 Mere. How come you to know anything about him, 
 — a sailorflike you, always at the oar 1 
 
 Cha. Look here now, — that's very disrespectful to my 
 craft. Why, when I carried him across after he was 
 dead, I heard him rhapsodising all the way, and I 
 remember some of it. A terrible storm we had. that 
 voyage, too. He began some chant of not very happy 
 omen for seafaring folk, — how Neptune gathered the 
 clouds, and troubled the sea— stirring it up with his 
 trident, like a ladle — rousing all the winds and every- 
 thing else. He so disturbed the water with his poetry, 
 that all on a sudden we had a perfect tempest about 
 us, and the boat was wellnigh overset. Well, then, 
 he fell sick himself, and vomited up great part of his 
 poem, — Scylla and Charybdis, and the Cyclops, and 
 all. I had no great trouble in picking up a few scraps 
 of the contents. So, as the poet has it, — 
 
 * Horn., II. v. 127.
 
 84 LUC IAN. 
 
 " Who is yon stalwart warrior, tall and strong,' 
 By head and shoulders towering o'er the throng ?" 
 
 Merc. That's Milo of Crotona, the great wrestler. 
 The Greeks are applauding him because he has just 
 lifted a bull and is carrying it across the arena. 
 
 Cha. They'll have much better reason to applaud 
 me, Mercury, when I get hold of Milo himself, as I 
 shall do very shortly, and clap him on board my boat, 
 when he comes down our way after having been thrown 
 by that invincible wrestler, Death ; no back-trick 
 that he knows can manage him. He'll weep and groan 
 then, we shall see, when he remembers all his laurels 
 and triumphs ; but now he is very proud kjcause they 
 all admire him for carrying the bull. Do yorbsuppose, 
 now, that man ever expects to die ? 
 
 The visitor from the lower world, under Mercury's 
 instruction, surveys many other scenes in human life. 
 Space and Chronology are, of course, set entirely at 
 defiance under the potent incantation which Mercury 
 has borrowed from the poet — as they are, indeed, 
 sometime-s by poets themselves. He sees Cyrus plan- 
 ning his great expedition against Crcesus ; overhears 
 the latter monarch holding his celebrated conversation 
 with Solon on the great question of human happiness ; 
 is shown the Scythian Tomyris on her white horse, the 
 savage queen who is to give the Persian conqueror 
 " his fill of blood." He sees the too fortunate Poly- 
 crates receiving back his lost ring from the fisherman, 
 and learns from his guide (who has heard it as a secret
 
 CU A RON'S VISIT TO THE WORLD. 85 
 
 from Clotho) tlio miserable end of the tyrant's pros- 
 perity. Then Mercury shows him the now desolate 
 site of what once was Nineveh, and tells him how the 
 great Babylon is fated to perish in like manner. As 
 for the remains of Mycenae, and Argos, and, above all, 
 of the renowned Troy, — these Mercury is afraid to 
 show his friend, lest when he returns to the Shades 
 below he should strangle the poet for his exaggerations. 
 The whole dialogue is very fine, and in a higher tone 
 than is Lucian's wont to use, though no writer could 
 use it with better effect. 
 
 Cha. Strange and multiform indeed is the crowd I 
 see, andjiuman life seems full of trouble. And their 
 cities are like hives of bees, in which each has his own 
 sting, and therewith attacks his neighbour ; and some, 
 like wasps, plunder and harry the weaker. But who 
 are that crowd of shadows, invisible to them, who 
 hover over their heads ] 
 
 Merc. These, Charon, are Hope, and Fear, and 
 Madness ; and Lusts, and Desires, and Passions, and 
 Hate, and suchlike. Of these, Folly mingles with the 
 crowd below, and is, as one may say, their fellow-citizen. 
 So also Hate, and Anger, and Jealousy, and Ignorance, 
 and Distress, and Covetousness. But Fear and Hope 
 hover above them ; and the first, when she swoops 
 down upon them, drives them out of their minds, and 
 makes them cower and shudder ; whilst Hope, still 
 fluttering over them, the instant one thinks he has 
 surely laid hold of her, flies up out of his reach, and 
 leaves him balked and gaping, like Tantalus below,
 
 86 LVCIAN. 
 
 when the water flies his lips. Also, if you look close, 
 you will see the Fates too hovering over them, each 
 with her spindle, whence are drawn slender threads 
 which are attached to all. 
 
 Charon compares human life to the buhhles which 
 rise and float along the stream — some small, which 
 quickly burst and disappear ; some larger, which at- 
 tract others in their course, and so grow larger still, 
 but which soon break also in their turn, and vanish 
 into nothing ;* and Mercury assures him that his com- 
 parison is quite as good as Homer's celebrated one of the 
 leaves on the trees. It puzzles him also to discover what 
 there is in this life so very desirable, that men should 
 so take the loss of it to heart; and he would fain 
 himself take a journey to earth, and preach wisdom to 
 these miserable mortals, to warn them to " cease from 
 vanity, and live with death ever before their eyes. 
 1 fools ! ' I would say to them, ' why are ye anxious 
 about such little things ] Cease from thus wearying 
 yourselves ; ye cannot live for ever : none of those 
 tilings ye so admire is everlasting, nor can a man carry 
 aught of it away with him when he dies, but naked 
 he must depart below ; and house and lands and gold 
 must change their master, and pass into other hands.' " 
 
 But all such preaching, Mercury assures him, would 
 be in vain. Their ears are so fast stopped with error 
 and ignorance, that no surgeon's instrument can bore 
 them. What Lethe does for the dead, obstinacy does 
 
 * Jeremy Taylor has adopted and enlarged this passage from 
 Lucian, in the opening paragraph of his "Holy Dying."
 
 CHARON'S VISIT TO THE WORLD. 87 
 
 for the living. Some there are, however, among these 
 mortals, " whose ears are open to the voice of truth, 
 and whose vision is purged to see the things of human 
 life in their real aspect." Charon would read his 
 lesson, then, to them. " That would be labour lost," 
 replies Mercury, " to teach them what they know well 
 already. See how they sit apart from the vulgar herd, 
 smiling at all that passes, and feeling never any kind 
 of satisfaction in it : but plainly meditating an escape 
 to your quiet regions, out of the weariness of life ; 
 hated, moreover, as they are by their fellows, because 
 they seek to convict them of their folly." "These 
 seem but few," says Charon. "They are enough," 
 replies Mercury. Enough to be the salt of the earth ; 
 such, even in the heathen's estimate, must always be 
 few. And cynicism and suicide, — these, as we see, 
 were the heathen's remedies for the vanity and vexa- 
 tion of life.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LUCIAN AND THE PHILOSOPHERS. 
 
 The great success and reputation achieved by the 
 early Greek philosophers, and especially by those who 
 professed Rhetoric and Dialectics, naturally led to the 
 assumption of the character by a host of successors, 
 many of them mere pretenders. It was a profession 
 not only tempting to a man's self-conceit, but to his 
 love of gain : for, in spite of the protest of one at least 
 of the great teachers of antiquity — Socrates — against 
 debasing philosophy to a mere trade by accepting 
 money for discoursing on it, it had not unnaturally 
 become the custom to take fees both for public lectures 
 and for private instruction. For a philosopher had to 
 live, like other men. The Antonine Caesars, zealous 
 for the education of their subjects, founding lecture- 
 ships and endowing colleges throughout their empire, 
 possibly encouraged too much the mere pretenders to 
 learning by the liberality of their grants, and the ire 
 of the satirist may have been justly roused by the un- 
 worthiness of many of the recipients.* 
 
 * " Beaucoup de gens se faisaient philosophes parce que Marc 
 Aurele les enrichissait." — Champagny, "Les Antonines," iii.
 
 LVCIAN AND THE PHILOSOPHERS.. 89 
 
 Athens was still the great resort for professors of 
 all sciences, from all countries, and of all characters. 
 The genius of the people insured such visitors a wel- 
 come reception. Talk was the Athenian's privilege and 
 his delight. " To tell or to hear some new thing," is 
 St Paul's brief epitome of the life of the Athenian 
 multitude of his day — and contemporary history does 
 hut amplify the apostle's report. Nor is it to he sup- 
 posed that the wisest or the most honest teacher was 
 always the most popular ; rather, the boldest and 
 least scrupulous pretenders were perhaps the most sure 
 of an audience. As in our own clays, the medicine 
 whieliis. put forward as a cure for all diseases is secure 
 of a wide sale, among the vulgar ; so the lecturer who 
 professed universal knowledge — and there were plenty 
 of such — did not fail of commending himself to the 
 greedy ears of the Athenian populace. There were 
 men who announced themselves as prepared — for a 
 consideration — to dispute on any imaginable subject of 
 human knowledge, or to reply to any question which 
 curiosity might propose. Especially were those sought 
 after who professed to teach the great secret of beating 
 an opponent in argument, right or wrong ; an enviable 
 accomplishment, unfortunately, in the eyes of most 
 intellectual people, but especially of men Avho took 
 so much part in public life as did the Athenian 
 commons. 
 
 To such an extent had this passion for talk in all its 
 forms — whether in propounding the most startling 
 
 222. The whole passage, as an illustration of Lucian, well de- 
 serves attention. 
 
 '{rO~c < 
 
 <*-»
 
 90 LUGIAN. 
 
 theories of morals or metaphysics, or in the most in- 
 genious fencing with the weapons of logic and rhetoric 
 ■ — spread itself in Lucian's day, that the abuses of the 
 Schools presented an ample and tempting field for so 
 keen a satirist. Add to this that he himself had been 
 very much as it were behind the scenes ; that in so 
 far as he had been a real seeker after wisdom and an 
 honest teacher of the truth, he had seen how these 
 were disregarded by the pretended philosophers of 
 his day ; or in so far as he had lent himself to the 
 common temptation, and had regarded gain and repu- 
 tation more than a conscientious utterance of what 
 truth he knew, hejwould have experienced how very 
 
 readily a few specious phrases and plausible asser- 
 tions pass for wisdom with the multitude, and how 
 often the unintelligible may be made to do duty for 
 the sublime. 
 
 Next to the absurdities of the popular religion, then, 
 those of the pretenders to philosophy lay invitingly 
 open to the attack of the satirist. The fact that in 
 both cases such attack had to be made upon a strong 
 position, guarded by much popular prejudice and by 
 many private interests, would be only an additional 
 reason for engaging in it. He looked upon both 
 systems as what a modern satirist would call " enor- 
 mous shams," and the success of the imposture made 
 the work of unmasking it all the more exciting. In 
 both cases, truth suffered more or less under the un- 
 discriminating ridicule which could not afford to spoil ' 
 its point by making distinctions and exceptions. As 
 in his merciless dissection of the so-called divinities of
 
 LUCIAN AND THE PHILOSOPHERS. 91 
 
 the pagan heaven, he seems often to repudiate the 
 existence of any divine principle at all ; so when he 
 holds up to derision the charlatans and impostors who 
 sheltered themselves under the names of the great 
 masters of old times, and who pushed their tenets to 
 absurdity, he lays himself open to the charge of carica- 
 turing those venerable sages themselves. 
 
 But, in truth, veneration for great names is a luxury 
 in which the satirist by profession can rarely afford to 
 indulge. The exigencies of his craft go nigh to forbid 
 him to hold anything sacred. We know how con- 
 stantly, even in our more decorous modern days, the 
 man who has a keen taste for humour and a reputation 
 for being amusing is tempted to make jests which savour 
 of profanity, while he may very possibly be no more 
 profane at heart than those who profess themselves 
 shocked by his levity of tone. It has been remarked 
 already, in one of the preceding volumes of this series, 
 in speaking of Aristophanes, that we may be quite Avrong 
 in assuming that he bore any malice against Socrates, 
 or was insensible to the higher qualities of his char- 
 acter, because he found that it suited his purpose to 
 caricature some of the eccentricities of so well known 
 a personage for the comic stage : and we may be doing 
 Lucian equal injustice in accusing him of atheism, 
 because in his writings he touches only the absurd side 
 of a faith which was fast passing away and leaving as 
 yet nothing in its place ; or in thinking that he sneers 
 at all great intellectual discoveries, because he found 
 in the contradictions and the sophistries of the Schools 
 such congenial matter for his pen. And although,
 
 92 LUCIAN. 
 
 like Aristophanes, he uses well-known names from 
 time to time for the persons of his drama, anything 
 like what we call personality was probably far from 
 his thoughts. " Lucian," says Eanke, " spoke after 
 the manner of ancient comedy, — things true, not of 
 this or that individual, but of bodies, of communities, 
 of society in general." 
 
 With this reservation the reader will perhaps judge 
 more fairly the broad farce — for this is what it really 
 is — of the Dialogue which follows. 
 
 THE SALE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS. 
 
 Scene, a Slave-mart; Jupiter, Mercury, Philoso- 
 phers in the garb of slaves for sale; audience 
 of Buyers. 
 
 Jupiter. Now, you arrange the benches, and get the 
 place ready for the company. You bring out the 
 goods, and set them in a row ; but trim them up a 
 little first, and make them look their best, to attract as 
 many customers as possible. You, Mercury, must put 
 up the lots, and bid all comers welcome to the sale. — 
 Gentlemen, Ave are here going to offer you philosophi- 
 cal systems of all kinds, and of the most varied and in- 
 genious description. If any gentleman happens to be 
 short of ready money, he can give his security for the 
 amount, and pay next year. 
 
 Mercury (to Jupiter). There are a great many 
 come ; so we had best begin at once, and not keep 
 them waiting.
 
 THE SALE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS. 93 
 
 Jup. Begin the sale, then. 
 
 Merc. Whom shall we put up first ? 
 
 Jup. This fellow with the long hair, — the Ionian. 
 He's rather an imposing personage. 
 
 Merc. You, Pythagoras ! step out, and show yourself 
 to the company. 
 
 Jup. Put him up. 
 
 Merc. Gentlemen, Ave here offer you a professor of 
 the very best and most select description — who buys 1 
 Who wants to be a cut above the rest of the world 1 
 Who wants to understand the harmonies of the uni- 
 verse? and to live two lives?* 
 
 Customer {fuming the Philosopher round and ex- 
 amining him). He's not bad to look at. What does 
 he know best % 
 
 * Mr Grote, in the introductory chapter of his Plato, thus 
 sketches the Pythagorean doctrine of "The Music of the 
 Spheres." "The revolutionsof such grand bodies [the Sun and 
 Planets] could not take place, in the opinion of the Pythago- 
 reans, without producing a loud aud powerful sound ; and as 
 their distances from the central fire were supposed to be arranged 
 in musical ratios, so the result of all these separate sounds was 
 full and perfect harmony. To the objection — Why were not 
 these sounds heard by us ? — they replied, that we had heard 
 them constantly and without intermission from the hour of our 
 birth ; hence they had become imperceptible by habit." 
 
 The "two lives" is of course an allusion to Pythagoras's 
 notion of the transmigration of souls. It is said of him that he 
 professed to be conscious of having been formerly Euphorbus, 
 one of the chiefs present at the siege of Troy, and of having 
 subsequently borne other shapes. There is also a story of his 
 having interfered on behalf of a dog which was being beaten, 
 declaring that in its cries he recognised "the voice of a de- 
 parted friend."
 
 94 LUCIAN. 
 
 Merc. Arithmetic, astronomy, prognostics, geometry, 
 music, and conjuring — you've a first-rate soothsayer 
 hefore you. 
 
 Cast. May one ask him a few questions 1 
 
 Merc. Certainly — (aside) and much good may the 
 answers do you. 
 
 Cust. What country do you come from ? 
 
 Pythagoras. Samos. 
 
 Cust. Where were you educated ? 
 
 Pyth. In Egypt, among the wise men there. 
 
 Cust. Suppose I buy you, now — what will you teach 
 me? 
 
 Pyth. I will teach you nothing — only recall things 
 to your memory.* 
 
 Cust. How will you do that 1 
 
 Pyth. First, I will clean out your mind, and wash 
 out all the rubbish. 
 
 Cust. W r ell, suppose that done, how do you proceed 
 to refresh the memory? 
 
 Pyth. First, by long repose, and silence — speaking 
 no word for five whole years. t 
 
 * That "all knowledge' is but recollection" is an assertion 
 attributed both to Pythagoras and Plato. The idea of "an 
 immortal soul always learning and forgetting in successive 
 periods of existence, having seen and known all things at one 
 time or other, and by association with one thing capable of 
 recovering all," may be seen discussed in Plato's Dialogue, 
 " Meno," 81, 82, &c. 
 
 + The injunction of a period of silence upon neophytes (tho 
 " five years " is most likely an exaggeration) was plainly 
 meant as a check upon their presuming to teach before they had 
 matured their knowledge. " It would be not unserviceable " 
 (says Tooke) "in our own age, by preventing many of our raw
 
 THE SALE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS. 95 
 
 Oust. Why, look ye, my good fellow, you'd best go 
 teach the dumb son of Crcesus ! I want to talk, and 
 not be a dummy. Well, — but after this silence and 
 these five years 1 
 
 Pijth. You shall learn music and geometry. 
 
 Oust. A queer idea, that one must be a fiddler before 
 one can be a wise man ! 
 
 Pyth. Then you shall learn the science of numbers. 
 
 Cast. Thank you, but I know how to count already. 
 
 Pyth. How do you count 1 
 
 Oust. One, two, three, four — 
 
 Pyth. Ha ! what you call four is ten, and the per- 
 fect triangle, and the great oath by which Ave swear.* 
 
 Oust. Now, so help me the great Ten and Four, I 
 never heard more divine or more wonderful words ! 
 
 Pyth. And afterwards, stranger, you shall learn 
 about Earth, and Air, and Water, and Fire, — what is 
 their action, and what their form, and what their 
 motion. 
 
 Oust. What ! have Fire, Air, or Water bodily shape ? 
 
 Pyth. Surely they have ; else, without form and 
 shape, how could they move? — Besides, you shall 
 learn that the Deity consists in Number, Mind, and 
 Harmony. 
 
 Cust. What you say is really wonderful ! 
 
 Pyth. Besides what I have just told you, you shall 
 
 young divines exposing themselves in the pulpit before they 
 have read their Greek Testament." 
 
 * Ten being the sum of 1, 2, 3, 4. Number, in the system 
 of Pythagoras, was the fundamental principle of all things : ia 
 the Monad— Unity • — he recognised the Deity.
 
 96 LUCIAN. 
 
 understand that you yourself, who seem to he one indi- 
 vidual, are really somebody else. 
 
 Cast. What ! do you mean to say I'm somebody else, 
 and not myself, now talking to you 1 
 
 Pyth. Just at this moment you are ; but once upon a 
 time you appeared in another body, and under another 
 name ; and hereafter you will pass again into another 
 shape stilL 
 
 [After a little more discussion of this philosopher's 
 tenets, he is purchased on behalf of a company of pro- 
 fessors from Magna Grecia, for ten minse. The next 
 lot is Diogenes, the Cynic] 
 
 Merc. Who'll you have next? That dirty fellow 
 from Pontus? 
 
 Jup. Ay — he'll do. 
 
 Merc. Here ! you with the wallet on your back, — 
 you round-shouldered fellow ! come out, and walk round 
 the ring. — A grand character, here, gentlemen ; a most 
 extraordinary and remarkable character, I may say ; a 
 really free man here I have to offer you — who'll buy 1 
 
 Cust. How say you, Mr Salesman 1 ? Sell a free 
 citizen 1 
 
 Merc. Oh yes. 
 
 Cust. Are you not afraid he may bring you before 
 the court of Areopagus for kidnapping 1 ? 
 
 Merc. Oh, he doesn't mind about being sold ; he 
 says he's free wherever he goes or whatever becomes of 
 him. 
 
 Cust. But what could one do with such a dirty,
 
 THE SALE OF THii PHILOSOPHERS. 97 
 
 wretched-looking body — unless one were to make 
 a ditcher or a water-carrier of him 1 
 
 Merc. Well, or if you employ him as door-porter, 
 you'll find him more trustworthy than any dog. In 
 fact, ' Dog ' is his name. 
 
 Cast. "Where does he come from, and what does ho 
 profess ? 
 
 M n rc. Ask him — that will be most satisfactory. 
 
 Cust. I'm afraid of him, he looks so savage and 
 sulky ; perhaps he'll bark if I go near him, or even 
 bite me, I shouldn't wonder. Don't you see how 
 he handles his club, and knits his brows, and looks 
 threatening and angry 1 
 
 Merc. Oh, there's no fear — he's quite tame. 
 
 Cust. (approaching Diogenes cautiously). First, my 
 good fellow, of what country are you 1 
 
 Diogenes {surlily). All countries. 
 
 Cust. How can that be 1 
 
 Diog. I'm a citizen of the world. 
 
 Cust. What master do you profess to follow ? 
 
 Diog. Hercules. 
 
 Cust. Why don't you adopt the lion's hide, then ? 
 I see you have the club. 
 
 Diog. Here's my lion's hide, — this old cloak. Like 
 Hercules, I wage war against pleasure ; but not under 
 orders, as he did, but of my own free will. My choice 
 is to cleanse human life. 
 
 Cust. A very good choice too. Eut what do you 
 profess to know best? or of what art are you 
 master 1 ? 
 
 Diog. I am the liberator of mankind, the physician 
 a. c. vol. xviii. a
 
 98 LUCIAN. 
 
 of the passions ; in short, I claim to he the prophet ol 
 truth and liberty. 
 
 Cust. Come now, Sir Prophet, suppose I buy you, 
 after what fashion will you instruct me ] 
 
 Dior/. I shall first take and strip you of all your 
 luxury, confine you to poverty, and put an old gar- 
 ment on you : then I shall make you work hard, and 
 lie on the ground, and drink water only, and fill your 
 belly with whatever comes first ; your money, if you 
 have any, at my bidding you must take and throw 
 into the sea ; and you must care for neither wife nor 
 children, nor country ; and hold all things vanity ; 
 and leave your father's house and sleep in an empty 
 tomb, or a ruined tower, — ay, or in a tub : and have 
 your wallet filled with lentils, and parchments close- 
 written on both sides. And in this state you shall 
 profess yourself happier than the King of the East. 
 And if any man beats you, or tortures you, this you 
 shall hold to be not painful at all. 
 
 Cust. How ! do you mean to say I shall not feel 
 pain when I'm beaten 1 Do you think I've the shell 
 of a crab or a tortoise, man 1 
 
 Dlog. You can quote that line of Euripides, you 
 know, — slightly altered. 
 
 Cud. And what's that, pray ] 
 
 Ding. 
 
 " Thy mind shall feel pain, but thy tongue confess none." * 
 
 15 ut the qualifications you will most require are these : 
 you must be unscrupulous, and brazen-faced, and ready 
 
 * This unfortunate quibble of Euripides, which he puts into
 
 THE SALE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS. 99 
 
 to revile prince and peasant alike ; so shall men tako 
 notice of you, and hold you for a brave man. More- 
 over, let your speech he rough, and your voice harsh, 
 and in fact like a dog's growl ; and your countenance 
 rigid, and your gait corresponding to it, and your 
 manner generally hrute-like and savage. All modesty 
 and gentleness and moderation put far from you ; the 
 faculty of blushing you must eradicate utterly. Seek 
 the most crowded haunts of men ; but when there, 
 keep solitary, and hold converse with none ; address 
 neither friend nor stranger, for that would be the 
 ruin of your empire. Do in sight of all what others 
 are almost ashamed to do alone. At the last, if 
 you choose, choke yourself with a raw polypus, or 
 an onion.* And this happy consummation I devoutly 
 wish you. 
 
 Cast, (recovering from some astonishment). Get 
 out with you ! what abominable and unnatural prin- 
 ciples ! 
 
 Diog. But very easy to carry out, mind you, and 
 not at all difficult to learn. One needs no education, 
 or reading, or such nonsense, for this system ; it's the 
 real short cut to reputation. Be you the most ordi- 
 nary person, — cobbler, sausagcmonger, carpenter, pawn- 
 
 the mouth of Hippolytus in his play (Hipp. 612) as a defence 
 of perjury,— 
 
 " My tongue hath sworn it— but my thought was free " — 
 
 was a never- failing subject of parody to his critics and 
 satirists. 
 
 * The first mode of suicide was said to have been adopted 
 by the philosopher Democritus.
 
 100 LUCIAN. 
 
 broker, — nothing hinders your being the object 
 of popular admiration, provided only that you've 
 impudence enough, and brass enough, and a happy 
 talent for bad language. 
 
 Oust. "Well, I don't require your instructions in 
 that line. Possibly, however, you might do for a 
 bargeman or a gardener,* at a pinch, if this party 
 has a mind to sell you for a couple of oboli, — I 
 couldn't give more. 
 
 Merc, (eagerly). Take him at your own bidding ; 
 •we're glad to get rid of him, he is so troublesome, 
 — bawls so, and insults everybody up and down, 
 and uses such very bad language. 
 
 Jap. Call out the next — the Cyrenaic there, in 
 purple, with the garland on. 
 
 Merc. Now, gentlemen, let me beg your best atten- 
 tion. This next lot is a very valuable one — quite 
 suited to parties in a good position. Here's Pleasure 
 and Perfect Happiness, all for sale ! Who'll give me 
 a bidding now, for perpetual luxury and enjoyment? 
 \_A Cyrenaic, bearing traces of recent debauch, staggers 
 into the ring.'] 
 
 Gust. Come forward here, and tell us what you 
 know : I shouldn't mind buying you, if you've any 
 useful qualities. 
 
 Merc. Don't disturb him, sir, if you please, just 
 now — don't ask him any questions. The truth is, he 
 
 * For the accomplishments of the bargemen and vine- 
 dressers in the way of bad language we have Horace's testi- 
 mony, Sat. i. 5 and 7. The first-mentioned fraternity bear the 
 same reputation stilL
 
 THE SALE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS. 101 
 
 has taken a little too much ; that's why he doesn't 
 answer — his tongue's not quite steady. 
 
 Cast And who in their senses, do you suppose, 
 would huy such a dehauched and drunken rascal 1 ? 
 Faugh ! how he stinks of unguents ! and look how he 
 staggers and goes from side to side as he walks ! * But 
 tell us, now, Mercury, what qualifications he really 
 has, and what he knows anything about. 
 
 Merc. Well, he's very pleasant company — good to 
 drink with, and can sing and dance a little — useful to 
 a master who is a man of pleasure and fond of a gay 
 life. Besides, he is a good cook, and clever in made 
 dishes — and, in short, a complete master of the science 
 of luxury. He was brought up at Athens, and was 
 once in the service of the Tyrants of Sicily, who gave 
 him a very good character. The sum of his prin- 
 ciples is to despise everything, to make use of every- 
 thing, and to extract the greatest amount of pleasure 
 from everything. 
 
 Cust. Then you must look out for some other 
 purchaser, among the rich and wealthy here ; I can't 
 afford to huy such an expensive indulgence. 
 
 Merc. I fear, Jupiter, we shall have this lot left on 
 our hands — he's unsaleable. 
 
 * If this he really meant for Aristippns, the founder of the 
 Cvrcnaic philosophy, it is the most unfair presentation of all. 
 However some of his followers might have abused his prin- 
 ciples, his own character is probably much more fairly described 
 by Horace : — 
 
 " All lives sat well on Aristippns ; though 
 He liked the high, he yet could grace the low." 
 
 — Ep. I. xvii.
 
 102 LUC I AN. 
 
 Jup. Put him aside, and bring out another. Stay, 
 — those two there, that fellow from Ahdera who is 
 always laughing, and the Ephesian, who is always 
 crying ; I've a mind to sell them as a pair. 
 
 Merc. Stand out there in the ring, you two. — "We 
 offer you here, sirs, two most admirable characters, the 
 ■wisest we've had for sale yet. 
 
 Cust. By Jove, they're a remarkable contrast ! Why, 
 one of them never stops laughing, while the other 
 seems to be in trouble about something, for he's in 
 tears all the time. Holloa, you fellow ! what's all this 
 about 1 "What are you laughing at 1 
 
 Democrltus. Need you ask? Because everything 
 seems to me so ridiculous — you yourselves included. 
 
 Cust. What ! do you mean to laugh at us all to our 
 faces, and mock at all Ave say and do 1 
 
 Dem. Undoubtedly ; there's nothing in life that's 
 serious. Everything is unreal and empty — a mere 
 fortuitous concurrence of indefinite atoms. 
 
 Cust. You're an indefinite atom yourself, you rascal ! 
 Confound your insolence, won't you stop laughing? 
 But you there, poor soul (to Heraclitus), why do you 
 weep so 1 for there seems more use in talking to you. 
 
 Heraclitus. Because, stranger, everything in life 
 seems to me to call for pity and to deserve tears ; there 
 is nothing but what is liable to calamity ; wherefore 
 I mourn for men, and pity them. The evil of to-day I 
 regard not much : but I mourn for that which is to 
 come hereafter — the burning and destruction of all 
 things. This I grieve for, and that nothing is per- 
 manent, but all mingled, as it were, in one bitter cup,
 
 HIE SALE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS. 103 
 
 —pleasure that is no pleasure, knowledge that knows 
 nothing, greatness that is so little, all going round and 
 round and taking their turn in this game of life. 
 
 Oust. What do you hold human life to be, then? 
 
 Her. A child at play, handling its toys, and 
 changing them with every caprice. 
 
 Cast. And what are men? 
 
 Her. Gods — but mortal. 
 
 Oust. And the gods ? 
 
 Her. Men — but immortal. 
 
 Oust. You speak in riddles, fellow, and put us off 
 with puzzles. You are as bad as Apollo Loxias, giving 
 oracles that no man can understand. 
 
 Her. Yea ; I trouble not myself for any of ye. 
 
 Cast. Then no man in his senses is like to buy 
 you. 
 
 Her. Woe ! woe to every man of ye, I say ! buyers 
 or not buyers. 
 
 Oust. Why, this fellow is pretty near mad ! — I'll 
 have nought to do with either of them, for my part. 
 
 Merc, (turning to Jupiter). We shall have this pair 
 left on our hands too. 
 
 Jup. Put up another. 
 
 Merc. Will you have that Athenian there, who talks 
 so much? 
 
 Jup. Ay — try him. 
 
 Merc. Step out, there ! — A highly moral character, 
 gentlemen, and very sensible. Who makes me an 
 offer for this truly pious lot ? 
 
 [The morality which the satirist puts into the mouth 
 of Socrates, in his replies to the interrogatories of his
 
 104 LUCIAN. 
 
 would-be purchaser, is that which was attributed to him 
 — probably quite without foundation — by his enemies. 
 The customer next asks, where he lives ?] 
 
 Socrates. I live in a certain city of mine own build- 
 ing, a new model Eepublic, and I make laws for 
 myself.* 
 
 Oust. I should like to hear one of them. 
 
 Soc. Listen to my grand law of all, then, about 
 ■wives — that no man should have a wife of his own, 
 but that all should have wives in common. 
 
 Oust. What ! do you mean to say you have abro- 
 gated all the laws of marriage 1 
 
 Soc. It puts an end, you see, to so many difficult 
 questions, and so much litigation in the divorce 
 courts. 
 
 Cust. Grand idea that ! But what is the main 
 feature of your philosophy 1 
 
 Soc. The existence of ideals and patterns of all 
 things in nature. Everything you see — the earth, 
 and all that is on it, the heavens, the sea — of all 
 these there exist invisible ideals, external to this 
 visible universe. 
 
 Cust. And pray where are they 1 
 
 Soc. Nowhere. If they were confined to any place, 
 you see, they could not be at all. 
 
 Cust. I never see any of these ideals of yours. 
 
 Soc. Of course not : the eyes of your soul are 
 blind. But I can see the ideals of all things. I see 
 
 * It must be remembered that Plato, in his 'Republic,' 
 makes Socrates the expositor of his new polity throughout ; he 
 had probably derived at least the leading ideas from him.
 
 THE SALE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS. 105 
 
 an invisible double of yourself, and another self 
 besides myself — in fact, I see everything double. 
 
 Cast. Bless me ! I must buy you, you are so very 
 clever and sharp-sighted. Come (turning to Mercury), 
 what do you ask for him? 
 
 Marc. Give us two talents for him. 
 
 Cust. I'll take him at your price. I'll pay you 
 another time. 
 
 Merc. What's your name 1 
 
 Oust. Dion, of Syracuse. 
 
 Merc, {makes a note). Take him, and good luck to 
 you. Now, Epicurus, we want you. Who'll buy this 
 lot 1 He's a disciple of that laughing fellow, and also 
 of the other drunken party, whom we put up just 
 now. He knows more than either of them, however, 
 on one point — he's more of an infidel. Otherwise, 
 he's a pleasant fellow, and fond of good eating. 
 
 Cust. What's his price ? 
 
 Merc. Two minse. 
 
 Cust. Here's the money. But just tell us what he 
 likes best. 
 
 Merc. Oh, anything sweet — honey-cakes, and figs 
 especially. 
 
 Cust. They're easily got ; Carian rigs are cheap 
 enough. 
 
 J up. Now then, call another — him with the shaven 
 crown there, and gloomy looks — the one we got from 
 the Porch yonder. 
 
 Merc. You're right. I fancy a good many of out 
 customers who have come to the sale are waiting to 
 bid for him. — Now I'm going to offer you the most
 
 106 LUC I AN. 
 
 perfect article of all — Virtue personified. Who wants 
 to be the only man who knows everything ? 
 
 Gust. What do you mean 1 
 
 Here. I mean that here you have the only wise 
 man, the only handsome man, the only righteous man, 
 the true and only king, general, orator, legislator, and 
 everything else there is.* 
 
 Oust. The true and only cook then, I conclude, and 
 cobbler, and carpenter, and so forth ] 
 
 Merc. I conclude so too. 
 
 Oust. Come then, my good fellow — if I'm to pur- 
 chase you, tell me all about yourself ; and first let me 
 ask, with all these wonderful qualifications, are you 
 not mortified at being put up for sale here as a slave % 
 
 Chrysippus. Not at all : such things are external 
 to ourselves, and whatever is external to ourselves, it 
 follows must be matters of indifference to us. 
 
 [The Stoic proceeds to explain his tenets, in the 
 technical jargon of his school — which his listener de- 
 clares to be utterly incomprehensible, and on which 
 modern readers would pronounce much the same jud^- 
 
 * Lucian had evidently in his mind the humorous sketch of 
 the Stoic given by Horace, Sat. i. 3 : — 
 
 " What though the wise ne'er shoe or slipper made, 
 The wise is still a brother of the trade, — 
 Just as Hermogenes, when silent, still 
 Remains a singer of consummate skill — 
 As sly Alfenius, when he had let drop 
 His implements of art and shut up shop, 
 Was still a harber, — so the wise is best 
 In every craft, a king's among the rest."— (Conington.)
 
 THE SALE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS. 107 
 
 ment. His great accomplishment lies, as he him- 
 self professes, in the skilful handling of sophisms — 
 " word-nets," as he calls them — in which he entangles 
 his opponents, stops their months, and reduces 
 them to silence. He gives an example of his art, 
 which is a curious specimen of the kind of folly to 
 •which the wisdom of the ancients occasionally conde- 
 scended. A crocodile is supposed to have seized a hoy 
 in crossing a river, and promises to restore him to 
 his father if this latter can guess correctly what 
 he intends to do with him. If he guesses that the 
 crocodile means to give him back, he has guessed 
 wrong, because the crocodile's real intention is to eat 
 him. If he guesses that the crocodile means to eat 
 him, why then, if the crocodile gives him back after 
 all, the guess would plainly be proved wrong by the 
 result ; so that there seems no chance for the father, 
 guess which he will. The philosopher assures his 
 listener that this is but one out of many choice 
 examples of the sophistical art with Avhich he is pre- 
 pared to furnish him ; and when the other retorts upon 
 him somewhat in his own style, the Stoic threatens to 
 knock him down with an " indemonstrable syllogism," 
 the effect of which, he warns him, will be to plunge 
 him into " eternal doubt, everlasting silence, and dis- 
 traction of mind." In the end, however, he is pur- 
 chased by his interrogator for "self and company." 
 The next who is put up for sale is " the Peripatetic," 
 by whom Aristotle is clearly intended. With him the 
 satirist deals briefly and lightly, as though he had 
 some tenderness for that particular school. " You will
 
 108 LVC1AN. 
 
 find him," says the auctioneer, " moderate, upright, 
 consistent in his life — and what makes him yet more 
 valuable is that in him you are really buying two 
 men." "How do you make that out?" asks the cus- 
 tomer. " Because," explains Mercury, " he appears to 
 be one person outside and another inside ; and remem- 
 ber, if you buy him, you must call one ' esoteric ' and 
 the other ' exoteric' " With such recommendations, 
 the Peripatetic finds a ready purchaser for the large 
 sum of twenty minae. Last comes the Sceptic, Pyriho, 
 "who figures, by a slight change of name, as Pyrrhia, 
 a common appellation for a barbarian slave. The 
 intending purchaser asks him a few questions.] 
 
 Oust. Tell me, now, what do you know? 
 
 Pyrrhia. Nothing. 
 
 Oust. "What do you mean 1 
 
 Pijrrh. That nothing seems to me certain. 
 
 Gust. Are we ourselves nothing 1 
 
 Pijrrh. Well, that is what I am not sure of. 
 
 Cast. Don't you know whether you are anything 
 yourself? 
 
 Pijrrh. That is what I am still more in doubt about. 
 
 Cust. What a creature of doubts it is ! And what 
 are those scales for, pray 1 
 
 Pijrrh. I weigh arguments in them, and balance 
 them one against another ; and then, when I find them 
 precisely equal and of the same weight, why, I find it 
 impossible to tell which of them is true. 
 
 Cust. Well, is there anything you can do in any 
 other line of business 1
 
 THE SALE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS. 109 
 
 Pyrrh. Anything, except catcli a runaway slave. 
 
 Cust. And why can't you do that 1 
 
 Pyrrh. Because, you see, I've no faculty of appre- 
 hension* 
 
 Cust. So I should think — you seem to me quite 
 slow and stupid. And now, what do you consider 
 the main end of knowledge 1 
 
 Pyrrh. Ignorance — to hear nothing and see no- 
 thing. 
 
 Cust. You confess yourself blind and deaf then 1 
 
 Pyrrh. Yea, and void of sense and perception, and 
 in no wise differing from a worm. 
 
 Cust. I must buy you. (To Mercury.) What shall 
 we say for him 1 
 
 Merc. An Attic mina. 
 
 Cust Here 'tis. Now, fellow, have I bought you 
 or not — tell me I 
 
 Pyrrh. Well, it's a doubtful question. « 
 
 Cust. Not at all — at least I've paid for you. 
 
 Pyrrh. I reserve my opinion on that point; it 
 requires consideration. 
 
 Cust. Follow me, at all events — that's a servant's 
 duty. 
 
 Pyrrh. Are you sure you're stating a fact 1 
 
 Cust. (impatiently). There's the auctioneer, and 
 there's the money, and there are the bystanders to 
 witness. 
 
 Pyrrh. Are you sure there are any bystanders ? 
 
 * The pun here happens to he the same in English as in 
 Greek. But the Athenians were fonder of such word-play than 
 we are.
 
 110 luciajst. 
 
 Cast. I'll have you off to the grinding-house,* sir, and 
 make you feel I'm your master by very tangible proofs. 
 
 Pyrrh. Stay — I should like to argue that point a 
 little. 
 
 [The doubting philosopher is hurried off, still uncon- 
 vinced, by Mercury and his new owner, and the sale is 
 adjourned to the next day, when Mercury promises the 
 public that he shall have some cheaper bargains to 
 offer. The whole scene reads like a passage from the 
 old Aristophanic comedy ; and though some of the 
 allusions must necessarily lose much of their pungency 
 from our comparative ignorance of the popular phil- 
 osophy of Lucian's day, the humour of it is still 
 sufficiently entertaining.] 
 
 The professors of the various Schools of Philosophy 
 may well be supposed to have been loud in their in- 
 dignation at this caricature, and in their denunciation 
 of the author. Or at least it suited Lucian's purpose 
 to assume that they were so, and to make the wrath of 
 the solemn fraternity, real or imagined, the subject of 
 a Dialogue which follows by way of sequel to the first. 
 Possibly, also, he desired to guard against any miscon- 
 ception of his purpose in the satire, and to make it 
 clear that it was not against true philosophy or sound 
 science that he directed his wit, but against shallow and 
 conceited pretenders. This second Dialogue — " The Re- 
 suscitated Professors" — presents theauthor flying for his 
 life, pursued by a body of irate philosophers of all sects, 
 
 • Slaves who misbehaved were sent there, as the hardest work.
 
 TEE RESUSCITATED PROFESSORS. Ill 
 
 who have ohtained one clay's leave of ahsence from the 
 Shades helow to avenge themselves on their libeller. 
 
 THE RESUSCITATED PROFESSORS. 
 
 Socrates. Pelt the wretch ! pelt him with volleys of 
 stones, — throw clods at him, — oyster-shells ! Beat the 
 blasphemer with your clubs — don't let him escape ! 
 Hit him, Plato ! and you, Chrysippus ! and you ! — 
 Form a phalanx, and rush on him all together ! As 
 Homer says — " Let wallet join with wallet, club 
 with club ! " He is the common enemy of us all, and 
 there is no man among ye whom he has not insulted. 
 You, Diogenes, now use that staff of yours, if ever you 
 did ! Don't stop ! let him have it, blasphemer that he is ! 
 What ! tired already, Epicurus and Aristippus 1 You 
 ought not to be : — 
 
 " Be men, professors ! summon all your pluck ! " 
 
 Aristotle, do run a little faster ! — That's good ! we've 
 caught the beast ! We've got you, you rascal ! You 
 shall soon find ou^ who you've been abusing ! Now 
 what shall We do witft him 1 Let us think of some 
 multiform kind of death, that may suffice for all of us 
 — for he deserves a separate death from each. 
 
 Pliilosopher A. I vote that he be impaled. 
 
 Phil. B. Yes — but be well scourged first. 
 
 '3 V 
 
 Phil. C. Let his eyes be gouged out. 
 
 Phil. D. Ay — but his tongue should be cut out 
 first. 
 
 Soc. What think you, Empedocles 1 
 
 Empedocles. He should be thrown down the crater
 
 112 LUC I AN. 
 
 of some volcano, and so learn not to revile his 
 betters. 
 
 Plato. Nay — the Lest punishment for him will be 
 that, like Pentheus or Orpheus, — 
 
 " Torn by the ragged rocks he meet his fate." 
 
 Lucian. Oh no, no, pray ! spare me, for the love 
 of heaven ! 
 
 Soc. Sentence is passed : nothing can save you. 
 For, as Homer says, — 
 
 " 'Twixt men and lions, say, what truce can hold ? " 
 
 Luc. And I implore you, too, in Homer's words — 
 you will respect him, perhaps, and not reject me, when 
 I give you a recitation,— 
 
 " Spare a brave foe, and take a ransom meet, 
 Good bronze, and gold — which even wise men love." * 
 
 But his captors have an answer ready out of Homer's 
 inexhaustible repertory ; and an appeal which the 
 prisoner makes to Euripides is met in a similar man- 
 ner. Lucian begs at least to be heard in his own 
 defence. He will prove that he is really the champion 
 and patron of true philosophy, to whom he owes all 
 that he knows. Let him at least have a fair trial, 
 before any judge they please. None can be better 
 than Philosophy herself; but where can she be found? 
 Lucian himself does not know where she lives, though 
 he has often made inquiry. He has seen men in grave 
 
 * Parodied from Homer, II. x. 378, &c. But the last half-line 
 is Lucian's own.
 
 THE RESUSCITATED PROFESSORS. 113 
 
 habits, with long beards, who ought to have known, 
 but they bave always misdirected him. lie lias seen, 
 too, a flaunting woman, affecting to represent her, whose 
 hall of audience was thronged with visitors ; but he 
 had soon detected her as a mere impostor. 
 
 Plato agrees with him, that the dwelling of Philo- 
 sophy is hard to find, nor is her door open to all idle 
 comers. But while they are speaking, they meet her 
 walking in the portico ; and to her, by consent of both 
 parties, the prisoner's case is referred. Virtue, and 
 Temperance, and Justice, and Education, who are walk- 
 ing in her company, shall be her assessors in the court; 
 and Truth, " a colourless form, all but imperceptible " 
 — of whom Lucian himself has but a dim glimpse — 
 who brings with her Liberty and Free-speech. The 
 court is held in the temple of Minerva. The aggrieved 
 parties have to choose one of their number as formal 
 accuser ; and Chrysippus, in words of high eulogy 
 which may fairly be taken to express the serious 
 opinion of the author himself, suggests Plato as the 
 fittest for that office. The " marvellous sublimity of 
 thought, the Attic sweetness of diction, the persuasive 
 grace, and sagacity, and accuracy, and apposite illus- 
 trations ; the delicate irony and rapid interrogation," 
 which are here attributed to the great philosopher, are 
 all too genuine characteristics to have been introduced 
 ironically. But Plato declines the office, and the 
 Cynic Diogenes undertakes it, readily enough, dis- 
 gusted as he is at having been valued at no more than 
 two oboli at the late " Sale." He accuses Lucian of 
 endeavouring to bring all philosophy into contempt. 
 
 a. c. vol. xviii. H
 
 114 LUCIA N. 
 
 He is worse than the comedy-writers, Eupolis and 
 Aristophanes, who could at least plead in their excuse 
 the recognised licence of the Dionysiac festivals. He 
 calls for such a sentence on this profane libeller as 
 may deter others from following his example. Lucian 
 defends himself hy protesting that it is only sham 
 philosophers, " asses in lions' skins," who shelter their 
 pretensions under the shadow of great names, that he 
 lias attached ; it is they, not he, Avho hring Philosophy 
 into contempt. Such gross misrepresentations as 
 theirs are the less excusable because of the dignity of 
 the things which they misrepresent. " The actor who 
 performs badly the part of a slave or a messenger is 
 guilty of but a venial fault ; but to present a Jupiter 
 or a Hercules to the audience in a fashion unworthy 
 of the dignity of the character becomes wellnigh a 
 profanation." 
 
 The satirist is triumphantly acquitted. Even Plato 
 and Diogenes withdrew their accusation, and join in 
 hailing him as the real friend of Truth. It is resolved 
 to call up the false pretenders to philosophy for trial 
 before the same court. Lucian desires "Syllogism" — 
 that useful instrument of argument, who acts as crier 
 of the court — to summon them for this purpose ; but 
 a strict logical examination is exactly what these pro- 
 fessors shrink from. Lucian succeeds, however, in 
 securing their attendance by a proclamation of his own. 
 He announces a public distribution of money and corn 
 in the Acropolis ; and whoever can show a very long 
 beard shall be entitled to a basket of figs into the 
 bargain. They come in crowds— Stoics, Peripatetics,
 
 THE MODERN LATITUDE. 115 
 
 and Epicureans, each claiming to be served first. Tint 
 as soon as they hear of the investigation into their 
 lives and morals, as well as their professions, which 
 is to take place, all hut two or three take to flight in 
 a panic. Then Lucian adopts another plan to catch 
 them for examination : he hangs out from the wall of 
 the Acropolis a fisherman's rod and line, baited with a 
 cluster of figs and a purse of gold. They take the bait 
 eagerly, and are hauled up one after another; and as 
 each of the masters of philosophy repudiates all know- 
 ledge of them as true disciples, are thrown headlong 
 from the rock. Put as there is a risk lest some strong 
 fish should break the line and make off with the bait, 
 Lucian goes down into the city accompanied by Con- 
 viction (one of Philosophy's suite), prepared under her 
 guidance to crown with olive such as can stand the 
 test, and to brand conspicuously on the forehead, with 
 the impression of a fox or an ape, all Avhose profession 
 is a mere cloak for selfish ends. He foretells that 
 they will require for their purpose very few olive 
 crowns, but a good supply of branding-irons. 
 
 THE BANQUET; OR, THE MODERN BATTLE OF THE LAPITH^. 
 
 This is another humorous attack upon the Schools of 
 Philosophy in general, cast in the form of a dialogue. 
 There has been a -wedding supper-party at the house of 
 an Athenian of some rank, on the occasion of the 
 marriage of his son, of which Lycinus (i.e., Lucian) 
 here gives an account in a conversation with a friend. 
 He apologises — ironically — for telling the story at all ;
 
 116 LUCIAN. 
 
 he protests against betraying the secrets of hospitality ; 
 lie declares that, like the poet, he " hates a guest who 
 lias a retentive memory ; " but since the tale has already, 
 lie finds, got abroad, — why, perhaps he had better tell 
 it himself, in order that at least it ma*y be told truly. 
 His friend is sure that in point of fact he is burning to 
 tell it, and threatens, if he affects any more scruple in 
 the matter, to go to some one else for his information. 
 Then Lucian begins his narrative. There had been 
 invited to this banquet representatives of all the dif- 
 ferent schools, — Stoic, Peripatetic, and Epicurean, and 
 a " grammarian " (what we should call a " literary 
 man") and a rhetorician besides. Io the Platonist, 
 known in the circles of schoolmen as " The Model," 
 tutor to the young bridegroom, also enters among the 
 guests, and is treated by the host and by most of the 
 company with great consideration and respect, though 
 the Stoic insisted upon being assigned the highest seat. 
 Alcidamas, the Cynic, came in last, without an invita- 
 tion, quoting, as an impudent sort of apology, the 
 words of Homer— 
 
 " But Menelaus uninvited came." 
 
 To which one of the guests whispered a very apposite 
 reply from the same poet — 
 
 " Howbeit this pleased not Agamemnon's heart." 
 
 The good host, however, though all the seats were 
 already filled, with much courtesy offered him a stool; 
 but this the Cynic declined as an effeminate and need- 
 less luxury. He preferred, he said, to take his food 
 standing; and accordingly ate his supper, as Lucian
 
 TUB MODERN LATITUDE. 117 
 
 describes it, "in a kind of nomad fashion, like the 
 Scythians, looking out the best pastures, and following 
 the dishes as the slaves handed them round." Ami 
 still, as he ate and drank, he declaimed loudly against 
 the luxury of such entertainments, until the host stopped 
 his mouth with a cup of strong wine. The Peripatetic 
 philosopher was observed to be flirting surreptitiously 
 with a pretty waiting-maid, — a proceeding to which 
 the host had to put a stop by sending her quietly out 
 of the room, and substituting a rough-looking groom 
 in her place. As the wine went round, and tongues 
 were loosened, the rhetorician began to recite passages 
 from his orations ; Avhile the litterateur, not content 
 with quoting Pindar and Anacreon, went on to favour 
 the company with a very tiresome extempore poem of 
 his own. There was a hired jester present, who, of 
 course, launched his jokes indiscriminately, as occasion 
 offered, at all the company. Most of them took it 
 gooddiumouredly enough ; but the Cynic, accustomed 
 to make jests instead of being the subject of them, 
 lost his temper, and engaged in a match at fisticuffs 
 with the poor buffoon, who was a mere pigmy of a 
 man, but who nevertheless gave him a good thrash- 
 ing, to the great delight of the company. 
 
 But at this stage of the entertainment a slave entered 
 with a note. One Stoic professor had been left out of 
 the list of invitations, and had sent an angry remon- 
 strance, in the form of a kind of speech, which the slave 
 was instructed to read. " Though, as was well known, 
 he disliked and despised feasts, as a mere form of sen- 
 sual gratification ; still, ingratitude was a thing he could
 
 118 LUCIAN. 
 
 notbesa. Forgotten? accidentally overlooked 1 Oil no, 
 — that excuse would not do. Twice that very morning 
 he had purposely made- his how to his friend Aristse- 
 netus. No one can he expected to put up with such 
 marked neglect. Even Diana could not forgive not 
 hiving heen invited to the sacrifice of CEneus. He 
 hegs to enclose a philosophical problem which he 
 challenges the whole party of these pretenders wdio 
 have heen preferred to him to solve if they can. He 
 could tell a story about the bridegroom, too, but — 
 never mind. And he begs to say in conclusion, that 
 it is no use to think of appeasing his righteous indig- 
 nation by offering now to send a present of game, or 
 anything of that kind, by his servant, — the man has 
 strict orders not to take it." 
 
 Lucian declares he was quite ashamed when he 
 heard this production read. "You could never have 
 expected such mean and unworthy language," he says, 
 " from a man of his hoary hairs and grave demeanour." 
 The Peripatetic philosopher took occasion from it at 
 once to attack the Stoics generally in the most un- 
 measured language. One of that school who Avas in the 
 company retaliated in similar terms — all the professors 
 set to work to abuse each other, and ended by throw- 
 ing wine in each other's faces, and indulging in other 
 social courtesies of a like kind. 
 
 " I could not help reflecting," says the satirist, " how 
 little the learning of the Schools avails us, if it does 
 nothing to improve and dignify the intercourse of daily 
 life. Here were scholars of the highest mark making 
 themselves worse than ridiculous in the eves of the
 
 Til li MODERN LAP 1 Til. E. Ill) 
 
 company ! Can it be true that, as some say, much 
 poring over books, and stuffing their heads with other 
 people's ideas, makes men lose their common-sense] 
 Such conduct cannot in this case be laid to the charge 
 of the wine, — for the letter-writer at least was sober. 
 Yet here are the unlearned portion of the company 
 behaving themselves quietly and modestly, while such 
 is the example set them by these professors of wisdom ! " 
 Io, the Platonist, now tried to quiet the uproar by 
 proposing a subject for discussion, upon which, after 
 the fashion of the Dialogues of Plato, each should be 
 allowed to speak in his turn and without interruption. 
 He suggested " Marriage " as an appropriate theme, 
 and proceeded to deliver his own opinion thereupon, 
 which is, of course, that of his great master, as broached 
 in his ' Republic,' and as we have had it set forth 
 by Socrates in his examination at the " Sale." * It 
 would be far better if men would make up their 
 minds to do without it altogether ; but as this 
 seems improbable, at least he would recommend 
 the abolition of the prejudice in favour of having 
 separate wives. Lucian thought this expression of 
 opinion somewhat curious, to say the very least, upon 
 such an occasion. The literary gentleman, instead of 
 giving his own views on the question, took the op- 
 portunity of reciting to the company an epithalamium 
 of his own composition, which is no doubt a fair 
 burlesque of the common style of such productions. 
 Then, as it grew late, the guests began to make their 
 
 * See p. 104.
 
 120 LUCIAN. 
 
 preparations for departure ; and each proceeded to pack 
 up and carry home, as was the custom at such enter- 
 tainments, some little delicacy set apart for them hy 
 their liberal host. They quarrelled again, however, in 
 their greediness, over the largest portions and the fat- 
 test fowls. A " free fight " of philosophers ensued, 
 which Lucian could only aptly compare with the battle 
 between the Centaurs and Lapithse at the marriage of 
 Pirithous. In the midst of it Alcidamas the Cynic, by 
 design or accident, upset the lamp, and the combatants 
 Avere left for a while in darkness. When it was sud- 
 denly relighted, some awkward revelations were made. 
 The Peripatetic moralist was discovered making fierce 
 love to a music-girl, while the Epicurean was concealing 
 under his robe a gold cup which he had snatched from 
 the table. "Wounded and bleeding, the combatants 
 were assisted from the room by their attendant slaves. 
 Put even thus they could not resist a gibe or two at 
 parting. The Epicurean, with two teeth knocked out 
 in the scuffle, saw the Stoic professor with a damaged 
 eye and his nose bleeding, and bids him remember that, 
 according to his own tenets, " Pain is no real evil." 
 Lucian could only sum up the moral, he tells his 
 friend, in the words of Euripides, — 
 
 " How strange and various are the fates of men ! 
 The gods still bring to pass the unforeseen, 
 And what we look for never comes at all." * 
 
 For what could possibly be more unexpected than 
 
 * The somewhat weak "tag" common to seyeral of Euripi- 
 des' s plays.
 
 IIERM0T1MUS. ]2l 
 
 such a termination to a philosophical and literary 
 symposium 1 ? 
 
 hf.hmotimcs. 
 
 This Dialogue, between the author himself as 
 Lycinus and a disciple of the Stoic school, though 
 rather of graver cast than either of the preceding, has 
 yet a great deal of quiet humour in it, and bears token 
 of careful finish. It is a good-humoured blow at the 
 Stoics, and through them at the theories of philosophers 
 generally : but it seems to convey also a graver lesson, 
 which was probably often present to a mind like 
 Lueian's, — that wisdom is hard to tind, and that human 
 life is not long enough for the successful pursuit of her. 
 
 Lycinus meets Hermotimus going to one of his 
 master's lectures. The student walks with a meditative 
 air, repeating mentally his lesson of yesterday : for, as 
 he explains, he must lose no time; "life is short, and 
 art is long," as said the great Hippocrates ; and if it 
 were true of physic, still more true is it of philosophy. 
 Lycinus remarks that as, to his certain knowledge, 
 Hermotimus has been studying hard for the last twenty 
 years, much to the detriment of his health and his 
 complexion, he should have conceived that he must 
 by this time be very near the attainment of the goal 
 of happiness — if that be synonymous with wisdom. 
 " Nay," replies the other ; " Virtue, as Hesiod tells us, 
 dwells afar off, and the road to her is long, and very 
 steep and rough, and costs no small toil to them that 
 travel it." He himself is as yet only at the foot of 
 the mountain. And when does he hope to get to the
 
 122 LUC I AN. 
 
 top? Well, Hermotimus thinks possibly in another 
 twenty years or so. Lycinus remarks that a man 
 might go three times round the world in that time : and 
 can his master promise him that he will live so long ? 
 He hopes so, at least; and one day — one minute 
 — of enjoyment on the summit, if once attained, will 
 recompense him fully for all his time and pains. But 
 is he sure again that the happiness he seeks there, and 
 of which he can have as yet no kind of experience, 
 will be found worth the search? and in what is it to 
 consist] glory, riches, exquisite pleasures — is that 
 what be expects? Hermotimus bids his friend talk 
 more soberly : the life of virtue is not concerned with 
 such things as these. The fine passage which follows 
 can scarcely be altogether ironical. " liiches and glory, 
 and all pleasures of the body, all these are stripped off 
 and left below, and the man ascends, like Hercules, 
 who rose a god from the pile which consumed him on 
 Mount (Eta : so did he throw off there all that was 
 mortal, all that he inherited from his earthly mother, 
 and bearing with him that which was divine, now puri- 
 fied by fire and cleansed from all dross, soared upwards 
 to the gods. And so they who are purified by philos- 
 ophy, as though by fire, from the love of all those 
 things which men in their ignorance hold in admira- 
 tion, attain the summit and there enjoy all happiness 
 remembering no more either riches, or glory, or pleas- 
 ure, and smiling at those who still believe in their 
 existence." 
 
 Lycinus meets him with the weapon which is always 
 at hand— which the weakness of human nature fur-
 
 HERMOTIMUS. 123 
 
 nishes us with as an answer to all high aspirations. 
 Men's lives are not found to be in accordance 'with the 
 principles they profess. The actual Stoics whom he 
 sees and knows do not display this insensibility to 
 riches and pleasures which the theoretical Stoic pro- 
 claims. He has seen Hermotimus's own master, the 
 great Stoic himself, dragging off a pupil before the 
 magistrates for not paying his fees. The dialogue 
 which follows is amusing. 
 
 Hermotimus. Ah ! that fellow was a rascal, and very 
 ungrateful in the matter of payment. My master never 
 treated other people so (and there were many he had 
 lent money to) — because, you see, they paid him the 
 interest punctually. 
 
 Lycinus. But even suppose they never paid, my 
 cood fellow, what difference could it make to a man 
 like him, — purified by philosophy, and not caring for 
 what he had left behind — on Mount (Eta, you know 1 ? 
 
 Herm. You don't suppose it was on his own account 
 he troubled himself about it? He has a young family, 
 and he would not like to see them come to want. 
 
 Lye. But then, my good Hermotimus, he ought to 
 Tiring them up in virtuous habits too — to be happy 
 like him, and care nothing for money. 
 
 Herm. I really have no time now, Lycinus, to discuss 
 such questions with you : I'm in a great hurry to get 
 to his lecture, and am afraid of being too late. 
 
 Lycinus begs him to set his mind at rest on that 
 point ; to-day, he can assure him, will be a holiday
 
 124 LUCIAN. 
 
 so far as lectures are concerned. He lias just seen 
 a notice to that effect, in large letters, posted on the 
 professor's door. He happens to know that the excel- 
 lent man is keeping his hed, and has given strict orders 
 not to be disturbed ; having, in fact, been at a late 
 supper-party the night before, where he had eaten and 
 drunk rather more than was good for him. He had 
 been engaged there, too, in a warm dispute with a Peri 
 patetic, which had helped to disturb his digestion. The 
 scholar is naturally anxious to know whether his master 
 got the better of his opponent. " Yes," says his infor- 
 mant ; " the Peripatetic being rather obstinate and 
 argumentative, not willing to be convinced and trouble- 
 some to refute, your excellent master, having a cup in 
 his hand such as would have rejoiced the heart of old 
 Nestor,* broke his head with it — they were sitting close 
 together — and so silenced him at once." " An excellent 
 plan, too," says the scholar ; " there's no other way of 
 dealing with men who won't be convinced." And Lyci- 
 nus gravely assures him that he quite concurs in the 
 opinion. " It is extremely wrong and foolish," he ad- 
 mits, " to provoke a philosopher — especially when he 
 happens to have a heavy goblet in his hand." 
 
 He proposes, however, that as Hermotimus cannot 
 go to his master's lecture to - day, he should turn 
 lecturer himself for once, so far at least as to give his 
 old friend some account of his experience as a student 
 of philosophy. Only one thing he would be glad to 
 
 * " Scarce might another raise it from the hoard 
 When full ; but aged Nestor raised with ease." 
 
 — Iliad, xi. 635 (Lord Derby).
 
 IIERMOTIMUS. 125 
 
 know before they begin — will he permit his present 
 ignorant pupil to ask questions, or even contradict 
 him, if he sees occasion 1 ? Hermotimus says it is not 
 usually allowed by the teacher, but in the present case 
 he shall not object.* 
 
 The portion of this dialogue which follows is a clever 
 imitation of the Socratic mode of argument by asking 
 continuous questions, and forcing answers from an 
 opponent which have the result of reducing his state- 
 ment to an absurdity. Lycinus shows himself an 
 adept in this kind of fence. Though too long for ex- 
 tract here, it is doing scanty justice to the author to 
 condense it ; yet the spirit of it may perhaps be fairly 
 given. 
 
 Is there one only path to philosophy — that of the 
 Stoics — or, as Lycinus has heard, many, and under 
 various names'? Many, undoubtedly, is the answer. 
 — And do all teach the same or different? Totally 
 different. — Then, probably, only one can be right? 
 Certainly. — And how came Hermotimus (being at the 
 first outset an ignoramus, of course, like others, and 
 not the wise or half-wise man he is now) — how came 
 lie to know which to choose out of all these different 
 schools ? how distinguish the true from the false ? 
 Well— he saw the greater numbers go one way, and 
 judged that must be the best. — And what majority 
 had the Stoics over the Epicureans? and does he 
 
 * The disciples of Plato were apt to reply to those disputants 
 who were so unreasonable as to ask for proof of any assertion — 
 " He said it himself" — the " ipse dixit " which lias passed into 
 a modern phrase.
 
 126 LUCIAN. 
 
 really think that in such a matter it is safe to go by a 
 mere majority of voices 1 But it was not only that ; 
 he heard everybody say the Stoics were the Avisest— 
 that your true Stoic is the only complete man — king, 
 and cobbler all in one. — Did the Stoics say this ot 
 themselves 1 (because you can hardly trust a man's 
 own account of himself; ) or did other people say it of 
 them ? Other people, also, certainly — many of them. — 
 Surely not the philosophers of rival sects'? they would 
 not say so 1 IS T o. — It was people who were not philo- 
 sophers at all, then 1 the vulgar and illiterate, in fact 1 
 and could a man of sense like Hermotimus really go 
 by what they said on such a question 1 Nay, but he 
 had acted on his own judgment as well : he had ob- 
 served the Stoics to be always grave and well-behaved, 
 and respectably dressed ; not effeminate like some, or 
 rough like others. Then, says Lycinus, it comes to this, 
 — you judge wisdom by dress, and looks, and gait : 
 which makes it hard for the blind man, does it not 1 
 how is lie to know which to follow t Hermotimus 
 does not consider himself bound to make provision for 
 the blind : that is an extreme case. Well, suppose 
 we leave the blind to shift without philosophy, says 
 Lycinus — though they seem to want it as much as 
 anybody, poor fellows, to help them to bear their in- 
 firmity — still, even those who can see, how can they 
 look inside a man and know what he really is? be- 
 cause you chose these men as guides, I suppose, for 
 their insides, not their outsides 1 ? The student feels 
 that he is no match for his opponent, and wants to 
 close the discussion. '-Nothing that I say satisfies
 
 IIERMOTIMUS. 127 
 
 you," he sulkily exclaims. "Nay," says the other, 
 "you don't try to satisfy me. You want to go and 
 leave me here in the slough of my ignorance : you are 
 afraid lest I should become as good a philosopher as 
 yourself. You won't teach me. So now you must 
 listen to me — only don't laugh at my awkward way of 
 putting things." The passage which follows is too 
 fine to mutilate. 
 
 Lychnis. I picture virtue to myself in this way, — 
 as it were a city whose inhabitants are perfectly happy 
 (as your teacher would surely tell us if he could 
 come down from thence), perfectly wise and brave 
 and just and temperate, little less than gods. And in 
 that city you would see none of those deeds which are 
 common here among us — men robbing and committing 
 violence, and overreaching each other : but they live 
 together as fellow-citizens in peace and harmony. And 
 no wonder; for all those things which in other states 
 cause strife and contention, and for the sake of which 
 men plot against each other, are put far away from 
 them : for they regard neither gold, nor sensual plea- 
 sure, nor glory, not holding such things necessary to 
 their polity. Thus they lead a calm and entirely 
 happy life, under good laws and with equal rights, 
 liberty, and all other blessings. 
 
 Hermotimus. Well, then, Lycinus, is it not good 
 for all men to wish to be citizens of such a city, and 
 neither to regard the toil of the road, nor the long 
 time spent in the pilgrimage, so only they may reach it, 
 and be enrolled on its records and share its privileges 1
 
 128 LUC I AN. 
 
 Lye. Ay, verily it is, Hermotimus. That would 
 of all things he hest worth striving for, even if we 
 had to give up all hesides. Nor, though this present 
 land in which Ave live should seek to hold us back, 
 ought we to regard it ; nor, though children or parents, 
 if we have them, should seek with tears to detain us 
 here, ought we to be moved by them, but rather, if 
 we may, urge them to follow us on the same path, and 
 if they cannot or will not, then shake ourselves free 
 from them, and make straight for that blessed city — 
 casting off our very garment, if they cling to that to 
 retain us, — eager only to get there : for there is no fear, 
 believe me, that even the naked should be denied ad- 
 mittance if they reach the gate. There was an old 
 man, I remember, once on a time, who discoursed to 
 me of how matters went in that city, and exhorted 
 me to follow him thither : he would lead the way, he 
 said, and when I came, would enrol me in his own 
 tribe, and let me share his privileges, and so I should 
 live happy there with them all. But I, in my youth- 
 ful folly (I was scarce fifteen), would not listen to 
 him, or I might now be in the suburbs of that city, or 
 even at its gates.* Many things he told me of it, as 
 I seem to remember, and among them this, — that all 
 there were strangers and immigrants, and that many 
 
 * We shall never know Lucian's full meaning here. Is tins 
 hut another version of " The Dream," and does he imply that 
 he had failed to carry out the nobler ideal of his choice, and 
 had sunk into the mere hired pleader? Or had he some higher 
 "dream" still in his youth, whose invitation he was conscious 
 of having disobeyed ?
 
 IIERM0T1MUS. 129 
 
 barbarians and slaves, nay, and deformed persons, and 
 dwarfs, and beggars, Avere enrolled among its citizens, 
 and in short, that any might win the freedom of that 
 city who would. For that the law there was that a 
 man should be ranked not by his dress, or his station, 
 or his beauty, nor yet by his birth and noble ancestry : 
 of such matters they took no account. But it sufficed, 
 in order to become a citizen, that a man should have 
 sense, and a love of the right, and diligence, and 
 energy, and should not faint or be discouraged under 
 the many difficulties he met with on the road : so that he 
 who displayed these qualities, and made good his way 
 thither, was at once admitted as a citizen with equal 
 rights, be he who he might : and such terms as higher 
 or lower, noble or plebeian, bond or free, were never 
 so much as named in that community. 
 
 Herm. You see then, Lycinus, it is no vain or weak 
 .aspiration of mine, to become a denizen myself of such 
 a noble and blessed republic. 
 
 Lye. Nay, I also, my friend, have the same longing 
 as yourself, and there is no blessing I would more 
 devoutly pray for. If only that city were near, and 
 manifest to all men's eyes, be sure that I had long ere 
 this become a citizen of it. But since, as you say 
 (both you and Hesiod), it lies far off, we must needs 
 inquire the way, and seek the best guide we can, — is 
 it not so 1 
 
 Heiin. Else we shall hardly get there. 
 
 Lye. Now, so far as promises and professions of 
 knowing the road go, we have guides offering them- 
 selves in plenty : many there are, who stand ready, 
 
 a. c. vol. xviii. I
 
 130 LUC IAN. 
 
 who tell us they are actually natives of the place. 
 But it would seem there is not one road thither, 
 hut many, and all in different directions — one east, 
 one west, one north, another south ; some lead 
 through pleasant meadows and shady groves, with no 
 obstacles or unpleasantness ; others over rough and 
 stony ground, through much heat and thirst and toil ; 
 yet all are said to lead to that one and the same city, 
 though then- lines lie so far apart. 
 
 There are guides, too, each recommending their own 
 path as the only true one ; which of all such are we 
 to follow ] There is Plato's road, and Epicurus's road, 
 and the road taken by the Stoics ; who is to say which 
 is right 1 The guides themselves know no road bufc 
 their own : and though each may declare that they have 
 seen a city at the end of it, who knows whether they 
 mean the same city, after all? The only safe guide 
 would be the man who had tried every path, — who 
 had studied profoundly all the theories of Pythagoras, 
 Plato, Epicurus, Chrysippus, Aristotle, and the rest, 
 and chosen that which, from his own knowledge 
 and experience, he found to be the best and safest. 
 And what lifetime would suffice for this 1 " Twenty 
 years," says his friend to Hermotimus, "you have 
 already been studying undei the Stoics, you told us ; 
 and some twenty more you thought you required to 
 perfect yourself in their philosophy. And how many 
 would you give to Plato 1 and how many to Aristotle ' 
 and how long do you expect to live? " 
 
 Poor Hermotimus is no match for his Socratic cross
 
 IIERMOTIMUS. 131 
 
 examiner. He declares, with great truth and honesty, 
 that his clever friend has succeeded, like many clever 
 disputants, in making him, at all events, very uncom- 
 fortahle, and that he heartily wishes he had never met 
 him that morning in his quiet meditations. " You 
 always were overhearing in argument, Lycinus ; I 
 don't know what harm Philosophy ever did you, that 
 you hate her so, and make such a joke of us philo- 
 sophers." " My dear Hermotinius," calmly replies his 
 friend, " you and your master, heing philosophers, 
 ought to know more ahout Truth than I do : I only 
 know this much, — she is not always pleasant to those 
 who listen to her." 
 
 The Dialogue is extended to some length, hut the 
 neophyte Stoic fails to hold his ground. Lycinus argues 
 that after all there comes no answer to that great ques- 
 tion — ' What is truth 1 ' It may he, after all, that she 
 is something different from anything yet discovered. 
 All visions of her are but different guesses, and all the 
 guesses may he wrong. And life is too short to waste 
 in interminable speculations. " Words, words," are, 
 in the opinion of Lycinus, the sum of the philosophy 
 of the day, whereas life demands action. Hermotinius 
 becomes convinced that he has hitherto been wasting 
 his time ; henceforth he will try to do his duty as 
 a private citizen, and if he meets a professor of phi- 
 losophy in the street, will " avoid him as he would 
 a mad dog." 
 
 Lucian is best remembered as a satirist and a jester, 
 but this Dialogue is enough to prove to us that he was
 
 132 LUCIAN. 
 
 something more. He jests continually at the false- 
 hoods which were passed off as Truth, and at the 
 douhtful shadows, of various shape and hue, which 
 confident theorists insisted were her true and only 
 emhodiment. But if he could have been sure of her 
 identity, there is no reason to think he would not have 
 become her ready and willing worshipper. 
 
 THE NEW ICARUS. 
 
 Hopelessly puzzled by the contradictory theories of 
 the philosophers, especially on cosmogony, the Cynic 
 Menippus has taken a journey to the stars to see 
 whether he may possibly learn the truth there; and 
 in the Dialogue which bears the above title he gives an 
 account of his aerial travels to a friend. He had made 
 for himself a rather uneven pair of wings by cutting off 
 one from an eagle and one from a vulture, and after some 
 preliminary experiments in flying had succeeded in mak- 
 ing good his first stage, to the Moon. The earth and its 
 inhabitants looked wonderfully small from that height ; 
 indeed, except the Colossus of Rhodes and the watch- 
 tower of Pharos, he could make out little or nothing ; 
 until Empedocles, whom he met there (looking as black 
 as a cinder, as well he might, having so lately come out 
 of the crater of ^Etna), showed him that by using the 
 eagle's wing only for a while he might also acquire the 
 eagle's vision. Then he saw many things not clearly dis- 
 cernible to ordinary eyes, for his new sight penetrated 
 even into the houses. He saw the Epicurean forswear- 
 ing himself for a thousand drachmas, the Stoic quarrel-
 
 THE NEW ICARUS. 133 
 
 ling with his pupils about fees, and the Cynic in very- 
 bad company. For the rest, the world was going on 
 much as he supposed ; the Egyptians were busy cultivat- 
 ing their fields, the Phoenicians making their merchant 
 voyages, the Spartans whipping their children, andtho 
 Athenians, as usual, in the law-courts.* " Such," says 
 tho traveller, " is the confused jumble of this world. It 
 is as though one should hire a multitude of singers, 
 or rather bands of singers, and then bid each performer 
 choose his own tune, caring nothing for the harmony ; 
 each singing his loudest, and going on with his own 
 song, and trying to drown his neighbour's voice — you 
 may judge what music that would make. Even such, 
 my friend, are the performers on earth, and such is 
 the confused discord which makes up human life ; they 
 not only sound different notes, but move in inharmoni- 
 ous time and figure, with no common idea or purpose ; 
 until the choir-master drives them all from the stage, 
 and says he has no more need of them." He won- 
 dered, too, and could not forbear smiling, at the 
 quarrels which arise between men about their little 
 strips of territory, when to his eyes, as he looked 
 down, " all Greece was but four fingers' breadth." It 
 reminded him of " a swarm of ants running round and 
 round and in and out of their city, — one turning over 
 a bit of dung, another seizing a bean-shell, or half a 
 
 * A reminiscence of Aristophanes, who is never weary of 
 satirising the passion of Lis fellow-citizens for law. In his 
 " Clouds " (1. 280), where Strepsiades is shown Athens ou 
 the map, he exclaims — 
 
 " Athens ! go to ! I see no law-courts sitting."
 
 131 LUC I AN. 
 
 grain of wheat, and running away with it. Probably 
 among them too, conformably to the requirements of 
 ant-life, they have their architects, and their popular 
 leaders, and public officers, and musicians, and philoso- 
 phers." [If his friend disapproves of the comparison, 
 he bids him remember the old Thessalian fable of the 
 Myrmidons.] 
 
 He was just taking flight again, he says, when the 
 Moon — in a soft and pleasant female voice — begged 
 him to carry something for her up to Jupiter. " ' By 
 all means,' said I, ' if it's not very heavj'.' ' Only a 
 message,' said she — 'just a small petition to him. I'm 
 quite out of patience, Menippus, at being talked about 
 in such a shameful way by those philosophers, who 
 seem to have nothing else to do but speculate about me 
 — what I am, and how big I am, and why I am some- 
 times halved and sometimes round. Some of them say 
 I'm inhabited, and others, that I hang over the sea like 
 a looking-glass; in short, any fancy that comes into their 
 heads, they apply to me. And, as if that were not 
 enough, they say my very light is not my own, but as 
 it were of a bastard sort, borrowed from the sun; trying 
 to make mischief between me and him — my own 
 brother — on purpose to set us at variance ; as if it was 
 not enough for them to say what they have about him, 
 — that he is a stone, and nothing but a mass of hre. 
 How many stories / could tell of them, and their 
 goings-on o' nights, for all the grave faces and severe 
 looks they wear by day ! I see it all, though I hold 
 my tongue — it seems to me scarcely decent tobrin, r all 
 their proceedings to light. So, when I see any of
 
 THE NEW ICARUS. 135 
 
 tbora misbehaving, I just wrap myself in a cloud, 
 not to expose them. Yet they do nothing hut discuss 
 me in their talk, and insult me in every way. So 
 that I swear I have often had thoughts of going 
 away altogether as far as possible, to escape their 
 troublesome tongues. Be sure you tell Jupiter this ; 
 and say besides, that I can't possibly stay where I 
 am, unless he crushes those physical science men, 
 gags the Dialecticians, pulls down the Porch, burns 
 tho Academy, and puts a stop to those Peripatetics ; 
 eo that I may have a little peace, instead of being 
 measured and examined by them every day.' 'It 
 stall be done,' said I, and so took my leave." 
 
 So he went on, and reached the abode of Jupiter, 
 where he hoped at first to get in without notice, being 
 almost half an eagle — that bird being under Jupiter's 
 protection ; but, remembering that, after all, he was 
 also half a vulture, he thought it best to knock at the 
 door, which was opened by Mercury.* Jupiter com- 
 plimented him highly upon his courage in making 
 the journey, though the other gods were rather 
 alarmed, thinking it a bad precedent for mortals. 
 The monarch of Olympus asked him a good many 
 questions as to the goings-on below, about which he 
 appeared somewhat curious ; — " What the price of 
 wheat was now? What sort of a winter they had 
 last year 1 " Especially he was anxious to know what 
 mortals really thought about him. Menippus was 
 very diplomatic in his answers. " ' What can they 
 
 * Lucian evidently has in mind Trygreus's reception by Mer- 
 cury, in the "Peace" of Aristophanes, i. 180, &c.
 
 136 LUC IAN. 
 
 think, your majesty,' said I, ' but what they are 
 in duty bound to think, — that you are the sovereign 
 of the gods.' ' Nonsense,' replied his majesty ; ' I 
 know very well how fond they are all of something 
 new. There was a time when I was thought good 
 enough to give them oracles, and heal their diseases, 
 — when Dodona and Pisa were in all their glory, and 
 looked up to by everybody, and so full of sacrifices 
 that I could hardly see for the smoke. But ever 
 since Apollo set up his oracle at Delphi, and iEscu- 
 lapius his surgery at Pergamus, and Bendis has had 
 her worship in Thrace, and Anubis in Egypt, and 
 Diana at Ephesus, they all run there to hold their 
 festivals and offer their hecatombs, and look upon 
 me as old-fashioned and decrepit, and think it quite 
 enough to sacrifice to me once in six years at 
 Olympia.' " They had a good deal more chat to- 
 gether, says Menippus, after which Jupiter took 
 him to see the place where the prayers came up — 
 through holes with covers to them. Their purport 
 was various and contradictory : one sailor praying for 
 a north wind, another for a south ; the farmer for 
 rain, and the fuller for sunshine. Jupiter only let 
 the reasonable prayers come through the hole, and 
 blew the foolish ones back again ; but was sadly 
 puzzled by the contradictory petitions, — especially 
 when both petitioners promised him a hecatomb. 
 This business over, they went to supper ; and Menip- 
 pus was highly delighted with Apollo's • performance 
 on the harp, with Silenus's dancing, and with the re- 
 citation of some of Hesiod's and Pindar's poetry by the
 
 THE NEW ICARUS. 137 
 
 Muses. A general council of the gods was afterwards 
 called, in which Jupiter announced his intention of 
 making very short work with the philosophers of 
 whom the Moon had complained. Then Menippus 
 was dismissed, under the charge of Mercury, who 
 had orders, however, to take off his wings, that he 
 might not come that way again • and he is now 
 hurrying, he tells his friend, with some malicious 
 enjoyment, to warn the gentlemen of the Schools of 
 what they may very soon expect from Jupiter.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SATIRES ON SOCIETY: 
 THE PARASITE — UPON HIRED COMPANIONS. 
 
 It needs but a slight acquaintance with Greek and 
 Roman literature, and with social life at Athens in 
 its later days, and at Rome in the times of the em- 
 perors, to know that the men of rank and wealth 
 filled their tables not only with their private friends, 
 but also with guests who stood lower in the social 
 scale, and were invited because they contributed in 
 some way either to the amusement of the company 
 or to the glorification of the host. A rich man, if he 
 had any pretence to a good position in society, kept 
 almost open house : and there was a class of men 
 who, by means of sponging and toadying, and all 
 those kindred arts which are practised, only under 
 somewhat finer disguises, in modern society, contrived 
 seldom either to go without a dinner or to dine at 
 home. This disreputable fraternity of diners-out — 
 "Parasites," as the Greek term was — supplied an 
 inexhaustible subject for the satirist and the play- 
 writer, as has been already noticed in these volumes,
 
 SATIRES ON SOCIETY. 139 
 
 in examining the comedies of Plautus and Terence. 
 Lucian has not omitted to handle, in his own style, 
 a character so well known, and which presented such 
 fair game to the writer who set himself to hunt down 
 the follies of the times. Yet the little dialogue called 
 "The Parasite," in which he introduces one of these 
 mendicants of society arguing stoutly in defence of his 
 vocation, is one of the most good-humoured of all. 
 Perhaps there was an amount of bonhomie about a 
 man who could not afford to be disagreeable which dis- 
 armed the satirist, together with a serio-comic " poor- 
 devil" misery inevitable to his position which excited 
 pity as well as contempt. Few readers can lay down 
 the " Phormio " of Terence without a kindly feeling 
 towards its unabashed and ingenious hero. 
 
 Simo, the Parasite of Lucian's Dialogue, makes open 
 profession of his vocation, like Phormio. The friend 
 with whom the conversation is carried on, knowing 
 that Simo's private means are small, is curious to know 
 by what trade or employment he gains his living, since 
 he cannot make out that he follows any. Simo assures 
 him that there is a school of art in which he is a per- 
 fect master, and which never allows him to be in 
 want It is the art of Parasitism. And he proceeds 
 to prove, by an argument in the catechetical stylo of 
 Socrates and Plato, that it is an art of the highest and 
 most perfect kind. It falls quite within the definition 
 of art as given by the philosophers — " a system of 
 approved rules co-operating to a certain end, useful to 
 society." As to the usefulness of the end, nothing is 
 so useful — nay, so absolutely needful — as eating and
 
 140 LUCIA N. 
 
 drinking. It is not a gift of nature, but acquired, 
 therefore an art, if the schoolmen be right in their 
 technical distinctions. It is also most practical, which 
 is the essence of a perfect art : other arts may exist 
 in their possessor in posse, yet be seldom or never in 
 operation ; whereas this must be always at work — for 
 when the parasite ceases to get his dinners, there is 
 an end, not only of the art, but of the artificer. It 
 excels all other arts also in this, — that whereas most 
 arts require toil and discipline, and even threats and 
 stripes, in order to be learnt thoroughly — which things 
 are manifestly contrary to our nature — this art can be 
 studied pleasantly and cheerfully without any of these 
 disagreeable accompaniments. "Who ever yet re- 
 turned in tears from a feast, as many scholars do from 
 their masters 1 Who that is going to a good dinner 
 ever looks pale and melancholy, as those do who 
 frequent the Schools 1 " Other arts we pay to learn, 
 this we are paid for learning ; others require a master, 
 this may be learnt without. Other systems seem 
 vague; all give different definitions of wisdom and 
 happiness— and that which is so indefinite can have 
 no real existence at all ; whereas the end and object 
 of Parasitism is distinct and obvious. And in this 
 alone of all systems the practice of the school agrees 
 with its professions. And whereas no parasite was 
 ever known to desert his art and turn philosopher, 
 many philosophers have turned parasites, and do so to 
 this day. Euripides became the dependant of Arche- 
 laus of Macedon ; and even Plato was content to sit 
 at the table of the tyrant Dionysius. If the testimony
 
 SATIRES ON SOCIETY. 141 
 
 of the wise men of old is to be taken in evidence of 
 the value and antiquity of the art, look only at Homer, 
 a witness whom, the speaker hopes, every one Avill 
 admit. He makes some of his greatest heroes para- 
 sites — old Nestor, always a guest at the table of the 
 King of Men, and Patroclus, who was nothing more or 
 less than the parasite of Achilles, and whom it took 
 the combined power of two mortal warriors and a god 
 to kill,* whereas Paris alone proved a match for his 
 master Achilles, as Achilles had for Hector. Listen, 
 he says, to the poet's own words touching this great 
 school ot the table : — 
 
 " Find me a joy to human heart more dear 
 Than is a. people's gladness, when good cheer 
 Keigns, and all listening pause in deep delight, 
 When in mid feast the hard his song doth rear, 
 What time the hoard with all good things is dight." 
 
 And, as if this were not praise enough, he adds 
 again — 
 
 " Methinks that nothing can more lovely he ! " + 
 
 By such ingenious arguments, not at all an unfair 
 burlesque upon the style of Plato and Aristotle, Simo 
 succeeds in convincing his friend of the superiority in 
 every way of the art which he himself follows with so 
 much success. His listener determines to come to 
 him for instruction, and hopes, as he is his first pupil, 
 that he will teach him gratis. 
 
 But besides this lower class of parasites, who sought 
 
 * Euphoibus, Hector, and Apollo. See Iliad, x\L 
 t Odyss., ix. 5, &c.
 
 142 LUCIAN. 
 
 a precarious dinner from day to day by making them- 
 selves agreeable or useful to their entertainers, the 
 great men of the day were in the habit of receiving at 
 their tables as daily guests, or even of entertaining 
 altogether as members of their household, — often in 
 the really or professed capacity of tutors to their sons, 
 — guests of a different stamp. The man of wealth and 
 position hardly thought his establishment complete, 
 unless it comprised some of the representatives of litera- 
 ture and science — a philosopher or two, a poet, a rhet- 
 orician, or a historian. There was not necessarily 
 anything degrading in the arrangement to 1he recipient 
 of such hospitality. He might consider himself as the 
 rightful successor of the bard of olden times, whose 
 divine song was more than payment for his place at 
 the feast, and to whom, by prerogative of genius, the 
 highest seat at the king's board, and the best portion 
 from the king's table, was by all willingly accorded. 
 On such terms we may suppose that Plato, in spite of 
 Simo's sarcasm, lived at the court of Dionysius ; and 
 with a scarcely less independent feeling, Horace would 
 tell us that he accepted the gracious welcome of Maece- 
 nas. But guests of the calibre of Plato and Horace 
 were few ; and men who had neither the munificence 
 of Dionysius nor the taste of Maecenas yet wanted to 
 have the Muses represented at their banquets. If 
 one was not a philosopher or a poet or play-writer 
 one's self, at least it was well, since such things were the 
 fashion, to be in the fashion so far as to have them in 
 the house. If it Avas as troublesome for the rich man 
 to do his own thinking for himself as the oriental
 
 SATIRES ON SOCIETY. U3 
 
 would consider it to do his own dancing, it was desir- 
 able to have it done for him. A swarm of small 
 sciolists, and worse than mediocre poets, and UttSrateurs 
 of all varieties, rose to meet the demand, and sought 
 places at great men's tables. Conscious that their 
 services were scarcely worth the wages, they learnt to 
 be not too fastidious as to the circumstances under 
 which they were paid : while the patron, feeling that 
 after all he had not got the genuine article, was not 
 always careful to make the payment in the most 
 gracious manner. 
 
 With this in his mind, Lucian writes his bitter essay 
 " Upon Hired Companions," cast in the form of a letter 
 to a friend who is supposed to be under some tempta- 
 tion to adopt that line of life. He draws a vivid pic- 
 ture of the humiliations and indignities to which the 
 Greek scholar is likely to be subjected who enters the 
 family of a wealthy nobleman at Rome, in the capacity 
 either of tutor to his children or humble literary com- 
 panion to the master himself. They are curiously 
 similar in character to those which, if we trust our 
 own satirists, existed in English society a century 
 ago. First, there is the difficulty of securing a proper 
 introduction to the patron. The candidate must be 
 early at the great man's door, and wait his leisure, 
 and fee the porter well ; must dress more expensively 
 than his purse can well afford, to make a good figure 
 in his eyes ; must dance attendance at his levee per- 
 haps for days, and at last, when he suddenly con- 
 descends to notice and address his humble servant, 
 nervousness and embarrassment will so overcome the
 
 Hi LUC1AN. 
 
 unfortunate man, that he makes an absolute fool of 
 himself in the interview which he has so anxiously 
 desired, and leaves an impression of nothing but awk- 
 wardness and ignorance. 
 
 But, pursues the letter-writer, supposing that your 
 introduction is successful : supposing that the great 
 man's friends do not set him against you, that the lady 
 of the house does not take a violent dislike to you, 
 that the steward and the housekeeper are graciously 
 pleased to approve of you on the whole, — still, what 
 an ordeal you have to go through at your very first 
 dinner ! 
 
 " My lord's gentleman, a suave personage, brings 
 you the invitation. You must win his goodwill, to 
 begin with : so, not to seem wanting in good manners, 
 you slip five drachmae into his hand, at the least. He 
 affects to refuse it. ' From you, sir 1 Oh dear, no ! 
 on no account — I couldn't think of it.' But he is 
 persuaded at last, and smiles with his white teeth as 
 he takes his leave. Well, you put on your best suit, 
 and get yourself up as correctly as you can, and reach 
 the door — very much afraid of arriving before the 
 other guests, which is as awkward as coming last is 
 rude. So you take careful pains to hit the happy 
 medium, are graciously received, and are placed within 
 a few seats of the host, — just below two or three old 
 friends of the house. You stare at everything as if 
 you had been introduced all at once into the palace of 
 Jupiter, and watch every detail anxiously — all is so 
 new and strange ; while the whole family have their 
 eyes on you, and are watching what you will do next.
 
 SATIRES ON SOCIETY. 145 
 
 Indeed the great man has even given orders to some of 
 the attendants to take notice whether you seem to 
 admire his wife and children sufficiently. Even the 
 servants of the other guests who are present notice your 
 evident embarrassment, and laugh at your ignorance of 
 the ways of society, guessing that you have never been 
 to a regular dinner-party before, and that even the 
 napkin laid for you is something quite new to you. 
 No wonder that you are actually in a cold sweat from 
 embarrassment, and neither venture to ask for drink 
 when you want it, for fear they should think yon a 
 hard drinker, or know which to take first .and which 
 last of the various dishes which are arranged before 
 you evidently in some kind of recognised sequence and 
 order. So that you are obliged furtively to watch and 
 imitate what your next neighbour does, and so make 
 yourself acquainted with the ceremonial of dinner." 
 
 " Such," says the letter-writer, after a little more 
 description of the same kind, — "such is your first 
 dinner in a great man's house : I had rather, for my 
 part, have an onion and some salt, and be allowed to 
 eat it when and how I please." Then come the deli- 
 cate arrangements about salary. When one reads 
 Lucian's description of this, it is almost difficult to 
 believe that he had not before him one of those 
 modern advertisements for a governess, who is expected 
 to possess all the virtues and all the accomplishments, 
 and to whom " a very small salary is offered, as she 
 will be treated as one of the family." " We are quite 
 plain people here, as you see," says the pompous Eoman 
 to the new tutor; "but you will consider yourself 
 
 A. c. vol. xviii K
 
 146 LUCIA X. 
 
 quite at home with us, I hope. I know you are a 
 sensible man : I know you have that happy disposi- 
 tion which is its own test reward, and quite under- 
 stand that you do not enter my house from any mer- 
 cenary motives, but for other reasons, — because you 
 know the regard I have for you, and the good position 
 it will give you in the eyes of the world. Still, some 
 definite sum srfould be fixed, perhaps. I leave it to 
 you to name your own terms ; remembering, of course, 
 that you will have a good many presents made you in 
 the course of the year : but you scholars, as becomes 
 your profession, are above mere money considerations, 
 I know." At last it is agreed to leave the amount 
 of the tutor's salary to a friend of the family ; and 
 the referee, a mere creature and toady himself, after 
 reminding the poor scholar of his extreme good 
 fortune in having made "such a valuable connec- 
 tion," names a sum which is quite ridiculously in- 
 adequate. 
 
 This is not the worst. The unhappy dependant 
 will soon find his treatment in the house very different 
 from his first introduction. "You must not expect to 
 have the same fare as strangers and others have : that 
 would be considered insufferable presumption. The 
 dish placed before you will not be the same as the 
 others. Their fowl will be plump and well fed : yours 
 will be half a skinny chicken, or a dry tough pigeon ; 
 a direct slight and insult. Kay, often, if the bill of 
 fare is scanty, and an additional guest comes in, the 
 servant will actually take the dish from before you 
 and give it to him ; whispering familiarly in your ear
 
 SATIRES OiV SOCIETY. 147 
 
 ■ — 'you're one of the family, you know.' * While they 
 are drinking good old wine, you will he expected to 
 swallow some muddy vapid stuff: and you will do 
 well to drink it out of gold or silver gohlets, that it 
 may not he plain to all, from the colour of the liquor, 
 how little respect is paid to you in the household. 
 Even of this poor stuff you will not he allowed your 
 fill ; for often, when you call for it, the servant will 
 pretend not to hear." 
 
 He warns him, also, that in such a household the 
 preceptor or the poet will he held of less account than 
 the flutist, or the dancing-master, or the Egyptian hoy 
 who can sing love-songs. And after all, do what he 
 will, he will hardly please. If he preserves a grave 
 and dignified hehaviour, he will he called churlish 
 and morose ; if he tries to he gay, and puts on a 
 smiling face, the company will only stare and laugh 
 at him. 
 
 If the town life of the unfortunate dependant is 
 full of such mortifications, matters do not mend much 
 when he accompanies his patron into the country. 
 " Amongst other things, if it rains ever so hard, you 
 must come last (that is your recognised place), and 
 wait for a conveyance ; and, if there is no room, he 
 
 * Lucian is not very original here. He hail probahly read 
 the fifth Satire of Juvenal, where, among other indignities 
 offered to the poor dependant, even the bread set before him is 
 of very inferior quality — 
 
 " Black mouldy fragments which defy the saw, 
 The mere despair of every aching jaw, 
 While manchets of the finest Hour are set 
 Before your lord." — GLfford.
 
 148 LUCIAX. 
 
 crammed into the litter with the cook and my lady's 
 woman, with scarce straw enough to keep you warm." 
 And the writer goes on to relate a veritable anecdote, 
 told him, as he declares, by a Stoic philosopher who 
 had been so unfortunate as thus to hire himself out 
 into the service of a rich Eoman lady. The story 
 reads almost like a bit out of Swift. Travelling one 
 day into the country in the suite of his patroness, 
 he found a seat allotted him next a perfumed and 
 smooth-shaven gentleman who held an equivocal 
 position in the lady's household, and whose bearing 
 might answer to that of the French dancing-master 
 of modern satirists ; not a very suitable companion 
 for the grave philosopher, who rather prided himself 
 on a venerable beard and dignified deportment. Just 
 as they were starting, the lady, with tears in her eyes, 
 appealed to his known kindness of heart to do her a 
 personal favour. Even a philosopher could not refuse 
 a request couched in such terms. " Will you then so 
 far oblige me," said she, "as just to take my dear little 
 dog Myrrhina with you in the carriage, and nurse her 
 carefully 1 She is not at all well, poor dear — in fact, 
 very near her accouchement ; and those abominable 
 careless servants of mine will give themselves no 
 trouble about me,' — much less about her." So, during 
 the whole journey, there was the little beast peeping 
 out of the grave philosopher's cloak, yelping at inter- 
 vals, and now and then licking his face, and making 
 herself disagreeable in clivers ways ; giving occasion to 
 his companion to remark, with a mincing wit, that ho 
 had become a Cynic philosoper instead of a Stoic for
 
 SATIRES ON SOCIETY. 149 
 
 the present." * Those who liked to make a good story 
 complete declared afterwards to the present narrator 
 that the philosopher, before they reached their journey's 
 end, found himself nurse to a litter of puppies as 
 well as to their interesting mother. 
 
 Scarcely less distasteful is the duty which belongs 
 to the literary companion of listening to his patron's 
 compositions, if he is a dabbler, as so many are, in poetry, 
 or history, or the drama, since one must not only listen 
 but loudly applaud his wretched attempts as an author. 
 Or, where the companion is expected himself to give 
 readings of his own to amuse the leisure of his patron, 
 the mortification may be even greater— especially if, as 
 in the case just mentioned, the patron be of the softer 
 sex. " It will often happen that while the philosopher 
 is reading, the maid will bring in a billet from a lover. 
 Straightway the lecture upon wisdom and chastity is 
 brought to a stand-still, until the lady has read and 
 answered the missive, after which they return to it 
 with all convenient speed." t 
 
 * It is hardly necessary to repeat that the term " Cynic " is 
 derived from the Greek for " dog." 
 
 t Some readers will remember the anecdote told of Dr , 
 
 one of Queen Anne's chaplains. His duty was to read the 
 Church prayers in the anteroom, while the queen was at her 
 toilet within. Occasionally the door was shut, "while her 
 majesty was shifting herself," during which interval the doctor 
 left off, and resumed when the door was reopened. The other 
 chaplains had not been so fastidious ; and the doctor was asked 
 by one of her majesty's women, why he did not go straight on 
 with his reading : upon which he replied that he " woidd never 
 whistle the Word of God through a keydiole."
 
 150 LUCIAN. 
 
 The writer entreats liis friend to have too much 
 self-respect to adopt a line of life so utterly distasteful 
 to any man of independent spirit. " Is there no pulse 
 still growing," he asks indignantly, — " no -wholesome 
 herbs on which a man may sustain life, no streams of 
 pure water left, that you should he driven to this 
 direst strait for existence V If a man will deliberately 
 choose such a life, he bids him not rail at his fate 
 hereafter, as many do, but remember those words of 
 Plato, — " Heaven is blameless — the fault lies in 
 our own choice." 
 
 It must be borne in mind that we here are reading 
 satire, and not social history, and that it -would be un- 
 fair to judge of the common position of literary men in 
 the houses of the great from this highly coloured sketch 
 of Lucian's. JS T o doubt there were still to be found hosts 
 like Maecenas wherever there were companions like 
 Horace. Few readers can have followed these extracts 
 from Lucian's description of the literary dependant of 
 his own day, without having forcibly recalled to them 
 Macaulay's well-known picture of the domestic chap- 
 lain of the days of the Stuarts. There is abundant 
 material for that brilliant caricature to be found, of 
 course, in the satirists and the comedy-writers of those 
 times, — the Lucians of the day ; and they no doubt 
 could have pointed to the original of every feature in 
 their portraits. It does not follow that such portraits 
 are to be taken as fair representatives of a class. 
 But we must remember that the lively author we have 
 now before us did not profess to be writing history; 
 and it is well not to forget in reading the English
 
 SATIRES ON SOCIETY. 151 
 
 historian's pages that we are following Oldham and 
 Swift. 
 
 THE MAUVEL-MONGEKS. 
 
 We have seen the hitter and unsparing ridicule which, 
 not without a purpose, Lucian brings to hear against 
 the fables which passed under the name of religion in 
 his day. But, if he laughed at Greek mythology, he 
 hated the strange and outlandish superstitions which 
 he saw creeping in at Athens and at Borne. He threw 
 something of his own feeling into the remonstrance of 
 the "old families" of Olympus, when they saw dog- 
 headed monsters like Anubis, and apes and hulls from 
 Memphis, introduced into the sacred circle. We have 
 no need to depend upon satirists like Horace, or 
 Juvenal, or Lucian — we need only go to the pages of 
 the historian Tacitus — to learn how the superstitions 
 of Egypt and Asia were gaining favour with the aris- 
 tocracy of Rome. " Never," says Wieland, " was the 
 propensity to supernatural prodigies and the eagerness 
 to credit them more vehement than in this very en- 
 lightened age. The priestcraft of Upper Eg3 r pt, the 
 different branches of magic, divination, and oracles of 
 all kinds, the so-called occult sciences, which associ- 
 ated mankind with a fabulous world of spirits, and 
 pretended to give them the control over the powers of 
 nature, were almost universally respected. Persons of 
 all ranks and descriptions — great lords and ladies, 
 statesmen, scholars, the recognised and paid professors 
 of the Pythagorean, the Platonic, the Stoic, and even 
 the Aristotelian school, thought on these topics exactly
 
 152 LUCIAN. 
 
 as did the simplest of the people. . . . Meii be- 
 lieved everything — and nothing." 
 
 It is in derision of this passion for the marvellous 
 that Lucian composed this Dialogue between two 
 friends, Tychiades and Philocles, of Avhom the former 
 may be taken to represent the author himself. Tychi- 
 ades wants to know why so many people prefer lies 
 to truth 1 ? Well, replies his friend, in some cases 
 men are almost obliged to tell lies for the sake of 
 their own interest ; and in war, lies to deceive an 
 enemy are allowable. But some people, rejoins the 
 other, seem to take a pleasure in lying for its own 
 sake ; and this is what puzzles him. Herodotus and 
 Homer, so far as he can make out, were notorious liars ; 
 and lied withal in such a charming way, that their lies, 
 unlike most others, have had immense vitality. 
 
 Philocles thinks something may be said in their 
 defence : they were obliged, in order to be popular, 
 to consult the universal taste for the marvellous. 
 Besides, if all the old Greek fables are to be set 
 aside, what is to become of the unfortunate people 
 who get their living by showing the antiquities and 
 curiosities % 
 
 Be this as it may, Tychiades has been quite shocked 
 and astonished at what he has heard at a party lately 
 given byhisfriendEucrates — a grey-headed philosopher, 
 who at least ought to have known better. He was laid 
 up with gout ; and the lying absurdities which his 
 friends and physicians were prescribing for him by 
 way of remedies were atrocious. A weasel's tootli 
 wrapped in a lion's skin — though the doctors gravely
 
 SATIRES ON SOCIETY. 153 
 
 squabbled whether it should not rather be a deer-skin 
 — did any one ever hear the like 1 And then the guests 
 had all set to work to tell the most marvellous stories 
 — stories which go a long way to show how little 
 novelty there is in the inventions of superstition ; of 
 magic rings made out of gibbet - irons ; of haunted 
 houses in which ghosts appeared and showed the way 
 to their unburied bones ; of a statue which at night 
 stepped down from its pedestal and walked about the 
 house, and even took a bath — you might hear him 
 splashing in the water; of a slave who, having stolen 
 his master's goods, was every night flogged by an invis- 
 ible hand — you could count the wheals upon his back 
 in the morning ; of a little bronze figure of Hippocrates, 
 only two spans high (this is the doctor's story), who 
 is also given to nocturnal perambulations, and, small 
 as he is, makes a great clatter in the surgery, upsetting 
 the pill-boxes and changing the places of the bottles, 
 if he has not had proper honour paid to him in 
 the way of sacrifice during the year ; of a colossal 
 figure terminating in a serpent — Eucrates has seen it 
 himself — before whose feet the infernal regions opened. 
 Eucrates' own wife, again, whom he had burnt and 
 buried handsomely, with all her favourite dresses too, 
 in order to make her as comfortable as possihle in her 
 new state of existence,* had appeared to him seven 
 months afterwards — " while I was lying on my couch, 
 
 * Probably founded on the story of Melissa's complaint to 
 her husband Periander, that she was cold in the Shades below, 
 because her clothes had only been buried, and not burnt, with 
 her. — Herodotus, v. 92.
 
 154 LUC I AN. 
 
 just as I am now, and reading Plato on the immor- 
 tality of the soul" — and frightened him terribly. 
 She had missed an article of her wardrobe — one 
 of a pair of golden slippers to which she was parti- 
 cularly attached, and there was no rest for her per- 
 turbed spirit without it. Happily the slipper was 
 found next morning in the very place which the 
 lady had indicated, behind a chest, and was duly 
 burned ; and both husband and household had peace 
 afterwards. 
 
 Eucrates had another story to tell also, of something 
 which had happened to himself — a story with which 
 we are tolerably familiar in more than one modern 
 form, but which it may be amusing to read here in an 
 older version. The narrator had the good fortune, 
 on a voyage up the Nile, to make the acquaintance 
 of a certain Pancrates, one of the holy scribes of 
 Memphis, who had learnt magic from the goddess 
 Isis herself. They became so intimate that they 
 agreed to continue their travels together, Pancrates 
 assuring his friend that they should have no need 
 of servants. 
 
 " When we got to an inn, this remarkable man 
 would take the bar of the door, or a broom, or a 
 pestle, put some clothes on it, mutter a charm over 
 it, and make it walk, looking to every one else's eyes 
 for all the world like a man : it would go and draw 
 water, fetch provisions and set them out, and make 
 an excellent servant and waiter in all respects. Then, 
 when its office was done to our contentment, he would 
 mutter a counter-charm, and make the broom become a
 
 SATIRES ON SOCIETY. 155 
 
 broom again, and the pestle a pestle. Now this charm 
 I never could get him to disclose to me, with all my 
 entreaties ; he was jealous on this one point, though 
 in everything else he was most obliging. But one 
 day, standing in a dark corner, I overheard the spell 
 — it was but three syllables — without his knowing it 
 He went off to market after giving the pestle its 
 orders. So next day, when he was gone out on 
 business, I took the pestle, dressed it up, and bid it 
 go and draw water. When it had filled the pitcher 
 and brought it back, " Stop ! " said I ; " draw no more 
 water ; be a pestle again." But it paid no attention 
 to me, but went on drawing water till the whole house 
 was full. Not knowing what on earth to do (for 
 Pancrates was sure to be in a terrible way when he 
 came back, as indeed fell out), I laid hold on a 
 hatchet, and split the pestle in two. At once both 
 halves took up a pitcher apiece, and began drawing 
 water. So instead of one water-carrier, I had two. 
 In the middle of it all, in came Pancrates, and under- 
 standing how matters stood, changed them back into 
 wood again as they were before. Cut he Avent off and 
 left me without a word, and I never knew wdiat be- 
 came of hi in." 
 
 They afterwards went on to tell so many horrible 
 stories, that Tychiades left them in disgust ; and 
 he declares to his friend that even now he has 
 nothing but goblins and spectres before his eyes 
 ever since, and would give something to forget the 
 conversation. 
 
 A passage occurs in this Dialogue worthy of remark,
 
 156 LUCIAN. 
 
 as containing, in the opinion of some, one of the few 
 notices of Christianity which occur in contemporary- 
 heathen writers. One of the party at which the nar- 
 rator was present speaks of having heen an eyewitness 
 of certain cures worked upon " demoniacs " hy a person 
 of whom he speaks as "that Syrian from Palestine, 
 whom all men know." " He would stand over those 
 possessed, and ask the spirits from whence they had 
 entered into the body? and the sick man himself 
 would he silent, but the devil would reply, either in 
 Greek or some barbarous tongue of his own country, 
 how and from whence he had entered into the man. 
 Then the exorcist, using adjurations, and, if these 
 had no effect, even threats, would expel the spirit." * 
 It has been thought that here we have a record 
 of healing wrought by some one of the successors 
 of the Christian apostles. It must be observed, 
 however, that the cure is here expressly said to have 
 been performed " for a large fee," and that we have 
 distinct mention in the Acts of the Apostles of 
 professed exorcists who were not Christians. 
 
 The "Saturnalia," and the piece called "Nigrinus," 
 may also be classed with the preceding. In the first, 
 the author takes occasion of the well-known annual 
 festival, kept in remembrance of the " good old times," 
 at which so much general licence was allowed even to 
 slaves, to deal some good-humoured blows at the follies 
 of the day ; and at the same time to introduce Saturn 
 
 * " The Marvel-Mongers" (Philopseudcs), 16.
 
 SATIRES ON SOCIETY. 157 
 
 himself as a poor gouty decrepit old deity, quite out of 
 date, and to remark upon Jupiter's unfdial conduct in 
 turning him out of his kingdom. In the latter Dia- 
 logue, a Platonic philosopher named Nigrinus (whether 
 a real or imaginary personage is not certainly known) 
 contrasts the pomp and luxury of Eoman city life with 
 the simpler hahits of the Athenians.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 LUCIAN AS A ROMANCE-WRITER. 
 
 "We can readily see, from the spirit and vivecity of 
 Lucian's Dialogues, what an admirable novelist he 
 would have been ; especially if he had chosen the style 
 which has of late become deservedly popular, where 
 nice delineation of character, and conversation of that 
 clever and yet apparently natural and easy kind in 
 which " the art conceals the art," form the attraction 
 to the reader, rather than exciting incidents or elabor- 
 ate plot. But this kind of literature had yet to be 
 born. Lucian has left us, however, two short romances, 
 if they may be so called, which it would be hardly fair 
 to compare Avith modern works of fiction, but which 
 show that he possessed powers of imagination admit- 
 ting of large and successful development if his own 
 age had afforded scope and encouragement to literary 
 efforts of that kind. It must be remembered that the 
 modern novel, in all its various types, is the special 
 product of modern society; the love -tales which 
 so largely form its staple, and the nice distinctions of 
 character on which so much of its interest depends, 
 spring entirely out of the circumstances of modern
 
 LUCTAN AS A ROMANCE-WRITER. 159 
 
 civilisation, and could have no place in Greek or 
 Roman life in the days of Lucian. Yet he may fairly 
 claim to have furnished hints, at least, of which later 
 workers in the same field have taken advantage. 
 
 One of these tales Lucian has entitled " The Veraci- 
 ous History." Even here he preserves his favourite, 
 character of satirist ; for he glances slyly, both in the 
 opening of his story and throughout it, at the stories 
 told hy the old poets and historians, which he would 
 have us understand are often about as " veracious " as 
 his own. His old quarrel with the pretenders to 
 philosophy breaks out also from time to time in the 
 same pages. He introduces his story (which is the 
 account of an imaginary voyage made into certain un- 
 discovered regions) by a kind of preface, of which the 
 following is a portion. 
 
 " Ctesias, son of Ctesiochus, of Cnidus, has written 
 an account of India, and of the things there which he 
 never either saw himself or heard from any one else. 
 So also lambulus has told us a great many incredible 
 stories about things in the great ocean, which every- 
 body knew to be false, but which he has put to- 
 gether in a form by no means unentertaining.* So 
 many others besides, with the same end in view, have 
 related what purported to be their own travels and 
 adventures, describing marvellously large beasts and 
 savage men, and strange modes of life. But the ring- 
 
 * Ctesias's ' Indica,' of which Photius gives an abridgment, 
 though to some extent fabulous, is not so contemptible as Lu- 
 cian represents. lambulus, whose account of India Diodorug 
 Siculus adopts, seems to have indulged in pure fiction.
 
 1G0 LUC I AN. 
 
 leader and first introducer of this extravagant style 
 is that Ulysses of Homer's, telling his stories at the 
 court of Alcinb'us, about the imprisonment of the 
 ■winds, and the one-eyed Cyclops, and the man-eaters, 
 and suchlike savage tribes ; and about creatures with 
 many heads, and the transformation of his comrades 
 by magic potions, and all the rest of it, with which he 
 astonished the simple Phrcacians. "When I read all 
 these, I do not blame the writers so much for their lies, 
 because I find the custom common even with those 
 who pretend to be philosophers. All I wonder at is, 
 that they should ever have supposed that people would 
 not find out that they were telling what was not true. 
 "Wherefore, being myself incited (by an absurd vanity, 
 I admit) to leave some legacy to posterity, that I may 
 not be the only man without my share in this open 
 field of story-telling, and having nothing true to tell 
 (for I never met with any very memorable adventures), 
 I hive turned my thoughts to lying ; in much more ex- 
 cusable fashion, however, than the others. For I shall 
 certainly speak the truth on one point, — when I tell 
 you that I lie ; and so it seems to me I ought to escape 
 censure from the public, since I freely confess there is 
 not a word of truth in my story. I am going to write, 
 then, about things which I never saw, adventures 
 I never went through, or heard from any one else ; 
 things, moreover, which never were, nor ever can be. 
 So my readers must on no account believe them." 
 
 The adventures of the voyagers " from the Pillars of 
 Hercules into the "Western Ocean " are indeed of the 
 most extravagant kind. They have all the wild im-
 
 LUCIAN AS A ROMANCE- WRITER. 1G1 
 
 possibilities without much of the picturesqueness of 
 an Eastern tale. A burlesque resemblance is kept up 
 throughout to the kind of incident which, in the 
 mouths of the old bards, had passed for history. "VVe 
 read how they came to a brass pillar with an almost 
 illegible inscription, marking the limit of the travels of 
 Hercules and Bacchus, and found near it on a rock 
 the prints of two footsteps, one " measuring about an 
 acre " — plainly that of Hercules ; the smaller one, of 
 course, belonged to Bacchus : how they found rivers 
 of native wine, — a manifest confirmation of the visit 
 of the latter god to those parts : and how a whirl- 
 wind carried them, ship and all, up into the moon, 
 where they made acquaintance with Endymion, and 
 saw the earth below looking like a moon to them, 
 Avhich shows that Lucian was not so far wrong 
 in his astronomy. How their ship Avas swallowed 
 by a sea-monster, and they lived inside him a year 
 and eight months, carrying on a small war against 
 a previous colony whom they found established 
 there : and effected their escape at last by lighting an 
 enormous fire, so that the monster died of internal 
 inflammation. After this they made their way to that 
 hitherto undiscovered country, the ' Island of the 
 Blest,' when they were bound in fetters of roses, and 
 led before Bhadamanthus, the king. We have a glow- 
 ing description of the city, with its streets of gold and 
 walls of emerald, temples of beryl and altars of ame- 
 thyst ; where there was no day or night, but a per- 
 petual luminous twilight ; where it was always spring, 
 and none but the south wind blew ; and where the vines 
 a. c. vol. xviii. l
 
 162 LUCIAN. 
 
 ripened their fruit every month.* There they found 
 most of the heroes of Grecian legend and of later 
 history. Philosophers, too — genuine philosophers — 
 were there in good number. And here the satirist 
 quite gets the mastery over the story-teller. Plato 
 was remarked as absent ; he preferred living " in his 
 own Republic, under his own laws," to any Elysium 
 that could be offered him. The Stoics had not yet 
 arrived, when these voyagers reached the island, though 
 they were expected ; Hesiod's ' Hill of Virtue, 't which 
 they all had to climb, was such a very long one. Neither 
 were the Sceptics of the Academy to be seen there ; 
 they were thinking of coming, but had " doubts " about 
 it — doubts whether there Avere any such place at all ; 
 and perhaps, thinks Lucian, they were shy of encoun- 
 tering the judgment of Rhadamanthus, having a pro- 
 found dislike to any decisive judgment upon any sub- 
 ject whatever. 
 
 The travellers would gladly have remained in the 
 Happy Island altogether, but this was not allowed. 
 They were promised, however, by Rhadamanthus, that if 
 during their further voyage they complied with certain 
 rules, which remind us of the old burlesque oath for- 
 
 ' * It has been thought that the writer must either have seen 
 or heard of the description of the New Jerusalem in the Revela- 
 tion. But figurative diction has always some features in 
 common ; and in this passage reminiscences of the Greek poets 
 are very evident. The ingenuity of some commentators has 
 discovered, not only here, but throughout this "Veracious 
 History," an intentional travesty of Scripture. But such an 
 idea is surely fanciful. 
 + Seep. 121.
 
 LUCIAN AS A ROMANCE-WRITER. 1G3 
 
 merly sworn by travellers at Highgate — such as " never 
 to stir the fire with a sword, and never to kiss any 
 woman above two-and-twenty " * — they should in good 
 time find their way there again. Just as the writer is 
 taking his leave, " Ulysses, unknown to Penelope, 
 slipped into his hand a note to Calypso, directed to 
 the island of Ogygia." The note, in the course of their 
 subsequent wanderings, was duly delivered, and Calypso 
 entertained the bearers very handsomely in her island; 
 asking, not without tears, many questions about her old 
 lover ; and also — whether Penelope was really so very 
 lovely and so virtuous 1 to which, very prudently, says 
 Lucian, " we made such a reply as we thought would 
 please her best." 
 
 They meet with some other adventures, tedious to 
 our ears, sated as they are with fiction in all shapes, 
 but probably not so to the hearers or readers to whom 
 Lucian addressed them. But either he grew tired of 
 story - telling, or the conclusion of this "Veracious 
 History " has been lost ; for it breaks oft abruptly, 
 
 * This latter caution bears a curious similarity to one of 
 the parting injunctions which Perceval (or Peredur), when 
 setting out from home in quest of adventures, receives from his 
 mother, and which appears with little variation in the Welsh, 
 Breton, and Norman legends — to kiss every demoiselle he meets, 
 without waiting for her permission ; it is, she assures him, a 
 point of chivalry. He carries out his instructions, according to 
 one raconteur, by kissing the first lady he falls in with " vingt 
 fois," in spite of her resistance, pleading his filial obligation : 
 " Ma mere m'enseigna et dit 
 Que les puceles saluasse 
 En quel lieu que je les trovasse." 
 
 — Chrestien de Troyes.
 
 164 LUCIAN. 
 
 leaving some promises made in the early portion un- 
 fulfilled. 
 
 De Bergerac, in his ' Voyage to the Moon ' and 
 ' History of the Empire of the Sun,' Swift, in his 
 ' Gulliver's Travels,' Quevedo, in his ' Visions,' and 
 Rabelais, in his ' History of Gargantua and Pantagruel,' 
 are all said to have borrowed from this imaginary voy- 
 age oi Lucian's. But they can have taken from him 
 little more than crude hints, and Swift at least owes 
 a much larger debt to De Bergerac than to Lucian. 
 
 Lucius, or The Ass, is another short essay in fiction, 
 complete in itself, and approximating more closely to 
 our modern idea of a story. It relates the transforma- 
 tion of the hero into an ass, through the accidental 
 operation of the charm of a sorceress, and his restora- 
 tion, after a variety of adventures in his quadruped 
 form, into his own proper shape by feeding on some 
 roses. It is not certain whether the story is original, 
 or merely an abridgment in our author's own style 
 from a tale by one Lucius of Patrse. The " Golden 
 Ass" of Apuleius (written probably at about the same 
 date) seems to be founded either on this piece of 
 Lucian's or on the common original, but Apuleius 
 extends the tale to greater length. The experiences 
 of Lucius in the person of the ass, while retaining all 
 his human faculties, are fairly amusing, but not tempt- 
 ing either for extract or abridgment. The piece is 
 chiefly interesting as one of the few surviving speci- 
 mens of an ancient novelette. 
 
 Shorter, but much more amusing, is the pleasant
 
 LUCIA X AS A ROM A NCE -WRITER. IG5 
 
 little sketch, oast in Lucian's favourite form of a 
 Dialogue — " The Cock and the Cobbler." 
 
 The Cohhler is our old friend Micyllus, who is 
 awakened one morning much earlier than he likes by 
 the crowing of his cock, whom he declares lie would 
 kill if it were not too dark to catch him. The Cock 
 remonstrates : he is only doing his duty ; and if his 
 master will not get up and make a shoe before break- 
 fast, he is very likely to go without. Micyllus is very 
 much startled at the prodigy of a cock's finding a 
 human voice ; upon which the bird remarks that if 
 Achilles's horse Xanthus could make a long sptech, 
 and in verse too, and the half-roasted oxen in the 
 Odyssey could low even on the spit — and there is 
 Homer's excellent authority for both * — surely he 
 may say a few words in humble prose. Besides, if 
 his master wants to know, he has not always be^n a 
 bird — he was a man, once upon a time : Micyllus has 
 surely heard of the great philosopher Pythagoras, and 
 his transformations? Yes, Micyllus has heard all 
 about it— and a great impostor he was. " Pray, don't 
 use violent language," replies the Cock ; " I am 
 Pythagoras — or rather, I was." He proceeds to ex- 
 plain how many and various transmigrations he has 
 already gone through ; he has been a king, a b^'gar, 
 
 * It will Le observed that Lucian is continually jesting upon 
 the marvels related by Homer, and affecting to be shocked at 
 them as palpable lies. But his very familiarity with the poet 
 is proof sufficient of his real appreciation of him. Like the old 
 angler, he puts him on his hook, but still "handles him ten- 
 derly, as though he loved him."
 
 1G6 lucian. 
 
 a woman, a horse, and a jackdaw ; and never more 
 miserable than in the character of a king. Micyllus 
 expresses great surprise at this statement : for his own 
 part, riches are the one thing he has always longed 
 for; and the reason for his having been so angry 
 now at being awakened was that he was in the midst 
 of a most charming and interesting dream — it was, that 
 he had inherited all the great wealth of his rich 
 neighbour Eucrates, and was giving a grand supper 
 on the occasion. He had thought he should now 
 be able to repay the insolence of his former acquaint- 
 ance Simo, who from a cobbler like himself bad be- 
 come suddenly a rich man, and would no longer recog- 
 nise his old associate. The Cock assures his master 
 that in his present poor estate he is really happier than 
 many of the wealthy and great ; and he will give him 
 proof positive of his assertion. One of the two long 
 feathers in his (the cock's) tail — the right-hand one — 
 has the miraculous power of opening locks, and even 
 making a passage through walls : he bids Micyllus pull 
 it out. The cobbler pulls out both, to make sure, at 
 which the Cock is very angry, until assured by his master 
 that with one feather he would have looked very lop- 
 sided. Armed with this talisman (the same which Le 
 Sage has borrowed for his ' Diable Boiteux'), the pair 
 fly through the sleeping city from house to house. They 
 visit amongst others Simo and Eucrates : they find the 
 former hiding his money, unable to sleep, in an agony 
 for fear of thieves ; and the latter cheated and be- 
 trayed by his wife and his servants. And the cobbler 
 goes back home a wiser and more contented man.
 
 CHAPTER Vn. 
 
 LDCIAN AND CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 TnE notices of Christianity to be found in heathen 
 
 authors who were either contemporary with its great 
 
 Founder, or who wrote during the early ages of the 
 
 Christian Church, are so few, that even the slightest 
 
 has an interest beyond what would otherwise be its 
 
 historical importance. The rarity of such notices, and 
 
 their general brevity and indistinctness, is apt to surprise 
 
 us, untd we recollect that Christianity did not for some 
 
 time make that impression upon the heathen world 
 
 which from our own point of view we might naturally 
 
 expect. The Christians were long regarded as merely a 
 
 sect within a sect, and that an insignificant and despised 
 
 one : even historians like Tacitus and Suetonius saw in 
 
 the " Christus " whom they both mention little more 
 
 than a ringleader of turbulent Jews. Superstitions 
 
 of all kinds and from all quarters were crowding in, as 
 
 we may see even from Lucian's own pages, upon the 
 
 ground which the priesthood of pagan Rome were 
 
 striving to hold by making the national religion so 
 
 "catholic" as to include the gods of as many other 
 
 creeds as they could. Men believed, as Wielund says,
 
 168 LUC I AN. 
 
 " everything, and nothing." A new god or a new 
 superstition more or less made not much impression on 
 the popular mind. The very feeling to which St Paul 
 appeals at Athens, their readiness to adopt even an 
 " unknown God," is evidence of a latitudinarianism 
 in such matters which at once gave hope of toleration, 
 and opened a dreary prospect of indifference. And 
 indifference was, no doubt, the feeling with which 
 the Christians were widely regarded, unless when by 
 some misrepresentation of their doctrines they were 
 denounced as plotters against the throne or the life of 
 the reigning emperor, and the populace was hounded 
 on against them, as in more modern times against the 
 Jews, as atheists, sorcerers, and enemies of the state. 
 
 The attitude of Lucian towards Christianity has 
 "been the subject of more discussion than that of any 
 other heathen writer. He has written an account of 
 the self-immolation of one Peregrinus or Proteus, about 
 whose character and antecedents the learned are not 
 quite agreed. If Lucian' s history of him is to be 
 trusted, he was a Hellespontine Greek, who, after a 
 youth of great profligacy, had, either from conviction 
 or more probably for selfish ends, become a Christian, 
 had held high office in the Church, and attained a 
 position of great influence in the body, combining the 
 pretensions of a Cynic philosopher with those of a 
 Christian priest. He had even suffered for his pro- 
 fessed faith, and been imprisoned by the governor of 
 Syria. But this imprisonment Lucian thinks he pur- 
 posely sought in order to obtain notoriety, which object 
 the governor was aware of, and disappointed him by
 
 / 
 
 LUCIAN AND CHRISTIANITY. 1G9 
 
 setting him free. He afterwards travelled, supported, 
 according to apostolic precedent, byliis fellow-believers; 
 but being detected in some profanation (apparently) of 
 the Eucharist,* he threw off his profession, and returned 
 to his old profligate life. Expelled from Eome by the 
 authorities for his scandalous conduct there, he endea- 
 voured without success to excite the people of Elis to 
 revolt against the Roman Government ; and at length, 
 finding his popularity and influence on the wane, sought 
 to restore it by giving out publicly that he would burn 
 himself solemnly at the forthcoming Olympic games. 
 This intention, strange to say, ho actually carried into 
 execution ; whether from an insane desire for posthu- 
 mous notoriety, or whether, hoping to be rescued at 
 the last moment by his friends, he had gone too far to 
 recede, is not at all clear from any version of the story. 
 
 Lucian was an eyewitness of this very remarkable 
 spectacle, of which he gives an account in the shape 
 of a letter to a friend, prefacing it with a short bio- 
 graphical sketch, touched in very dark colours, of a 
 man whom he considers to have been, both in his life 
 and death, a consummate impostor. These are the 
 passages in which he speaks of the Christians : — 
 
 "About this time, Peregrinus became a disciple of 
 that extraordinary philosophy of the Christians, having 
 met with some of their priests and scribes in Palestine. 
 He soon convinced them that they were all mere chil- 
 
 * Lucian 's words are, " I believe it was eating certain food for- 
 bidden among them." This may have reference to the " meats 
 ottered to idols : " or he may very probably here, as elsewhere, 
 coniound Christians with Jews.
 
 170 LUCIAiV. 
 
 dren to him, becoming their prophet and choir-leader 
 and chief of their synagogue, and, in short, everything 
 to them. Several of their sacred books he annotated 
 and interpreted, and some he wrote himself. They 
 lield him almost as a god, and made him their lawgiver 
 and president.* You know they still reverence that 
 great man, Him that was crucified in Palestine for 
 introducing these new doctrines into the world. On 
 this account Proteus was apprehended and thrown into 
 prison, which very thing brought him no small renown 
 for the future, and the admiration and notoriety which 
 he was so fond of. For, during the time that he was 
 in prison, the Christians, looking upon it as a general 
 misfortune, tried every means to get him released. 
 Then, when this was found impossible, their attention 
 to him in all other ways was zealous and unremitting. 
 Prom early dawn you might see widows and orphans 
 waiting at the prison - doors ; and the men of rank 
 among them even bribed the jailors to allow them to 
 pass the night with him inside the walls. Then they 
 brought in to him there sumptuous meals, and read 
 their sacred books together ; and this good Peregrinus 
 (for he was then called so) was termed by them a second 
 Socrates. There came certain Christians, too, from 
 some of the cities in Asia, deputed by their community 
 to bring him aid, and to counsel and encourage him. 
 For they are wonderfully ready whenever their public 
 interest is concerned — in short, they grudge nothing 
 and so much money came in to Peregrinus at that 
 
 * The Greek word here used (vpoffrarrts) possibly means 
 bishop. St Cyril calls St Taul and St Peter by that name.
 
 LUC'IAN AND CHRISTIANITY. 171 
 
 time, by reason of his imprisonment, that he made a 
 considerable income by it. For these poor wretches 
 persuade themselves that they shall be immortal, and 
 live for everlasting ; so that they despise death, and 
 some of them offer themselves to it voluntarily. Again, 
 their first lawgiver taught them that they were all 
 brothers, when once they had committed themselves 
 so far as to renounce the gods of the Greeks, and wor- 
 ship that crucified sophist, and live according to his 
 laws. So they hold all things alike in contempt, and 
 consider all property common, trusting each other in 
 such matters without any valid security. If, therefore, 
 any clever impostor came among them, who knew how 
 to manage matters, he very soon made himself a rich 
 man, by practising on the credulity of these simple 
 people." 
 
 We have in this passage a not very unfair account 
 of the discipline and practice of the early Christians, 
 taking into consideration that it is given by a cynical 
 observer, who saw in this new phase of religion only 
 one superstition the more. There is an evident and 
 not unnatural confusion here and there between Chris- 
 tians and Jews ; and it is not clear whether the " first 
 lawgiver" is a vague idea of Moses, or of St Paul, 
 or of Christ himself. But in the " widows " we plainly 
 see those deaconesses, or whatever we may term them, 
 of whom Phoebe at Cenchrea was one ; the " sumptu- 
 ous meals" are almost certainly the "love-feasts" of 
 the Church ; while in the reading of the sacred books 
 we have one of the most striking features of their 
 public worship. In the account of the prison-life of
 
 172 luc i an: 
 
 Peregrinus, impostor if he were, we seem to be reading 
 but another version of that of St Paul — of the "prayer 
 that was made of the Church " for him — of the good 
 Philemon and Onesiphorus, who " ministered to him 
 in his bonds," and those of " the chief of Asia who 
 were his friends." The whole passage, brief as it is, 
 bears token of having been penned by a writer who, 
 if not acquainted with the tenets and practices of the 
 Christians of those days from personal observation and 
 experience, had at least gained his information from 
 some fairly accurate source. 
 
 Such a passage was sure to exercise the criticism 
 of Christian scholars, and very conflicting theories 
 have been set up as to its interpretation, as bearing 
 upon the author's own relations and feelings towards 
 Christianity. Some over-ingenious speculators, read- 
 ing it side by side with his bitter satire on the accepted 
 theology of Paganism, have fancied that they saw in it 
 evidence that Lucian himself was a Christian — in dis- 
 guise. That after boldly and openly attacking Poly- 
 theism, and exhibiting it in the most grotesque cari- 
 cature, he cautiously, as one treading on perilous 
 ground, and still in a tone of half-banter, opens to 
 his readers a half-view of the new philosophy whose 
 ideal republic is a grander scheme than Plato's — the 
 "simple people," the leading features ot whose pol- 
 ity are " universal brotherhood " and " community of 
 goods." 
 
 Such a view was tempting, no doubt, to a clever 
 scholar, from the very paradox which it involved. 
 Put, except as a paradox, it is hard to conceive its
 
 LUCIAN AND CHRISTIANITY. 173 
 
 having been propounded. It was much more natural 
 to take, as many honest theologians did take and 
 hotly maintain, quite the opposite view of Lucian's 
 feelings towards the new religion. And these could 
 certainly produce better evidence in support of their 
 opinion. They traced in the sceptical tone of his 
 writings the voice of an enemy to all forms of reli- 
 gion, true as well as false. They called him loudly 
 "atheist" and "blasphemer." Some of them in- 
 vented, and probably told until they believed it, a 
 story of his having met his death by being torn 
 in pieces by dogs — as such impiety well deserved. 
 And one — Suidas — went so far as to express the 
 charitable hope and belief that his punishment did 
 not end there, but is still proceeding.* In the 
 passage which has been here quoted, they saw a 
 sneer at the holiest mysteries. Yet surely no 
 such interpretation is self-evident to any candid 
 reader. It is a cold, unimpassioned statement ; half 
 serious and half satiric, as is Lucian's wont ; but 
 neither prejudiced nor malicious. We have nothing 
 here like the bitterness of Fronto or Celsus, or the 
 stern anathema which Tacitus, ranking Christianity 
 among other hated introductions from the East, hurls 
 against it as an "execrable superstition." The tenets 
 of this obscure sect did seem to Lucian — the man of the 
 
 * Suidas shall express himself in his own Latin, and if any 
 English reader does not understand him, he will have no great 
 loss: "Quare et rabiei istius poenas sufficientes in praesenti 
 vita dedit, et in futurum hferes sterni ignis una cum Satana 
 erit." — Life of Lucian, prefixed to Zuinger's edit., 1602.
 
 174 LUCIAN. 
 
 world — " extraordinary ; " nothing more or less, what- 
 ever irony some may find in the word. Even the term 
 " crucified sophist," however offensive to our ears, 
 had nothing necessarily offensive as used by the 
 writer. The clever Greek has no special sympathy 
 with the "simple people" who were content with bad 
 security for their money, and proved such an easy 
 prey to any designing adventurer ; but all his con- 
 tempt and wrath is reserved for the impostor who 
 cheated them. On him, and not on the Christians, 
 he pours it out unsparingly. Here is his account 
 of Peregrinus's last moments. The great games were 
 over, but the crowd still lingered at Olympia to see 
 the promised spectacle. It was deferred from night 
 to night, but at last an hour was appointed. At- 
 tended by a troop of friends and admirers (a criminal 
 going to execution, says the merciless narrator, has 
 usually a long train), Peregrinus approached the pile, 
 which had been prepared near the Hippodrome. 
 
 " Then the more foolish among the crowd shouted, 
 ' Live, for the sake of the Greeks ! ' But the more 
 hard-hearted cried, ' Fulfil your promise ! ' At this 
 the old man was not a little put out, for he had 
 expected that they Avould surely all lay hold on 
 him, and not let him get into the firj, but force 
 him to live against his will. But this exhortation 
 to ' keep his promise ' fell on him quite unex- 
 pectedly, and made him paler than ever, though his 
 colour looked like death before. He trembled, and 
 became silent. . . . When the moon rose (for 
 she, too, must needs look upon this grand sight)
 
 LUCIA N AND CHRISTIANITY. 175 
 
 he came forward, clad in his usual dress, and followed 
 hy his train of Cynics, and specially the notorious 
 Theagenes of Patras, well fitted to play second in 
 such a performance. Peregrinus, too, carried a torch ; 
 and approaching the pile — a very large one, made 
 up of pitch-pine and brushwood — they lighted it at 
 either end. Then the hero (mark what I say) laid 
 down his scrip and his cloak, and the Herculean 
 club he -used to carry, and stood in his under gar- 
 ment — and very dirty it was. He next asked for 
 frankincense to cast .on the fire ; and when some one 
 brought it, he threw it on, and turning his face to- 
 wards the south (this turning towards the south is 
 an important point in the performance) he exclaimed, 
 ' Shades of my father and my mother, be propitious, 
 and receive me ! ' "When he had said this, he leaped 
 into the burning pile and was seen no more, the flames 
 rising high and enveloping him at once." 
 
 Lucian goes on to say, that when the followers of 
 Peregrinus stood round weeping and lamenting, he 
 could not resist some jokes at their expense, which 
 very nearly cost him a beating. On his way home 
 he met several persons who were too late for the 
 sight ; and when they begged him to give them an 
 account of it, he added to the story a few touches 
 of his own : how the earth shook, and how a vulture* 
 was seen soaring out of the flames, and crying, " I 
 have left earth, and mount to Olympus ! " These 
 
 * The vulture among birds was the general scavenger, as the 
 dog among Leasts ; and Lucian perhaps imagines the soul of 
 he Cynic naturally taking that form.
 
 176 LUCIA X. 
 
 little embellishments of the fact were, as he assures 
 his friend, repeated afterwards as integral parts of the 
 story. Some time afterwards he had met " a grey- 
 haired old man, whose beard and venerable aspect 
 might have seemed to bespeak a trustworthy witness," 
 who solemnly declared that he had seen Proteus after 
 his burning, " all in white, wearing a crown of olive ; " 
 nay, that he had not long ago left him " alive and 
 cheerful, walking in the Hall of the Seven Echoes." 
 
 This portion of the narrative has also given rise 
 to considerable discussion. Those who could see in 
 Lucian nothing but a scoffer, asserted that the whole 
 story was fictitious, and that his sole intention was to 
 ridicule and caricature the deaths of Christian martyrs. 
 They noted in this account of the last moments of 
 Peregrinus many circumstances apparently borrowed 
 from the deaths of the famous martyrs of the times. 
 The previous attempts at rescue and the bribing of the 
 jailors have their exact parallels in the case of Igna- 
 tius, and the Christians in their dreams saw him 
 walking about in a glorified shape ; the " olive-crown " 
 might be an embodiment of that " crown of victory " 
 of which he spoke at his death, or "the crown of 
 immortality " which Polycarp saw before him ; the 
 stripping and " standing in the under garment only" is 
 related of Cyprian at his martyrdom ; and Lucian's 
 vulture seems but a parody of the dove which the 
 imaginative piety of Christian legend saw rising from 
 the funeral-pile of Polycarp.* The very year (a.d. 1G5) 
 
 * The dove is omitted in the account given by Eusehius.
 
 LUCIAN AND CHRISTIANITY. 177 
 
 of Polycarp's death, which we are distinctly told " was 
 discussed everywhere among the heathen," seems pos- 
 sibly to correspond. Bishop Pearson appears to have 
 considered the whole account as nothing more than 
 a kind of travesty of the martyrdom of Ignatius, and 
 in this idea he has been followed by many German 
 scholars. It has been conjectured that possibly Lucian 
 may have intended to satirise the contempt of death 
 which he speaks of as a characteristic of the Christian 
 sect, and that positive desire for martyrdom which we 
 know from other authorities to have prevailed among 
 some of them to a morbid degree, as a new development 
 of cynicism. 
 
 But there seems no good reason to doubt the main 
 accuracy of the account given by Lucian, or to attribute 
 to him any sinister motive in telling the story as he does. 
 The extraordinary fact of this self-immolation of Pere- 
 grinus is related, though briefly, by Christian writers 
 — by Tatian, Tertullian, and Eusebius. Aulus Gellius, 
 indeed, speaks of having known him in his earlier 
 life, as living in a cottage in the suburbs of Athens, 
 " a grave and earnest man," to whose wise discourse he 
 had often listened with much pleasure. But a consum- 
 mate impostor such as Lucian describes may well have 
 succeeded in imposing upon the Roman antiquarian 
 as upon the officers of the Christian Church.* He had 
 
 * See Noct. Att., xii. 11. Wieland, all whose remarks on 
 Lucian deserve respect, thought his portrait of Peregrinus mani- 
 festly unfair, and wrote a kind of novelette, cast in the form 
 of a Dialogue between Lucian and Peregrinus in Elysium, in 
 which the latter gives a very different account of his life from 
 a. c. vol. xviii. m
 
 178 LUCIA If. 
 
 probably", as Eusebius relates of him, joined tbat com- 
 munity for a time, most likely for bis own ends, though 
 he may not have held the high position among them 
 which is here ascribed to him. On the motives which 
 led him to the extraordinary act which closed his life, 
 Lucian must have had better opportunities of judging 
 than are open to us ; and he plainly considers that he 
 Avas actuated at first by a fanatical desire for notoriety, 
 and possibly forced at the last to carry out his announce- 
 ment against his will. It might have required more 
 courage to draw back, in the face of public ridicule and 
 certain exposure, than to brave death amidst the ap- 
 plause of the crowd. 
 
 The abuse showered upon Lucian by Christian 
 writers as a "blasphemer" and an "Antichrist" is 
 due partly to his having had ascribed to him a Dia- 
 logue called " Philopatris," in Avhich the Christians are 
 maliciously accused of prophesying misfortunes to the 
 state, and which bears internal evidence of having 
 been written by one who had been at some period a 
 member of a Christian Church. As the author of this, 
 they charged him Avith Avorse than infidelity — apostasy 
 from the faith, and treason to his former associates. 
 But it has been pretty clearly proved that this Avork is 
 of much later date, and could not possibly have come 
 from the hand of Lucian. It is true that in his ac- 
 count of the pseudo-prophet Alexander, the only other 
 occasion on Avhich he mentions the Christians by name, 
 
 the version here presented to us. There is a good notice of this 
 little work of Wieland's in W. Taylor's 'Historic Survey of 
 German Poetry,' ii. 482.
 
 LUCI AN AND CHRISTIANITY. 179 
 
 he has classed them with " atheists and Epicureans ;" * 
 hut this is only so far as to show that they were all 
 equally incredulous of the pretended miracles of that 
 impostor. 
 
 Of the new Kingdom which had risen Lucian had 
 in fact no conception. What opportunities he may 
 have had, or may have missed, of making acquaintance 
 with it, we cannot tell. Its silent growth seems to 
 have heen little noted hy him. The contempt for 
 death and indifference to riches professed hy this new 
 sect would seem to him only echoes of what he had 
 long heard from the lips of those Stoic and Cynic pre- 
 tenders whom he had made it his special business to 
 unmask ; the vagrant preachers of this new faith, sup- 
 ported hy contributions, were confounded by him with 
 the half-mendicant professors of philosophy whom he 
 had known too well. He did not care enough about 
 the Christians to hate them much. Their refusal to 
 sacrifice to the national idols — the great testing-point 
 of their martyrs under the reigning emperors — could 
 have been no great crime in the eyes of the author of 
 the " Dialogues of the Gods." Fanaticism in that 
 direction was no worse than fanaticism in the other. 
 His chief attention seems to have been concen- 
 trated on that remarkable revival of paganism which 
 began under Hadrian and the Anton ines, against 
 which he protests with all the force of a keen 
 intellect and a biting wit. Eut, far from being the 
 enemy of Christianity, he was, however unintentionally 
 
 * "Alexander," 38.
 
 180 LUCIA N. 
 
 and unconsciously, one of its most active allies. He 
 fought its battle on a totally different ground from its 
 own apologists, and would have been astonished to 
 know that he was fighting it at all ; but he was weak- 
 ening the common enemy. He did the same service 
 to the advancing forces of Christianity as the explo- 
 sion of a mine does to the storming party who are 
 waiting in the trenches : he blew into ruins the forti- 
 fications of pagan superstition, already grievously 
 shaken. He did not know who was to enter in at 
 the breach ; but he had a strong conviction that the 
 old stronghold of falsehood ought at any cost not to 
 stand. 
 
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