“Lucian of Samosata [was] surnamed ‘The blasphemer,’ because in his dialogues he alleges that the things told of the gods are absurd.... He was at first an advocate in Antioch, but, having ill success in that, he turned to the composition of discourses, and his writings are innumerable. He is said to have been killed by dogs, he having been rabid against the truth. For in his ‘Life of Peregrinus’ he attacks Christianity and, wicked man, blasphemes against Christ himself. Wherefore for his madness he suffered meet punishment in this life, and hereafter with Satan he will be inheritor of the everlasting fire.”[291]
This is the meagre biography by Suidas of the great satirist who through nearly all of the second century held up the mirror of his frankness to reflect images of the Greek and Roman world. Suidas’ misrepresentation of Lucian’s allusions to the Christians and his fanciful picture of the sophist’s end vilify much of this traditional vita. From Lucian’s own writings more facts may be assembled.
Syrian by birth, he wrote in Greek and became a master of an Attic prose style. As a boy he was apprenticed to a sculptor uncle, but quickly left work with his hands for work with his tongue, studied rhetoric and oratory, practiced as an advocate at Antioch, became a professional sophist and travelled in Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece, Italy, Gaul; about A.D. 165 settled at Athens where he lived twenty years, then near the end of his life took an official post in Egypt under the Emperor and wrote an Apology for so doing. Suidas’ description of his writings as “innumerable” seems justified by the eighty-two prose works extant to say nothing of two mock tragedies and fifty-three epigrams, now considered spurious.
Though the great bulk of Lucian’s writings consists of Platonic and satiric dialogues, he enters into the scope of this book as a writer of the satiric or parody romance. For two of his writings, the True History and Lucius or Ass, establish for us this new type of Greek romance. His True History is a parody of all travellers’ tales from Odysseus’ to such as those of Antonius Diogenes in The Wonderful Things beyond Thule. Probably this work of Lucian had more literary influence than any of his other writings. His other romance, of which we have only an epitome, Lucius or Ass, is, I believe, a parody of the romance motivated mainly by religion. Its greatest value in its present syncopated form is that it outlines a contemporary Greek counterpart of the famous Latin novel, Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, and furnishes us with a touchstone for testing the pure gold of Apuleius’ originality.
Before, however, we can discuss Lucian’s art of narration in his two romances, we must reconstruct from his own writings his literary autobiography and his conceptions of his literary art. Only then when we have met the critic self-criticized will we be competent to appreciate his brilliant imaginative flights in his novels.
A dangerous temptation at once assails any one who starts to write on any subject connected with Lucian. That is to attempt to cover the whole field of his life and works because of the brilliancy of the many-sided facets of his genius. A forcible deterrent is the fact that a masterly appreciation of La vie et les œuvres de Lucien has already been written by Maurice Croiset in his Essai[292] which in richness and style alike is worthy of its great theme. All subsequent studies of Lucian are inevitably founded on M. Croiset’s appreciation.
Gildersleeve, following Croiset, pointed out that Lucian’s life must be reconstructed from his own writings. And this within the scope of a brief essay Gildersleeve did brilliantly for English readers fifty years ago.[293] From another angle I am attempting to do this same thing now in order to make us acquainted before we read his stories with Lucian the story-teller.[294]
Lucian’s early life is pictured in a brief speech called The Dream. This was probably delivered in his native Syria on his return after his European lecture-tour which made him famous as a Sophist. In a whimsical mixture of fact and fancy he describes his choice of a career. As a young lad when he had just finished school, Lucian was apprenticed to his mother’s brother, a sculptor, to learn to be “a good stone-cutter, mason and sculptor.” On his first day he struck a slab of marble so hard that he shattered it. Whereat his uncle gave him such a violent beating that he ran home to his mother for comfort. That night he had a vision. Two women were struggling to get possession of him. They were vastly different in appearance and in the appeals they made to him, for they were Sculpture and Education. Sculpture, unkempt, speaking haltingly and like a barbarian, told Lucian that if he came to her, he would live well, have strong shoulders, would never go abroad, but would gain such fame as surrounded Phidias, Polyclitus, Myron, Praxiteles. Education in her turn assured him that even if he became a famous sculptor, he would be only a mechanic, living by his hands; she herself has much more to offer him.
“If you follow my advice, first of all I shall show you many works of men of old, tell you their wondrous deeds and words, and make you conversant with almost all knowledge, and I shall ornament your soul, which concerns you most, with many noble adornments—temperance, justice, piety, kindliness, reasonableness, understanding, steadfastness, love of all that is beautiful, ardour towards all that is sublime; for these are the truly flawless jewels of the soul. Nothing that came to pass of old will escape you, and nothing that must now come to pass; nay, you will even foresee the future with me. In a word, I shall speedily teach you everything that there is, whether it pertains to the gods or to man.”[295]
Moreover, he will dress with distinction, will speak with eloquence. Finally he may became as famous as Demosthenes or Aeschines. He must recall that Socrates left sculpture for philosophy.
Lucian on hearing these two appeals gave himself to Education, who then took him in a car with winged horses and from the air showed him the cities and peoples of the world. After this vision she clothed him suitably and returned him to his home. Lucian says he has told this dream “in order that those who are young may take the better direction and cleave to education, above all if poverty is making any one of them faint-hearted.”[296]
Now although this choice of Lucian is based on the choice of Hercules[297] and although facts are clothed in fantasy, the picture of Lucian’s early apprenticeship may well be true, for the boy’s delight in modelling little figures of wax seems to forecast Lucian’s life-long interest in sculpture and other art forms.
The next crisis in Lucian’s literary life is depicted in The Double Indictment, a dialogue composed when the author was forty. In it Lucian appears in court to answer two charges: one of the rhetoricians, for giving up speech-making and essay-writing; the other of the philosophers, for using their sacred Platonic dialogue for satire. Lucian’s trial takes place on the Areopagus with Justice presiding, but the dialogue opens in heaven with a long complaint by Zeus about the hard life of the gods especially his own, no time for anything. Hermes who is listening tells him frankly that there are many complaints among mortals on earth because of the slowness of the law courts. Zeus then sends Hermes down to proclaim a session and orders Justice to preside at it.
At this court, after various cases have been wittily disposed of, the Syrian is called to face two indictments: Oratory versus the Syrian for neglect, Dialogue versus the Syrian for maltreatment. Oratory first relates how she found the plaintiff as a lad wandering in Ionia, speaking with a foreign accent, dressed as a Syrian. She educated him and at his eager request married him although all his dowry was wonderful speeches. Next she had him made a citizen and then went travelling with him to Greece, Ionia, Italy and Gaul. As he became famous, he grew indifferent to her, for he was enamored of a bearded man, Dialogue, said to be the son of Philosophy. Now he no longer makes speeches, but has a strange way of using short questions. She sues him for desertion. The Syrian replies that all her facts are true, but there are others; she lost her modesty, made up like a courtesan, flirted indiscriminately with many lovers. So he separated from her and went to live with a respectable gentleman, Dialogue. The Syrian won the case.
Next Dialogue pleaded. His dignity, his cosmic thoughts, his tragic mask have all been stolen from him. He has been forced to associate with Jest, Satire, Cynicism, Eupolis and Aristophanes, “terrible men for mocking at all that is holy and scoffing at all that is right,” finally too even with Menippus. He has been transformed into a monster not homogeneous but Centaur-like. The Syrian in reply showed the benefits which he had bestowed on Dialogue: he taught him to walk like a man, to clean up, to smile, to be yoked with Comedy. Dialogue resents that the Syrian will not indulge in endless arguments on subtle themes. The Syrian declares that he has not taken off Dialogue’s Greek cloak and put him into barbarian garb: Dialogue is still dressed in his native Greek costume. The Syrian was unanimously acquitted much to the delight of the audience. This mock-trial picturesquely portrays Lucian’s change from writing the philosophical dialogues in the style of Plato to the satiric dialogue, influenced successively by New Attic Comedy, Menippus and Old Attic Comedy.[298] Lucian here is writing an Apology for the new style of satire-dialogue which he created.
With similar wit but in various modes Lucian in other pieces satirizes now Rhetoric, now Philosophy. An illuminating series of such dialogues is The Professor of Oratory, Nigrinus, Philosophies for Sale, The Fisherman.
In The Professor of Oratory ironic advice is given to a young man on how to become an orator and a sophist. The quest is noble and the way to success is not difficult. The Lady Rhetoric sits fair and desirable on the top of a high mountain attended by Wealth, Fame and Power. Thither two roads lead. One is a narrow, steep and thorny path, the other an easy slope amid flowers and fountains. Two guides will present themselves to you. One, vigorous and manly, will point out to you the hard way in the footprints of Demosthenes and Plato and will tell how severe the training must be for their followers. He will wish, the simpleton, to make you model yourself on the past.
The other guide is a pretty gentleman, daintily groomed and perfumed, with an alluring smile and a honey voice. He will tell you that you can become such an orator as he is if you carry as equipment ignorance, boldness, shamelessness; if you dress in bright, diaphanous robes and always carry a book! Your course of study will be the memorizing of a few stock words, a few learned references for ornaments of your discourse. He will teach you a high singsong chant and the art of always beginning with stories from the Iliad.
Your fame will be secured by a well-trained chorus of applauders in your audiences and by slanders of all your rivals. In private life you must live fast with dice, wine and women, so you come to be talked of as a deuce of a fellow, and amours will increase your income. Thus you will be fitted to be the bridegroom of Rhetoric by driving furiously the winged chariot of which Plato wrote. Your adviser is already getting out of your way, for he was defeated when once you chose the primrose path. This picture of The Perfect Rhetorician has been thought by some critics to be a personal satire of the contemporary lexicographer Pollux. However that may be, it is certainly a satire of any pseudo-professor of rhetoric who bases oratory on cheap externalities and superficial training.
At another time Lucian was to satirize pseudo-philosophers as he had rhetoricians, but once, perhaps in the beginning of revolt against rhetoric, he chose to picture a noble type in the dialogue on Nigrinus, a philosopher unknown except through Lucian. His great tribute to Nigrinus may be set as a companion piece to the mocking praise of The Perfect Rhetorician. The dialogue is prefaced by an introductory letter in which Lucian tells Nigrinus that he is not carrying owls to Athens in offering him this book as if to display his use of words, but he is sending it in thanks for Nigrinus’ words. In the dialogue itself one man relates to another how by talking with Nigrinus he was made free instead of a slave, poor instead of rich. For Nigrinus praised philosophy and the freedom it gives and ridiculed what men in general exalt: wealth, fame, power, honor. Nigrinus praised Athens because there Poverty and Philosophy are foster-brothers; there life is free, noble, harmonious. Rome is the city for those who love wealth and luxury, wine and women. The Romans have given themselves over to the pleasures of the senses and have every means of gratifying them. So Nigrinus in Rome leads a life of retirement, conversing with Philosophy and with Plato, reflecting on the ridiculous rich, the parasites, the pseudo-philosophers, the will-hunters, the gourmands, the frequenters of the circus and the baths. No wonder men come to him for healing.
The tribute to Platonism here, the tribute to Epicurus in Alexander the False Prophet,[299] might tempt readers to affiliate Lucian with one or the other of these philosophical schools. But as if to forestall being labelled, in the spirit of Horace’s famous line
nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri,[300]
Lucian turns his satire on all the leading creeds of the time in his Philosophies for Sale.
Zeus orders an auction of philosophies. Hermes acts as crier and auctioneer. The buyer questions each person who is put up for sale on his knowledge, on his creed, on his use. A Pythagorean is put up first by Hermes who asks: “Who wishes to know about the harmony of the world and re-birth?” The Pythagorean attempts to expound to the buyer the catharsis of the spirit, the need of music and of geometry, the flux of the cosmos, the divinity in numbers, the transmigration of souls. An Italian bought him for a brotherhood in Magna Graecia for ten minas.
A Cynic is next displayed, dirty, morose, ready to bark at everyone. He declares that Hercules is his model and that like Hercules he is a militant reformer, working to clear the world of filth. He declares that he will teach his purchaser to discard luxury, to endure hardship, to drink only water, to throw his money into the sea, to reject all family ties, to live in a tomb or a jar. So he will feel no pain even when flogged and will be happier than the Great King. He will be bold, abusive, savage, shameless. For such a life no education is necessary. The Cynic is sold for two obols.
The third called is the Cyrenaic, who appears clad in purple and crowned with a wreath. Hermes announces that his philosophy is the sweetest, indeed thrice blessed. As the Cyrenaic is too drunk to answer questions, Hermes describes his virtues: he is pleasant to live with, congenial to drink with, a companion for amours, and an excellent chef! There was no bid for him!
Next two are put up together, the one who laughs and the one who cries. The first explains his laughter on the ground that all men and all their affairs are ridiculous; all things are folly, a mere drift of atoms. The weeper pities men because their lives are foreordained and in them nothing is stable; men themselves are mere pawns in the game of eternity and the gods are only immortal men. No one bids for the pair.
An Academic next advertises his wares as a teacher of the art of love, but claims that this love is of the soul, not of the body. He affirms that he lives in a city fashioned by himself, where wives are held in common, fair boys are prizes for valor, and realities are ideas, visible only to the wise. He was bought for two talents.
A pupil of the laugher and the drunkard is now offered for sale, namely Epicurus. The mere description of him as more irreverent than his teachers, charming, fond of good eating, sells him for two minas.
The sad philosopher of the Porch is now announced by Hermes who proclaims that he is selling virtue itself and that the Stoic is “the only wise man, the only handsome man, the only just man, brave man, king, orator, rich man, lawgiver, and everything else that there is.”[301] His talk about himself is full of hair-splitting dialectics and subtle explanations of why man must devote himself “to the chief natural goods ... wealth, health, and the like”[301] and go through much toil for much learning. In spite of all this he is bought for twenty minas.
The Peripatetic is also sold for twenty minas because he knows everything but the Sceptic brings in only one mina because he knows nothing! The auction ends with the announcement by Hermes of another sale the next day of plain men, workmen, tradesmen.
Inevitably this ironic treatment of the great philosophies of Greece produced a storm of criticism. This was answered by Lucian in an apology of sorts under the title The Resurrected or The Fisherman. In it the satirist under the pseudonym of Frankness faces his accusers. For up from the dead, led by a militant Socrates, come to Athens Empedocles, Plato, Aristotle and other phantoms to execute worthy dooms on the worst of maligners. Frankness by rhetoric and argument averts stoning or crucifixion and secures a fair trial, presided over by Philosophy, who is attended by Truth, Investigation and Virtue. After Diogenes makes the speech for the prosecution, Frankness replies in defense of himself—and Lucian! He wins a unanimous verdict for acquittal by his claim that he auctioned off, not the great philosophers who now prosecute him, but base impostors who imitate them. Syllogism now acts as herald and calls from Athens to court all the philosophers to defend themselves. Frankness by promising largess secures a crowd of them, Platonists, Stoics, Peripatetics, Epicureans, Academics. When Philosophy announces that they are to be tried as impostors by herself, Virtue and Truth, they all disappear in wild rout. To get them back, Frankness now becomes a fisherman and, with bait of gold, hooks and hauls back the craven cheats. The head of each school disowns his imitators and the discarded are thrown down over the cliffs. Finally Philosophy dismisses the court with an injunction to Frankness to keep investigating philosophers in order to crown the true and brand the false.
The genial tone of Philosophies for Sale has entirely vanished in the essay on The End of Peregrinus. The influence of New Comedy and of Menippus with their ironic raillery is superseded by Aristophanic denunciation. Bitter mockery, cruel derision are loosed upon one creed, the Cynic. Lucian directs his vituperation against the Cynic philosopher Peregrinus, whose career had been meteoric. In his early life he was converted to Christianity, and even went to prison for his faith. Later, beliefs of India so possessed him that he immolated himself at Olympia just after the Olympic games of A.D. 165. Such self-sacrifice by cremation had been consummated at Susa by Calanus before Alexander the Great and by Zarmarus after initiation into the mysteries at Athens in the presence of Augustus.
Lucian saw only one possible interpretation of Peregrinus’ self-sacrifice, desire for notoriety, but there have been many critics of this motivation as Harmon points out:[302]
“Lucian believes himself to be exposing a sham, whose zeal was not at all for truth but only for applause and renown. Many notable modern critics, including Zeller, Bernays, Croiset, and Wilamowitz, dissent from his interpretation, discerning in the man an earnest seeker after truth; for to them thirst for glory is not an adequate explanation of his final act.”
The piece is written as a letter to Cronius who is marked as a Platonist by the formula of greeting εὖ πράττειν. Lucian begins with the fact of Peregrinus’ self-imposed death and at once ascribes to him the motive of love of notoriety. This, he says, is proved by the fact that Peregrinus selected for the time of his suicide the Olympic festival, which draws great crowds. Lucian knows that Cronius will have a good laugh at the foolishness of the old man so he will write his friend just what he himself saw as he stood near the pyre.
His method is clever. First Theagenes a Cynic proclaimed in the streets of Elis the glory of virtue and the glory of her follower Proteus (Peregrinus) and announced that Proteus was about to leave this life by fire in the manner of Hercules, Aesculapius, Dionysus and Empedocles. Theagenes’ justification of the deed went unheard because of the noise of the crowd, but another orator (clearly Lucian) stepped forth and made a speech reviewing Peregrinus’ career. Beginning with Democritean laughter he narrated the life of Proteus accusing him of adultery as a youth in Armenia, of corrupting a boy in Asia, of strangling his own father, of becoming a Christian in Palestine, of resigning all his property in Parium on the Hellespont, of practicing the ascetic life in Egypt, of seeking notoriety in Greece by denouncing Herodes Atticus for his aqueduct at Olympia and later recanting. Finally, says Lucian, this Proteus has announced his intention of cremating himself. The motive is love of fame though he claims that he wishes thus to teach men to despise death and endure torture. He plainly hopes that myths and a cult will arise around his memory. Indeed Theagenes has quoted a prophecy to that effect, but Lucian can match that oracle with another which orders all the Cynic’s disciples to imitate him even to the last leap into the flames.
After these speeches, Lucian was on hand when the pyre was kindled at Harpina near Olympia shortly after midnight. As an eye-witness he saw the pyre in a pit six feet deep, Peregrinus in the dress of a Cynic bearing a torch, men lighting the fire, how then Peregrinus stripped to his old shirt and after crying: “Spirits of my mother and my father, receive me with goodwill,” leaped into the flames to be seen no more. Even when the other Cynics stood about the pyre in silent grief, Lucian felt no sympathy, but taunted them brutally, and actually got into a broil with them before he departed to meditate on how strange the love of fame is. Lucian had to tell the story of Peregrinus’ death over and over until to amuse himself, he invented a vulture that he saw flying from the flames to heaven, crying: “I have left the earth, I am going to Olympus.” And this invention of his became part of the growing myth about the hero.
“So ended (wrote Lucian) that poor wretch Proteus, a man who (to put it briefly) never fixed his gaze on the verities, but always did and said everything with a view to glory and the praise of the multitude, even to the extent of leaping into fire, when he was sure not to enjoy the praise because he could not hear it.”[303]
Lucian concludes with anecdotes about Peregrinus sea-sick, in a fever, having eye-trouble and trying to cure fever and correct vision as though Aeacus in the lower world would care about either ailment. He was simply furnishing Democritus with more cause for laughter. This heartless ridicule of the Cynic’s action takes no account of the psychology of fanaticism or the hysteria of martyrdom. Croiset points out that Lucian’s insensitivity to all mysticism must be viewed with the knowledge that the satirist believed Peregrinus was a sham and that he was unveiling an impostor. Lucian’s consistent worship of veracity and frankness then explain his derisive attitude towards the apotheosis of a pretender.[304]
The savagery used in exposing a false philosopher was turned by Lucian upon a religious fraud, Alexander of Abonoteichus. The piece is a letter to a friend, Celsus, written after A.D. 180, ten years after Alexander’s death. Lucian’s account gives almost all we know of this Alexander although his existence and influence are attested by gems, coins and inscriptions. The letter, however, as Croiset points out, contains more satire than history, for it does not attempt to distinguish scrupulously between the false and the true; rather it presents in lively anecdotes and personal reminiscences a satiric portrait of an historical prophet.[305] Cumont has commented on the unique features of Abonoteichus’ version of the worship of Aesculapius: the giving a serpent a human head and calling it the god incarnate; the issuing of oracles and advice instead of using incubation or dealing particularly with healing.[306]
Lucian exposes all Alexander’s shams and corruptions. He describes his handsome appearance and education, his cleverness in purchasing a tame serpent and in selecting the site of Abonoteichus for his oracle. He describes the installation of the serpent, the invention of the human head for it, the exhibition of it, the methods of giving oracles, the prices, the publicity, the “autophones,” cunningly contrived to issue from the serpent’s mouth, the spread of his fame even to Italy. Lucian pictures too the perils that menaced any critics of the oracle, the burning of the sayings of Epicurus, the personal danger to himself. Lucian was advised by the governor of Bithynia and Pontus not to prosecute Alexander for his attempted murder so after the prophet’s death he wrote this account to honor Epicurus and to present the truth to thinking minds. Personal revenge then as well as horror at religious fraud motivated this biography. Lucian, who derided Epicureans in Philosophies for Sale, chooses now to revere their founder!
One of Lucian’s greatest works bears the title Parasites for Pay. It was written and undoubtedly read to the public in the last part of his life before he went to Egypt. It is not only very distinguished as a satire,[307] but in it as Gildersleeve points out[308] “his sensitiveness for Greek honor, for the honor of the people as well as for the honor of the literary class, manifests itself in a way to do infinite credit to Lucian’s heart.” Harmon calls it “a Hogarthian sketch of the life led by educated Greeks who attached themselves to the households of great Roman lords—and ladies.”[309]
The satire is in the form of a letter addressed to a friend Timocles who is thinking of taking such a post. The case, says Lucian, is the same for philosophers, grammarians, rhetoricians, and musicians. The motives which apparently led men to accept such positions are poverty and pleasure, but their recompense is small and they have no share in the luxury that dazzled them. They overwork; their expenses in clothing and tips eat up their stipends. Moreover their humiliations are incessant. The first dinner given in their honor brings the strain of observing proper etiquette. Next morning the conference about salary disappoints all hopes by the pittance offered. But a man sells himself and never afterwards can feel free or noble: he is a monkey with a chain around his neck. For he was not engaged to discourse on Homer, Demosthenes, Plato, but because it looks well to have a distinguished Greek philosopher with a long beard and a flowing robe in his master’s suite. The day’s routine of service is exhausting and humiliating, and the philosopher’s rivals for his lord’s favor are a gigolo, a dancing master, an Alexandrian dwarf who recites erotic verses. The night’s sleep is shattered by meditations on lost freedom and present servitude.
Such is life in the city, but a trip to the country is worse. Thermopolis had to hold his lady’s puppy for her in the jolting carriage and the miserable little dog kept licking his beard for relics of yesterday’s dinner and finally laid a litter of puppies in the philosopher’s cloak. Other services of the parasite include listening to the rich man’s literary compositions and delivering a lecture on philosophy to the lady while her hair is being dressed or at the dinner-table. And in the midst of a discourse on virtue a maid brings her a letter from a paramour which she answers at once with a yes.
In time, envy and slander or the disabilities of old age cause the parasite’s downfall and he is discarded on the rubbish heap. Such a career can best be depicted in a symbolic painting of a hill on whose summit golden Wealth resides. Hope, Deceit, Slavery help the traveller start on the ascent. But Toil then escorts him on. And finally Old Age, Insolence and Despair lead him until he is ejected by a hidden back door, naked, deformed, ruined. Repentance meeting him cannot save him. Timocles is urged before making his decision about the post offered him to meditate on this picture and on Plato’s famous words: “God is not at fault; the fault is his who maketh the choice.”[310] This essay alone would justify Croiset’s great tribute to Lucian’s independence of thought: “among his contemporaries Lucian stands alone as an intelligence of a remarkable force and independence which nothing could tame.”[311]
It was natural that, when later Lucian accepted a post in civil service in Egypt, he should anticipate reminders of his essay on Parasites for Pay on the part of his friends and foes. His Apology[312] answers their imaginary criticisms of his inconsistencies. It is written in the form of a letter to a friend. Lucian assures this Sabinus that he knows Sabinus enjoyed his recent essay on Parasites, but now must be full of amazement at his friend’s accepting a salaried post in Egypt. He imagines receiving an epistle from Sabinus to this effect:[313]
“The difference between your precept and practice is infinitely more ridiculous; you draw a realistic word-picture of that servile life; you pour contempt on the man who runs into the trap of a rich man’s house, where a thousand degradations, half of them self-inflicted, await him; and then in extreme old age, when you are on the border between life and death, you take this miserable servitude upon you and make a sort of circus exhibition of your chains. The conspicuousness of your position will only make the more ridiculous that contrast between your book and your life.”
Lucian in reply suggests various lines of self-defense: the compulsion of Chance, Fate or Necessity; admiration of his patron’s character; the drive of poverty, brought on by old age and ill health. But he rejects all these pleas. His real defense is the difference between being a parasite and slave in the house of a rich master and entering civil service to work for the state. Lucian explains the dignity and the responsibility of the post he has accepted in the service of the Emperor.
“What better use can you make of yourself than if you join forces with your friends in the cause of progress, come out into the open, and let men see that you are loyal and zealous and careful of your trust, not what Homer calls a vain cumberer of the earth?”[314]
Even this brief review of the writings which make up Lucian’s literary autobiography shows the conflicting forces which strove for dominance over his life. Sculpture and the Education of a Sophist first contended for his favor and his choice of the orator’s training never destroyed his life-long interest in art. Oratory which secured his service soon disillusionized him because of her cheap followers. Plato and his philosophical dialogues for a while controlled his mind and style, but, satire proving stronger in him than reflective thinking, he created a new form of dialogue allied to Comedy and Menippus for his medium of comment on the world. This form and the epistle he used for satirizing sophistry and oratory, philosophy and religion, always pointing out the counterfeit and the sham and distinguishing them from the tested gold of verities. This same sort of touch-stone he applied in his Apology to his own life to vindicate his maintenance of personal freedom. The traveller, the sophist, the satirist, now become civil servant of the Emperor, admits no chain about his neck.
As regards his literary art he has revealed that his main ideals are frankness, truth and freedom. In his works he establishes warm human contacts with his hearer or reader. His Greek style achieves a pure Attic simplicity of expression and by it, as Croiset says,[315] he clothes abstract ideas in words which give them body and form. The main qualities of his style, spirit and imagination, unite in the effective descriptions and narrations which fill his works. His wealth of ideas found expression in realistic details noted with keen observation and assembled in realistic series to give vitality to his prose.
One work by Lucian is a specific treatise on writing and peculiarly significant for his literary autobiography. That is the essay on How History Should Be Written. It was composed as a letter to a friend Philo in the time of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. The occasion was the sudden spawning of a whole shoal of would-be historians after the Roman victories in the war with the Parthians (A.D. 165). Outraged by these scribblers, Lucian sets forth his thoughts on the True Historian.
Since the barbarian war began, says Lucian, everyone is writing history. It is just as when an epidemic of madness at Abdera made all the people chant tragedies. It recalls too Diogenes, who, when Corinth was in danger of a siege from Philip and the citizens were hurrying defense measures, kept rolling his jar up and down hill that he might seem as busy as the rest of the world. Lucian’s advice will include the faults of historians which are to be avoided, the virtues to be cultivated.
History must not be written as panegyric. History must not be written as poetry. Among the faults of contemporary historians are lack of taste, over-abundance of details, purple patches, inaccuracies about facts.
“There are some ... who leave alone, or deal very cursorily with, all that is great and memorable; amateurs and not artists, they have no selective faculty, and loiter over copious laboured descriptions of the various trifles; it is as if a visitor to Olympia, instead of examining, commending or describing to his stay-at-home friends the general greatness and beauty of the Zeus, were to be struck with the exact symmetry and polish of its footstool, or the proportions of its shoe, and give all his attention to these minor points.”[316]
Indispensable qualities of the ideal historian are political insight and ability in writing. His “one task is to tell the thing as it happened.”[317] He will be “fearless, incorruptible, independent, a believer in frankness and veracity; one that will call a spade a spade, make no concession to likes and dislikes, nor spare any men for pity or respect or propriety; an impartial judge, kind to all, but too kind to none; a literary cosmopolite with neither suzerain nor king, never heeding what this or that man may think, but setting down the thing that befell.”[317] Thucydides fulfills this ideal.
In diction and style, the marks of the true historian are frankness and truth, lucidity and simplicity. The preface should be in proportion to the subject. “The body of the history ... is nothing from beginning to end but a long narrative; it must therefore be graced with the narrative virtues—smooth, level, and consistent progress, neither soaring nor crawling, and the charm of lucidity.” “Brevity is always desirable.” “Restraint in descriptions of mountains, walls, rivers, and the like, is very important.” If a speech is introduced, “the first requirement is that it should suit the character both of the speaker and of the occasion.” “It may occasionally happen that some extraordinary story has to be introduced; it should be simply narrated, without guarantee of its truth, thrown down for any-one to make what he can of it.” The historian should write not for the present, but for eternity. He should hope to have said of himself: “This was a man indeed, free and free-spoken; flattery and servility were not in him; he was truth all through.”[318]
Gildersleeve was probably right in calling the True History “a comic sequel to a brilliant essay entitled ‘How to write History.’”[319] The traditional manuscript order which places the True History after How History Should Be Written seems so aptly prompted by Lucianic irony. For this romance in two books is not history at all and has nothing of Lucian’s primary requirement for history, that it should be true! It is a work of pure imagination, one of the earliest accounts of fictitious voyages and as such is part of the great tradition from the Odyssey to Gulliver’s Travels.[320] Lucian’s preface explains both the nature of the piece and his reasons for writing it.[321]
The True History like many good stories is told in the first person by Lucian himself. The author, moreover, preludes and interrupts the narrative to get in direct touch with his reader. In his introduction, he states that his purpose in writing is to furnish to students some reading that will give relaxation, but at the same time “a little food for thought.” The story is bound to charm, Lucian thinks, because of the novelty of the subject, the humor of the plan, the plausible lying involved and the comical parodies of such authors as Ctesias, Iambulus, and Homer in his Odyssey. Lucian confesses to being a liar with the best of them, but affirms that his lying is unique in being honest because he admits it.
“Be it understood, then, that I am writing about things which I have neither seen nor had to do with nor learned from others—which, in fact, do not exist at all and, in the nature of things, cannot exist. Therefore my readers should on no account believe in them.”[322]
In spite of this confession, Lucian here and there in his story tries to create an atmosphere of veracity by protestations of it. As he never saw the Corn Sparrow forces or the Crane Knights, he does not venture to relate the marvellous and incredible stories told about them.[323] When he describes the magic mirror over a well in the Moon which furnished him television of his family and country he says that disbelievers by going there will find he tells the truth.[324] In the Island of the Wicked, Lucian finds all liars, both those who had told lies on earth or written them, among the latter Ctesias and Herodotus. “On seeing them,” he says, “I had good hopes for the future, for I have never told a lie that I know of.”[325] The last sentence of the romance is: “What happened in the other world I shall tell you in the succeeding books.”[326] This, a Greek scholiast comments, is the greatest lie of all!
Now after having seen what a wag Lucian is from his own words, we must decide how we are going to take him. Are we to seek in him relaxation and entertainment (the gift of all true romance) or are we going to marshal our “little learning” to meet his and study all his sources, his parodies of historians and philosophers, or search for allegories in his fantastic worlds? The happy way will be along the path of the golden mean. Gildersleeve put up a sign-board to it and inscribed directions for future travellers.
“To enjoy the show properly, it is far better for the reader to give himself up to this play of Lucian’s fancy than to endeavor to unriddle whatever satire of contemporary literature may lie concealed in its allegory.... There may be profound meaning in the war which breaks out between the Sunburghers under Phaêthon, and the Moonburghers under Endymion, which begins with the attempt of the Moonburghers to found a colony on the desert planet of Lucifer, and which ends with the victory of the Sunburghers, Lucifer being declared common property and the vanquished compelled to pay an annual tribute of ten thousand amphoreis of dew. But so elastic are all such allegories that they can be stretched to fit anything, and the war of these Heliotes and Selenites would answer to describe the conflict between orthodoxy and rationalism, and Lucifer would stand for the coming man. But how much better to look with childish interest on the marshalling of Horsevultures and Chickpeashooters and Garlickfighters and Flea-archers and Wind-runners, and to watch the huge spiders spin their web from the moon to Lucifer.”[327]
So after realizing that we too may visit the Isles of the Blessed and the Wicked, may soar up to Aristophanes’ Cloudcuckooland or dive under the sea in the brother of Jonah’s whale, or see Sinbad’s roc, let us begin at the beginning. Let the lights go out and the curtain go up. Let us watch breathlessly an ancient Walt Disney fantasy rush across the screen. The very names of countries and peoples add to the excitement as the panorama unrolls. And so vivid are Lucian’s descriptions that as in all good movies soon we find ourselves participating in his adventures. Having set out from the Pillars of Hercules with fifty men on a good ship, on the eightieth day we come to a wooded island. Here huge footprints and an inscription reveal that Hercules and Dionysus were here before us. And no wonder, for this is the Isle of Wines: grape-vines produce springs of wine, springs feed rivers, rivers produce fish that eaten make people drunk. And there is a species of vine that is half grape and half lady like Daphne turning into a laurel and the kiss of the Vine-woman brings intoxication and her embrace is a prison. We lost two of our men to that captivity.
As we set sail, a whirlwind lifted the ship and she became a hydroplane, sailing through the air for seven days and seven nights. The island where then we landed proved to be the Moon. Endymion is the King so of course he spoke Greek and we at once joined his forces for he had a war on with the Men of the Sun, whose King is Phaethon. It was all about which should colonize the Morning Star. Our fellow Moonites were as strange as their names: Vulture Knights, Grass Plumes, Pea Shooters, Garlic Warriors, Flea Bowmen, Wind Aviators, Corn Sparrows and Crane Knights. And Phaethon’s Heliotes were as fantastic: Ant Knights, Mosquito Aviators, Dance Aviators, Stalk Mushrooms, Dog-faced Knights, Cloud Centaurs. A fierce battle we had and the Men of the Sun won because they cut off light from the Moon so Endymion surrendered. We saw strange marvels in our stay on the Moon: how men are the child-bearers; how their clothing is made of glass or bronze; their eyes are removable; they have a mirror over a well in which they can see what happens in far distant lands.
As we voyaged onward, we came to many other countries: to the Morning Star which was just being colonized, to Lamp Town where among the inhabitants Lucian found his own Lamp which gave him news of home, to Cloudcuckooland which Aristophanes described so truthfully. But after such interesting scenes, disaster fell upon us. A monstrous whale bore down upon us and in a trice swallowed us, ship and all.
When we recovered from our terror, we found that life inside a whale is confined but not impossible. We discovered an island where we beached our boat. The whale opened his mouth once an hour so we could mark time and get the points of the compass. And we soon met other men there, a Cypriote called Scintharus and his son. Scintharus told us about the other inhabitants of the whale, who were savage barbarians, and always ready to attack them. We thought best to join Scintharus in subduing these enemies, but the fight was fierce for there were scores of these Lobsters, Crabhands, Tunnyheads, Seagoats, Crawfish Coots and Solefish. After our victory, we lived fairly well in the whale for a year and eight months. In the ninth month, we saw through the teeth of our monster the most terrifying battle, a sea-fight between men riding on huge islands each of which carried about one hundred and twenty.
In spite of seeing such dangers outside, we decided finally that we must escape from our prison. We used fire as a weapon, set the forest at the tail-end aflame and after twelve days found that the whale was going to die. Just in time we propped open his mouth with huge beams and the next day when he expired, out we went on our good ship and felt once more the wind in our sails. Fair weather did not last long. A terrible northern gale descended and froze all the sea to a depth of six fathoms. Scintharus, who was now our ship-master, saved us by directing us to excavate a cave-home in the ice. In it we lived for thirty days, building a fire and cooking the fish we cut out of the ice. When food gave out, we dug out the boat and sailed over the ice as though it were the sea until on the fifth day we came to open water. Now we kept coming to various islands. We got water at one and at the next one milk, for this island had grapes whose juice was milk, and its earth was cheese. It was easy to subsist there! Next we passed the Isle of Cork where the city is built on a cork foundation and the men have feet of cork so that they can run over the waters as they will, buoyed up by their own life-preservers!
Happiest of all our stays was that on the Island of the Blessed. Here it is always spring. Every month the vines yield grapes and the trees fruit. It is a land flowing with milk and wine. Glass trees furnish goblets which fill automatically at the banquet. Baked loaves of bread are plucked from trees. Beside the table are two springs, one of laughter, one of joy, and with draughts from these the banqueters start their revels. Famous men dwell there. I saw Socrates surrounded by fair young men arguing with Nestor and Palamedes. Plato preferred to live in his own Republic. The followers of Aristippus and Epicurus were considered the best of companions, but Diogenes the Cynic had reformed, married Lais and taken to dancing. The Stoics had not yet arrived for they were still toiling up the steep hill of virtue. Conversation with Homer was one of the greatest pleasures, especially as he settled the matter of his birthplace by declaring himself a Babylonian and solved the Homeric question by affirming that he had written all the lines attributed to him. Beside literary talks, there were games for the Dead.
Even the Island of the Blessed could not be free from wars, for the Wicked invaded it and had to be expelled by force. Homer wrote a new epic on the fight of the dead heroes. The Island had its scandals too all due again to Helen. For she bewitched Scintharus’ son and tried to elope with him, but was caught. That episode caused our expulsion from the Island of the Blessed. Before we left, Homer wrote a couplet for Lucian which he had carved on a stele of beryl and Odysseus secretly gave him a letter for Calypso.