Lucian

Front matter

BY THE

REV. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A.

AUTHOR OF 'ETONIANA,' 'THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS,' ETC.

Chapter I

CHAPTER I.

BIOGRAPHICAL.

Lucian (Lucianus, or Lycinus, 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 perhaps 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 circumstances, held a council of the friends of the family to consult what should be done with their boy. They 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 still be of an intellectual 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 Mercuries—'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 that 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 my uncle I was sent. I did not at all object to it myself: 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 with beginners. My uncle put a chisel in my hand, and bid 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 broke; and my uncle, seizing 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 went 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 reproduction, adapted to suit the circumstances, of the well-known "Choice of Hercules." How far Lucian 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 explanation of his uncle's beating him was equally capable of inventing a dream for the family edification; or (and this is the most likely supposition) the practised fabulist might have only adopted it as an apposite parable for the audience before whom he related 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 being 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 appearance; 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, justice, gentleness, prudence, and fortitude; with the love of the beautiful, and the thirst for knowledge. Nay, she will give him that which all men covet—immortality. 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 contributed not a little to my choice." The rejected claimant gnashed upon him savagely with her teeth, and then, "stiffening like a second Niobe," she was—very appropriately—turned into stone.

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 Rhetorician. 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 maintained public lectures on jurisprudence, with which rhetoric was directly connected, both at Rome and in the provinces.

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 profession, 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: but 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 a rich harvest-field, as we 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 literary 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 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 reputation, 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, 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 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 respected 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 occasion paid a visit to the reputed oracle of the arch-impostor Alexander, at Abonoteichos in Paphlagonia, of which he gives a very graphic account. This man exercised an extraordinary influence over the credulity not only of his own countrymen but of strangers 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 which he only escaped through the unusual tender-heartedness of the Asiatic captain.

He seems to have become poorer again in his later years, and to have occasionally taken up his old profession. But at last the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (or, as Wieland rather thinks, Commodus) offered him an official appointment (something like that of Recorder, 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 of a state of dependence on great men, and was conscious that his enemies might take occasion to sneer at so stout a champion of independence 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 pension offered by Lord Bute, after the bitter definitions 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 fairly 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 disorder 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 humorous mock-tragic dramatic scenes in which Gout is personified 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 versatile writer, a descriptive catalogue of which would alone fill some pages. Nor has the common order of arrangement been here followed, but 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 formidable number of his works has no doubt been one reason for this. Spence's translation (1684) 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 English translator approaches in point of excellence the admirable German version by Wieland.

Chapter II

CHAPTER II.

LUCIAN 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, containing 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, but 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 apprenticeship, 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 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 circumstances 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 Æschylus. 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 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 offending. 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 sacrifices, if the earth had remained untenanted? Even the beauty of the universe would have had no admirers. 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 beneficent, 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, 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 Æschylus, 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 forgive 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? 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.

Cup. Yes, no wonder; they are but mortal, you know, Jupiter, and can't endure your awful person.

Jup. How is it, then, that Apollo gets them to fall in love with him?

Cup. 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 ægis, 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 gilded 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 Mœnads do after Bacchus.

Jup. Away with you—I couldn't condescend to be attractive by making myself such a fool as that.

Cup. Very well, Jupiter, then give up love-making altogether; (looking slyly at him)—thats easy enough, you know.

Jup. Nay, I must go on with my courting, but you must find me some less troublesome fashion than that. And upon this sole condition, I let you off once more.

VULCAN AND APOLLO.

Vulcan. I say, Apollo—have you seen this young bantling that Maia has just produced? What a fine 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? 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? who can hardly stand? the one in the cradle there?

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?

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 he had studied thieving before he was born!

Ap. Ah! you haven't heard him yet talking, as pert and as glib as may be. 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 guides 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.

JUPITER, ÆSCULAPIUS, AND HERCULES.

Jupiter. Be quiet, do, both of you—Hercules and Æsculapius—quarrelling with one another, just like mortals. It's really quite unseemly, this kind of conduct; not at all the thing in Olympian society.

Hercules. But do you mean to say, Jupiter, this apothecary fellow is to sit above me?

Æsculapius. Quite fair I should; I'm the better deity.

Herc. 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?

Æsc. Have you forgot, Hercules, the bonfire that you made of yourself upon Mount Œta, that you taunt me with having been burnt?

Herc. Our lives were considerably different. I, the son of Jove, who undertook all those labours to benefit my generation, conquering monsters and punishing tyrants: while you went about like a vagabond, collecting roots, of some little use perhaps to dose a few sick folk, but never having done a single deed of valour.

Æsc. 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 Omphale with her gilt slipper: and never went mad and killed my wife and children.

Herc. 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 be more than Pæan himself can do to mend you when your skull's broken.

Jup. 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 Æsculapius should sit above you—because he died first.

JUNO AND LATONA.

Juno (meeting her rival 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 he 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 lust 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 —archery, and music, and medicine, and magic to boot; and has set up his prophecy-shops, one at Delphi, and one in Claros, and one at Didymœ; and cheats the people who come to consult him, with his enigmas and double-entendres, which can be turned into answers to the question both ways, so that he can never be proved wrong. He makes it pay, no doubt; there are always fools enough in the world ready to be cheated by a fortune-toller. 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 Actæon, for fear that the young man should publish her ugliness, she set the dogs at him. And I might add that her occupation as a midwife is not over-maidenly.