No More Learning

Through all Lucian arguing without deflecting our attention. That surprise
[44]
is a
it
is
a
if
a
a is,
EXTANT WRITINGS
only realized when he pauses to inject some longer, more undisguised screed. This momen tum that carries us along is generated by his esprit and his power of imagination — his " fantaisie spirituelle " — the two outstanding qualities of his style. This " esprit " is as dif ficult to diagnose as is charm in a woman. The particular features of the subject in hand may be beautiful or ugly, bizarre or matter-of-fact,
but his charm, his verve still dominates. Lu- cian is master, par excellence, of an irony now biting, now subtly malicious, now good-hu moured and sympathetic. When he steps down
from his proper role as artist and gives way to personal polemic, this subtler irony is liable to degenerate into bitterness imperfectly sea soned with Attic salt.
The Satiric Dialogues, naturally, best reflect Lucian's dramatic art which was influenced by certain favourite dialogues of Plato and is often redolent of Aristophanic humour. To speak of imitation is beside the point. He borrows from both with each hand. But his debts are en
tered on an open ledger and the borrowed capital has been put out at interest. No Greek, for example, could fail to be reminded of Try-
gaeus and his journey to heaven on the beetle, [45]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
in the Peace of Aristophanes, by the aerial ex ploit of Icaromenippus but Lucian's new occa sion gives him opportunity for new and origi nal effects.
In narration Lucian's force and grace are on a par with his dramatic skill in the dialogues. He seizes upon the salient point, reenforces it by unexpected detail, and carries us, easily ac quiescent, into another impossibility. The True Story, the best known of his narrations and for centuries a quarry for imitators, still retains its primacy over all comers.
Even experts in the art of writing may gather fresh suggestion from a study of Lucian's meth ods. The diagnosis of the styles of Voltaire and
Lucian, made with wonted Gallic precision by M. Croiset, is both a stimulating comparative study in the artistry of writing and a skilful indication of Lucian's assets and limitations. To a Frenchman, himself possessed of a per fect instrument of expression, the sympathetic understanding of both writers was possible, and no one except a Frenchman could, with so good a grace, attribute to Lucian preeminence, in certain particulars, over Voltaire's mastery in language.
[46]
ARTIST
V. PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS
LUCIAN'S scheme of life we need spend
less time, than we must in the case of the
Platonized Socrates, in distinguishing the IN
purely speculative from the practical. Al though he speaks so often and so glibly of philosophy and the philosophers he does not concern himself in detail with transmuting the transcendental into the pragmatic. He does, on occasion, contemptuously record certain obvi ous catch-words and theses from the pre-So- cratic philosophers, from Socrates himself and his contemporaries, or from the subsequent re alignment and development of philosophic spec ulation, but all this affords him mere copy for his cartoons or, at best, an abridged manual of practical rules of conduct. Usually he remained not only tone-deaf to the Pythagorean " music of the spheres " but apparently stone-blind to Plato's " vision of the more excellent in the ideal. " Only rarely does he allow some deeper misgiving to break through the salt crust of satire, as in his allusion to the haven of true
[47]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
philosophy, subtly reminiscent of a beautiful passage in Plato's Republic. One early piece, indeed, the Nigrinus, in form a short letter in troducing a dialogue, gives us his contact with a philosopher of the nobler type that he seldom recognizes as existing. This piece reads like the
record of a " conversion " from the vain de sires of this world to a higher life. Although this early dream " fades into the light of com mon day " in Lucian's subsequent bitterness and satire upon charlatans, it is only fair to remember that he began his career with this underlying ideal.
If we close our minds to the brilliant ar tistry of his dialogues we may apprehend his superficial attitude towards pure philosophy and science and, at the same time, appraise at its face value his avowed ethical purpose — his crusade against shams.
In this crusade, as was natural, contempo rary creeds and practices were chiefly his con cern. In his Sale of Soul Samples only two pre- Socratics are put up at auction. Pythagoras was a show-piece, suitable to start the bidding. Lucian treats with amused inadequacy his es oteric doctrines of "reminiscence," the diapa son of the planets and all the intricacies of the
[48]
PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS
great master's mathematical imagination. The Pythagoras proxy is made to say:
Pyth. I will teach you how to count.
But I know how already.
Buyer.
Pyth. How do you count?
Buyer. One, two, three, four. " " " "
Pyth. See? What you think four is ten and a perfect triangle and the oath we swear by. Buyer. Now, by your greatest oath, Number
Four, never did I hear propositions more divine nor more sacrosanct!
Next, the " four elements " are anachronisti- cally attributed to Pythagoras, and Lucian then passes on to ridicule the doctrine of im mortality and the transmigration of souls. Next come dietary data and other stock jokes — the Pythagorean five years' silence, embryo of the Trappist's vow; abstention from eating beans
hard-boiled reasons); and, finally, the traditional golden thigh of the master. This particular Pythagorean talent was not wrapped inactive in a napkin, for we find that later,16 in the " Islands of the Blest," the whole right side of the philosopher has aurified. Here the sagacious bidder buys him promptly, as an in vestment, for one hundred and eighty dollars.
Lucian, careless of chronology, does not put up another pre-Socratic philosopher until he
[49]
(with
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
has disposed of two later ones. There is good and sufficient artistic reason for this order. Heracleitus the Obscure, the pessimist, is saved up to pair with Democritus the Optimist — a stock contrast. They both prove unsalable. Lucian betrays little appreciation of the sig nificance of either of them. Heracleitus's aeon, to be sure, is neatly played with, but the Atomic theory of Democritus, adumbration of the modern ion, is dismissed with a punning joke. Lucian elsewhere 17 recognizes this theory as part of the Epicurean eclecticism and, with his characteristic trick of being specific, identi fies their special brand of atoms. The " Bird- man," appraising from his airy height the rela tive insignificance of earth's broad acres, sees that the largest landholder is " farming an es tate no bigger than an Epicurean atom. " Plato himself, it may be remembered, had ignored Democritus and, anyhow, it would be owlish literalness to expect the satirist to spoil his bur lesque by telling all that he knows. Even in the serious apologia of the sequel, The Fisher, Lu cian, when he attempts to restore the philoso phers to their rightful perspective, as con trasted with the charlatans masquerading in their cloaks, emphasizes only their ethical value
[So]
PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS
and their contributions to literary art. He leaves the real factor in the personal equation unsolved and an unknown quantity. In this sequel Heracleitus is altogether ignored and Pythagoras, referred to repeatedly, maintains his orthodox silence, though his greedy fol lowers urge his date as reason for precedence — " first come, first served. "
After disposing of the costly Pythagoras an tique, the auctioneer next puts up Diogenes the Cynic. This Great Unwashed, domiciled in a Corinthian jar — (not a " tub," that curiously wooden mistranslation! ) — was still, after more than four centuries, available as a sample of contemporary exponents of the strenuous life. Although Lucian, on occasion, was wont to masquerade under the incognito of Menippus, he became " exceeding mad " against the char latan Cynics of his own day whom he thinks of as so many " soap-box " radicals, fanatics or hypocrites.
The treatment of Diogenes is purely prag matic and external. The Cynic explains to an intending buyer how a systematic course in trampling upon all the conventionalities of life, ignoring all comforts, and welcoming discom fort and pain, will equip one to be a guide of
[SO
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
others: " You'll need no culture, nor dialectics, nor nonsense. It will be a short cut to fame if you merely have shamelessness and impudence and learn thoroughly how to play the black guard. " (Some of this has, incidentally, a mod ern sound! ) Hermes, the auctioneer, gladly ac cepts a " marked down " price of six cents. This added insult to Diogenes is still rankling when he is put forward, in the sequel, as the most available prosecuting attorney. Was this Lucian's relative valuation of the philosophy of the Cynics at this period? He does not deign to give any inkling of their real doctrine, al though their rejection of polytheism may easily have appealed to him.
Next Aristippus of Cyrene is put up for sale. He made pleasure the summum bonum, draw ing from the common master, Socrates, this one distortion of "his teaching just as the " Dog- philosophers had gone off with only one bare bone of the Socratic anatomy. Aristippus, how ever, is too drunk to speak up for himself and this " professor of luxury " and " experienced chef " remains unsold. Later on, Epicurus him self is successfully auctioned off as a more ade
of this philosophy of life. In the sequel, however, both of them quickly
quate representative
[52]
ARTIST
PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS
give out, through weariness of their pampered flesh, when the Resurrected Philosophers are in hot pursuit of their calumniator. Thus Lu- cian could include in his satire the vulnerable features of Epicurean practice, though, on oc casion, he praised, almost as if a disciple, the nobler creed of Epicurus himself.
After the unsuccessful attempt, above no ticed, to sell off the out-of-date Heracleitus and the unpractical Democritus, Socrates is put up for sale. It might be expected that he, at least, as an exponent of the ethical, would escape calumny; but Lucian outdoes Aristoph anes himself with one wicked thrust. In the sequel, however, he makes clear enough that he is merely unmasking the license lurking be neath contemporary cloaks. His mockery of Socrates otherwise, as, for example, his queer oaths, is good humoured enough and he does not, in this dialogue, even attack his belief in immortality which was for Lucian an irritating dogma. Elsewhere,18 indeed, in a confidential family talk between the dog-janitor and the dog-philosopher Menippus, Cerberus declares that Socrates, at his death, merely put on a brave front to impress those who were present. " But," continues Cerberus, " when he peeped
[S3]
LUCIAN,
down into the chasm, and the darkness became visible, and I, giving him a hemlock-bite as he was still holding back, jerked him down by the foot, he howled like an infant and bewailed his own children and ' turned every which way. ' "
In this " Sale," however, the buyer next asks Socrates about his mode of life. He replies that he lives in a Republic of his own and goes in
for his own Laws. Suddenly we are dealing with Plato himself. The buyer demands a sample of these laws and there is served up to him forthwith a choice digest of the matri monial communism in Book V of The Repub lic of Plato. Next the buyer demands the sum and substance of his system. The Socrates- Plato explains:
S. P. The Ideas and Exemplars of what is really existent. For you must know that of whatsoever you behold — the earth, things on the earth, the heavens, the sea — of all these, unseen images stand outside the universe.
Buyer. Stand? Where?
SATIRIST AND ARTIST
S. P. Nowhere. For if they were anywhere, they would not exist.
Buyer. I do not see these Exemplars of which you speak.
S. P. Naturally. For you are blind in your soul's eye.
[54]
PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS
Finally the customer purchases the Platonized Socrates for two talents — more than two thou sand dollars — for the lot, or, for each one more than the sum total paid in for all the other soul-samples, who together net only $810. 06. It is as if Lucian in the midst of his raillery would indicate his relative estimate of Socrates — too secure in his noble fame to be harmed by ribald innuendo —and of Plato, whose primacy he is constrained to acknowledge, on more than one occasion.
Now comes the hasty sale, for thirty-six dol lars, of a real Epicurean. The comments though not very vicious, certainly do not suggest that Lucian, at the moment, was an orthodox Epi curean.
Then the Stoic, Lucian's bete noir, is put through the third degree with great gusto. Catch-words from the Stoic vocabulary are ridiculed. The Rt. Reverend Syllogism is brought out. Chrysippus — presumably it is he, his busts were omnipresent 19 —cites sol emnly sundry stock conundrums and proves that it is more altruistic, and therefore more blessed, to receive than to give. Systematic logic is satirized by his triumphant propound ing of illogical syllogisms, with undistributed
[55]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
middles. He is bought for two hundred and sixteen dollars by a large syndicate, a detail which reflects the numerical popularity of the Court creed.
Then the Peripatetic is sold for three hun dred and sixty dollars, the largest sum received for any lot offered except the Socrates-Plato. Lucian refrains, very noticeably, from any vio lent thrust at Aristotle. There of course, good-humoured bantering of the one " who knows all and sundry"; the one "who can tell how deep the sunshine penetrates the sea"; who knows " of what sort the soul-life of the oyster or of his X-ray insight into the for mation of the embryo, etc. The solid nucleus of biological investigation, Aristotle's most per manent contribution to science, was as unin
spiring to sophistic rhetoricians as had been, indeed, to the ethical preoccupation of Socrates the pregnant theories of Anaxagoras. And Lu cian, although he must have his joke about the " double " Aristotle, the exoteric and the eso teric, constrained to honour his three pecu liarly Hellenic qualities, "moderation, seemli- ness, and harmony of life," and to comment on the triple summum bonum inherent in the soul
(or mind), the body, and the environment. As [56]
is
";
is
is,
PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS
far as his own treatment was concerned, Aris totle need not have come up from Hades along with the other resurgent protestants to demand satisfaction.
Finally, a Sceptic is sold for one Attic mina, about eighteen dollars, a trifling price for an able-bodied slave. He is addressed as Pyrrhias, " carrots," to suggest at once a red-headed slave and also the name of the founder of the school, Pyrrho, a contemporary of Aristotle who, as contrasted with the Stoics, developed this tendency of the Academics. Lucian on various occasions, prone to merge the Sceptics and Academics together. Zeus, for example, seated over the trapdoor for ascending prayers, in the Icaromenippus, when he has the chance to make an equally good thing out of two identical promissory offerings in two mutually exclusive prayers, has that "usual Academic experience and, like Pyrrho, remained on the fence. "
It little surprising that Lucian, the cavil ling agnostic, who might be expected to sym pathize with the Sceptic philosophy, treats as contemptuously as he treated Plato's unreal " realities " or as he would treat today the in- corporealities of Christian " Science. " Pyr
[57]
it
is,
is a
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
rhias, when asked what practical service he is good for, describes himself as a general utility man who can do anything and everything " ex cept catch a runaway slave. " As reason for this handicap he explains that he cannot " catch on " since there is no tangible standard for anything!
It is difficult, in fact, to identify Lucian with any school. If, as is sometimes assumed, the allusion20 to himself as a "high-priced soph ist " means that he actually held " in days gone by," out in Gaul, an imperial " professorship," it cannot have been while he was coquetting with the Cynics who, like the Sceptics, were ineligible for imperial preferment. We learn, for example, from the somewhat clinical test ing of a candidate in the Eunuchus (where, in deed, it was not a question of sect but of sex) that only the conventional " Big Four " — Aca demics, Epicureans, Peripatetics, and" Stoics, summarized by Gildersleeve as the Estab lished Church " in contrast with " Dissenters " like the Cynics — were eligible for these large imperial stipends. Lucian certainly was not a Stoic; hardly an Epicurean at this date; nor was he equipped, as it would seem, to elucidate the doctrines of either of the other two schools.
[58]
ARTIST
PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS
In this Sale of Soul Samples he has held up to ridicule, in varying degree, all the four of ficially recognized schools as well as the Cynics and Sceptics. Pythagoras, Heracleitus and De- mocritus were also " good copy. " Empedocles, one of his pet aversions, was well toasted in Aetna, warmed over in the Moon,21 and will appear in the sequel in a very hot temper.
An appraisal of the companion-piece or se quel, The Fisher, would be a study of Lucian's best qualities, as a stylist, in the dramatic dia logue. It is consciously" Aristophanic in the opening scene where the Resurgents," on fur lough from Hades for one day — the same de vice as is used in the Charon — enter, in hot pursuit of their alleged calumniator. There is a succession of dramatic scenes. Lucian with dif
ficulty escapes lynching and persuades his cap tors that they must, by virtue of their own love of justice, grant him a judicial trial.
With much reluctance on the part of the philosophers, this is conceded and the defend ant easily proves his real innocence. All the censure and ridicule that he had poured out in the " Sale " was entirely directed against the charlatans of his own day. His triumphant, unanimous acquittal is a matter of course. The
[59]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
next thing is to punish the pseudo-philosophers. He receives his high commission from Lady Philosophy herself — to go up and down the world branding the false and crowning the gen uine. The last scene, which suggested the title, contains skilful satire. He borrows a hook and line, dedicated in the Parthenon by a grateful fisherman, borrows also from the Priestess some gold as bait, and proceeds to fish over the side of the Acropolis for the greedy dog-fish and other sharks who swarm in these second- century waters. By his selection of a repre sentative catch, he again betrays his intellec tual indifference towards the schools that were
not continued as a contemporary living issue — he was not after stale fish. In fact, he lands sample fish from four only of the six main schools: a dog-shark for the Cynics, but no Sceptic — probably they could not " catch on " — and specimen fish from the Platonic, Peri patetic and Stoic shoals, but no sluggish Epi curean! The fish are biting well, but he fears that he will lose his gold bait. These samples suffice. From them Lucian can feed the multi tude, his hearers.
Various other works of Lucian must be read for a full understanding of his attitude towards
[60]
PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS
philosophy and ethics. Brief suggestion only of three more can be given here. All of these differ from each other in content.
The Hireling Philosophers, one of Lucian's most amusing pieces, vivid, witty, bitter, is a warning, in letter form though without super scription, to a friend, against selling his liberty and his intellect to lend eclat to a rich patron. With unsparing detail he pictures the life led by a domesticated scholar whether in the great city establishment or en route for the country- place in the servants' carriage, sandwiched between a vulgar valet and the mistress's " beauty-expert," where, incidentally, he is compelled to give maieutic assistance to my lady's Maltese lapdog which has been confided to his especial care. This tragic, though amus ing, recital has been a warning to many an
scholar. 22 Lucian himself in his old age, when dependent on a government salary, feels it incumbent upon him to defend
himself from his own satire by writing a feeble
Apologia.
The Symposium, like the Eunuchus, shows
us Lucian in his most unrestrained humour in his satire upon contemporary philosophers. And yet, outrageous as it only for few
[61]
impecunious
is,
a
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
sentences does it degenerate into the banality of bitterness that sometimes mars his pages. In this piece he gathers together at a wedding- feast representatives of the four great sects (with two Stoics for good measure) and other prominent persons. Later a Cynic enters un invited not as a mere entree but as the piece de resistance. In a succession of rapid scenes Lucian gives us the most incredible situa tions, filled with jealousy and lust, wrangling, vituperation, gouged-out eyes, truncated noses, blows and blood. But it is incomparable for skill in narration and dramatic suggestion.
The Hermotimus or the Sects was written when Lucian was forty years old, when he is consciously turning to his proper business of literary creation. It is his longest and, in some respects, his most interesting work although not to be classed with his best dramatic and artistic productions. It is his serious deliver ance on philosophy or, more strictly, upon the systems of ethics. In form it is an undisguised reflection of Plato's dialogues. It was doubtless intended by Lucian to be his magnum opus and yet, in a sense, it is his most conspicuous fail ure. Attempting serious dialogue, he either lec tures or answers himself back in falsetto like a
[62]
ARTIST
PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS
marionette-exhibitor. We might be tempted, at times, to say the same of the Platonized-Soc- rates, but the Republic of Plato is construc tive; it rears a lofty dwelling-place not made with hands, whereas Lucian uproots the very foundations. It is his " Confession of Unfaith. " The pupil Hermotimus, who has been painfully working the stony tract of Stoicism these forty
years — he is now sixty — is relentlessly driven from one refuge to another until, with his hopes shattered, he gives in at the last and exclaims in effect like Faust:
Naught can we know with certainty — That sears the very heart in me!
It is not simply the Stoics that have been weighed and found wanting. They are merely one outstanding illustration. " Lycinus " as sures the now disenchanted Hermotimus that it is the same with all creeds — neither
Jew nor Gentile, Stoic churchman nor Cynic dis
senter can guide you up the hill of Virtue. His substitute creed is " Common Sense and scep ticism. " " Keep sober," he says with Epichar- mus, " Keep sober and remember to doubt. "
We may well be sceptical as to how much Lucian actually accomplished for the ethics of
[63]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
his own generation; some critics consider his avowed crusade against shams as rhetorical ar rogance; others, inclined to grant, even to great men, a more generous margin of self-deception, may believe that Lucian, in his own estimate of his role, was really an honest Commissioner for repairing the highways and byways of his time.
ARTIST
[64]
VI. THE SUPERNATURAL
i. The Gods
Crusade against Shams, how
ever much or little reasoned conviction
we may be disposed to concede to him, IUC^IAN'S
was not confined to attacks upon the unethical practices of contemporaries who posed as phi losophers. His satire, now bald and bitter, now glowing with iridescent charm, pursued relent lessly all superstitions and manifestations of a belief in the supernatural. The most intransi gent scientists of the middle of the nineteenth century in their consecrated quest for proto plasm were hardly more bitter than he against all belief in " things unseen. " They, to be sure, were " sustained by an unfaltering trust " in their constructive aims, whereas Lucian was cynically destructive, an iconoclast who could set up in the vacated shrines " no good God except good Greek. " 23 A continuous trip with him through the devastated region of his No- gods' land would become depressing were it not
for his unfailing humour that acts as a partial counter-irritant against pessimism.
[65]
LUCIAN,
To illustrate fully his hostility to the old es tablished Greek religion and to current super stitions, we should have to lay under contribu tion ten or twelve, at least, of his best pieces and add, moreover, many of the fifty-six short Dialogues of the Gods and Dialogues of the Dead.
Experts on the novel point out that the num ber of really distinct plots in the nature of things, very limited. Lucian's writings contain
disconcerting number of repetitions, both of ideas and matter. He was not by way of writ ing an orderly Manual of Ethics! When he wrote his " sequels," they were evidently in tended for audiences previously addressed, but, as rule, he could safely count either upon new hearers or upon his own adroitness and wit in presenting shop-worn roles under new mask.
As to his inconsistencies, these are not of character to indicate either moral obliquity or lack of stability. The most striking apparent inconsistency his shift to vitriolic vitupera tion of the Cynics after his earlier cordial, and even partisan, approval of their creed. The or dinary explanation doubtless, the correct one. His frank adherence to the Cynic Menip
[66]
SATIRIST AND ARTIST
is is,
a a
a
a
is,
THE SUPERNATURAL
pus as a model continued into a part, at least, of his best period.
When it came to personal satire, as in the case of the suicide Peregrinus, he was under no bonds to any creed. It does not seem practicable to use this criterion with exactitude, in establishing the chronological sequence of his writings.
Minor inconsistencies are, of course, delib erate artistic devices. Such, for example, is the insouciance of his whim of the moment when Charon, at one time, conducts his ferry-boat on
the " pay-as-you-enter " system and refuses embarcation to a would-be passenger who can not pay down his obol, and rejects the sug gested compromise of allowing him to work out his fare, while, in another dialogue, he willingly permits a stow-away to work his passage by baling bilge-water or by taking a hand at the oar. Quite different from such deliberate de vices is the possible moral deterioration of Lu- cian grown old and submitting to imperial pat
ronage. To those who seek an ethical lesson this may suggest that a philosophy of negation is no safe sheet-anchor.
In his Zeus Cross-questioned he relentlessly annihilates the sovereignty of the gods. " Cy- niscus " (a Menippean incognito) is allowed by
[67]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND ARTIST
the Chairman of the gods to ask one thing, after promising that he will not ask for wealth or power. He therefore propounds the leading question : " Do Destiny and the Fates really dispose of all things without appeal? " Zeus, falling into the trap, goes the limit in emphasiz ing, as a cardinal doctrine for all orthodox be lief, that the ultimate decision for gods as well as for men, rests with the Fates. The logical application is easy for the Cynic. On this basis the inequalities of life cannot be relieved by any divine intervention, and the suggestion of any readjustment by rewards and punishments after death is seen to be preposterous. This age-old contradiction between predestination and free-will of course, favourite weapon with Lucian. He uses most artistically, per haps, in one of the Dialogues the Dead, where Minos, the judge, has already passed judgment on certain tyrant and then, out of deference to the legal right of the defendant to show cause why sentence should not be passed
upon him, makes the mistake of allowing the condemned criminal to interpellate the court. Minos has an irreproachably judicial mind and
led to admit that an executioner, for example, no more responsible for carrying out " orders
[68]
is is
a
is,
of
it
a
THE SUPERNATURAL
from above " than is the sword itself with which he beheads the criminal. Sostratus, the tyrant, therefore claims, and receives, from the logical judge the cancellation of his sentence. " But," says Minos, " see to it that you don't put up the rest of the corpses to asking similar questions! "
The Tragical Zeus is an elaboration of the foregoing. Zeus appears, this time in the bosom of the family, voicing the tragic crisis in which he finds himself by declaiming adaptations from Euripides, with some Homer thrown in. In answer to anxious metrical questions from his children and caustic free-prose remarks from his wife — (" / haven't," she says, " swal lowed Euripides whole ") — he reveals how he, disguised as a philosopher, has been listening to a most atheistic attack made by a certain Epi curean — (Lucian's proxy here) — with only very feeble rebuttal from a Stoic philosopher. After some discussion of ways and means, Hermes, in canonical hexameters, calls a panoe- cumenical council of the gods. Not even a nymph fails to heed the summons. An insol uble difficulty develops at once as to the ques tion of seating the delegates. There are all
grades of blue blood and new blood, from the [69]
LUCIAN, SATIRIST AND
Twelve Olympians down through half-gods to foreigners of outside pedigree. More perplex ing still is the case of accredited statues, in volving the question of size, material, and the value of artistic workmanship. If the foreign gold gods are to have front seats then the
marble Cnidian Aphrodite, though one of " The Twelve " and of Praxitelean workmanship, is relegated to the rear — and yet, as she justly urges, Homer had, in so many words, called
her " golden Aphrodite. " Finally, the Colossus of Rhodes, though made of bronze, urges that by mere tonnage displacement he is worth more than many gold statuettes. Zeus realizes that the Colossus in front would take up too much space, no matter if they " sit close," and would, moreover, obstruct the view of a whole wedge of gods behind him. He is told to stand up in the rear. The question of precedence stands over for a future session.
Zeus now puts before the gods the crisis that is upon them — how contemporary atheistic tendencies are to be met. To win the attention of this more exoteric audience and warned, per haps, by his wife's sarcasm, he drops tragedy and takes to Demosthenes. But even his De mosthenes soon gives out and he rehearses —
[70]
ARTIST
THE SUPERNATURAL
probably in the contemporary lingua franca of the Common Greek. — the depressing incident of yesterday, and asks for suggestions. Momus, the official Censor — one of Lucian's numer ous proxies — speaks first and makes matters worse. Poseidon then makes the practical sug gestion that Zeus should take executive action and with his thunderbolt put Damis the Epi curean hors de combat before he can finish his atheistic attack. Zeus, with some irritation, re minds him that only the Fates could authorize the death of Damis. Moreover his death would leave the question itself unsettled. Apollo then suggests that Timocles the Stoic, god-fearing as
he may be, is hardly the person to entrust with the gods' very existence, which is now upon the razor's edge. They should appoint a clear- voiced coadjutor. This gives the Momus-Lu- cian the chance for a double thrust at the Stoics and at the involved oracles of Apollo. He urges Apollo himself to foretell which one will win out in tomorrow's debate. Apollo replies that he can't give a proper oracle, away from his dark-room and his medium at Delphi. None the less he does give, under pressure, an eight- line hexameter oracle which, to say the least, is non-committal. Forcible intervention is again
[71]
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suggested by the strenuous Heracles but he too, like Poseidon, is sharply reminded by Zeus that such action lies on the knees, not of the gods, but of the Fates. A vicious Lucianic twist is given by Zeus's careful explanation that Her acles, while alive on earth as a free-will agent, might perhaps have performed his " twelve la bours " but now that he is a mere emeritus god he is no longer able to initiate anything.
At this juncture there arrives from Athens an ectoplasmic Hermes-of-the-Marketplace, the rhetorician Hermagoras, a pro tem, liaison god, to say that the debate is again in full swing. There is nothing for it but to stoop over, listen and hope for the best. Zeus sharply orders the Hours to unbar the Olympian front-door and to remove all intervening clouds so as to secure an unimpeded view and hearing of the debate below.
This paves the way, artistically, for a dia logue within the dialogue, a device used else where by Lucian — most happily, perhaps, in the Charon. The Stoic champion of the gods — arguments, syllogisms, illustrations and all — is of course overwhelmed but, though defeated, he has the courage of his earlier conviction and, not being a mere denatured god, pursues his
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successful opponent with a shower of missiles, giving Hermes the cue for some final words of comfort to his depressed father, selected not from tragedy but this time from Menander's comedy: Never say die! " You've suffered nothing evil, if nothing you admit. " 24
In the Called Assembly of Gods it would seem that Lucian had followed up Zeus's prom ise, made above, to settle questions of prece dence and, still more pressing, of divine eligi bility. Hermes proclaims the opportunity for free discussion as to full-breed gods. The ques tion of the eligibility of resident-aliens and half-breeds is up for consideration.
Momus of course, the first to gain recog nition by the presiding officer, Zeus. He pro ceeds at once to criticize the pedigrees of Di onysus, Pan, et al. Zeus warns him not to say
word about Asclepius or Heracles. Momus then takes up certain ugly reports about Zeus himself — his promiscuous birth-places, meta morphoses and even burial-places. Zeus makes no rebuttal except to warn him against any reference to Ganymede. Momus switches off to catalogue of queer Oriental and Egyptian gods—some of them cannot even speak Greek! He comes around, naturally, to the growing
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menace of the worship of the goddess " Chance," which is upsetting the stock-market of sacri fices. Finally, he proposed an elaborate bill, worded in good Athenian form. This in brief: Whereas numerous and sundry unnatu ralized and polyglot gods have slipped into the registry without establishing title or even pay ing the fee, and whereas the over-populating of heaven has so curtailed the supply of ambrosia and nectar that the latter now costs eighteen dollars the half-pint, be resolved: That Commission be appointed consisting of seven full-breed gods, three of the old Cronus coun cil and four, including the chairman, from " The Twelve," fully empowered to enroll such gods as are proved genuine and to send back to their ancestral tombs and barrows all half- breeds and foreigners. Penalty for non-observ
ance of the Commission's findings: To be
thrown into Tartarus. Incidentally,
to keep to his or her own specialty. Athena,
for example, not to practice medicine; As- clepius not to give oracles; Apollo to cut down his overlapping activities. The philoso phers are to be warned and the statues of all illegitimate gods are to be taken down and replaced by images of Zeus, Hera, Apollo, etc.
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Zeus, not daring to put the decree to vote in this mixed assembly, arbitrarily announces it as " carried! "
To include here, by way of illustration, ex tracts from the twenty-six Dialogues of the Gods would shift the emphasis from their more important quality as artistic, dramatic pictures. But the satire in them, though veiled, is the more effective because the gods convict them selves of folly and passion. They plead guilty by explaining. Zeus and the others come be fore us in all their chryselephantine pomp, but they lay open their breasts to us with confiding frankness and show their unlovely and wooden interiors. Such testimony admits no rebuttal. The case goes against them by default.
The thirty Dialogues of the Dead transfer Lucian's frontal attack upon the gods and an overruling Providence to a campaign against the superstitions encrusted upon the belief in a life after death. 25 The juxtaposition of things material and immaterial gives Lucian's fancy a welcome opportunity. Men and gods, earth and heaven reappear reflected in the mirror of the Infernal Lake like a landscape inverted in the water, while the shore's edge, dividing the real and the unreal, shrinks to a mathematical
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line. Charon's boat glides over the unruffled water. It, or its reflected image," will surely make "port. The certainty of death and taxes is exemplified in the person of the Col lector Aeacus checking off the way-bill.
By the very virulence of his satire on " corpse-affairs " Lucian almost seems to be tray a lurking misgiving that there may be a sequel to this life. If so, however, it was an unconscious betrayal. He was consistent in his nonchalant attitude towards a belief in im mortality: now amused, as in his inimitable creation of the Chanticleer-avatar of Pythag oras; now pungently contemptuous at the sight of a pickled mummy; now rollickingly logical, as when Heracles in Hades carefully explains that his immortal half is honeymooning in Heaven; or, finally, pityingly patronizing to wards the misguided worshippers of " the cru cified sophist " who have persuaded themselves that they are to live on through time un ending. 26
His own insistence on the liberti et igaliti et fraternity in Hades, as an antidote to the inequalities of riches and poverty in this life, forces him, as though with an effort, to portray their real unreality. The actors in these brief
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dramas are not clothed upon with unnecessary rhetoric, but the snub-nosed skulls still have " speculation in their eyes," the white femora step out bravely, and the vacant ribs reecho the Cynic's ventriloquism.
Life's futility is presented from various sides. We learn the vanity of riches that yield the Ferryman's fee as their only dividend; we see the frustrated legacy-hunters ; see, too, beauty and kisses, flow of rhetoric and flowing beard of the philosophers, pedigree and patrimony, the fair fame of Socrates — all alike — go by the board and drift astern in the boat's livid wake as the passengers prepare to step ashore with naked bones that need fear no nip of Cerberus. Or, the fancy changes and the dead arrive before the judge still branded with the stigmata of sins for which they are to suffer, in propria persona, most humanly as they deserve.
" Crossing the Bar "
or The Tyrant is a much larger canvas, painted in more lurid
colours, but on the same gray and livid back ground.
The Subway officials, the crew and the pas sengers on Charon's crowded boat are painted in with swift impressionism. Atropos " with
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the abhorred shears " has " slit the thin-spun life " of 1004 persons today. Aeacus, the Rev enue Inspector at the Ferry, finds the shipment one corpse short as per Bill of Lading. The flurried Corpse-conductor, Hermes, with the
aid of the now jovial Cynic, retrieves the Ty rant who has nearly made good his escape up the funicular tunnel. This unprecedented delay to the cable-line of the Fates, usually running on schedule time, angers the Ferryman, who has already lost two trips. He hurries all on
board, except Micyllus,28 the cobbler, who has no obol to pay his fare, and casts loose his mooring. The cobbler, long since eager for his mansion on the ever-gray shore, is in despair but, realizing that he cannot drown since he is dead already, plunges into the Salt Lake whose high specific gravity easily buoys up his now negligible weight. Being in the swim he even offers to race Charon to the landing. This,
however, is not de rigeur. Clotho, the senior Spinster, sailing as special supercargo, salvages the unconventional corpse and, for lack of other accommodations, gives him an upper bunk on the shoulders of the Tyrant. The scene, where Rhadamanthus pronounces judgment, informs us that all previous sins leave stigmata on the
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sinner's body. Under microscopic examination the Cynic is found to have many faint traces of former sins. His strenuous philosophic virtue, however, has entirely obliterated his guilt and he is passed without conditions. The cobbler, whose poverty is apparently counted unto him as righteousness, has a skin as smooth as a baby's and he is at once billed through to the Islands of the Blest. But Megapenthes, the multimillionaire tyrant, is in a parlous state — livid all over with confluent stigmata. His lamp and couch, summoned as eyewitnesses, give il luminating and bed-rock testimony. For such an imperial sinner a special punishment is de vised. He is not allowed to drink of the water of Lethe, the River of Oblivion. His " sorrow's crown of sorrows " shall be the eternal and undimmed recollection of his former life of luxury. For him we may delimit " Hades " and translate the title as The Hell-bent
Voyage.
Two other pieces, the Menippus and the
Icaromenippus are pertinent here and also sug gest how Lucian developed his own negatives. Their inverted mechanism is identical — the preambles; the miraculous trips to Hades and Heaven respectively; the Synod of Corpses
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and the Council of Olympians; the inferences drawn; and even the simplicity of the two short-cuts back to Earth are pendants of each other. In each of them a comedy of Aristoph anes — the Frogs and the Peace — furnishes a happy suggestion. The main difference lies in the relative degree of finish. The Menippus or Necromancy is apparently a mere charcoal sketch, or a snap-shot caught by the help of Persephone's flashlight, of shadows of shades, whereas in the Icaromenippus the artist, work ing en plein air, paints at leisure his finished picture with perfected technique and unfading colours.
This latter is an elaborate satire on Greek religion, in Lucian's most brilliant vein, pref aced by a somewhat detailed and irritable analysis of the net yield of philosophic specu lation and physical investigation, as Lucian chose to appraise them. The transcendental Birdman, with the synthetic name, Icaro menippus, explains why he found it necessary to obtain, by a visit to Heaven 29 itself, first hand information in the hope of coordinating
conflicting statements of contemporary philos ophers. This original purpose is not ignored in the end but is merged in the larger question
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of man's relation to the gods. This question of universal import is asked today. No more deadly comment has ever been made on the immoral futility of the necessarily conflicting petitions raised by embattled nations, each to its Tribal God, than Lucian's witty resume of Zeus's daily office-business.
Daedalus, incidentally the father of flying as well as of other far more important con tributions to progress, had fastened on with wax his own and his son's wings, a device adapted only to a low-altitude flight across the Aegean. Icarus soared high and was lost.
Icaromenippus, however, provides against this by a greatly improved method of attaching his wings — one an eagle's, one a vulture's. This combination, indeed, of the celestial and the terrestrial nearly wrecked the venture. Ham pered by the inferior vulture's wing, he puts in for repairs at the Lunar garage conducted by Empedocles, an emigre from Aetna, in whose crater he had acquired mechanical skill by watching the Olympian blacksmith, Hephaes tus, mending the points of the imperial thunder bolts, broken 30 on the rocks through Zeus's poor marksmanship. After various instructive episodes on the Moon, upward we fly forget
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ting, in the iridescent joys of the open road, all earthly handicaps.
On the traveller's arrival at the front door of the Imperial Palace, Hermes, the heavenly " bell-hop," answers his knock and takes in his name to Zeus. When admitted, he is thunder struck at the Father's loud voice and Titanic glance but is secretly somewhat reassured by observing that the gods are equally alarmed at his own unexpected epiphany. But Zeus is con versant with Homer and the sacred rights of guest-friendship, and before dinner takes his guest for a walk to the most resonant part of Heaven where the sound-waves concentrate and bring up the prayers, day by day, through window-like openings in the floors, covered by lids. But Zeus"was out for information also and he asks: What's the present quotation on wheat in Greece? Was last winter very hard on you? Do the vegetables need more rain? "
— and other questions including more personal matters, such as the likelihood of the comple tion of his great Olympieium in Athens and whether certain temple robbers have yet been apprehended, and, finally and most important: " What opinion do men have about me? " — a question requiring some cleverness to answer
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both respectfully and diplomatically. Zeus, in fact, reveals his own apprehension that the great extension of the elective system, with the consequent inclusion of so many deities in the curriculum, is resulting in a general indifference to all of them.
Arrived at the prayer-precinct, Zeus took off a lid and allowed his guest to bend over with him and hear the various requests, for ex ample:
O Zeus, grant that I may become King! O Zeus, make my onions grow and my garlic! O Gods, grant that my father die soon!
And one and another would say:
Grant that I may fall heir to my wife's money! Grant me that I escape detection in plotting against my brother! God grant that I may win in my law-suit! Grant that I be crowned at the Olympic Games!
And of those who were sailing the seas, one prayed for the north wind to blow, another for the south wind. And the farmer asked for rain; the fuller for sunshine. Zeus, though carefully considering each request, did not grant them all. In fact, he was occasionally at a loss when diametrically opposite requests were accom panied by precisely equal offerings!
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After the prayers, Zeus listened in at other trap-doors, designed for transmitting oracles or the names of those who were making sacrifices, and then gave out his orders for the day to the Winds and Seasons:
Today let it rain in Scythia! Let there be lightning among the Libyans! Let it snow in
Greece! And: North wind, do you blow in Lydia! and do you, Southwind, remain inactive! Let Westwind kick up the waves in the Adriatic! And let, we'll say, about fifteen hundred bushels of hail be scattered over Cappodocia!
The family dinner that follows gives Lucian abundant opportunity — and he seems never to miss a chance — for his cumulative satire. Al though seated with the alien-resident gods of doubtful pedigree, Icaromenippus could see and hear everything. He even had the good- fortune to get a taste, on the sly, of the con ventional nectar on which gods only may get drunk. The cup-bearer, Ganymede, out of sym pathetic loyalty to his own human extraction, would come, whenever the attention of the gods was deflected, and pour out for the guest a
half-pint or so of nectar. The food and drink were all of home production, furnished from the special preserves and cellars of various gods. Nor were the finer intellectual amuse
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ments — music, dancing and poetry — far to seek, the Muses, for example, singing selections from Hesiod's Genesis of the Gods!
Night came on somehow although Helios was present at the table, wearing his ever-blazing halo. A called assembly of the gods next morn ing repeats situations already familiar, but de tails differ and the humour seems new and al luring. On this occasion Zeus does not choose to admit that he is not master of Fate and he promises the excited gods that he will resort to the most drastic measures against all atheists — after the holidays! Just now it would be sacrilegious.
He gives specific directions for"ridding them selves of their unusual guest: Take off his wings so that he may never come here again " — (To construct another airship would doubt less have been treated as an infringement of Zeus's patent on the eagle! ) — "and let Hermes take him down to the Earth today. " " And the " son of Cyllene," Icaromenippus concludes, holding me suspended by my right ear " — (the seat of memory) — " brought me and set me down yesterday at eventide in the
Potters' Quarter. "
Lucian might have rested content with his
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campaign against Zeus and his Olympians, on the one hand, and, on the other, against Pluto, the " nether Zeus," and his realm. His inspec tor Menippus had spied out all the weak points in Hades below and in Heaven above. The debacle of the gods, supernal and infernal, was inevitable. But there still remained a third ap proach to the problem — the viewing of human life through divine binoculars. To effect this,
Lucian presses into temporary service the god Hermes, the busy corpse-conductor, and the god Charon, another proxy for Lucian in place of the discarded Menippus. Although logically, along with the rest of the gods, these two also by Lucian's catholic satire should have lost their standing, they had, in fact, only taken on a new lease of life. Lucian's audiences were
now, more than ever, on familiar speaking terms with them.
The Charon or The Inspectors is usually grouped with the Dialogues of the Dead and contains, indeed, many superficial points of contact with them. But its tone is different. Scathing satire and even harsh invective against tyrants are tempered by a finer humour and by more than a touch of pity for men dangling helplessly from the spindles of the
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Fates. Not even in Lucian's bitter mind is Death always a subject for ridicule. Its in- evitableness seems to set free for once, a more human sympathy lurking beneath his polished cynicism. Comic actors do not necessarily laugh behind their masks and, in reading the Charon, we are even tempted to consider genu ine an epigram, replete with feeling, that is attributed to Lucian. It is on the death of a
child, named Callimachus:
Me unpitying Death has taken,
Me a child of five years old, — Me whose soul no grief has shaken Small time, true, my life had doled, Small ills, too, my life did see,
Weep not, therefore — not for me.
Whether written by Lucian or no, this attitude towards the death of the very young, while delicate in its sympathy, is highly antiseptic and not out of keeping with the nobler " imperturbability " (arapa^ia) of Epicurus 31 himself which was, perhaps, Lucian's best ideal. Be that as it may, this dialogue, which in ar tistic conception and execution has few equals,
rises above Menippean cynicism. The " Inspec tors," Charon and Hermes, meet on neutral
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ground and the result of their review of human life is unexpectedly non-partisan. Charon, to be sure, newly arrived on a furlough from the Underworld, at the opening of the dialogue is convulsed with laughter at hearing a man eagerly accept a dinner invitation, only to be killed the next moment by a falling tile. This reminds him pleasantly of his ferry business and, indeed, before the end of the dialogue, he
insists, out of purely professional curiosity, upon seeing the terrestrial cold-storage plants which serve as terminal depots for the shipping of his daily cargoes. But the illuminating dis cussion with Hermes concerning the panorama of human history unrolled before them cul minates in an unconscious parallel to the altru ism of the rich man in Hell's torment who is fain to have Lazarus, whilom beggar but
now ensconced in Abraham's bosom, sent as a missionary to his surviving brothers to urge them to timely repentance. But, like the rich man's unselfish thought for the living, Charon's generous impulse to cry out and warn men of their folly is suppressed by Hermes with sim ilar finality. The Fates are in control and men would not, and could not, " be
persuaded, though one rose from the dead. " We see, in
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effect, the Fates floating above us. We see the shadowy phantoms with which they mock us: hopes, fears, ambitions, jealousy, wrath and
covetousness. Chilling, in spite of its comic reminiscence, falls upon our ears the swift resume at the end: "Lord, what fools these mortals be! Kings, golden ingots, funeral rites, battles, but never a word about Charon! "
2. Applied Superstition
The Charon makes a natural transition to Lucian's crusades against contemporary ap plied superstition. Superstition did not die out with the advent of Christianity. It is not dead yet. The classic curtsy to Nemesis survives un disguised in our apologetic: " Knock on wood," and the very vigour of the well-groomed twen tieth-century intellect seems to furnish surplus energy for the rank fungus growth of Spiritism.
In this brilliant Age of the Antonines super stitions, home-made and oriental, flourished under the genial sunlight of the Roman Em pire alongside the noble philosophy inculcated by Imperial example. Here also Lucian found his opportunity for asserting his ethics of ne gation and also for covert or open attacks upon contemporaries.
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His Lie-Fancier 32 is a round-trip ticket for a journey through the bog-lands of the human mind, ancient and modern, guided by the self- lighting ignes fatui of the generations.
Tychiades, Lucian himself, pays a visit of condolence to a sufferer from gout.