VII Lucian and his Satiric Romances: the True History and Lucius or Ass
“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 Essai292 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 Hercules297 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 out308 “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 Apology312 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.
We touched at the Isle of the Wicked and at the Isle of Dreams, where we slept thirty days and next we put in at Ogygia. Lucian read Odysseus’ letter before he delivered it to Calypso and found he had always regretted leaving her! For Odysseus’ sake, Calypso entertained us royally.
Next we fell into danger from the Pumpkin Pirates and the Hardshell Pirates and the Dolphin-Riders, but we escaped them all. One night we ran aground on the marvellous and mighty nest of a king-fisher. And a little further on in the sea we came to a forest of rootless trees which we could not penetrate. There was nothing to do but haul the ship up to their tops and take “a forest cruise” across. More marvellous still we had to cross a water-chasm on a water bridge, a river-way between two water precipices. After that we came to the Isle of the Bellowing Bullheads, men like Minotaurs, and had some skirmishes with them. And then we came to an Island of Fair Ladies who wished to take us to bed with them, but Lucian discovered that they all had ass-legs and that they ate strangers when they had cozened them to sleep. So we departed in haste. At dawn we saw the land which is on the other side of the world from ours and there we were shipwrecked. What happened there will be another story.
This review of the two books of Lucian’s True History reveals at once its startling differences from the other Greek romances of the early Empire. Romantic love does not figure in it. Religion has little or no place in it. Adventures are its bones and sinews. These adventures though described realistically are all figments of the imagination, explorations of the Wonderful Things beyond Thule as much as those of Antonius Diogenes must have been. The coloring of the pictures is an amazing mixture of realism and fantasy. The veracity of sense impressions almost converts doubting Thomases. Lucian comes to seem no mean rival of Herodotus, the Father of Lies. Only occasionally some satiric laughter betrays him.
It is perhaps easier for twentieth century readers to accept his wonders than it was for his contemporaries of the second century. Science has developed so many of his imaginative forecasts. The monstrous footprints of Hercules and Dionysus might be rock-prints of dinosaurs. The plunging whale is a submarine. His ship lifting from the ocean to sail through the air has become the hydroplane. His island galleys bearing one hundred and twenty men each are our battleships. The Cloud Centaurs who fight in the air are our aviators. Arctic explorers have lived in huts made of ice-blocks. Ice-sailing is a recognized winter sport. Clothing is made not of glass or bronze, but of cellulose and steel. Removable eyes suggest spectacles, contact lenses and field-glasses. The Cork-footed Men must have resembled surf riders. And the magic mirror over the well anticipated the perforated sphere of television.
But his contemporaries had the advantage of us in recognizing Lucian’s sources and parodies more readily than we can. For us, Antonius Diogenes, Ctesias and Iambulus are lost. Yet Photius records that the romance of Antonius Diogenes, The Wonders beyond Thule, was the chief source of Lucian’s True History. So many, however, are the sources which Lucian used to forward his avowed purpose of furnishing relaxation accompanied by some learning, that scholars have busied themselves for years tracing parallels with Greek and Latin authors.328 Allinson remarks wisely: “In general, it seems safe to conclude that Lucian regarded the writings of predecessors and contemporaries as an open quarry from which he first built up his own style and then picked out material to imbed, with an artist’s skill, in the parti-coloured mosaic of his satire.”329
Some idea of Lucian’s parody of his sources may be gained, even though Antonius Diogenes is lost, from his incidental flings at great Greeks and from his constant references to Homer which are a mixture of admiration and irony. So when he saw Cloudcuckooland he remembered Aristophanes the poet, “a wise and truthful man whose writings are distrusted without reason.”330 On the Island of the Blessed he did not find Plato for he preferred to live in the city of his imagination under his own constitution and laws. Yet he might well have been in Elysium for the inhabitants are most Platonic in sharing their wives.331 The solemn treaty which ended the wars between the Men of the Sun and the Men of the Moon has a comical resemblance to the treaty between Athens and Sparta which Thucydides records though it is signed by Fireman, Hotman, and Burner, by Nightman, Moonman and Allbright.332
Herodotus comes in for more imitation, for he furnishes stories of ants bigger than foxes,333 of dog-headed men,334 of men who feed on odors,335 of a feast of lanterns in Egypt,336 of a floating island,337 of the sea freezing,338 of a breeze that bears the perfume of Arabia.339 But when Lucian solemnly imitates these exaggerations, we feel he has his tongue in his cheek and our suspicion is confirmed when he consigns Ctesias and Herodotus to the limbo of Liars in the Island of the Wicked.340
Lucian’s treatment of Homer shows his most genial irony. In his preface he makes Homer’s Odysseus the guide and teacher of all historians of imaginary travels, Odysseus “who tells Alcinous and his court about winds in bondage, one-eyed men, cannibals and savages; also about animals with many heads, and transformations of his comrades wrought with drugs,” and with such marvels “humbugged the illiterate Phaeacians.”341 But in the Island of the Blessed, Homer is the shade in whose talk Lucian most delights. Homer indeed is most affable in discussing all the literary problems of his epics, especially since he had just won a lawsuit in which Thersites accused him of libel, through the aid of his lawyer Odysseus.342 Homer as a shade is still writing for when there was war in heaven, he produced a new epic about the battle of the shades of the heroes,343 which Lucian unfortunately lost on the way home, and on Lucian’s departure Homer composed a commemorative epigram which described him as dear to the blessed gods.344
Lucian introduces Homer’s characters into his scenes. Achilles is one of the most honored heroes on the Island of the Blessed, serving as joint judge with Theseus at the Games of the Dead.345 Helen is the leading lady in the court-room scene where Rhadamanthus had to decide whose wife she should be in Elysium. She has forgiven Stesichorus for saying she caused the Trojan War.346 But she creates a new scandal by trying to desert Menelaus again in an elopement with Scintharus’ son.347 Calypso on receiving Odysseus’ letter from Lucian’s hand weeps as she reads that he always regretted giving up his life with her, and then with true feminine curiosity asks how Penelope is looking now and whether she is as wise as Odysseus used to boast. Lucian made such replies as he thought would gratify her!348
Minor episodes are reminiscent of the Odyssey. Rhadamanthus gives Lucian a talisman of mallow as Hermes gave Odysseus the moly.349 To the Land of Dreams Lucian must erect four gates in place of Homer’s two, one of horn, one of ivory.350 And the Singing Sirens that tried to beguile Odysseus have been metamorphosed into fair young ladies in long chitons which conceal the legs of she-asses.351 But whatever changes are made in the source-material taken from the Odyssey, Lucian’s gentle raillery does not hide his admiration of great Homer. He gives the lie to the myth that Homer was blind.352 And in the contest of the poets at the Games of the Dead in the Island of the Blessed, he ironically makes Hesiod the victor though he affirms that in truth Homer was by far the best of poets.
Lucian’s style in his True History illustrates many of his own criteria for writing history. The short preface is in proportion to the short two-book True History. The narrative is concise, rapid, lucid and shows consistent progress, one event following naturally and quickly upon another without extravagant use of details. The few speeches are short, lively and suited to the character of the speaker. The descriptions are realistic and pointed. Extraordinary stories are told simply with an appearance of veracity.
A few typical elements of the Greek Romances appear in the True History. There is a suggestion of a court-room scene where Rhadamanthus judges Helen’s accomplices in escape. One letter is inserted, Odysseus’ to Calypso, for the purpose of ironic satire of Homeric characters. An inscription on bronze is discovered and a laudatory couplet in hexameter is composed and inscribed on stone. But love and religion, the commonest themes of the Greek Romances, are eliminated from this tale of marvellous adventures.
Satire though this story is, it ranks easily first among imaginary voyagings both in fantasy and style. In his narration Lucian pours all his spirit, his liveliness of observation, his brilliant imagination, his vivacious wit. His own enjoyment in his facile, marvellous inventions is contagious. As he rushes his breathless readers over the earth, through the air, under the sea, as he introduces us to innumerable natural phenomena and monstrous beings, he convinces us that this world of fantasy is a real world. He has made many others wish to record similar travels, for the True History is the model of all those imaginary voyages with which Rabelais, Cyrano de Bergerac, Swift, Voltaire and others amused their contemporaries. No work of Lucian found so many imitators as this.353
The readers of Lucian’s True History on finishing it feel that they have drunk with him more from his eternal springs of joy and laughter than from his irony, in fact that his irony gives only a few drops of angostura bitters to the heady cocktails of his wit. And at the end the readers of this romance are ready today to salute the shade of Lucian as Andrew Lang did:354
“In what bower, oh Lucian, of your rediscovered Islands Fortunate are you now reclining; the delight of the fair, the learned, the witty, and the brave?...
“There, among the vines that bear twelve times in the year, more excellent than all the vineyards of Touraine, while the song-birds bring you flowers from vales enchanted, and the shapes of the Blessed come and go, beautiful in wind-woven raiment of sunset hues; there, in a land that knows not age, nor winter, midnight, nor autumn, nor noon, where the silver twilight of summer-dawn is perennial, where youth does not wax spectre-pale and die; there, my Lucian, you are crowned the Prince of the Paradise of Mirth.”
It may seem anti-climax to turn from the True History to Lucian’s other romance, the Metamorphoses, for the second exists only in an epitome by another hand. Since however this epitome is included in all the best manuscripts and has been proved conclusively by B. E. Perry to be a condensation of an original Metamorphoses by Lucian on the basis of spirit, vocabulary, syntax and phraseology, we must try to form some idea of this other romance.355
As the True History is a satire of travellers’ tales, this epitome, Lucius or Ass, is primarily a satire of magic and magic rites. Just as in the True History not only epic poets and historians were parodied, but philosophers came in for their share of ironic comment, so in Lucius or Ass satire is directed not merely against magicians, but also against corrupt priests and frail women. The satire is of the earth, earthy, very near the folk-story from which it may have originated. Lucius or Ass is Everyman in his credulity, gullibility and bestiality. The only heroines in his murky world are a witch-woman and a corrupt maid. This epitome has two great values: it gives us some idea of Lucian’s lost Metamorphoses, and hence affords a basis for comparison with Apuleius’ great Latin novel Metamorphoses. It will prove convenient I hope, to have a rather full outline presented here in English for purposes of discussion and comparison. This Greek Lucius or Ass like the True History is written in the first person, but Lucius of Patrae, the hero, not the author, is the narrator. In my brief résumé, I have found it clearer to write Lucius’ account in the third person.
Once upon a time on a journey to Thessaly Lucius inquires of some fellow travellers whereabouts in the city of Hypata a man named Hipparchus lives, for he is carrying a letter of introduction to him. On his arrival he stays at Hipparchus’ house. Only his wife and a maid Palaestra lived with him. On his host’s inquiring the object of his travels, Lucius says he is on his way to Larissa. He conceals the fact that he is searching for women who deal in magic. While walking around the city, he meets an old friend of his mother named Abroea, who warns him against the wife of Hipparchus because she is a witch. Lucius, delighted with this news, returns to Hipparchus’ house and in the absence of his host and hostess makes love to Palaestra with the purpose of persuading the maid to acquaint him with her mistress’ magic powers. At the close of a night of revel, Lucius persuades Palaestra to show him her mistress at her magic rites.
A few nights later Palaestra fulfills her promise by leading Lucius at dead of night to the door of her lady’s bedroom where through a crack he can watch her proceedings. She mutters to her lamp. She strips. She rubs her naked body with ointment from a little box. Gradually she is transformed into an owl and flies away to her lover. Lucius then prevails upon Palaestra to let him attempt the same transformation. By ill luck the maid brings him the wrong box of ointment so that he is changed not into a bird, but into an ass. Palaestra soothingly assures him that the antidote is simple, just a meal of roses, and if her dearest will pass the night quietly in the stable, in the morning she will gather the flowers and recover her Lucius.
But this simple plan gangs a-gley, for in the night robbers raid the house, secure much booty and to carry it steal also the horse and the real ass of Hipparchus and Lucius. So the man-ass, heavily burdened, is driven to the robbers’ home. One old woman is their care-taker. Several days later the robbers return from one of their forays bringing in as booty a young woman whom they have kidnapped. Later on in the absence of the brigands the girl tries to escape riding on the ass, but both are captured by the robbers. On their return, they find that the old woman in terror has hanged herself.
The robbers plan a dreadful punishment for the culprits: to kill the ass, disembowel him and sew the girl up alive in his paunch to die by slow torture. But before they achieve this horror, a company of soldiers arrives, captures the whole band and carries them off to a magistrate. They had been conducted to the robbers’ den by the fiancé of the girl. He now escorts her home on the honored ass Lucius.
After the wedding of the happy pair, the bride persuades her father to reward the ass her benefactor so he is to be turned out into pasture with the she-asses. But the servant to whom the care of the ass is intrusted wickedly takes him home and makes him labor first in a mill, then carrying fagots on a steep mountain, where a cruel driver mistreats him. In the midst of his sufferings, news comes that the bride and groom have been drowned on the seashore. So since their new masters are dead, the servants all flee, taking the ass with them. They sell him in a city of Macedonia to a eunuch priest of a Syrian goddess. In his life with the priests, Lucius is so horrified by their impure practices that he brays loudly in protest. The noise brings up some passing peasants who go off to tell the village the obscenities they have witnessed. The priests have to flee for their lives, but first they nearly kill the ass by beating him for his braying.
Lucius is in danger of his life again at the house of a rich man where they stop. For the servants who have lost the meat of a wild ass which was to be the dinner (the dogs stole it), plot to kill Lucius and serve up his flesh. He saves himself only by running away from the cook. The priests are now arrested because they are found in possession of a golden phiale which they stole from a temple, and the ass is sold to a baker. In the mill Lucius is so worn down by the hard work that he is sold as worthless to an old gardener. On the way to town, this gardener has a quarrel with a soldier and nearly kills him so the gardener and the ass have to go into hiding. Stupid Lucius betrays their hiding place by putting his head out of an upper window to see what is going on. Captured he is given to the soldier, but he soon sells him to a cook. Now Lucius fattens on good food by surreptitious filching of choice portions which the cook and his brother had reserved for themselves. By a little detective work the brothers discover that the thief is the ass. They show him eating men’s food to their master, who promptly buys the ass, has a servant train him to act like a man (easy lessons for Lucius!) and exhibits him for admission fees. A woman buys a night with him and has intercourse with him.
Then his master purposes to exhibit him couched with a woman (a condemned criminal) at a public festival. The scene is all set when some one comes up to Lucius and the woman at the banquet table bearing, among other flowers, roses. At last the ass has his meal of restorative flowers and becomes once more Lucius. He appeals to the magistrate for protection against those who cry he is a magician and must be killed. He informs the governor that his name is Lucius, he has a brother Gaius, both have the same two other names; that he himself is a writer of stories and his brother is an elegiac poet and a good prophet. The magistrate believing his story gives him hospitality. Lucius’ brother comes to take him home, but first Lucius thought it fitting to call on the woman who had given him her love when he was an ass. He is chagrined to find that as a man he has no charm for her! He sails with his brother to Patrae and there sacrifices to the gods who have saved him.
No other work attributed to Lucian has aroused greater controversy than Lucius or Ass. All the literature about it is reviewed in Ben Edwin Perry’s epoch-making book The Metamorphoses Ascribed to Lucius of Patrae, which conclusively proves that Lucius or Ass is an epitome of Lucian’s Metamorphoses, made by another writer. Perry analyzes Photius’ description of the lost Greek Metamorphoses with its theory of the three versions of the ass-story,356 and proves that Photius’ one mistake was in thinking that the name Lucius of Patrae referred to an author of a third Metamorphoses, which was probably the original of Lucian’s and Apuleius’ stories: Lucius of Patrae in Lucius or Ass is the hero-narrator, not the author. Perry then with convincing logic reconstructs the probable content of the Metamorphoses of which Lucius or Ass is an epitome and with the same irrefutable reasoning discusses the nature of this original Greek novel. The basis of it was a folk-lore story of a transformation. The style was plain, the narrative rapid, the tone ironic. The narrator keeps the character of the hero of the adventures and never identifies himself with the author. The character of the hero is that of “an unique clown” with an absorbing and credulous interest in strange phenomena especially transformations. The final proof that the Metamorphoses was satirical is “the simple fact that the Eselmensch is a litterateur and an investigator of marvels.” “The generic title shows that the author regarded his story as a kind of commentary on the subject of metamorphoses, and writers who interested themselves in such things.”357
This author, “second century Atticist, humorist, and satirist,” can be none other than Lucian himself, for the Greek Metamorphoses is Lucianic in type, is a relaxation from serious work as is the True History; it shows the same satire of credulity that other works of Lucian (for example the Alexander) did; and it is colored by the same ironic humor. The epitome contains a striking Lucianic element although this is overlaid by philological errors. Perry also analyzes resemblances and differences between the reconstructed Metamorphoses of Lucian and Apuleius’ novel, but this discussion I shall reserve for the next chapter.
Lucius or Ass is valuable in proving that Lucian wrote not one but two romances; that in both he developed a new type of romance, the satiric; that in each he maintained the same great qualities which mark his other writings: the quest for truth, intolerance of fraud and credulity; keen observation and realistic description; condensation, rapidity, clarity; dramatic irony. The two romances also show more than any other of Lucian’s writings his brilliant imaginative powers.
A postscript to this discussion of Lucian’s satiric romances may well include an account of a novel in miniature which appears in one of his dialogues. Writing in the second century he was of course thoroughly familiar with the conventional type of the Greek romance. Though this statement might be accepted a priori, certain evidence of it is furnished by his insertion in his Toxaris of an epitome of a Scythian romance of love and adventure. The Toxaris is a Platonic dialogue written probably about A.D. 165, in Lucian’s period of transition from purely rhetorical writings to those of moral or religious satire.358 In it a Greek Mnesippus and a Scythian Toxaris discuss friendship each giving five illustrations of famous instances in his own country. The longest one related is a Scythian romance told by Toxaris.359 Rostovtzeff has shown that Lucian probably had in his hands a Greek romance with a Scythian background, for papyri fragments furnish incontrovertible evidence of a similar Scythian romance in Greek dating from the second century A.D.360
The story as told by Lucian is melodramatic. It relates the devotion of three Scythians, Macentes, Lonchates and Arsacomas, who had pledged to each other friendship for life and death in the old Scythian way of shedding some of their blood into a cup and quaffing it together. Now Arsacomas, who had gone on a mission to Leucanor, king of Bosporus, there fell madly in love at first sight with his daughter Mazaea. At a banquet when suitors were bidding for the hand of the princess with proud lists of their possessions, all Arsacomas could boast of was his two fair, brave friends. The Bosporans laughed him to scorn and the girl was awarded to Adyrmachus, who the next day was to convey his bride to the land of the Machlyans.
The outraged Arsacomas rushing home told his friends how he and their friendship had been ridiculed and the three as one man planned immediate vengeance. Lonchates promised to bring Arsacomas the head of Leucanor. Macentes was to kidnap the bride. Arsacomas was to stay at home and raise an army on the ox-hide for the war that would surely follow. All proceeded according to schedule. Arsacomas slew an ox, cut up and cooked the meat, spread the hide on the ground and sat on it with his hands held behind him. This is the greatest appeal for aid possible for a man who desires to secure help for vengeance. His friends and kinsmen coming accepted each a portion of the meat, set right foot on the hide and pledged as much aid as he could. So a goodly army was raised.
Lonchates went to Bosporus, pretending he had come as a friend to offer aid against Arsacomas’ planned invasion. King Leucanor alarmed by the news of an imminent Scythian attack was lured alone into the temple of Ares to take a secret oath of friendship with Lonchates. There Lonchates murdered him, cut off his head and escaped with it under his cloak before the guards outside knew what had happened.
Macentes too used subterfuge, for hurrying to the Machlyans he reported King Leucanor’s death, said falsely that the Bosporans called Adyrmachus as his son-in-law to be their king, and offered while Adyrmachus rode at full speed to them, to escort after him his bride Mazaea in the wagon-train, for she, he claimed, was a relative of his own. This plan worked so smoothly that Macentes, when night came on, took Mazaea from her carriage, put her on his horse with himself and galloped off with her to Arsacomas. The horse dropped dead at the end but the kidnapped bride was delivered. Then all three friends united in the battle against Adyrmachus, slew him on the field, and by nightfall had won a victory. The next day peace was negotiated. Such are the deeds of daring which Scythians perform for their friends.
In the papyrus fragments a lady in distress is weeping and lamenting in the tent of a general Eubiotus. He clears his tent because of her woe, hears her declare that she wishes she had never seen Eraseinus (apparently her lover) and prevents her attempted suicide by wresting her sword from her. She then tells Eubiotus that she is not the Amazon Themisto though she is so disguised, but a Greek girl Calligone. Here the fragments end. The only points in common with Lucian’s story are the geographical background and the name Eubiotus (in Lucian the illegitimate brother of Leucanor and an aspirant to his throne),361 but both stories as Rostovtzeff points out look to history for characters and setting as the Ninus Romance did.
In the Toxaris the coloring is only quasi-historical through the mention of names of kings and their lineage: the story is not history, but an historical novel. And the connection of the Scythians with the Sarmatians, the Alans, the Maeotians and the Bosporans corresponds only in part with their actual relations at the time. The Sauromatians are a relic of the past; the Alans represent actual conditions in the time of the author. The geographical coloring is likewise only partly historical. The picture of the Scythians even with its tendency to idealization represents the people fairly. They are nomadic, poor, with a free democratic political organization without kings, and they are warriors. Their gods are the sword and the wind. Their customs are primitive. They make war on their neighbors and have special relations with the Greek states on the Bosporus and Olbia and visit those on the south side of the Black Sea.
Lucian in composing his Toxaris probably had in hand a Greek romance with a Scythian background, containing certain historical and ethnographical material. This he worked over making his story represent what his public then knew or could know of the Scythians and their neighbors. The discovery of the papyrus fragments of the Calligone novel confirms this thesis.362 The type of the Toxaris story and the papyrus story is the same. Both were love romances, though in each the erotic motif is subordinated to adventure. The interest of the age in the unfamiliar, the strange is manifested in the selection of Scythia for the background.
Lucian’s narrative is intensely exciting as well as picturesque and although it is only a miniature story it gives us an idea of another love romance of a wild type with a king’s head cut off for vengeance, a bride kidnapped on horseback and an army raised on the ox-hide. The whole Toxaris indeed, as Croiset remarked,363 with its ten anecdotes furnishes rich examples of Lucian’s art of narration.