Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
_Lucian._ Rather should I be ashamed of indifference on so important
an occasion.
_Timotheus._ We know the fact by surer signs.
_Lucian._ These, if you could vouch for them, would be sure enough for
me. The least of them would make me sweat as profusely as if I stood
up to the neck in the hot preparation of a mummy. Surely no wise or
benevolent philosopher could ever have uttered what he knew or
believed might be distorted into any such interpretation. For if men
are persuaded that they and their works are so soon about to perish,
what provident care are they likely to take in the education and
welfare of their families? What sciences will they improve, what
learning will they cultivate, what monuments of past ages will they be
studious to preserve, who are certain that there can be no future
ones? Poetry will be censured as rank profaneness, eloquence will be
converted into howls and execrations, statuary will exhibit only
Midases and Ixions, and all the colours of painting will be mixed
together to produce one grand conflagration: _flammantia moenia
mundi_.
_Timotheus._ Do not quote an atheist; especially in Latin. I hate the
language; the Romans are beginning to differ from us already.
_Lucian._ Ah! you will soon split into smaller fractions. But pardon
me my unusual fault of quoting. Before I let fall a quotation I must
be taken by surprise. I seldom do it in conversation, seldomer in
composition; for it mars the beauty and unity of style, especially
when it invades it from a foreign tongue. A quoter is either
ostentatious of his acquirements or doubtful of his cause. And
moreover, he never walks gracefully who leans upon the shoulder of
another, however gracefully that other may walk. Herodotus, Plato,
Aristoteles, Demosthenes, are no quoters. Thucydides, twice or thrice,
inserts a few sentences of Pericles: but Thucydides is an emanation of
Pericles, somewhat less clear indeed, being lower, although at no
great distance from that purest and most pellucid source. The best of
the Romans, I agree with you, are remote from such originals, if not
in power of mind, or in acuteness of remark, or in sobriety of
judgment, yet in the graces of composition. While I admired, with a
species of awe such as not Homer himself ever impressed me with, the
majesty and sanctimony of Livy, I have been informed by learned Romans
that in the structure of his sentences he is often inharmonious, and
sometimes uncouth. I can imagine such uncouthness in the goddess of
battles, confident of power and victory, when part of her hair is
waving round the helmet, loosened by the rapidity of her descent or
the vibration of her spear. Composition may be too adorned even for
beauty. In painting it is often requisite to cover a bright colour
with one less bright; and, in language, to relieve the ear from the
tension of high notes, even at the cost of a discord. There are urns
of which the borders are too prominent and too decorated for use, and
which appear to be brought out chiefly for state, at grand carousals.
The author who imitates the artificers of these, shall never have my
custom.
_Timotheus._ I think you judge rightly: but I do not understand
languages: I only understand religion.
_Lucian._ He must be a most accomplished, a most extraordinary man,
who comprehends them both together. We do not even talk clearly when
we are walking in the dark.
_Timotheus._ Thou art not merely walking in the dark, but fast asleep.
_Lucian._ And thou, my cousin, wouldst kindly awaken me with a red-hot
poker. I have but a few paces to go along the corridor of life:
prithee let me turn into my bed again and lie quiet. Never was any man
less an enemy to religion than I am, whatever may be said to the
contrary: and you shall judge of me by the soundness of my advice. If
your leaders are in earnest, as many think, do persuade them to
abstain from quarrelsomeness and contention, and not to declare it
necessary that there should perpetually be a religious as well as a
political war between east and west. No honest and considerate man
will believe in their doctrines, who, inculcating peace and good-will,
continue all the time to assail their fellow-citizens with the utmost
rancour at every divergency of opinion, and, forbidding the indulgence
of the kindlier affections, exercise at full stretch the fiercer. This
is certain: if they obey any commander, they will never sound a charge
when his order is to sound a retreat: if they acknowledge any
magistrate, they will never tear down the tablet of his edicts.
_Timotheus._ We have what is all-sufficient.
_Lucian._ I see you have.
_Timotheus._ You have ridiculed all religion and all philosophy.
_Lucian._ I have found but little of either. I have cracked many a
nut, and have come only to dust or maggots.
_Timotheus._ To say nothing of the saints, are all philosophers fools
or impostors? And, because you cannot rise to the ethereal heights of
Plato, nor comprehend the real magnitude of a man so much above you,
must he be a dwarf?
_Lucian._ The best sight is not that which sees best in the dark or
the twilight; for no objects are then visible in their true colours,
and just proportions; but it is that which presents to us things as
they are, and indicates what is within our reach and what is beyond
it. Never were any three writers, of high celebrity, so little
understood in the main character, as Plato, Diogenes, and Epicurus.
Plato is a perfect master of logic and rhetoric; and whenever he errs
in either, as I have proved to you he does occasionally, he errs
through perverseness, not through unwariness. His language often
settles into clear and most beautiful prose, often takes an imperfect
and incoherent shape of poetry, and often, cloud against cloud, bursts
with a vehement detonation in the air. Diogenes was hated both by the
vulgar and the philosophers. By the philosophers, because he exposed
their ignorance, ridiculed their jealousies, and rebuked their pride:
by the vulgar, because they never can endure a man apparently of their
own class who avoids their society and partakes in none of their
humours, prejudices, and animosities. What right has he to be greater
or better than they are? he who wears older clothes, who eats staler
fish, and possesses no vote to imprison or banish anybody. I am now
ashamed that I mingled in the rabble, and that I could not resist the
childish mischief of smoking him in his tub. He was the wisest man of
his time, not excepting Aristoteles; for he knew that he was greater
than Philip or Alexander. Aristoteles did not know that he himself
was, or knowing it, did not act up to his knowledge; and here is a
deficiency of wisdom.
_Timotheus._ Whether you did or did not strike the cask, Diogenes
would have closed his eyes equally. He would never have come forth and
seen the truth, had it shone upon the world in that day. But,
intractable as was this recluse, Epicurus, I fear, is quite as
lamentable. What horrible doctrines!
_Lucian._ Enjoy, said he, the pleasant walks where you are: repose and
eat gratefully the fruit that falls into your bosom: do not weary your
feet with an excursion, at the end whereof you will find no
resting-place: reject not the odour of roses for the fumes of pitch
and sulphur. What horrible doctrines!
_Timotheus._ Speak seriously. He was much too bad for ridicule.
_Lucian._ I will then speak as you desire me, seriously. His smile
was so unaffected and so graceful, that I should have thought it very
injudicious to set my laugh against it. No philosopher ever lived with
such uniform purity, such abstinence from censoriousness, from
controversy, from jealousy, and from arrogance.
_Timotheus._ Ah, poor mortal! I pity him, as far as may be; he is in
hell: it would be wicked to wish him out: we are not to murmur against
the all-wise dispensations.
_Lucian._ I am sure he would not; and it is therefore I hope he is
more comfortable than you believe.
_Timotheus._ Never have I defiled my fingers, and never will I defile
them, by turning over his writings. But in regard to Plato, I can have
no objection to take your advice.
_Lucian._ He will reward your assiduity: but he will assist you very
little if you consult him principally (and eloquence for this should
principally be consulted) to strengthen your humanity. Grandiloquent
and sonorous, his lungs seem to play the better for the absence of the
heart. His imagination is the most conspicuous, buoyed up by swelling
billows over unsounded depths. There are his mild thunders, there are
his glowing clouds, his traversing coruscations, and his shooting
stars. More of true wisdom, more of trustworthy manliness, more of
promptitude and power to keep you steady and straightforward on the
perilous road of life, may be found in the little manual of Epictetus,
which I could write in the palm of my left hand, than there is in all
the rolling and redundant volumes of this mighty rhetorician, which
you may begin to transcribe on the summit of the Great Pyramid, carry
down over the Sphinx at the bottom, and continue on the sands half-way
to Memphis. And indeed the materials are appropriate; one part being
far above our sight, and the other on what, by the most befitting
epithet, Homer calls the _no-corn-bearing_.
_Timotheus._ There are many who will stand against you on this ground.
_Lucian._ With what perfect ease and fluency do some of the dullest
men in existence toss over and discuss the most elaborate of all
works! How many myriads of such creatures would be insufficient to
furnish intellect enough for any single paragraph in them! Yet '_we
think this_', '_we advise that_', are expressions now become so
customary, that it would be difficult to turn them into ridicule. We
must pull the creatures out while they are in the very act, and show
who and what they are. One of these fellows said to Caius Fuscus in my
hearing, that there was a time when it was permitted him to doubt
occasionally on particular points of criticism, but that the time was
now over.
_Timotheus._ And what did you think of such arrogance? What did you
reply to such impertinence?
_Lucian._ Let me answer one question at a time. First: I thought him a
legitimate fool, of the purest breed. Secondly: I promised him I would
always be contented with the judgment he had rejected, leaving him and
his friends in the enjoyment of the rest.
_Timotheus._ And what said he?
_Lucian._ I forget. He seemed pleased at my acknowledgment of his
discrimination, at my deference and delicacy. He wished, however, I
had studied Plato, Xenophon, and Cicero, more attentively; without
which preparatory discipline, no two persons could be introduced
advantageously into a dialogue. I agreed with him on this position,
remarking that we ourselves were at that very time giving our sentence
on the fact. He suggested a slight mistake on my side, and expressed a
wish that he were conversing with a writer able to sustain the
opposite part. With his experience and skill in rhetoric, his long
habitude of composition, his knowledge of life, of morals, and of
character, he should be less verbose than Cicero, less gorgeous than
Plato, and less trimly attired than Xenophon.
_Timotheus._ If he spoke in that manner, he might indeed be ridiculed
for conceitedness and presumption, but his language is not altogether
a fool's.
_Lucian._ I deliver his sentiments, not his words: for who would read,
or who would listen to me, if such fell from me as from him? Poetry
has its probabilities, so has prose: when people cry out against the
representation of a dullard, _Could he have spoken all that?_
'Certainly no,' is the reply: neither did Priam implore, in harmonious
verse, the pity of Achilles. We say only what might be said, when