Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
started up from the company at dinner, struck his forehead, and cried
out, 'Where is my valise?' 'We are honest men here,' replied the host.
'You have left it, sir, in your chamber: where else indeed should you
leave it?'
'Honesty is seated on your brow,' exclaimed Aulus; 'but there are few
to be trusted in the world we live in. I now believe I can eat.' And
he gave a sure token of the belief that was in him, not without a
start now and then and a finger at his ear, as if he heard somebody
walking in the direction of his bedchamber. Now began his first
miracle: for now he contrived to pick up, from time to time, a little
money. In the presence of his host and fellow-lodgers, he threw a few
obols, negligently and indifferently, among the beggars. 'These poor
creatures,' said he, 'know a new-comer as well as the gnats do: in one
half-hour I am half ruined by them; and this daily.'
Nearly a month had elapsed since his arrival, and no account of board
and lodging had been delivered or called for. Suspicion at length
arose in the host whether he really was rich. When another man's
honesty is doubted, the doubter's is sometimes in jeopardy. The host
was tempted to unsew the valise. To his amazement and horror he found
only shreds within it. However, he was determined to be cautious, and
to consult his wife, who, although a Christian like Aulus, and much
edified by his discourses, might dissent from him in regard to a
community of goods, at least in her own household, and might defy him
to prove by any authority that the doctrine was meant for innkeepers.
Aulus, on his return in the evening, found out that his valise had
been opened. He hurried back, threw its contents into the canal, and,
borrowing an old cloak, he tucked it up under his dress, and returned.
Nobody had seen him enter or come back again, nor was it immediately
that his host or hostess were willing to appear. But, after he had
called them loudly for some time, they entered his apartment: and he
thus addressed the woman:
'O Eucharis! no words are requisite to convince you (firm as you are
in the faith) of eternal verities, however mysterious. But your
unhappy husband has betrayed his incredulity in regard to the most
awful. If my prayers, offered up in our holy temples all day long,
have been heard, and that they have been heard I feel within me the
blessed certainty, something miraculous has been vouchsafed for the
conversion of this miserable sinner. Until the present hour, the
valise before you was filled with precious relics from the apparel of
saints and martyrs, fresh as when on them.' 'True, by Jove!' said the
husband to himself. 'Within the present hour,' continued Aulus, 'they
are united into one raiment, signifying our own union, our own
restoration.'
He drew forth the cloak, and fell on his face. Eucharis fell also, and
kissed the saintly head prostrate before her. The host's eyes were
opened, and he bewailed his hardness of heart. Aulus is now occupied
in strengthening his faith, not without an occasional support to the
wife's: all three live together in unity.
_Timotheus._ And do you make a joke even of this? Will you never cease
from the habitude?
_Lucian._ Too soon. The farther we descend into the vale of years, the
fewer illusions accompany us: we have little inclination, little time,
for jocularity and laughter. Light things are easily detached from us,
and we shake off heavier as we can. Instead of levity, we are liable
to moroseness: for always near the grave there are more briers than
flowers, unless we plant them ourselves, or our friends supply them.
_Timotheus._ Thinking thus, do you continue to dissemble or to distort
the truth? The shreds are become a cable for the faithful. That they
were miraculously turned into one entire garment who shall gainsay?
How many hath it already clothed with righteousness? Happy men,
casting their doubts away before it! Who knows, O Cousin Lucian, but
on some future day you yourself will invoke the merciful interposition
of Aulus!
_Lucian._ Possibly: for if ever I fall among thieves, nobody is
likelier to be at the head of them.
_Timotheus._ Uncharitable man! how suspicious! how ungenerous! how
hardened in unbelief! Reason is a bladder on which you may paddle like
a child as you swim in summer waters: but, when the winds rise and the
waves roughen, it slips from under you, and you sink; yes, O Lucian,
you sink into a gulf whence you never can emerge.
_Lucian._ I deem those the wisest who exert the soonest their own
manly strength, now with the stream and now against it, enjoying the
exercise in fine weather, venturing out in foul, if need be, yet
avoiding not only rocks and whirlpools, but also shallows. In such a
light, my cousin, I look on your dispensations. I shut them out as we
shut out winds blowing from the desert; hot, debilitating, oppressive,
laden with impalpable sands and pungent salts, and inflicting an
incurable blindness.
_Timotheus._ Well, Cousin Lucian! I can bear all you say while you are
not witty. Let me bid you farewell in this happy interval.
_Lucian._ Is it not serious and sad, O my cousin, that what the Deity
hath willed to lie incomprehensible in His mysteries, we should fall
upon with tooth and nail, and ferociously growl over, or ignorantly
dissect?
_Timotheus._ Ho! now you come to be serious and sad, there are hopes
of you. Truth always begins or ends so.
_Lucian._ Undoubtedly. But I think it more reverential to abstain from
that which, with whatever effort, I should never understand.
_Timotheus._ You are lukewarm, my cousin, you are lukewarm. A most
dangerous state.
_Lucian._ For milk to continue in, not for men. I would not fain be
frozen or scalded.
_Timotheus._ Alas! you are blind, my sweet cousin!
_Lucian._ Well; do not open my eyes with pincers, nor compose for them
a collyrium of spurge.
May not men eat and drink and talk together, and perform in relation
one to another all the duties of social life, whose opinions are
different on things immediately under their eyes? If they can and do,
surely they may as easily on things equally above the comprehension of
each party. The wisest and most virtuous man in the whole extent of
the Roman Empire is Plutarch of Cheronaea: yet Plutarch holds a firm
belief in the existence of I know not how many gods, every one of whom
has committed notorious misdemeanours. The nearest to the Cheronaean
in virtue and wisdom is Trajan, who holds all the gods dog-cheap.
These two men are friends. If either of them were influenced by your
religion, as inculcated and practised by the priesthood, he would be
the enemy of the other, and wisdom and virtue would plead for the
delinquent in vain. When your religion had existed, as you tell us,
about a century, Caius Caecilius, of Novum Comum, was proconsul in
Bithynia. Trajan, the mildest and most equitable of mankind, desirous
to remove from them, as far as might be, the hatred and invectives of
those whose old religion was assailed by them, applied to Caecilius
for information on their behaviour as good citizens. The reply of
Caecilius was favourable. Had Trajan applied to the most eminent and
authoritative of the sect, they would certainly have brought into
jeopardy all who differed in one tittle from any point of their
doctrine or discipline. For the thorny and bitter aloe of dissension
required less than a century to flower on the steps of your temple.
_Timotheus._ You are already half a Christian, in exposing to the
world the vanities both of philosophy and of power.
_Lucian._ I have done no such thing: I have exposed the vanities of
the philosophizing and the powerful. Philosophy is admirable; and
Power may be glorious: the one conduces to truth, the other has nearly
all the means of conferring peace and happiness, but it usually, and
indeed almost always, takes a contrary direction. I have ridiculed the
futility of speculative minds, only when they would pave the clouds
instead of the streets. To see distant things better than near is a
certain proof of a defective sight. The people I have held in derision
never turn their eyes to what they can see, but direct them
continually where nothing is to be seen. And this, by their disciples,
is called the sublimity of speculation! There is little merit
acquired, or force exhibited, in blowing off a feather that would
settle on my nose: and this is all I have done in regard to the
philosophers: but I claim for myself the approbation of humanity, in
having shown the true dimensions of the great. The highest of them are
no higher than my tunic; but they are high enough to trample on the
necks of those wretches who throw themselves on the ground before
them.
_Timotheus._ Was Alexander of Macedon no higher?
_Lucian._ What region of the earth, what city, what theatre, what
library, what private study, hath he enlightened? If you are silent, I
may well be. It is neither my philosophy nor your religion which casts
the blood and bones of men in their faces, and insists on the most
reverence for those who have made the most unhappy. If the Romans
scourged by the hands of children the schoolmaster who would have
betrayed them, how greatly more deserving of flagellation, from the
same quarter, are those hundreds of pedagogues who deliver up the
intellects of youth to such immoral revellers and mad murderers! They
would punish a thirsty child for purloining a bunch of grapes from a
vineyard, and the same men on the same day would insist on his
reverence for the subverter of Tyre, the plunderer of Babylon, and the
incendiary of Persepolis. And are these men teachers? are these men
philosophers? are these men priests? Of all the curses that ever
afflicted the earth, I think Alexander was the worst. Never was he in
so little mischief as when he was murdering his friends.
_Timotheus._ Yet he built this very city; a noble and opulent one when
Rome was of hurdles and rushes.
_Lucian._ He built it! I wish, O Timotheus! he had been as well
employed as the stone-cutters or the plasterers. No, no: the wisest of
architects planned the most beautiful and commodious of cities, by
which, under a rational government and equitable laws, Africa might
have been civilized to the centre, and the palm have extended her
conquests through the remotest desert. Instead of which, a dozen of
Macedonian thieves rifled a dying drunkard and murdered his children.
In process of time, another drunkard reeled hitherward from Rome, made
an easy mistake in mistaking a palace for a brothel, permitted a
stripling boy to beat him soundly, and a serpent to receive the last
caresses of his paramour.
Shame upon historians and pedagogues for exciting the worst passions
of youth by the display of such false glories! If your religion hath
any truth or influence, her professors will extinguish the promontory
lights, which only allure to breakers. They will be assiduous in
teaching the young and ardent that great abilities do not constitute
great men, without the right and unremitting application of them; and
that, in the sight of Humanity and Wisdom, it is better to erect one
cottage than to demolish a hundred cities. Down to the present day we
have been taught little else than falsehood. We have been told to do
this thing and that: we have been told we shall be punished unless we
do: but at the same time we are shown by the finger that prosperity
and glory, and the esteem of all about us, rest upon other and very
different foundations. Now, do the ears or the eyes seduce the most
easily and lead the most directly to the heart? But both eyes and ears
are won over, and alike are persuaded to corrupt us.
_Timotheus._ Cousin Lucian, I was leaving you with the strangest of