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THE LIFE OF LUCIAN

The Dialogues of Lucian were translated by Walter Moyle, Sir Henry Shere, Charles Blount, and others, and seem to have been intended for publication about 1696, when our author supplied the following prefatory life. The design was, however, for a time laid aside, and the work did not appear until 1711 several years after Dryden’s death. Hence the preface wants those last corrections, which, I suspect, Dryden contented himself with bestowing upon the proof sheets, as they came from press. I have followed several of Mr Malone’s judicious, and indeed indispensable, corrections of the printed copy.

THE LIFE OF LUCIAN

The writing a life is at all times, and in all circumstances, the most difficult task of an historian; and, notwithstanding the numerous tribe of biographers, we can scarce find one, except Plutarch, who deserves our perusal, or can invite a second view. But if the difficulty be so great where the materials are plentiful, and the incidents extraordinary, what must it be when the person, that affords the subject, denies matter enough for a page? The learned seldom abound with action, and it is action only that furnishes the historian with things agreeable and instructive. It is true, that Diogenes Laertius, and our learned countryman Mr Stanley,²⁹ have both written the “Lives of the Philosophers;” but we are more obliged to the various principles of their several sects, than to any thing remarkable that they did, for our entertainment.

But Lucian, as pleasing and useful as he was in his writings, in the opinion of the most candid judges, has left so little of his own affairs on record, that there is scarce sufficient to fill a page, from his birth to his death.

There were many of the name of Lucian among the ancients, eminent in several ways, and whose names have reached posterity with honour and applause. Suidas mentions one, as a man of singular probity, who, having discharged the administration of the chief prefect of the Oriental empire,³⁰ under Arcadius, with extraordinary justice and praise of the people, drew on himself the envy and hate of the courtiers, (the constant attendant of eminent virtue and merit,) and the anger of the emperor himself; and was at last murdered by Rufinus.³¹

Among those, who were eminent for their learning, were some divines and philosophers. Of the former, we find one in St Cyprian, to whom the fourth and seventeenth epistles are inscribed. There was another, priest of the church of Antioch, who, as Suidas assures us, reviewed, corrected, and restored to its primitive purity, the Hebrew Bible; and afterward suffered martyrdom, at Nicomedia, under Maximilian.³² A third was a priest of Jerusalem, who not only made a figure among the learned of his own age,³³ but, as Gesnerus observes, conveyed his reputation to posterity by the remains of his writings.

But none of this name has met with the general applause of so many ages, as Lucian the philosopher and eminent sophist, who was author of the following Dialogues, of whose birth, life, and death, I shall give you all I could collect of any certain and historical credit.

He had not the good fortune to be born of illustrious or wealthy parents, which give a man a very advantageous rise on his first appearance in the world; but the father of our Lucian laboured under so great a straitness of estate, that he was fain to put his son apprentice to a statuary, whose genius for the finer studies was so extraordinary and so rare; because he hoped from that business, not only a speedy supply to his own wants, but was secure that his education in that art would be much less expensive to him.

He was born in Samosata, a city of Syria, not far from the river Euphrates; and for this reason, he calls himself more than once an Assyrian, and a Syrian; but he was derived from a Greek original, his forefathers having been citizens of Patras in Achaia.

We have nothing certain as to the exact time of his birth. Suidas confirms his flourishing under the Emperor Trajan; but then he was likewise before him. Some mention the reign of Adrian; but it cannot be fixed to any year or consulate.³⁴

The person he was bound to was his uncle, a man of a severe and morose temper, of whom he was to learn the statuary’s and stone-cutter’s art; for his father observing our Lucian, now a boy, of his own head, and without any instructor, make various figures in wax, he persuaded himself, that if he had a good master, he could not but arrive to an uncommon excellence in it.

But it happened, in the very beginning of his time, he broke a model, and was very severely called to account for it by his master. He, not liking this treatment, and having a soul and genius above any mechanic trade, ran away home.

After which, in his sleep, there appeared to him two young women, or rather the tutelar goddesses of the statuary art, and of the liberal sciences, hotly disputing of their preference to each other; and on a full hearing of both sides, he bids adieu to statuary, and entirely surrenders himself to the conduct of virtue and learning. And as his desires of improvement were great, and the instructions he had, very good, the progress he made was as considerable, till, by the maturity of his age and his study, he made his appearance in the world.

Though it is not to be supposed, that there is any thing of reality in this dream, or vision, of Lucian, which he treats of in his works, yet this may be gathered from it, – that Lucian himself, having consulted his genius, and the nature of the study his father had allotted him, and that to which he found a propensity in himself, he quitted the former, and pursued the latter, choosing rather to form the minds of men than their statues.

In his youth, he taught rhetoric in Gaul, and in several other places. He pleaded likewise at the bar in Antioch, the capital of Syria; but the noise of the bar disgusting, and his ill success in causes disheartening him, he quitted the practice of rhetoric and the law, and applied himself to writing.

He was forty years old, when he first took to philosophy. Having a mind to make himself known in Macedon, he took the opportunity of speaking in the public assembly of all that region. In his old age, he was received into the imperial family, and had the place of intendant of Egypt,³⁵ after he had travelled through almost all the known countries of that age to improve his knowledge in men, manners, and arts; for some writers make this particular observation on his travel into Gaul, and residence in that country, that he gained there the greatest part of his knowledge in rhetoric, that region being in his age, and also before it, a nursery of eloquence and oratory, as Juvenal, Martial, and others, sufficiently witness.³⁶

The manner of his death is obscure to us, though it is most probable he died of the gout. Suidas alone tells a story of his being worried to death, and devoured by dogs, returning from a feast; which being so uncommon a death, so very improbable, and attested only by one author, has found little credit with posterity. If it be true, that he was once a Christian, and afterwards became a renegade to our belief, perhaps some zealots may have invented this tale of his death, as a just and signal punishment for his apostacy. All men are willing to have the miracle, or at least the wonderful providence, go on their side, and will be teaching God Almighty what he ought to do in this world, as well as in the next; as if they were proper judges of his decrees, and for what end he prospers some, or punishes others, in this life. Ablancourt, and our learned countryman Dr Mayne,³⁷ look on the story as a fiction: and, for my part, I can see no reason either to believe he ever professed Christianity, or, if he did, why he might³⁸ not more probably die in his bed at so great an age as fourscore and ten, than be torn in pieces and devoured by dogs, when he was too feeble to defend himself. So early began the want of charity, the presumption of meddling with God’s government, and the spirit of calumny amongst the primitive believers.

Of his posterity we know nothing more, than that he left a son behind him, who was as much in favour with the Emperor Julian, as his father had been with Aurelius the philosopher. This son became in time a famous sophist; and among the works of Julian we find an epistle of that great person to him.³⁹

I find that I have mingled, before I was aware, some things which are doubtful with some which are certain; forced indeed by the narrowness of the subject, which affords very little of undisputed truth. Yet I find myself obliged to do right to Monsieur d’Ablancourt,⁴⁰ who is not positively of opinion, that Suidas was the author of this fable; but rather that it descended to him by the tradition of former times, yet without any certain ground of truth. He concludes it, however, to be a calumny, perhaps a charitable kind of lie, to deter others from satirizing the new dogmas of Christianity, by the judgment shown on Lucian. We find nothing in his writings, which gives any hint of his professing our belief; but being naturally curious, and living not only amongst Christians, but in the neighbourhood of Judea, he might reasonably be supposed to be knowing in our points of faith, without believing them. He ran a muck, and laid about him on all sides with more fury on the heathens, whose religion he professed; he struck at ours but casually, as it came in his way, rather than as he sought it; he contemned it too much to write in earnest against it.

We have indeed the highest probabilities for our revealed religion; arguments which will preponderate with a reasonable man, upon a long and careful disquisition; but I have always been of opinion, that we can demonstrate nothing, because the subject-matter is not capable of a demonstration. It is the particular grace of God, that any man believes the mysteries of our faith; which I think a conclusive argument against the doctrine of persecution in any church. And though I am absolutely convinced, as I heartily thank God I am, not only of the general principles of Christianity, but of all truths necessary to salvation in the Roman church, yet I cannot but detest our inquisition, as it is practised in some foreign parts, particularly in Spain and in the Indies.

Those reasons, which are cogent to me, may not prevail with others, who bear the denomination of Christians; and those which are prevalent with all Christians, in regard of their birth and education, may find no force, when they are used against Mahometans or heathens. To instruct is a charitable duty; to compel, by threatenings and punishment, is the office of a hangman, and the principle of a tyrant.

But my zeal in a good cause, as I believe, has transported me beyond the limits of my subject. I was endeavouring to prove, that Lucian had never been a member of the Christian church; and methinks it makes for my opinion, that, in relating the death of Peregrinus, who, being born a Pagan, pretended afterwards to turn Christian, and turned himself publicly at the Olympic games, at his death professing himself a cynic philosopher, it seems, I say, to me, that Lucian would not have so severely declaimed against this Proteus, (which was another of Peregrinus his names,) if he himself had been guilty of that apostacy.

I know not that this passage has been observed by any man before me;⁴¹ and yet in this very place it is, that this author has more severely handled our belief, and more at large, than in any other part of all his writings, excepting only the Dialogue of Triephon and Critias,⁴² wherein he lashes his own false gods with more severity than the true; and where the first Christians, with their cropped hair, their whining voices, melancholy faces, mournful discourses, and nasty habits, are described with a greater air of Calvinists or Quakers, than of Roman Catholics or Church of England men.

After all, what if this discourse last mentioned, and the rest of the dialogues wherein the Christians are satirized, were none of Lucian’s? The learned and ingenious Dr Mayne, whom I have before cited, is of this opinion, and confirms it by the attestation of Philander, Obsobœus, Mycillus, and Cognatus, whom since I have not read, or two of them but very superficially, I refer you for the faith of his quotation to the authors themselves.⁴³

The next supposition concerning Lucian’s religion is, that he was of none at all. I doubt not but the same people, who broached the story of his being once a Christian, followed their blow upon him in this second accusation.

There are several sorts of Christians at this day reigning in the world, who will not allow any man to believe in the Son of God, whose other articles of faith are not in all things conformable to theirs. Some of these exercise this rigid and severe kind of charity, with a good intent of reducing several sects into one common church; but the spirit of others is evidently seen by their detraction, their malice, their spitting venom, their raising false reports of those who are not of their communion. I wish the ancientness of these censorious principles may be proved by better arguments, than by any near resemblance they have with the primitive believers. But till I am convinced that Lucian has been charged with atheism of old, I shall be apt to think that this accusation is very modern.

One of Lucian’s translators pleads in his defence, that it was very improbable a man, who has laughed paganism out of doors, should believe no God; that he, who could point to the sepulchre of Jupiter in Crete, as well as our Tertullian, should be an atheist. But this argument, I confess, is of little weight to prove him a deist, only because he was no polytheist. He might as well believe in none, as in many gods; and on the other side, he might believe in many, as Julian did, and not in one. For my own part, I think it is not proved that either of them were apostates, though one of them, in hopes of an empire, might temporize, while Christianity was the mode at court. Neither is our author cleared any thing the more, because his writings have served, in the times of the heathens, to destroy that vain, unreasonable, and impious religion; that was an oblique service, which Lucian never intended us; for his business, like that of some modern polemics, was rather to pull down every thing, than to set up any thing. With what show of probability can I urge in his defence, that one of the greatest among the fathers has drawn whole homilies from our author’s dialogue, since I know that Lucian made them not for that purpose? The occasional good which he has done, is not to be imputed to him. St Chrysostom, St Augustin, and many others, have applied his arguments on better motives than their author proposed to himself in framing them.

These reasons therefore, as they make nothing against his being an atheist, so they prove nothing of his believing one God; but only leave him as they found him, and leave us in as great an obscurity concerning his religion as before. I may be as much mistaken in my opinion as these great men have been before me; and this is very probable, because I know less of him than they; yet I have read him over more than once, and therefore will presume to say, that I think him either one of the Eclectic⁴⁴ school, or else a Sceptic: I mean, that he either formed a body of philosophy for his own use out of the opinions and dogmas of several heathen philosophers, disagreeing amongst themselves, or that he doubted of every thing; weighed all opinions, and adhered to none of them; only used them as they served his occasion for the present dialogue, and perhaps rejected them in the next. And indeed this last opinion is the more probable of the two, if we consider the genius of the man, whose image we may clearly see in the glass which he holds before us of his writings, which reflects him to our sight.

Not to dwell on examples, with which his works are amply furnished, I will only mention two. In one, Socrates convinces his friend Chærephon of the power of the gods in transformations, and of a supreme Providence which accompanies that power in the administration of the world. In another, he confutes Jupiter, and pulls him down from heaven to earth, by his own Homerical chain; and makes him only a subservient slave to blind eternal fate. I might add, that he is, in one half of his book, a Stoic, in the other an Epicurean; never constant to himself in any scheme of divinity, unless it be in despising his gentile gods. And this derision, as it shews the man himself, so it gives us an idea of the age in which he lived; for if that had been devout or ignorant, his scoffing humour would either have been restrained, or had not passed unpunished; all knowing ages being naturally sceptic, and not at all bigotted; which, if I am not much deceived, is the proper character of our own.

To conclude this article: He was too fantastical, too giddy, too irresolute, either to be any thing at all, or any thing long; and in this view I cannot think he was either a steady atheist, or a deist, but a doubter, a sceptic, as he plainly declares himself to be, when he puts himself under the name of Hermotimus the Stoic, in the dialogue called the “Dialogue of the Sects.”

As for his morals, they are spoken of as variously as his opinions. Some are for decrying him more than he deserves; his defenders themselves dare not set him up for a pattern of severe virtue. No man is so profligate, as openly to profess vice; and therefore it is no wonder, if under the reign of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines, of which the last was his patron and benefactor, he lived not so much a libertine as he had it to be in his nature. He is more accused for his love of boys than of women. Not that we have any particular story to convince us of this detestable passion in him; but his own writings bear this record against him, that he speaks often of it, and I know not that ever he condemns it. Repeated expressions, as well as repeated actions, witness some secret pleasure in the deed, or at least some secret inclination to it. He seems to insinuate, in his “Dialogue of Loves,” that Socrates was given to this vice; but we find not that he blames him for it, which, if he had been wholly innocent himself, it became a philosopher to have done. But as we pass over a foul way as hastily as we can, so I will leave this abominable subject, which strikes me with horror when I name it.

If there be any who are guilty of this sin, we may assure ourselves they will never stop at any other; for when they have overleaped the bounds of nature, they run so fast to all other immoralities, that the grace of God, without a miracle, can never overtake them.

Lucian is accused likewise for his writing too lusciously in his “Dialogue of the Harlots.”⁴⁵ It has been the common fault of all satirists, to make vice too amiable, while they expose it; but of all men living, I am the most unfit to accuse Lucian, who am so little able to defend myself from the same objection. We find not, however, that Lucian was charged with the wantonness of his “Dialogues” in his own life-time. If he had been, he would certainly have answered for himself, as he did to those who accused him for exposing Socrates, Plato, Diogenes, and other great philosophers, to the laughter of the people, when Jupiter sold them by an inch of candle. But, to confess the truth, [as] I am of their opinion, who think that answer of his not over-ingenuous, viz. that he only attacked the false philosophers of their sects, in their persons whom he honoured; so I am persuaded, that he could not have alleged more in his excuse for these “Dialogues,” than that as he taught harlots to deceive, so, at the same time, he discovered their deceits to the knowledge of young men, and thereby warned them to avoid the snare.

I find him not charged with any other faults, than what I have already mentioned. He was otherwise of a life as unblameable as any man, for aught we find to the contrary: and I have this probable inducement to believe it, because he had so honourable an employment under Marcus Aurelius, an emperor as clear-sighted as he was truly virtuous; for both which qualities we need not quote Lucian, who was so much obliged to him, but may securely appeal to Herodian, and to all the historians who have written of him, – besides the testimony of his own admirable works, which are yet in the hands of all the learned.

As for those who condemn our author for the too much gall and virulency of his satires, it is to be suspected, says Dr Mayne, that they themselves are guilty of those hypocrisies, crimes, and follies, which he so sharply exposes, and at the same time endeavours to reform. I may add, that, for the most part, he rather laughs like Horace, than bites like Juvenal. Indeed his genius was of kin to both, but more nearly related to the former. Some diseases are curable by lenitives; to others corrosives are necessary. Can a man inveigh too sharply against the cruelty of tyrants, the pride and vanity of the great, the covetousness of the rich, the baseness of the Sophists, and particularly of the Cynics, (who while they preach poverty to others, are heaping up riches, and living in gluttony,) besides the wrangling of the sects amongst themselves about supreme happiness, which he describes at a drunken feast, and calls it the battle of the Lapithæ.

Excepting what already is excepted, he seems to me to be an enemy to nothing but to vice and folly. The pictures which he draws of Nigrinus and of Demonax are as fair as that of virtue herself, if, as the philosopher said, she could wear a body. And if we oppose to them the lives of Alexander the false prophet, and of Peregrinus, how pleasingly, and with how much profit, does the deformity of the last set off the beauty of the first!

Some of his censurers accuse him of flatness and want of wit in many places. These I suppose have read him in some Latin translations, which I confess, are generally dull; and this is the only excuse I can make for them. Otherwise they accuse themselves too manifestly for want of taste or understanding. Of this number is the wretched author of the Lucien en Belle Humeur, who being himself as insipid as a Dutch poet, yet arraigns Lucian for his own fault; introduces the ghost of Ablancourt, confessing his coldness in many places, the poorness of his thoughts, and his want of humour; represents his readers tired and yawning at his ill buffoonery and false mirth, and sleeping over his melancholic stories, which are every where stuffed with improbabilities. He could have said no worse of a Leyden slip.⁴⁶

The best on it is, the jaundice is only in his own eyes, which makes Lucian look yellow to him. All mankind will exclaim against him for preaching this doctrine; and be of opinion when they read his Lucian, that he looked in a glass when he drew his picture. I wish I had the liberty to lash this frog-land wit as he deserves; but when a speech is not seconded in parliament, it falls of course; and this author has the whole senate of the learned to pull him down: incipient omnes pro Cicerone loqui.

It is to be acknowledged, that his best translator, Ablancourt, thinks him not a profound master in any sort of philosophy; but only that he skimmed enough from every sect, to serve his turn in rhetoric, which was his profession. This he gathers from his superficial way of arguing. But why may not another man reply in his defence, that he made choice of those kinds of reasons which were most capable of being made to shine in his facetious way of arguing; and those undoubtedly were not the most knotty, nor the deepest, but the most diverting by the sharpness of the raillery. Dr Mayne, so often praised, has another opinion of Lucian’s learning, and the strength of his witty arguments, concluding on that subject in these words, or near them: “For my part, I know not to whose writings we owe more our Christianity, where the true God has succeeded a multitude of false, – whether to the grave confutation of Clemens Alexandrinus, Arnobius, Justin Martyr, St. Augustin, Lactantius, &c. or the facetious wit of Lucian.” – I cannot doubt but the treacherous translator would have given his hand to what the Englishman has said of their common author. The success has justified his opinion in the sight of all the world. Lucian’s manner of convincing, was certainly more pleasant than that of the Christian writers, and we know the effect was full as powerful; so easily can the Eternal Wisdom draw good out of evil, and make his enemy subservient to the establishment of his faith.

I will not enlarge on the praises of his oratory. If we compare his style with the Greek historians, his contemporaries, or near his time, we shall find it much more pure than that of Plutarch, Dion, or Appian, though not so grave; because his subjects and theirs required to be treated after a different manner. It was not of an uniform web, says Mayne, like Thucydides, Polybius, and some others whom he names, but was somewhat peculiar to himself; his words well chosen, his periods round, the parts of his sentences harmoniously divided, a full flood or even a torrent of persuasion, without inequalities or swellings; such as might be put in equal comparison with the best orations of Demosthenes or Isocrates; not so dry as the first, nor so flowery as the last. His wit, says Ablancourt, was full of urbanity, that attic salt, which the French call, fine raillery; not obscene, not gross, not rude, but facetious, well mannered, and well bred: only he will not allow his love the quality last mentioned, but thinks it rustical, and according either to his own genius, or that of the age in which he lived.

If wit consists in the propriety of thoughts and words, (which I imagined I had first found out, but since am pleasingly convinced that Aristotle has made the same definition in other terms,) then Lucian’s thoughts and words are always proper to his characters and his subject. If the pleasure arising from comedy and satire be either laughter, or some nobler sort of delight, which is above it, no man is so great a master of irony as our author. That figure is not only a keen, but a shining weapon in his hand; it glitters in the eyes of those it kills; his own gods, his greatest enemies, are not butchered by him, but fairly slain: they must acknowledge the hero in the stroke, and take the comfort which Virgil gives to a dying captain:

 
Æneæ magni dextrâ cadis.
 

I know not whom Lucian imitated, unless it might be Aristophanes; (for you never find him mentioning any Roman wit, so much the Grecians thought themselves superior to their conquerors;) but he, who has best imitated him in Latin, is Erasmus; and in French, Fontenelle, in his “Dialogues of the Dead,” which I never read but with a new pleasure.

Any one may see, that our author’s chief design was to dis-nest heaven of so many immoral and debauched deities; his next, to expose the mock philosophers; and his last, to give us examples of a good life in the persons of the true.

The rest of his discourses are on mixed subjects, less for profit than delight; and some of them too libertine.

The way which Lucian chose of delivering these profitable and pleasing truths, was that of dialogue: a choice worthy of the author; happily followed, as I said above, by Erasmus, and Fontenelle particularly, to whom I may justly add a triumvir of our own, – the reverend, ingenious, and learned Dr Eachard,⁴⁷ who, by using the same method, and the same ingredients of raillery and reason, has more baffled the philosopher of Malmesbury, than those who assaulted him with blunt heavy arguments, drawn from orthodox divinity; for Hobbes foresaw where those strokes would fall, and leaped aside before they could descend; but he could not avoid those nimble passes, which were made on him by a wit more active than his own, and which were within his body, before he could provide for his defence.

I will not here take notice of the several kinds of dialogue, and the whole art of it, which would ask an entire volume to perform. This has been a work long wanted, and much desired, of which the ancients have not sufficiently informed us; and I question whether any man now living can treat it accurately. Lucian, it seems, was very sensible of the difficult task, which he undertook in writing dialogues, as appears in his discourse against one who had called him Prometheus. He owns himself, in this particular, to be like to him, to whom he was resembled, to be the inventor of a new work, attempted in a new manner, – the model of which he had from none before him; but adds withal, that if he could not give it the graces which belong to so happy an invention, he deserves to be torn by twelve vultures, instead of one, which preys upon the heart of that first man-potter. For, to quit the beaten road of the ancients, and take a path of his own choosing, he acknowledges to be a bold and ridiculous attempt, if it succeed not. “The mirth of dialogue and comedy in my work,” says he, “is not enough to make it pleasing, because the union of two contraries may as well produce a monster as a miracle; as a centaur results from the joint natures of a horse and man. It is not but that from two excellent beings a third may arise of perfect beauty; but it is what I dare not promise to myself; for dialogue being a solemn entertainment of grave discourse, and comedy the wit and fooling of a theatre, I fear that through the corruption of two good things, I have made one bad. But whatever the child be, it is my own at least; I beg not with another’s brat upon my back. From which of the ancients should I have stolen or borrowed it? My chimeras have no other being than my own imagination; let every man produce who can; and whether this be a lawful birth, or a misshapen mass, is left for the present age, and for posterity, to judge.”