constitutional legislators; they know that when the fear of punishment is
wanting, nothing else is of avail. And this is doubly so with us who are
tyrants; whose power is based upon compulsion; who live in the midst of
enmity and treachery. The bugbear terrors of the law would never serve
our turn. Rebellion is a many-headed Hydra: we cut off one guilty head,
two others grow in its place. Yet we must harden our hearts, smite them
off as they grow, and--like lolaus--sear the wounds; thus only shall we
hold our own. The man who has once become involved in such a strife as
this must play the part that he has undertaken; to show mercy would be
fatal. Do you suppose that any man was ever so brutal, so inhuman, as to
rejoice in torture and groans and bloodshed for their own sake, when
there was no occasion for punishment? Many is the time that I have wept
while others suffered beneath the lash, and groaned in spirit over the
hard fate that subjected me to a torment more fierce and more abiding
than theirs. For to the man who is benevolent by nature, and harsh only
by compulsion, it is more painful to inflict punishment than it would be
to undergo it.
'Now I will speak my mind frankly. If I had to choose between punishing
innocent men, and facing death myself, believe me, I should have no
hesitation in accepting the latter alternative. But if I am asked,
whether I had rather die an undeserved death than give their deserts to
those who plotted against my life, I answer no; and once more, Delphians,
I appeal to you: which is better--to die when I deserve not death, or to
spare my enemies who deserve not mercy? [Footnote: Apparently the speaker
intended to repeat the last pair of alternatives in different words:
instead of which, he gives us one of those alternatives twice over.
Lucian's tautologic genius fails him for once.] No man surely can be such
a fool that he would not rather live than preserve his enemies by his
death. Yet in spite of this how many have I spared who were palpably
convicted of conspiring against me; such were Acanthus, Timocrates, and
his brother Leogoras, all of whom I saved out of regard for our former
intercourse.
'If you would learn more of me, apply to any of the strangers who have
visited Agrigentum; and see what account they give of the treatment they
received, and of my hospitality to all who land on my coasts. My
messengers are waiting for them in every port, to inquire after their
names and cities, that they may not go away without receiving due honour
at my hands. Some--the wisest of the Greeks--have come expressly to visit
me, so far are they from avoiding intercourse with me. It was but lately
that I received a visit from the sage Pythagoras. The account that he had
heard of me was belied by his experience; and on taking his departure he
expressed admiration of my justice, and deplored the circumstances which
made severity a duty. Now is it likely that one who is so benevolent to
strangers should deal unjustly with his fellow citizens? is it not to be
supposed that the provocation has been unusually great?
'So much then in defence of my own conduct; I have spoken the words of
truth and justice, and would persuade myself that I have merited your
approbation rather than your resentment. And now I must explain to you
the origin of my present offering, and the manner in which it came into
my hands. For it was by no instructions of mine that the statuary made
this bull: far be it from me to aspire to the possession of such works of
art! A countryman of my own, one Perilaus, an admirable artist, but a man
of evil disposition, had so far mistaken my character as to think that he
could win my regard by the invention of a new form of torture; the love
of torture, he thought, was my ruling passion. He it was who made the
bull and brought it to me. I no sooner set eyes on this beautiful and
exquisite piece of workmanship, which lacked only movement and sound to
complete the illusion, than I exclaimed: "Here is an offering fit for the
God of Delphi: to him I must send it." "And what will you say," rejoined
Perilaus, who stood by, "when you see the ingenious mechanism within it,
and learn the purpose it is designed to serve?" He opened the back of the
animal, and continued: "When you are minded to punish any one, shut him
up in this receptacle, apply these pipes to the nostrils of the bull, and
order a fire to be kindled beneath. The occupant will shriek and roar in
unremitting agony; and his cries will come to you through the pipes as
the tenderest, most pathetic, most melodious of bellowings. Your victim
will be punished, and you will enjoy the music."
'His words revolted me. I loathed the thought of such ingenious cruelty,
and resolved to punish the artificer in kind. "If this is anything more
than an empty boast, Perilaus," I said to him, "if your art can really
produce this effect, get inside yourself, and pretend to roar; and we
will see whether the pipes will make such music as you describe." He
consented; and when he was inside I closed the aperture, and ordered a
fire to be kindled. "Receive," I cried, "the due reward of your wondrous
art: let the music-master be the first to play." Thus did his ingenuity
meet with its deserts. But lest the offering should be polluted by his
death, I caused him to be removed while he was yet alive, and his body to
be flung dishonoured from the cliffs. The bull, after due purification, I
sent as an offering to your God, with an inscription upon it, setting
forth all the circumstances; the names of the donor and of the artist,
the evil design of the latter, and the righteous sentence which condemned
him to illustrate by his own agonized shrieks the efficacy of his musical
device.
'And now, men of Delphi, you will be doing me no more than justice, if
you join my ambassadors in making sacrifice on my behalf, and set up the
bull in a conspicuous part of the temple; that all men may know what is
my attitude towards evil-doers, and in what manner I chastise their
inordinate craving after wickedness. Herein is a sufficient indication of
my character: Perilaus punished, the bull consecrated, not reserved for
the bellowings of other victims. The first and last melody that issued
from those pipes was wrung from their artificer; that one experiment
made, the harsh, inhuman notes are silenced for ever. So much for the
present offering, which will be followed by many others, so soon as the
God vouchsafes me a respite from my work of chastisement.'
Such was the message of Phalaris; and his statement is in strict
accordance with the facts. You may safely accept our testimony, as we are
acquainted with the circumstances, and can have no object in deceiving
you on the present occasion. Must entreaty be added? Then on behalf of
one whose character has been misrepresented, and whose severities were
forced upon him against his will, we implore you,--we who are
Agrigentines, Greeks like yourselves and of Dorian origin--to accept his
offer of friendship, and not to thwart his benevolent intentions towards
your community and the individuals of which it is composed. Take the bull
into your keeping; consecrate it; and offer up your prayers on behalf of
Agrigentum and of Phalaris. Suffer us not to have come hither in vain:
repulse not our master with scorn: nor deprive the God of an offering
whose intrinsic beauty is only equalled by its righteous associations.
PHALARIS, II
Men of Delphi: I stand in no public relation to the city of Agrigentum,
in no private relation to its ruler; I am bound to him neither by
gratitude for past favours, nor by the prospect of future friendship: but
I have heard the just and temperate plea advanced by his emissaries, and
I rise to advocate the claims of religion, the interests of our
community, the duties of the priesthood; I charge you, thwart not the
pious intention of a mighty prince, nor deprive the God of an offering
which in the intention of the donor is already his, and which is destined
to serve as an eternal threefold record,--of the sculptor's art, of
inventive cruelty, and of righteous retribution. To me it seems that only
to have raised this question, only to have halted between acceptance and
rejection, is in itself an offence against Heaven; nay, a glaring
impiety. For what is this but a sacrilege more heinous than that of the
temple-robber, who does but plunder those sacred things to which you
would even deny consecration? I implore you,--your fellow priest, your
partner in good report (if so it may be), or in evil (should that now
befall us), implores you: close not the temple-doors upon the devout
worshipper; suffer us not to be known to the world as men who examine
jealously into the offerings that are brought, and subject the donor to
the narrow scrutiny of a court, and to the hazard of a vote. For who
would not be deterred at the thought that the God accepts no offering
without the previous sanction of his priests?
Already Apollo has declared his true opinion. Had he hated Phalaris, or
scorned his gift, it had been easy for him to sink the gift and the ship
that bore it in mid-ocean; instead, we learn that he vouchsafed them a
calm passage and a safe arrival at Cirrha. Clearly the monarch's piety is
acceptable in his sight. It behoves you to confirm his decision, and to
add this bull to the glories of the temple. Strange indeed, if the sender
of so magnificent a gift is to meet with rejection at the temple-door,
and his piety to be rewarded with the judgement that his offering is
unclean.
My opponent tells a harrowing tale of butchery and violence, of plunder
and abduction; it is much that he does not call himself an eyewitness
thereof; we might suppose that he was but newly arrived from Agrigentum,
did we not know that his travels have never carried him on board ship. In
matters of this kind, it is not advisable to place much reliance even on
the assertions of the supposed victims; there is no knowing how far they
are speaking the truth;--as to bringing allegations ourselves, when we
know nothing of the facts, that is out of the question. Granting even
that something of the kind _did_ happen, it happened in Sicily: we
are at Delphi; we are not called upon to interfere. Do we propose to
abandon the temple for the law-court? Are we, whose office it is to
sacrifice, and minister to the God, and receive his offerings,--are we to
sit here debating whether certain cities on the other side of the Ionian
sea are well or ill governed? Let other men's affairs be as they may, it
is our business, as I take it, to know our own: our past history, our
present situation, our best interests. We need not wait for Homer to
inform us that we inhabit a land of crags, and are tillers of a rocky
soil; our eyes tell us that; if we depended on our soil, we must go
hungry all our days. Apollo; his temple; his oracle; his worshippers; his
sacrifices;--these are the fields of the Delphians, these their revenues,
their wealth, their maintenance. I can speak the truth here. It is as the
poets say: we sow not, we plough not, yet all things grow for our use;
for a God is our husbandman, and gives us not the good things of Greece
only; all that Phrygia, all that Lydia, all that Persia, Assyria,
Phoenicia, Italy, and the far North can yield,--all comes to Delphi. We
live in prosperity and plenty; in the esteem of mankind we are second to
none but the God himself. So it was in the beginning: so it is now: and
so may it ever be!
But who has ever heard before of our putting an offering to the vote, or
hindering men from paying sacrifice? No one; and herein, as I maintain,
is the secret of our temple's greatness, and of the abundant wealth of
its offerings. Then let us have no innovations now, no new-fangled
institutions, no inquiries into the origin and nature and nationality and
pedigree of a gift; let us take what is brought to us, and set it in the
store-chamber without more ado. In this way we shall best serve both the
God and his worshippers. I think it would be well if, before you
deliberate further on the question before you, you would consider how
great and how various are the issues involved. There is the God, his
temple, his sacrifices and offerings, the ancient customs and ordinances,
the reputation of the oracle; again, our city as a whole, our common
interests, and those of every individual Delphian among us; lastly--and I
know not what consideration could seem of more vital importance to a
well-judging mind--, our own credit or discredit with the world at large.
I say, then, we have to deal not with Phalaris, not with a single tyrant,
not with this bull, not with so much weight of bronze,--but with every
king and prince who frequents our temple at this day; with gold and
silver and all the precious offerings that should pour in upon the God;
that God whose interests claim our first attention. Say, why should we
change the old-established usage in regard to offerings? What fault have
we to find with the ancient custom, that we should propose innovations?
Never yet, from the day when Delphi was first inhabited, and Apollo
prophesied, and the tripod gave utterance, and the priestess was
inspired, never yet have the bringers of gifts been subjected to
scrutiny. And shall they now? Consider how the ancient custom, which
granted free access to all men, has filled the temple with treasures; how
all men have brought their offerings, and how some have impoverished
themselves to enrich the God. My mind misgives me that, when you have
assumed the censorship of offerings, you will lack employment: men may
refuse to submit themselves to your court; they may think it is enough to
spend their money, without having to undergo the risk of a rejection for
their pains. Would life be worth living, to the man who should be judged
unworthy to offer sacrifice?
ALEXANDER THE ORACLE-MONGER
You, my dear Celsus, possibly suppose yourself to be laying upon me quite
a trifling task: _Write me down in a book and send me the life and
adventures, the tricks and frauds, of the impostor Alexander of
Abonutichus_. In fact, however, it would take as long to do this in
full detail as to reduce to writing the achievements of Alexander of
Macedon; the one is among villains what the other is among heroes.
Nevertheless, if you will promise to read with indulgence, and fill up
the gaps in my tale from your imagination, I will essay the task. I may
not cleanse that Augean stable completely, but I will do my best, and
fetch you out a few loads as samples of the unspeakable filth that three
thousand oxen could produce in many years.
I confess to being a little ashamed both on your account and my own.
There are you asking that the memory of an arch-scoundrel should be
perpetuated in writing; here am I going seriously into an investigation
of this sort--the doings of a person whose deserts entitled him not to be
read about by the cultivated, but to be torn to pieces in the
amphitheatre by apes or foxes, with a vast audience looking on. Well,
well, if any one does cast reflections of that sort upon us, we shall at
least have a precedent to plead. Arrian himself, disciple of Epictetus,
distinguished Roman, and product of lifelong culture as he was, had just
our experience, and shall make our defence. He condescended, that is, to
put on record the life of the robber Tilliborus. The robber we propose to
immortalize was of a far more pestilent kind, following his profession
not in the forests and mountains, but in cities; _he_ was not content to
overrun a Mysia or an Ida; _his_ booty came not from a few scantily
populated districts of Asia; one may say that the scene of his
depredations was the whole Roman Empire.
I will begin with a picture of the man himself, as lifelike (though I am
not great at description) as I can make it with nothing better than
words. In person--not to forget that part of him--he was a fine handsome
man with a real touch of divinity about him, white-skinned, moderately
bearded; he wore besides his own hair artificial additions which matched
it so cunningly that they were not generally detected. His eyes were
piercing, and suggested inspiration, his voice at once sweet and
sonorous. In fact there was no fault to be found with him in these
respects.
So much for externals. As for his mind and spirit--well, if all the kind
Gods who avert disaster will grant a prayer, it shall be that they bring
me not within reach of such a one as he; sooner will I face my bitterest
enemies, my country's foes. In understanding, resource, acuteness, he was
far above other men; curiosity, receptiveness, memory, scientific
ability--all these were his in overflowing measure. But he used them for
the worst purposes. Endowed with all these instruments of good, he very
soon reached a proud pre-eminence among all who have been famous for
evil; the Cercopes, Eurybatus, Phrynondas, Aristodemus, Sostratus--all
thrown into the shade. In a letter to his father-in-law Rutilianus, which
puts his own pretensions in a truly modest light, he compares himself to
Pythagoras. Well, I should not like to offend the wise, the divine
Pythagoras; but if he had been Alexander's contemporary, I am quite sure
he would have been a mere child to him. Now by all that is admirable, do
not take that for an insult to Pythagoras, nor suppose I would draw a
parallel between their achievements. What I mean is: if any one would
make a collection of all the vilest and most damaging slanders ever
vented against Pythagoras--things whose truth I would not accept for a
moment--, the sum of them would not come within measurable distance of
Alexander's cleverness. You are to set your imagination to work and
conceive a temperament curiously compounded of falsehood, trickery,
perjury, cunning; it is versatile, audacious, adventurous, yet dogged in
execution; it is plausible enough to inspire confidence; it can assume
the mask of virtue, and seem to eschew what it most desires. I suppose no
one ever left him after a first interview without the impression that
this was the best and kindest of men, ay, and the simplest and most
unsophisticated. Add to all this a certain greatness in his objects; he
never made a small plan; his ideas were always large.
While in the bloom of his youthful beauty, which we may assume to have
been great both from its later remains and from the report of those who
saw it, he traded quite shamelessly upon it. Among his other patrons was
one of the charlatans who deal in magic and mystic incantations; they
will smooth your course of love, confound your enemies, find you
treasure, or secure you an inheritance. This person was struck with the
lad's natural qualifications for apprenticeship to his trade, and finding
him as much attracted by rascality as attractive in appearance, gave him
a regular training as accomplice, satellite, and attendant. His own
ostensible profession was medicine, and his knowledge included, like that
of Thoon the Egyptian's wife,
Many a virtuous herb, and many a bane;
to all which inheritance our friend succeeded. This teacher and lover of
his was a native of Tyana, an associate of the great Apollonius, and
acquainted with all his heroics. And now you know the atmosphere in which
Alexander lived.
By the time his beard had come, the Tyanean was dead, and he found
himself in straits; for the personal attractions which might once have
been a resource were diminished. He now formed great designs, which he
imparted to a Byzantine chronicler of the strolling competitive order, a
man of still worse character than himself, called, I believe, Cocconas.
The pair went about living on occult pretensions, shearing 'fat-heads,'
as they describe ordinary people in the native Magian lingo. Among these
they got hold of a rich Macedonian woman; her youth was past, but not her
desire for admiration; they got sufficient supplies out of her, and
accompanied her from Bithynia to Macedonia. She came from Pella, which
had been a flourishing place under the Macedonian kingdom, but has now a
poor and much reduced population.
There is here a breed of large serpents, so tame and gentle that women
make pets of them, children take them to bed, they will let you tread on
them, have no objection to being squeezed, and will draw milk from the
breast like infants. To these facts is probably to be referred the common
story about Olympias when she was with child of Alexander; it was
doubtless one of these that was her bed-fellow. Well, the two saw these
creatures, and bought the finest they could get for a few pence.
And from this point, as Thucydides might say, the war takes its
beginning. These ambitious scoundrels were quite devoid of scruples, and
they had now joined forces; it could not escape their penetration that
human life is under the absolute dominion of two mighty principles, fear
and hope, and that any one who can make these serve his ends may be sure
of a rapid fortune. They realized that, whether a man is most swayed by
the one or by the other, what he must most depend upon and desire is a
knowledge of futurity. So were to be explained the ancient wealth and
fame of Delphi, Delos, Clarus, Branchidae; it was at the bidding of the
two tyrants aforesaid that men thronged the temples, longed for fore-
knowledge, and to attain it sacrificed their hecatombs or dedicated their
golden ingots. All this they turned over and debated, and it issued in
the resolve to establish an oracle. If it were successful, they looked
for immediate wealth and prosperity; the result surpassed their most
sanguine expectations.
The next things to be settled were, first the theatre of operations, and
secondly the plan of campaign. Cocconas favoured Chalcedon, as a
mercantile centre convenient both for Thrace and Bithynia, and accessible
enough for the province of Asia, Galatia, and tribes still further east.
Alexander, on the other hand, preferred his native place, urging very
truly that an enterprise like theirs required congenial soil to give it a
start, in the shape of 'fat-heads' and simpletons; that was a fair
description, he said, of the Paphlagonians beyond Abonutichus; they were
mostly superstitious and well-to-do; one had only to go there with some
one to play the flute, the tambourine, or the cymbals, set the proverbial
mantic sieve [Footnote: I have no information on Coscinomancy or sieve-
divination. 'This kind of divination was generally practised to discover
thieves ... They tied a thread to the sieve, by which it was upheld, then
prayed to the Gods to direct and assist them. After which they repeated
the names of the person suspected, and he at whose name the sieve whirled
round or moved was thought to have committed the fact' _Francklin's
Lucian._] a-spinning, and there they would all be gaping as if he were
a God from heaven.
This difference of opinion did not last long, and Alexander prevailed.
Discovering, however, that a use might after all be made of Chalcedon,
they went there first, and in the temple of Apollo, the oldest in the
place, they buried some brazen tablets, on which was the statement that
very shortly Asclepius, with his father Apollo, would pay a visit to
Pontus, and take up his abode at Abonutichus. The discovery of the
tablets took place as arranged, and the news flew through Bithynia and
Pontus, first of all, naturally, to Abonutichus. The people of that place
at once resolved to raise a temple, and lost no time in digging the
foundations. Cocconas was now left at Chalcedon, engaged in composing
certain ambiguous crabbed oracles. He shortly afterwards died, I believe,
of a viper's bite.
Alexander meanwhile went on in advance; he had now grown his hair and
wore it in long curls; his doublet was white and purple striped, his
cloak pure white; he carried a scimetar in imitation of Perseus, from
whom he now claimed descent through his mother. The wretched
Paphlagonians, who knew perfectly well that his parentage was obscure and
mean on both sides, nevertheless gave credence to the oracle, which ran:
Lo, sprung from Perseus, and to Phoebus dear,
High Alexander, Podalirius' son!
Podalirius, it seems, was of so highly amorous a complexion that the
distance between Tricca and Paphlagonia was no bar to his union with
Alexander's mother. A Sibylline prophecy had also been found:
Hard by Sinope on the Euxine shore
Th' Italic age a fortress prophet sees.
To the first monad let thrice ten be added,
Five monads yet, and then a triple score:
Such the quaternion of th' alexic name.
[Footnote: In 1. 2 of the oracle, the Italic age is the Roman Empire; the
fortress prophet is one who belongs to a place ending in--tichus (fort).
11>> 3-5 mean: Take 1, 30, 5, 60 (the Greek symbols for which are the
letters of the alphabet A, L, E, X), and you will have four letters of
the name of your coming protector (alexic).]