[Footnote 114: Lucian lived under four Roman emperors and possibly
five,--Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Verus, Commodus and
Pertinax. The Fowlers, whose translation is used in these specimens,
regard Lucian as "a linguistic miracle," stating the case as follows:
"A Syrian writes in Greek, and not in the Greek of his own time, but
in that of five or six centuries before, and he does it, if not with
absolute correctness, yet with the easy mastery that we expect from
one in a million of those who write in their mother tongue and takes
place as an immortal classic. The miracle may be repeated; an
English-educated Hindu may produce masterpieces of Elizabethan English
that will rank him with Bacon and Ben Jonson; but it will surprize us
when it does happen."]
[Footnote 115: From "Menippus: A Necromantic Experiment." Translated
by H. W. and F. G. Fowler. Menippus was a Cynic philosopher,
originally a slave, born in Syria. He lived about 60 B.C., and wrote
much, but all his works have been lost.]
[Footnote 116: Ixion, of whom the familiar legend is that he was
punished in the lower world by being chained to an ever-revolving
wheel, was King of the Lapithæ. Sisyphus, whose punishment was to roll
a stone up a hill and then see it roll back again, being condemned
perpetually to attempt rolling it completely to the top, belonged to a
period anterior to Homer, and was the founder of Corinth. Homer
describes him as the craftiest of men. Tantalus, one of the kings of
Lydia, was condemned to stand in water, but whenever he sought to
quench his thirst the water retreated from him.]
[Footnote 117: Thersites is represented as the most insolent and
hateful of the Greeks who went to Troy.]
[Footnote 118: Polycrates was tyrant of Samos from 536 to 522 B.C.,
but was put to death.]
[Footnote 119: Mausolus was King of Caria, a country lying on the
Ægean Sea in Asia Minor. Its chief town was Helicarnassus. Mausolus
died about 353 B.C. His sister-wife, Artemisia, erected above his
body the famous tomb named after him the Mausoleum, which was one of
the "seven wonders of the world."]
[Footnote 120: The father of Alexander the Great, and the king against
whom several of the orations of Demosthenes were delivered.]