'M. Aurelius has for us moderns this great superiority in interest over
Saint Louis or Alfred, that he lived and acted in a state of society
modern by its essential characteristics, in an epoch akin to our own,
in a brilliant centre of civilization. Trajan talks of "our enlightened
age" just as glibly as _The Times_ talks of it.' M. Arnold, _Essays in
Criticism, M. Aurelius_.
The age of M. Aurelius is also the age of Lucian, and with any man of
that age who has, like these two, left us a still legible message we
can enter into quite different relations from those which are possible
with what M. Arnold calls in the same essay 'classical-dictionary
heroes.' A twentieth-century Englishman, a second-century Greek or
Roman, would be much more at home in each other's century, if they had
the gift of tongues, than in most of those which have intervened. It is
neither necessary nor possible to go deeply into the resemblance here
[Footnote: Some words of Sir Leslie Stephen's may be given, however,
describing the welter of religious opinions that prevailed at both
epochs: 'The analogy between the present age and that which witnessed
the introduction of Christianity is too striking to have been missed by
very many observers. The most superficial acquaintance with the general
facts shows how close a parallel might be drawn by a competent
historian. There are none of the striking manifestations of the present
day to which it would not be easy to produce an analogy, though in some
respects on a smaller scale. Now, as then, we can find mystical
philosophers trying to evolve a satisfactory creed by some process of
logical legerdemain out of theosophical moonshine; and amiable and
intelligent persons labouring hard to prove that the old mythology
could be forced to accept a rationalistic interpretation—whether in
regard to the inspection of entrails or prayers for fine weather; and
philosophers framing systems of morality entirely apart from the
ancient creeds, and sufficiently satisfactory to themselves, while
hopelessly incapable of impressing the popular mind; and politicians,
conscious that the basis of social order was being sapped by the decay
of the faith in which it had arisen, and therefore attempting the
impossible task of galvanizing dead creeds into a semblance of
vitality; and strange superstitions creeping out of their
lurking-places, and gaining influence in a luxurious society whose
intelligence was an ineffectual safeguard against the most grovelling
errors; and a dogged adherence of formalists and conservatives to
ancient ways, and much empty profession of barren orthodoxy; and,
beneath all, a vague disquiet, a breaking up of ancient social and
natural bonds, and a blind groping toward some more cosmopolitan creed
and some deeper satisfaction for the emotional needs of mankind.'—_The
Religion of all Sensible Men_ in _An Agnostic's Apology_, 1893.]; all
that need be done is to pass in review those points of it, some
important, and some trifling, which are sure to occur in a detached way
to readers of Lucian.
The Graeco-Roman world was as settled and peaceful, as conscious of its
imperial responsibilities, as susceptible to boredom, as greedy of
amusement, could show as numerous a leisured class, and believed as
firmly in money, as our own. What is more important for our purpose, it
was questioning the truth of its religion as we are to-day questioning
the truth of ours. Lucian was the most vehement of the questioners. Of
what played the part then that the Christian religion plays now, the
pagan religion was only one half; the other half was philosophy. The
gods of Olympus had long lost their hold upon the educated, but not
perhaps upon the masses; the educated, ill content to be without any
guide through the maze of life, had taken to philosophy instead.
Stoicism was the prevalent creed, and how noble a form this could take
in a cultivated and virtuous mind is to be seen in the _Thoughts_ of M.
Aurelius. The test of a religion, however, is not what form it takes in
a virtuous mind, but what effects it produces on those of another sort.
Lucian applies the test of results alike to the religion usually so
called, and to its philosophic substitute. He finds both wanting; the
test is not a satisfactory one, but it is being applied by all sorts
and conditions of men to Christianity in our own time; so is the second
test, that of inherent probability, which he uses as well as the other
upon the pagan theology; and it is this that gives his writings, even
apart from their wit and fancy, a special interest for our own time.
Our attention seems to be concentrated more and more on the ethical, as
opposed to the speculative or dogmatic aspect of religion; just such
was Lucian's attitude towards philosophy.
Some minor points of similarity may be briefly noted. As we read the
_Anacharsis_, we are reminded of the modern prominence of athletics;
the question of football _versus_ drill is settled for us; light is
thrown upon the question of conscription; we think of our Commissions
on national deterioration, and the schoolmaster's wail over the
athletic _Frankenstein's_ monster which, like _Eucrates_ in _The Liar_,
he has created but cannot control. The 'horsy talk in every street' of
the _Nigrinus_ calls up the London newsboy with his 'All the winners.'
We think of palmists and spiritualists in the police-courts as we read
of Rutilianus and the Roman nobles consulting the impostor Alexander.
This sentence reads like the description of a modern man of science
confronted with the supernatural: 'It was an occasion for a man whose
intelligence was steeled against such assaults by scepticism and
insight, one who, if he could not detect the precise imposture, would
at any rate have been perfectly certain that, though this escaped him,
the whole thing was a lie and an impossibility.' The upper-class
audiences who listened to Lucian's readings, taking his points with
quiet smiles instead of the loud applause given to the rhetorician,
must have been something like that which listens decorously to an
Extension lecturer. When Lucian bids us mark 'how many there are who
once were but cyphers, but whom words have raised to fame and opulence,
ay, and to noble lineage too,' we remember not only Gibbon's remark
about the very Herodes Atticus of whom Lucian may have been thinking
('The family of Herod, at least after it had been favoured by fortune,
was lineally descended from Cimon and Miltiades'), but also the modern
_carriere ouverte aux talents_, and the fact that Tennyson was a lord.
There are the elements of a socialist question in the feelings between
rich and poor described in the _Saturnalia_; while, on the other hand,
the fact of there being an audience for the _Dialogues of the Hetaerae_
is an illustration of that spirit of _humani nihil a me alienum puto_
which is again prevalent today. We care now to realize the thoughts of
other classes besides our own; so did they in Lucian's time; but it is
significant that Francklin in 1780, refusing to translate this series,
says: 'These dialogues exhibit to us only such kind of conversation as
we may hear in the purlieus of Covent Garden—lewd, dull, and insipid.'
The lewdness hardly goes beyond the title; they are full of humour and
insight; and we make no apology for translating most of them. Lastly, a
generation that is always complaining of the modern over-production of
books feels that it would be at home in a state of society in which our
author found that, not to be too singular, he must at least write about
writing history, if he declined writing it himself, even as Diogenes
took to rolling his tub, lest he should be the only idle man when
Corinth was bustling about its defences.
As Lucian is so fond of saying, 'this is but a small selection of the
facts which might have been quoted' to illustrate the likeness between
our age and his. It may be well to allude, on the other hand, to a few
peculiarities of the time that appear conspicuously in his writings.
The Roman Empire was rather Graeco-Roman than Roman; this is now a
commonplace. It is interesting to observe that for Lucian 'we' is on
occasion the Romans; 'we' is also everywhere the Greeks; while at the
same time 'I' is a barbarian and a Syrian. Roughly speaking, the Roman
element stands for energy, material progress, authority, and the Greek
for thought; the Roman is the British Philistine, the Greek the man of
culture. Lucian is conscious enough of the distinction, and there is no
doubt where his own preference lies. He may be a materialist, so far as
he is anything, in philosophy; but in practice he puts the things of
the mind before the things of the body.
If our own age supplies parallels for most of what we meet with in the
second century, there are two phenomena which are to be matched rather
in an England that has passed away. The first is the Cynics, who swarm
in Lucian's pages like the begging friars in those of a historical
novelist painting the middle ages. Like the friars, they began nobly in
the desire for plain living and high thinking; in both cases the
thinking became plain, the living not perhaps high, but the best that
circumstances admitted of, and the class—with its numbers hugely
swelled by persons as little like their supposed teachers as a Marian
or Elizabethan persecutor was like the founder of Christianity—a pest
to society. Lucian's sympathy with the best Cynics, and detestation of
the worst, make Cynicism one of his most familiar themes. The second is
the class so vividly presented in _The dependent Scholar_—the indigent
learned Greek who looks about for a rich vulgar Roman to buy his
company, and finds he has the worst of the bargain. His successors, the
'trencher chaplains' who 'from grasshoppers turn bumble-bees and wasps,
plain parasites, and make the Muses mules, to satisfy their
hunger-starved panches, and get a meal's meat,' were commoner in
Burton's days than in our own, and are to be met in Fielding, and
Macaulay, and Thackeray.
Two others of Lucian's favourite figures, the parasite and the
legacy-hunter, exist still, no doubt, as they are sure to in every
complex civilization; but their operations are now conducted with more
regard to the decencies. This is worth remembering when we are
occasionally offended by his frankness on subjects to which we are not
accustomed to allude; he is not an unclean or a sensual writer, but the
waters of decency have risen since his time and submerged some things
which were then visible.
A slight prejudice, again, may sometimes be aroused by Lucian's trick
of constant and trivial quotation; he would rather put the simplest
statement, or even make his transition from one subject to another, in
words of Homer than in his own; we have modern writers too who show the
same tendency, and perhaps we like or dislike them for it in proportion
as their allusions recall memories or merely puzzle us; we cannot all
be expected to have agreeable memories stirred by insignificant Homer
tags; and it is well to bear in mind by way of palliation that in Greek
education Homer played as great a part as the Bible in ours. He might
be taken simply or taken allegorically; but one way or the other he was
the staple of education, and it might be assumed that every one would
like the mere sound of him.
We may end by remarking that the public readings of his own works, to
which the author makes frequent reference, were what served to a great
extent the purpose of our printing-press. We know that his pieces were
also published; but the public that could be reached by hand-written
copies would bear a very small proportion to that which heard them from
the writer's own lips; and though the modern system may have the
advantage on the whole, it is hard to believe that the unapproached
life and naturalness of Lucian's dialogue does not owe something to
this necessity.