PREFACE.

FOR the few ascertained facts in the life of the greatest prose satirist and most brilliant wit of Greek and Latin antiquity, we are indebted, almost wholly, to scattered and incidental allusions in his own various writings.

Like his immediate predecessor, Menippus the satirist; the illustrious Neo-Platonist, Porphyry, in the third; and the orator, Libanius, in the fourth century, Lucian was Syrian by birth. He was born at Samosata-its heap of ruins still retains the old name almost unchanged-on the Euphrates, not far distant from Edessa, and the chief city of the district of Kommagene, in the extreme northeast of Syria, about the year 120 A.D. Tradition protracts the term of his existence to the age of ninety, or even of one hundred years. He thus lived through the reigns of Hadrian, the two Antonines, and Commodus, and (at all events) the earlier part of the reign of Severus-altogether the happiest period of the Roman Empire, and one of the most interesting ages in the world's history. Of his earlier life, the brief record supplied in his incomplete autobiographical sketch, the Dream, so often has been repeated, that it is not necessary to do more than to refer to it here. It is enough briefly to repeat that the deliberations of a family council determined his parents, who were in poor circumstances, to apprentice him, at the age of fifteen, to his maternal uncle, a statuary, for whose art he had shown some boyish inclination; that, by a fortunate accident-fortunate, at least, for the world of literary, if not of plastic, Art—the breaking of a piece of marble, he was induced to run away from his master, in resentment at a severe flogging, and to transfer

his allegiance to Literature (Paideia'); or, rather, to prepare himself, in the first instance, by a severe course of training, for the profession of a rhetor (in modern phrase, a public speaker), which eventually led him to embrace the career of philosophy and letters.

At this very early stage his memoir, unhappily, comes to an end, and we are left to incidental remarks in his more considerable productions. His experiences for some years lay in the hard school of poverty and neglect (Tέvns kal apavýs). In search of employment, or, rather, to master the rudiments of his profession, the young Lucian wandered through the cities of the south-western region of the Lesser Asia, the celebrated and highly-cultured Ionia, gradually getting rid of his provincial manner and dialect, but still conspicuous by his Syrian (or, as he calls it, Assyrian) and un-Greek style of dress (The TwiceAccused, 27). In his twentieth year he arrived in Greece, and made his first acquaintance with the Platonic philosopher Nigrinus, who gives the title to one of his Dialogues. He next settled in the Syrian capital, Antioch, where he practised at the bar, and acquired considerable reputation as a pleader; but the chicanery and frauds of the interpreters of the laws soon caused him to abandon that pursuit (The Fisherman, 29). The skill thus gained he turned to lucrative account as travelling disputant (sophistes, as it was termed)—a popular and profitable calling, which was as common in the philosophic Hellenic and Roman world in the second century, A.D., as it was in Scholastic Europe of the Middle Ages. In that capacity he traversed Syria and Egypt. Soon afterwards he visited Rome (in the year 150), among other reasons, to consult an oculist; and in his Nigrinus, the literary result of his visit, he stigmatizes the prevailing corruptions and laborious trifling of the literary as well as fashionable society of the capital. After a stay of two years in Italy, he proceeded to southern Gaul, at that time, and long previously, celebrated for its schools of

1 The fine allegory of the rivalry of Paideia and Techne (" Trade") may have been suggested to him, in part, by the charming idyll of Moschus (in which Europe and Asia appear in a dream to the daughter of Kadmus, and contend for her possession), as well as by the Choice of Herakles of Prodikus and Xenophon.

rhetoric. In Gaul he continued his profession of public lecturer for some ten years, his residence in that country being interrupted only by a visit to Olympia. During this period, probably, he composed many of his published rhetorical pieces.

Having now secured an independent income, at the age of forty, Lucian set out again on his travels, and made a journey through Macedonia and Thessaly, on his way to his Syrian home. His stay at Samosata was only temporary; and, inducing his surviving family to remove to Athens, in the next year he himself followed them to the literary metropolis, which to him, as to every Greek or phil-Hellenist, doubtless was an object of supreme intellectual curiosity. It was on his journey to Athens that he had the interview with the Paphlagonian prophet, Alexander, which gave birth to his satire of that name. The contempt openly exhibited by him for that eminent miracle-worker had almost, as he assures us (Alex. 56, 57), cost him his life for the exasperated Alexander had secretly instructed the crew of the vessel, which he had insidiously placed at his visitor's disposal, to make away with their charge-a conspiracy frustrated only by the interposition of the relenting captain. Thus saved from a premature and inglorious end, he proceeded on his journey to Athens, accompanied by that extraordinary adventurer, Peregrinus, or Peregrinus Proteus, whose fiery immolation of himself (like that of another Hercules Furens), before the assembled multitude at Olympia, witnessed by Lucian, in the year 165, forms the principal subject of the Peregrinus.

At Athens Lucian seems-for there is no positive evidence to have taken up his fixed abode for the greater part of his remaining life, occupying himself, as may safely be conjectured, in the highest philosophical and literary studies, and in the enjoyment of the friendship of such exceptional philosophers as Celsus, the famous Platonistcritic of nascent Christianity (in his True Account, known to us only through the Reply of Origen, published fifty years later), of the Stoic Sostratus, and the Eclectic Demonax. His sketch of the career of the last, a meritorious ethical teacher, forms one of the not rare proofs of his

esteem for real goodness. During this period appeared his masterpieces-his principal theological, philosophical, and ethical Dialogues-when that consummate skill in the management of the marvellous Attic dialect had been attained which rivals the style of the best masters, and which, as the acquisition of a foreigner, excites the admiration of all his editors and critics. Perhaps the only other equally remarkable instance of such kind of excellence is that of the African Terence.

When about the age of seventy, impelled, it would seem, by imminent poverty-for authors, then, even of the highest reputation fell very far short of obtaining from the Sosii of the day the immense pecuniary profits now often secured by ephemeral writers-Lucian once more resumed his old occupation of rhetor or sophist, and produced some of those declamatory essays which appear among his published works. At a fortunate moment, he found relief from his pecuniary difficulties in an official income derived from his appointment to the registrarship or clerkship of the lawcourts of the Egyptian capital, the presentation to which office has variously been assigned to Marcus Aurelius, Commodus, and Severus. Chronology seems, on the whole, to support the claims of the last prince, who became emperor in 193, to the honour of saving from destitution the greatest literary ornament of the century. To clear himself from the charge of teaching one thing (in his satire, On Hired Dependants) and practising another, by way of supplement to that essay he published his Apology. From it, incidentally, we learn that he derived a large salary (ToλuráXavros) from his legal post. He alleges the forcible argument that, as the Imperial master of the Roman legions himself—not to mention numerous less exalted personages -by no means refused the richest emoluments of office,

The most interesting, and most meritorious, fact recorded in the life of this highly interesting philosopher, who inclined in opinion chiefly to the School of Plato, in practice to that of Antisthenes, is his fine remonstrance addressed to the people of Athens, who were contemplating the introduction of the cruel " sports of the Roman amphitheatres. "Refrain, Athenians," he protested, "from voting this, until you have first pulled down your altar erected to Pity" (Dem. 51). See, too, his very rational remark on sacrifices (Dem. 6).