This eBook was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.
by Lucian.
Translated from the Greek by Thomas Francklin, D.D.
CONTENTS.
Introduction by Professor Henry Morley.
Instructions for WritingHistory.
The True History.
Preface.
Book1.
Book 2.
Icaro-Menippus—ADialogue.
Lucian, in Greek Loukianos, was a Syrian, born about the year 120at Samosata, where a bend of the Euphrates brings that river nearestto the borders of Cilicia in Asia Minor. He had in him by naturea quick flow of wit, with a bent towards Greek literature. Itwas thought at home that he showed as a boy the artist nature by hisskill in making little waxen images. An uncle on his mother’sside happened to be a sculptor. The home was poor, Lucian wouldhave his bread to earn, and when he was fourteen he was apprenticedto his uncle that he might learn to become a sculptor. Beforelong, while polishing a marble tablet he pressed on it too heavily andbroke it. His uncle thrashed him. Lucian’s spiritrebelled, and he went home giving the comic reason that his uncle beathim because jealous of the extraordinary power he showed in his art.
After some debate Lucian abandoned training as a sculptor, studiedliterature and rhetoric, and qualified himself for the career of anadvocate and teacher at a time when rhetoric had still a chief placein the schools. He practised for a short time unsuccessfully atAntioch, and then travelled for the cultivation of his mind in Greece,Italy, and Gaul, making his way by use of his wits, as Goldsmith didlong afterwards when he started, at the outset also of his career asa writer, on a grand tour of the continent with nothing in his pocket. Lucian earned as he went by public use of his skill as a rhetorician. His travel was not unlike the modern American lecturing tour, made alsofor the money it may bring and for the new experience acquired by it.
Lucian stayed long enough in Athens to acquire a mastery of AtticGreek, and his public discourses could not have been without full seasoningof Attic salt. In Italy and Gaul his success brought him moneybeyond his present needs, and he went back to Samosata, when about fortyyears old, able to choose and follow his own course in life.
He then ceased to be a professional talker, and became a writer,bold and witty, against everything that seemed to him to want foundationfor the honour that it claimed. He attacked the gods of Greece,and the whole system of mythology, when, in its second century, theChristian Church was ready to replace the forms of heathen worship. He laughed at the philosophers, confounding together in one censuredeep conviction with shallow convention. His vigorous winnowingsent chaff to the winds, but not without some scattering of wheat. Delight in the power of satire leads always to some excess in its use. But if the power be used honestly—and even if it be used recklessly—notruth can be destroyed. Only the reckless use of it breeds inminds of the feebler sort mere pleasure in ridicule, that weakens themas helpers in the real work of the world, and in that way tends to retardthe forward movement. But on the whole, ridicule adds more vigourto the strong than it takes from the weak, and has its use even whenlevelled against what is good and true. In its own way it is atest of truth, and may be fearlessly applied to it as jewellers usenitric acid to try gold. If it be uttered for gold and is notgold, let it perish; but if it be true, it will s