of the time were in the habit of delivering both on serious and trifling subjects. He soon passed over to Greece proper, and no doubt visited Athens, then the chief centre1 of Greek education; all the while we may be sure extending the range of his information and improving the accuracy of his style. From thence he passed on to Italy, his reputation growing as he went: till he found a congenial society and source of profit in the rhetoricloving towns of Gaul.

(4) When Lucian was now in his fortieth year, and had amassed considerable wealth, he left the West and settled down at Athens, having removed his family thither from Samosata. He now threw over rhetoric and took to the study of philosophy. The many writings in the composition of which he now revelled are for the most part cast in the form of dialogue. Imitation of Plato was in all likelihood originally at the bottom of this, but the spirit of the satiric dialogue (of which Lucian may be called the founder) has more in common with Aristophanes than with Plato. At Athens our author learned to write a purer Attic Greek than he had before been able to attain; getting rid of most of those Syrian provincialisms which he, though long ago 'enrolled among the Greeks' by his earlier rhetorical studies, still no doubt retained in plenty.

(5) He now poured forth a series of satires, which assail human weakness and folly from many points of view. The popular notions of the gods and the life after death; the vain hopes fears and endeavours of men; the empty vanity of the rhetorician; the insincere moral-lecturing of the philosopher; the indignities borne by dependents at the hands of the great; the crafty machinations of harlots for the enthralment of wealthy youths; the weak and childish spirit in which the Homeric poems were read and learnt by heart; the want of critical power which encouraged the production of wild romances under the name of books of travel;-all these and more are mercilessly lashed in detail with the scourge of satire. Lucian is

1 See Mr Capes' lectures on University life in ancient Athens. The city teemed with lecturers of all sorts.

no philosopher: his principles seem to advance but little beyond the 'be sober and suspicious' of Epicharmus. He is cold and unimpassioned, and, while amid the rottenness of society he can point to no hope, he condescends to no utterance of despair. Yet he seems to have often been over-hasty in the writing or publication of his pieces: for he often had to write again and explain away the purport of what he had written, and this not always1 with success.

(6) Thus in literary employment, among the schools and refined society of Athens, Lucian passed his later middle age, and became an old man. Whether he ever set out again on a continuous round of travel as a lecturer, seems to me at the very least doubtful. Nor do I see safe ground for assuming that he fell into poverty in his declining years. We do however know that he was entrusted with a public office in Egypt, the management of the routine of a law-court and registration of proceedings in the same. He probably died in the enjoyment of the salary attached to this post, at a very advanced age; but the exact date is not known.

(7) Of the matter of Lucian's writings something has been said above, and so far as this book is concerned the pieces in it are separately handled below. His style is clear and flowing, the diction on the whole careful and the sentences neat and polished. But with all his efforts he never succeeded in bringing his grammar into full accord with the rules of strict Attic. He overloads his clauses with strained attempts at emphasis by too often thrusting in a kaì needlessly, or piling particle on particle ovde is used as the old writers use ore; the optative is put in consequential clauses where the subjunctive ought in strictness to have been used: and in common with Plutarch and other writers of that period μn is ruthlessly used as the equivalent of ov. Such blemishes are however excusable under the circumstances of Lucian's origin and life. We must admit that his efforts after the attainment of a pure Attic style were rewarded with a great measure of success. But in his matter

1 See below § 17.

and style alike there is a sort of sameness which is rather wearisome to the reader; the same old simile quotation and even turn of phrase reappear more often than is palatable. As to his reading, he seems to have studied carefully most of the works of the old classical Greek authors, especially the Homeric poems, the plays of Euripides and Aristophanes, the histories of Herodotus Thucydides and Xenophon, and the dialogues of Plato.

B. The Dream.

(8) The short piece known as the Dream must have been written by Lucian in his later middle age, when he revisited' his native town. He had left it poor and unknown; he came back rich and famous: and it is very likely that he may have been asked to address his fellow townsmen in public shortly after his arrival. Being struck with the deadness of provincial life and the want of enterprise in the youths of Samosata, he would probably think that he could not do better than give them a short view of his own rise, and stir their ambition by the force of his example. We may then suppose him to have told them the story of his dream, which may have been true or fictitious: it matters not. Afterwardswhether by request or not-he would write a report of his address for publication. This view of the origin of the paper before us is borne out by the direct appeal ☎ åvdpes in § 5, μn åtιorýonte in § 14, and by the whole sense and phraseology of §§ 17, 18.

(9) On a careful examination of the piece I find little in it to praise. It is simple and easy to understand; but the machinery of the dream is clumsy, and not even original, being evidently modelled on the famous fable of Prodikus called the 'choice of Herakles.' We may well believe that the remark

1 See above § 4.

put into the mouth of a bystander in § 17 may be not a mere fiction of the author but a plain report. To what a depth literary taste had sunk is well shewn by the allegorical description of his own travels in §§ 15, 16. When an eminent man, among the first writers of the age, could compose a passage so teeming with affectation and vanity, and then point complacently to his own superiority as compared with contemporary sculptors, we are sharply reminded of the intellectual dreariness of those days, of the barrenness of Philosophy and the degradation of Art. The modern reader will also be struck by another thing in connexion with the work; I mean the want of a sound core of facts bearing upon Lucian's life. We learn that he was destined to follow his uncle's trade or profession of Statuary; but that he abandoned this career at a very early stage and took to Liberal Education or Culture, and that through this latter he somehow rose to distinction and affluence. Little more is to be gathered as to the history of our author; and we can take but a very faint interest in the tedious details of the dream.

C. Charon.

(10) In order to give opportunity for setting forth in the form of a dialogue the views of a cynical observer concerning the world of men (ó Bíos), their vain hopes and endeavours, their pride and inconsistency, their blindness to the doom that surely awaits all-death—, Charon the ferryman of souls is introduced to us as on a short furlough, paying a visit to the earth. And since the legends represented him as always present in the nether world, and by consequence strange to the earth, it was necessary to provide him with a guide, that he might be able (§§ 1-3, 24) to spend his time to advantage. Now dramatic propriety at once pointed to Hermes the guide of souls as the proper person to undertake this duty. Not only would his wide acquaintance with life on earth make him a valuable guide to

any wanderer, but being also familiar with the world below he would be especially useful to Charon, seeing at once the point of his allusions and comparisons, and entering into his difficulties. Again, time being short, Charon must be placed where he may be supposed able to see both far and clearly. This apparently insuperable difficulty is overcome by the application of the Homeric mythology: Hermes soon finds out how to raise a scaffold of mountains, and charms away the mist from Charon's eyes by a timely quotation. Unless I am greatly mistaken, this introduction of the Homeric poems has its meaning. Lucian is really saying 'if you can accept the marvels of mythology, you can accept anything; hence if I come to a difficulty I have only to work in some of the myths with plenty of quotations from the Iliad and Odyssey, and you cannot complain of any absurdity.' In fact our author, while making the ridicule of human follies his main object in this dialogue, has a fling by the way at the popular religious conceptions. These latter are among the most common themes for his satirical pen.

(11) We now pass on to the panorama. First it is to be noted that the time chosen is somewhere in the sixth century BC, but strict chronology is set at defiance. Our attention is claimed by the figures, with the story and moral reflection attached to each: Milon (§ 8) the great athlete, glorying in his strength and forgetting that he must some day yield the victory to death: Croesus (§§ 10-12) the wealthy king of Lydia, claiming to have reached the summit of happiness, spurning the warning voice of Solon1 and unable to foresee the shameful end awaiting him: Cyrus and Cambyses (§ 13) either in his turn Great King of Persia, alike ignorant of the evil deaths in store for them: Polykrates (§ 14) tyrant of Samos in the height of his prosperity blind to his coming downfall. Charon remarks what fun it will be to see their humbled ghosts in the ferry-boat, stripped of all their splendour. Hermes then calls his attention to the common herd, the rank and file of mankind (§§ 15—20),

1 For a criticism of this story from Herodotus see Grote part II chapter 11.