Before, however, we can discuss Lucian’s art of narration in his two romances, we must reconstruct from his own writings his literary autobiography and his conceptions of his literary art. Only then when we have met the critic self-criticized will we be competent to appreciate his brilliant imaginative flights in his novels.
A dangerous temptation at once assails any one who starts to write on any subject connected with Lucian. That is to attempt to cover the whole field of his life and works because of the brilliancy of the many-sided facets of his genius. A forcible deterrent is the fact that a masterly appreciation of La vie et les œuvres de Lucien has already been written by Maurice Croiset in his Essai[292] which in richness and style alike is worthy of its great theme. All subsequent studies of Lucian are inevitably founded on M. Croiset’s appreciation.
Gildersleeve, following Croiset, pointed out that Lucian’s life must be reconstructed from his own writings. And this within the scope of a brief essay Gildersleeve did brilliantly for English readers fifty years ago.[293] From another angle I am attempting to do this same thing now in order to make us acquainted before we read his stories with Lucian the story-teller.[294]
Lucian’s early life is pictured in a brief speech called The Dream. This was probably delivered in his native Syria on his return after his European lecture-tour which made him famous as a Sophist. In a whimsical mixture of fact and fancy he describes his choice of a career. As a young lad when he had just finished school, Lucian was apprenticed to his mother’s brother, a sculptor, to learn to be “a good stone-cutter, mason and sculptor.” On his first day he struck a slab of marble so hard that he shattered it. Whereat his uncle gave him such a violent beating that he ran home to his mother for comfort. That night he had a vision. Two women were struggling to get possession of him. They were vastly different in appearance and in the appeals they made to him, for they were Sculpture and Education. Sculpture, unkempt, speaking haltingly and like a barbarian, told Lucian that if he came to her, he would live well, have strong shoulders, would never go abroad, but would gain such fame as surrounded Phidias, Polyclitus, Myron, Praxiteles. Education in her turn assured him that even if he became a famous sculptor, he would be only a mechanic, living by his hands; she herself has much more to offer him.
“If you follow my advice, first of all I shall show you many works of men of old, tell you their wondrous deeds and words, and make you conversant with almost all knowledge, and I shall ornament your soul, which concerns you most, with many noble adornments—temperance, justice, piety, kindliness, reasonableness, understanding, steadfastness, love of all that is beautiful, ardour towards all that is sublime; for these are the truly flawless jewels of the soul. Nothing that came to pass of old will escape you, and nothing that must now come to pass; nay, you will even foresee the future with me. In a word, I shall speedily teach you everything that there is, whether it pertains to the gods or to man.”[295]
Moreover, he will dress with distinction, will speak with eloquence. Finally he may became as famous as Demosthenes or Aeschines. He must recall that Socrates left sculpture for philosophy.
Lucian on hearing these two appeals gave himself to Education, who then took him in a car with winged horses and from the air showed him the cities and peoples of the world. After this vision she clothed him suitably and returned him to his home. Lucian says he has told this dream “in order that those who are young may take the better direction and cleave to education, above all if poverty is making any one of them faint-hearted.”[296]
Now although this choice of Lucian is based on the choice of Hercules[297] and although facts are clothed in fantasy, the picture of Lucian’s early apprenticeship may well be true, for the boy’s delight in modelling little figures of wax seems to forecast Lucian’s life-long interest in sculpture and other art forms.
The next crisis in Lucian’s literary life is depicted in The Double Indictment, a dialogue composed when the author was forty. In it Lucian appears in court to answer two charges: one of the rhetoricians, for giving up speech-making and essay-writing; the other of the philosophers, for using their sacred Platonic dialogue for satire. Lucian’s trial takes place on the Areopagus with Justice presiding, but the dialogue opens in heaven with a long complaint by Zeus about the hard life of the gods especially his own, no time for anything. Hermes who is listening tells him frankly that there are many complaints among mortals on earth because of the slowness of the law courts. Zeus then sends Hermes down to proclaim a session and orders Justice to preside at it.
At this court, after various cases have been wittily disposed of, the Syrian is called to face two indictments: Oratory versus the Syrian for neglect, Dialogue versus the Syrian for maltreatment. Oratory first relates how she found the plaintiff as a lad wandering in Ionia, speaking with a foreign accent, dressed as a Syrian. She educated him and at his eager request married him although all his dowry was wonderful speeches. Next she had him made a citizen and then went travelling with him to Greece, Ionia, Italy and Gaul. As he became famous, he grew indifferent to her, for he was enamored of a bearded man, Dialogue, said to be the son of Philosophy. Now he no longer makes speeches, but has a strange way of using short questions. She sues him for desertion. The Syrian replies that all her facts are true, but there are others; she lost her modesty, made up like a courtesan, flirted indiscriminately with many lovers. So he separated from her and went to live with a respectable gentleman, Dialogue. The Syrian won the case.