It is perhaps easier for twentieth century readers to accept his wonders than it was for his contemporaries of the second century. Science has developed so many of his imaginative forecasts. The monstrous footprints of Hercules and Dionysus might be rock-prints of dinosaurs. The plunging whale is a submarine. His ship lifting from the ocean to sail through the air has become the hydroplane. His island galleys bearing one hundred and twenty men each are our battleships. The Cloud Centaurs who fight in the air are our aviators. Arctic explorers have lived in huts made of ice-blocks. Ice-sailing is a recognized winter sport. Clothing is made not of glass or bronze, but of cellulose and steel. Removable eyes suggest spectacles, contact lenses and field-glasses. The Cork-footed Men must have resembled surf riders. And the magic mirror over the well anticipated the perforated sphere of television.
But his contemporaries had the advantage of us in recognizing Lucian’s sources and parodies more readily than we can. For us, Antonius Diogenes, Ctesias and Iambulus are lost. Yet Photius records that the romance of Antonius Diogenes, The Wonders beyond Thule, was the chief source of Lucian’s True History. So many, however, are the sources which Lucian used to forward his avowed purpose of furnishing relaxation accompanied by some learning, that scholars have busied themselves for years tracing parallels with Greek and Latin authors.[328] Allinson remarks wisely: “In general, it seems safe to conclude that Lucian regarded the writings of predecessors and contemporaries as an open quarry from which he first built up his own style and then picked out material to imbed, with an artist’s skill, in the parti-coloured mosaic of his satire.”[329]
Some idea of Lucian’s parody of his sources may be gained, even though Antonius Diogenes is lost, from his incidental flings at great Greeks and from his constant references to Homer which are a mixture of admiration and irony. So when he saw Cloudcuckooland he remembered Aristophanes the poet, “a wise and truthful man whose writings are distrusted without reason.”[330] On the Island of the Blessed he did not find Plato for he preferred to live in the city of his imagination under his own constitution and laws. Yet he might well have been in Elysium for the inhabitants are most Platonic in sharing their wives.[331] The solemn treaty which ended the wars between the Men of the Sun and the Men of the Moon has a comical resemblance to the treaty between Athens and Sparta which Thucydides records though it is signed by Fireman, Hotman, and Burner, by Nightman, Moonman and Allbright.[332]
Herodotus comes in for more imitation, for he furnishes stories of ants bigger than foxes,[333] of dog-headed men,[334] of men who feed on odors,[335] of a feast of lanterns in Egypt,[336] of a floating island,[337] of the sea freezing,[338] of a breeze that bears the perfume of Arabia.[339] But when Lucian solemnly imitates these exaggerations, we feel he has his tongue in his cheek and our suspicion is confirmed when he consigns Ctesias and Herodotus to the limbo of Liars in the Island of the Wicked.[340]
Lucian’s treatment of Homer shows his most genial irony. In his preface he makes Homer’s Odysseus the guide and teacher of all historians of imaginary travels, Odysseus “who tells Alcinous and his court about winds in bondage, one-eyed men, cannibals and savages; also about animals with many heads, and transformations of his comrades wrought with drugs,” and with such marvels “humbugged the illiterate Phaeacians.”[341] But in the Island of the Blessed, Homer is the shade in whose talk Lucian most delights. Homer indeed is most affable in discussing all the literary problems of his epics, especially since he had just won a lawsuit in which Thersites accused him of libel, through the aid of his lawyer Odysseus.[342] Homer as a shade is still writing for when there was war in heaven, he produced a new epic about the battle of the shades of the heroes,[343] which Lucian unfortunately lost on the way home, and on Lucian’s departure Homer composed a commemorative epigram which described him as dear to the blessed gods.[344]
Lucian introduces Homer’s characters into his scenes. Achilles is one of the most honored heroes on the Island of the Blessed, serving as joint judge with Theseus at the Games of the Dead.[345] Helen is the leading lady in the court-room scene where Rhadamanthus had to decide whose wife she should be in Elysium. She has forgiven Stesichorus for saying she caused the Trojan War.[346] But she creates a new scandal by trying to desert Menelaus again in an elopement with Scintharus’ son.[347] Calypso on receiving Odysseus’ letter from Lucian’s hand weeps as she reads that he always regretted giving up his life with her, and then with true feminine curiosity asks how Penelope is looking now and whether she is as wise as Odysseus used to boast. Lucian made such replies as he thought would gratify her![348]
Minor episodes are reminiscent of the Odyssey. Rhadamanthus gives Lucian a talisman of mallow as Hermes gave Odysseus the moly.[349] To the Land of Dreams Lucian must erect four gates in place of Homer’s two, one of horn, one of ivory.[350] And the Singing Sirens that tried to beguile Odysseus have been metamorphosed into fair young ladies in long chitons which conceal the legs of she-asses.[351] But whatever changes are made in the source-material taken from the Odyssey, Lucian’s gentle raillery does not hide his admiration of great Homer. He gives the lie to the myth that Homer was blind.[352] And in the contest of the poets at the Games of the Dead in the Island of the Blessed, he ironically makes Hesiod the victor though he affirms that in truth Homer was by far the best of poets.
Lucian’s style in his True History illustrates many of his own criteria for writing history. The short preface is in proportion to the short two-book True History. The narrative is concise, rapid, lucid and shows consistent progress, one event following naturally and quickly upon another without extravagant use of details. The few speeches are short, lively and suited to the character of the speaker. The descriptions are realistic and pointed. Extraordinary stories are told simply with an appearance of veracity.
A few typical elements of the Greek Romances appear in the True History. There is a suggestion of a court-room scene where Rhadamanthus judges Helen’s accomplices in escape. One letter is inserted, Odysseus’ to Calypso, for the purpose of ironic satire of Homeric characters. An inscription on bronze is discovered and a laudatory couplet in hexameter is composed and inscribed on stone. But love and religion, the commonest themes of the Greek Romances, are eliminated from this tale of marvellous adventures.
Satire though this story is, it ranks easily first among imaginary voyagings both in fantasy and style. In his narration Lucian pours all his spirit, his liveliness of observation, his brilliant imagination, his vivacious wit. His own enjoyment in his facile, marvellous inventions is contagious. As he rushes his breathless readers over the earth, through the air, under the sea, as he introduces us to innumerable natural phenomena and monstrous beings, he convinces us that this world of fantasy is a real world. He has made many others wish to record similar travels, for the True History is the model of all those imaginary voyages with which Rabelais, Cyrano de Bergerac, Swift, Voltaire and others amused their contemporaries. No work of Lucian found so many imitators as this.[353]