Finally, Cicero’s death excites our pity; for an old man to be miserably carried up and down by his servants, flying and hiding himself from that death which was, in the course of nature, so near at hand—and yet at last to be murdered. Demosthenes, though he seemed at first a little to supplicate, yet, by his preparing and keeping the poison by him, demands our admiration; and still more admirable was his using it. When the temple of the god no longer afforded him a sanctuary, he took refuge at a mightier altar, freeing himself from arms and soldiers, and laughing to scorn the cruelty of Antipater.”—Clough.
A moralist as well as a biographer, Plutarch wrote many ethical and philosophical essays. The death of his daughter called forth a feeling letter to his wife,—“the Consolation,”—in which he affectionately bids her not give way to extravagant grief, but submit with resignation to the blow, comforting her with thoughts of immortality; it may be added that he held Plato’s views on this subject as on others.
In his “Essay on Inquisitiveness” he condemns all eagerness to learn news and impatience in opening letters, or “biting the strings in two, as many will if they do not succeed at once with their fingers.” As an example of dignified patience, he instances Rusticus at Rome, who in the midst of a lecture received a letter from the emperor Domitian, but would not open it till Plutarch had finished speaking.
Lucian (probably 120-200 A.D.); one of the wittiest of Greek writers, was a native of Syria, and passed his boyhood on the banks of the Euphrates. Doubtless his favorite amusement of moulding wax into figures weighed with his parents, no less than their own poverty, when they bound him as an apprentice to his mother’s brother to learn the sculptor’s art. The young Lucian enthusiastically fell in with their decision, fondly anticipating the time when he should astonish his playfellows with little gods cut from the marble by his own hands. But his maiden attempt in the statuary’s shop resulted in a broken slab and a cruel whipping at the hands of his uncle. “The first wages I earned,” he said, “were tears”—but they were also the last. He never returned to the chisel and mallet.
After picking up a rhetorical education, by what means he does not tell us, Lucian established himself at Antioch as a lawyer; but failing of success, he set out on a lecture tour through Europe. In Gaul, where rhetoric, the art he taught, was in special demand, he accumulated a fortune; with which he retired from his profession in the prime of life, and took up his residence at Athens. Here he prosecuted his literary studies, exchanged his Syrian Greek for pure Attic, and is believed to have written his finest Dialogues.
At the age of seventy, Lucian found himself so reduced as to be obliged to accept from the Roman emperor the clerkship of the Alexandrian courts. This position, which allowed him to continue his literary labors, he is said to have enjoyed until his death.
Lucian’s Style and Writings.—Piquant humor, inimitable power of satire, and wonderful versatility, are Lucian’s strong points. His style is clear and graceful. Of his voluminous writings the most popular are the “Dialogues” on various subjects, serious and humorous. He attacked falsehood and trickery, folly and superstition; and the deadly blows he rained upon his country’s mythology, which led to his being called “the Blasphemer,” indirectly, though unintentionally, helped the spread of Christianity.
In the “Dialogues of the Gods,” the deities talk over the domestic affairs of the Olympian household, gossip, and wrangle, and pry into one another’s secrets, quite after the manner of humans. Such a belittling of the national divinities could not be without an unsettling effect on the popular faith.—The “Dialogues of the Dead” are equally rich with humor and ridicule.
Against the philosophers of his day, whom he looked upon as miserable charlatans, Lucian launched the laughable Dialogue entitled “the Sale of the Philosophers,” in which the founders of the old schools are disposed of at auction by Jupiter in a slave-market, Mercury playing the part of auctioneer. Pythagoras is put up first and sells for $175; Diogenes, the next, brings less than sixpence; while Socrates commands the high price of two talents. Pyrrho, the universal doubter, will not believe that he has been sold, even after he has seen himself paid for and delivered. The laughing Democritus and weeping Heraclitus fail to find a purchaser. The attempted sale of these two philosophers is thus depicted:—
“Jupiter.—Bring out another. Stay—those two there, that fellow from Abdera, who is always laughing, and the Ephesian, who is always crying; I’ve a mind to sell them as a pair.