More significant are the stories of the other world, for here we come again, from a different point of approach, into a region familiar to the reader of Plutarch. Eucrates himself, out in the woods, heard a noise of barking dogs; an earthquake followed and a voice of thunder, and then came a woman more than six hundred feet high, bearing sword and torch, and followed by dogs "taller than Indian elephants, black in colour." Her feet were snakes—here we may observe that Pausanias the traveller pauses to dismiss "the silly story that giants have serpents instead of feet," for a coffin more than eleven ells long was found near Antioch and "the whole body was that of a man."[[31]] So the snake-feet are not a mere fancy of Lucian's. The woman then tapped the earth with one of these feet of hers, and disappeared into the chasm she made. Eucrates, peeping over the edge, "saw everything in Hades, the river of fire and the lake, Cerberus and the dead"—what is more, he recognized some of the dead. "Did you see Socrates and Plato?" asks Ion. Socrates he thought he saw, "but Plato I did not recognize; I suppose one is bound to stick to the exact truth in talking to one's friends." Pyrrhias the slave confirms the story as an eye-witness.[[32]] Another follows with a story of his trance in illness, and how he saw the world below, Fates, Furies, and all, and was brought before Pluto, who dismissed him with some irritation, as not amenable yet to his Court, and called for the smith Demylos; he came back to life and announced that Demylos would shortly die, and Demylos did die. "Where is the wonder?" says another—the physician, "I know a man raised from the dead twenty days after his burial, for I attended him both before his death and after his resurrection."[[33]]
In all this, it is clear that there is a strong element of mockery. Mockery was Lucian's object, but he probably kept in all these stories a great deal nearer to what his neighbours would believe than we may imagine. Ælian, for example, has a story of a pious cock, which made a point of walking gratefully in the processions that took place in honour of Æsculapius; and he does not tell it in the spirit of the author of the Jackdaw of Rheims.
Lucian and the gods
As one of the main preoccupations of his age was with the gods, Lucian of course could not leave them alone. His usual method is to accept them as being exactly what tradition made them, and then to set them in new and impossible situations. The philosopher Menippus takes "the right wing of an eagle and the left of a vulture," and, after some careful practice, flies up to heaven to interview Zeus. He has been so terribly distracted by the arguments of the schools, that he wants to see for himself—"I dared not disbelieve men of such thundering voices and such imposing beards." Zeus most amiably allows him to stand by and watch him at work, hearing prayers as they come up through tubes, and granting or rejecting them, then settling some auguries, and finally arranging the weather—"rain in Scythia, snow in Greece, a storm in the Adriatic, and about a thousand bushels of hail in Cappadocia."[[34]] Zeus asks; rather nervously what men are saying about him nowadays—mankind is so fond of novelty. "There was a time," he says, "when I was everything to them—
Each street, each market-place was full of Zeus—
and I could hardly see for the smoke of sacrifice"; but other gods, Asklepios, Bendis, Anubis and others, have set up shrines and the altars of Zeus are cold—cold as Chrysippus.[[35]] Altogether the dialogue is a masterpiece of humour and irony.
In another piece, we find Zeus and the other gods in assembly listening to an argument going on at Athens. An Epicurean, Damis, and a singularly feeble Stoic are debating whether gods exist, and whether they exercise any providence for men. Poseidon recommends the prompt use of a thunderbolt "to let them see," but Zeus reminds him that it is Destiny that really controls the thunderbolts—and, besides, "it would look as if we were frightened." So the argument goes on, and all the familiar proofs from divine judgments, regularity of sun and season, from Homer and the poets, from the consensus of mankind and oracles, are produced and refuted there and then, while the gods listen, till it becomes doubtful whether they do exist. The Stoic breaks down and runs away. "What are we to do?" asks Zeus. Hermes quotes a comic poet in Hamlet's vein—"there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so"—and what does it matter, if a few men are persuaded by Damis? we still have the majority—"most of the Greeks and all the barbarians."[[36]]
In Zeus Cross-examined the process is carried further. Cyniscus questions Zeus, who is only too good-natured and falls into all the questioner's traps. He admits Destiny to be supreme, and gets entangled in a terrible net of problems about fore-knowledge, the value of sacrifice and of divination, divine wrath, sin and so forth, till he cries "You leave us nothing!—you seem to me to despise me, for sitting here and listening to you with a thunderbolt on my arm." "Hit me with it," says Cyniscus, "if it is so destined,—I shall have no quarrel with you for it, but with Clotho." At last Zeus rises and goes away and will answer no more. But perhaps, reflects Cyniscus, he has said enough, and it was "not destined for me to hear any more."[[37]] The reader feels that Zeus has said more than enough.
From the old gods of Greece, we naturally turn to the newcomers. When Zeus summoned the gods to discuss the question of atheism at Athens, a good many more came than understood Greek, and it was they who had the best seats as they were made of solid gold—Bendis, Anubis, Attis and Mithras for example. Elsewhere Momus (who is a divine Lucian) complains to Zeus about them—"that Mithras with his Persian robe and tiara, who can't talk Greek, nor even understand when one drinks to him"—what is he doing in heaven? And then the dog-faced Egyptian in linen—who is he to bark at the gods? "Of course,", says Zeus, "Egyptian religion—yes! but all the same there are hidden meanings, and the uninitiated must not laugh at them." Still Zeus is provoked into issuing a decree—on second thoughts, he would not put it to the vote of the divine assembly, for he felt sure he would be outvoted. The decree enacts that, whereas heaven is crowded with polyglot aliens, till there is a great rise in the price of nectar, and the old and true gods are being crowded out of their supremacy, a committee of seven gods shall be appointed to sit on claims; further, that each god shall attend to his own function, Athene shall not heal nor Asklepios give oracles, etc.; that philosophers shall talk no more nonsense; and that the statues of deified men shall be replaced by those of Zeus, Hera, etc., the said men to be buried in the usual way.[[38]]
Lucian's Alexander