More than one reference has been made to new gods and new oracles. Lucian in his Alexander gives a merciless account of how such shrines were started. He came into personal contact—indeed into conflict—with Alexander, the founder of the oracle of Abonoteichos, and his story is full of detail. The man was a quack of the vulgarest type, and, yet by means of a tame snake and some other simple contrivances, he imposed himself upon the faith of a community. His renown spread far and wide. By recognizing other oracles he secured their support. Men came to him even from Rome. Through one of these devotees, he actually sent an oracle to Marcus Aurelius among the Marcomanni and Quadi, bidding him throw two lions with spices into the Danube, and there should be a great victory. This was done, Lucian says; the lions swam ashore on the farther side, and the victory fell to the Germans.[[39]] Lucian himself trapped the prophet with some cunningly devised inquiries, which quite baffled god, prophet, snake and all. He also tried to detach an eminent adherent. Alexander realized what was going on, and Lucian got a guard of two soldiers from the governor of Cappadocia. Under their protection he went to see the prophet who had sent for him. The prophet, as he usually did with his followers, offered him his hand to kiss, and Lucian records with satisfaction that he bit the proffered hand and nearly lamed it. Thanks to his guard, he came away uninjured. Alexander, however, after this tried still more to compass his death, which is not surprising.[[40]] There is other evidence than Lucian's, though it is not unnaturally slight, for the existence of this remarkable impostor.
Lucian and Peregrinus
Lucian has one or two incidental references to Christians.[[41]] Alexander warned them, in company with the Epicureans, to keep away from his shrine. But we hear more of them in connexion with Proteus Peregrinus. Lucian is not greatly interested in them; he ridicules them as fools for being taken in by the impostor; for Peregrinus, he tells us, duped them with the greatest success. He became a prophet among them, a thiasarch, a ruler of the synagogue, everything in fact; he interpreted their books for them, and indeed wrote them a lot more; and they counted him a god and a lawgiver. "You know," Lucian explains, "they still worship that great man of theirs, who was put on a gibbet in Palestine, because he added this new mystery (teletèn) to human life." In his mocking way he gives some interesting evidence on the attention and care bestowed by Christians on those of their members who were thrown into prison. He details what was done by the foolish community for "their new Socrates" when Peregrinus was a prisoner. When he was released, Peregrinus started wandering again, living on Christian charity, till "he got into trouble with them, too,—he was caught eating forbidden meats."[[42]]
Lucian differs from Voltaire in having less purpose and no definite principles. He had no design to overthrow religion in favour of something else; it is merely that the absurdity of it provoked him, and he enjoyed saying aloud, and with all the vigour of reckless wit, that religious belief was silly. If the effect was scepticism, it was a scepticism founded, not on philosophy, but on the off-hand judgment of what is called common-sense. Hidden meanings and mysteries were to him nonsense. How little he was qualified to understand mysticism and religious enthusiasm, can be seen in his account of the self-immolation of Peregrinus on his pyre at the Olympian games[[43]]—perhaps the most insufficient thing he ever wrote, full of value as it is. Peregrinus was a wanderer among the religions of the age. Gellius—who often heard him at Athens, calls him a man gravis atque constans, and says he spoke much that was useful and honest. He quotes in his way a paragraph of a discourse on sin, which does not lack moral elevation.[[44]] To Lucian the man was a quack, an advertiser, a mountebank, who burnt himself to death merely to attract notice. Lucian says he witnessed the affair, and tells gaily how, among other jests, he imposed a pretty miracle of his own invention upon the credulous. He had taken no pains to understand the man—nor did he to understand either the religious temper in general, or the philosophic, or anything else. His habit of handling things easily and lightly did not help him to see what could not be taken in at a glance.
What then does Lucian make of human life? On this he says a great deal. His most characteristic invention perhaps is the visit that Charon pays to the upper world to see what it really is that the dead regret so much. It is indeed, as M. Croiset points out, a fine stroke of irony to take the opinion of a minister of Death upon Life. Charon has left his ferry boat and comes up to light. Hermes meets him and they pile up some mountains—Pelion on Ossa, and Parnassus on top, from the two summits of which they survey mankind—a charm from Homer removing Charon's difficulty of vision. He sees many famous people, such as Milo, Polycrates and Cyrus; and he overhears Croesus and Solon discussing happiness, while Hermes foretells their fates. He sees a varied scene, life full of confusion, cities like swarms of bees, where each has a sting and stings his neighbour, and some, like wasps, harass and plunder the rest; over them, like a cloud, hang hopes and fears and follies, pleasures and passions and hatreds. He sees the Fates spinning slender threads, soon cut, from which men hang with never a thought of how quickly death ends their dreams; and he compares them to bubbles, big and little inevitably broken. He would like to shout to them "to live with Death ever before their eyes"—why be so earnest about what they can never take away?—but Hermes tells him it would be useless. He is amazed at the absurdity of their burial rites, and he astonishes Hermes by quoting Homer on the subject. Last of all he witnesses a battle and cries out at the folly of it. "Such," he concludes, "is the life of miserable men—and not a word about Charon."[[45]]
In the same way and in the same spirit Menippus visits the Lower World, where he sees Minos judging the dead. Minos too seems to have been interested in literature, for he reduced the sentence upon Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, on the very proper ground of his generosity to authors. But the general picture has less humour. "We entered the Acherusian plain, and there we found the demi-gods, and the heroines, and the general throng of the dead in nations and tribes, some ancient and mouldering, 'strengthless heads' as Homer says, others fresh and holding together—Egyptians these in the main, so thoroughly good is their embalming. But to know one from another was no easy task; all become so much alike when the bones are bared; yet with pains and long scrutiny we began to recognize them. They lay pell-mell in undistinguishable heaps, with none of their earthly beauties left. With so many skeletons piled together, all as like as could be, eyes glaring ghastly and vacant, teeth gleaming bare, I knew not to tell Thersites from Nireus the fair.... For none of their ancient marks remained, and their bones were alike, uncertain, unlabelled, undistinguishable. When I saw all this, the life of man came before me under the likeness of a great pageant, arranged and marshalled by Chance," who assigns the parts and reassigns them as she pleases; and then the pageant ends, every one disrobes and all are alike. "Such is human life, as it seemed to me while I gazed."[[46]] Over and over again with every accent of irony the one moral is enforced—sometimes with sheer brutality as in the tract on Mourning.
Menippus asked Teiresias in the shades what was the best life. "He was a blind little old man, and pale, and had a weak voice." He said: "The life of ordinary people is best, and, wiser; cease from the folly of metaphysics, of inquiry into origins and purposes; spit upon those clever syllogisms and count all these things idle talk; and pursue one end alone, how you may well arrange the present and go on your way with a laugh for most things and no enthusiasms."[[47]] In fact, "the unexamined life" is the only one, as many a weary thinker has felt—if it were but possible.
Criticism of Lucian
Goethe's criticism on Heine may perhaps be applied to Lucian—"We cannot deny that he has many brilliant qualities, but he is wanting in love ... and thus he will never produce the effect which he ought."[[48]] Various views have been held of Lucian's contribution to the religious movement of the age; it has even been suggested that his Dialogues advanced the cause of Christianity. But when one reflects upon the tender hearts to be found in the literature of the century, it is difficult to think that Lucian can have had any effect on the mass of serious people, unless to quicken in them by repulsion the desire for something less terrible than a godless world of mockery and death, and the impulse to seek it in the ancestral faith of their fathers. He did not love men enough to understand their inmost mind. The instincts that drove men back upon the old religion were among the deepest in human nature, and of their strength Lucian had no idea. His admirers to-day speak of him as one whose question was always "Is it true?" We have seen that it was a question lightly asked and quickly answered. It is evident enough that his mockery of religion has some warrant in the follies and superstitions of his day. But such criticism as his, based upon knowledge incomplete and sympathy imperfect, is of little value. If a man's judgment upon religion is not to be external, he must have felt the need of a religion,—he must have had at some time the consciousness of imperative cravings and instincts which only a religion can satisfy. Such cravings are open to criticism, but men can neither be laughed out of them, nor indeed reasoned out of them; and however absurd a religion may seem, and however defective it may be, if it is still the only available satisfaction of the deepest needs of which men are conscious, it will hold its own, despite mockery and despite philosophy—as we shall see in the course of the chapter, though two more critics of religion remain to be noticed.