Timon is a very amusing and witty dialogue. The misanthrope, once wealthy, has become a poor farm-labourer, and reproaches Zeus for his indifference to the injustice of man. Zeus declares that the noisy disputes in Attica have so disgusted him that he has not been there for a long time (9). He tells Hermes to conduct Plutus to visit Timon, and see what can be done to help him. Plutus, who at first refuses to go, is persuaded after a long conversation with Hermes, and Timon is found by them digging in his field (31). Poverty is unwilling to resign her votary to wealth; and Timon himself is with difficulty persuaded to turn up with his mattock a crock of gold coins. Now that he has once more become rich, his former flatterers come cringing with their congratulations and respects, but they are all driven off with broken heads or pelted with stones. Between this dialogue and the Plutus of Aristophanes there are many close resemblances.
Hermotimus (pp. 739-831) is one of the longer dialogues, Hermotimus, a student of the Stoic philosophy for twenty years (2), and Lucian (Lycinus) being the interlocutors. The long time—forty years at the least—required for climbing up to the temple of virtue and happiness, and the short span of life, if any, left for the enjoyment of it, are discussed. That the greatest philosophers do not always attain perfect indifference, the Stoic ultimatum, is shown by the anecdote of one who dragged his pupil into court to make him pay his fee (9), and again by a violent quarrel with another at a banquet (11). Virtue is compared to a city with just and good and contented inhabitants; but so many offer themselves as guides to the right road to virtue that the inquirer is bewildered (26). What is truth, and who are the right teachers of it? The question is argued at length, and illustrated by a peculiar custom of watching the pairs of athletes and setting aside the reserved combatant (πάρεδρος) at the Olympian games by the marks on the ballots (40-43). This, it is argued, cannot be done till all the ballots have been examined; so a man cannot select the right way till he has tried all the ways to virtue. But to know the doctrines of all the sects is impossible in the term of a life (49). To take a taste of each, like trying a sample of wine, will not do, because the doctrines taught are not, like the crock of wine, the same throughout, but vary or advance day by day (59). A suggestion is made (68) that the searcher after truth should begin by taking lessons in the science of discrimination, so as to be a good judge of truth before testing the rival claims. But who is a good teacher of such a science? (70). The general conclusion is that philosophy is not worth the pursuit. “If I ever again,” says Hermotimus, “meet a philosopher on the road, I will shun him, as I would a mad dog.”
The Anacharsis is a dialogue between Solon and the Scythian philosopher, who has come to Athens to learn the nature of the Greek institutions. Seeing the young men performing athletic exercises in the Lyceum, he expresses his surprise at such a waste of energy. This gives Socrates an opportunity of descanting at length on training as a discipline, and emulation as a motive for excelling. Love of glory, Solon says, is one of the chief goods in life. The argument is rather ingenious and well put; the style reminds us of the minor essays of Xenophon.
The Alexander or False Prophet is the subject of a separate article (see [Alexander the Paphlagonian]).
These are the chief of Lucian’s works. Many others, e.g. Prometheus, Menippus, Life of Demonax, Toxaris, Zeus Tragoedus, The Dream or the Cock, Icaromenippus (an amusing satire on the physical philosophers), are of considerable literary value.
(F. A. P.)
Bibliography.—Editio princeps (Florence, 1496); valuable editions with notes by T. Hemsterhuis and J. F. Reitz (1743-1746, with Lexicon Lucianeum by C. C. Reitz) and J. T. Lehmann (1822-1831). Editions of the text by C. Jacobitz (1886-1888) and J. Sommerbrodt (1886-1899). The scholia have been edited by H. Rabe in the Teubner series (1906). There are numerous editions of separate portions of Lucian’s works and translations in most European languages; amongst the latter may be mentioned the German version by C. M. Wieland (1788), with valuable notes and commentaries: English; one by several hands (1711), for which Dryden had previously written an unsatisfactory life of the author, by T. Francklin (1780) and W. Tooke (1820): and French; of The Ass, by P. L. Courier, with full bibliography by A. J. Pons (1887), and of the complete works by E. Talbot (1866) and Belin de Ballu (1789; revised ed. by L. Humbert, 1896). A complete modern English translation, racy and colloquial, appeared in 1905, The Works of Lucian of Samosata, by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler. On Lucian generally, the best work is M. Croiset’s Essai sur la vie et les œuvres de Lucien (1882); see also E. Egger, “Parallèle de Lucien et Voltaire,” in Mémoires de littérature ancienne (1862); C. Martha, Les Moralistes sous l’empire romain (1866); H. W. L. Hime, Lucian, the Syrian Satirist (1900); Sir R. C. Jebb, Essays and Addresses (1907); “Lucian,” by W. L. Collins in Blackwood’s Ancient Classics for English Readers; the Prolegomena to editions of select works with notes by Sommerbrodt; and the exhaustive bibliography of the earlier literature in Engelmann, Scriptores Graeci (1880). On some special questions see E. Rohde, Über Lucians Schrift Δούκιος ἤ Ὄνος (Leipzig, 1869); C. Buerger, De Lucio Patrensi (Berlin, 1887); J. Bernays, Lucian und die Kyniker (Berlin, 1879); C. G. Jacob, Characteristik Lucians von Samosata (Hamburg, 1832); C. F. Hermann, Charakteristik Lucians (Göttingen, 1849); P. M. Bolderman, Studia Lucianea (Leiden, 1893); R. Helm, “Lucian und die Philosophenschulen,” in Neue Jahrb. f. das klassische Altertum (1901), pp. 188, 263, 367.
[1] In the Alexander (25) we are told that the province of Pontus, due north of Syria, was “full of Christians.”
[2] Philopatris, 12, ὑψιμέδοντα Θεὸν μέγαν ἄμβροτον οὐρανίωνα, υἱὸν Πατρὸς, Πνεῦμα ἐκ πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον, ἔν ἐκ τριῶν καὶ ἐξ ἑνὸς τρία, a passage which bears on the controverted procession “a Patre Filioque.”