Lucian of Samosata

“ Instead of garlands, the nightingales and the other song-birds, gather flowers in their bills from the fields hard by and drop them down like snow, flying overhead and singing. Furthermore, the way they are scented is that thick clouds draw up myrrh from the springs and the river, stand over the table and under the gentle manipulation of the winds rain down a delicate dew. At the board they pass their time with poetry and song. For the most part they sing the epics of Homer, who is there himself and shares the revelry, lying at table in the place above Odysseus. ”

“ But after some pause, the old man said, What are ye, you strangers? any of the sea spirits? or miserable men like unto us? for we that are men by nature, born and bred in the earth, are now sea-dwellers, and swim up and down within the Continent of this whale, and know not certainly what to think of ourselves: we are like to men that be dead, and yet believe ourselves to be alive. ”

“ Around the city runs a river of the finest myrrh, a hundred royal cubits wide and five deep, so that one can swim in it comfortably. For baths they have large houses of glass, warmed by burning cinnamon; instead of water there is hot dew in the tubs. For clothing they use delicate purple spider-webs. As for themselves, they have no bodies, but are intangible and fleshless, with only shape and figure. Incorporeal as they are, they nevertheless live and move and think and talk. In a word, it would appear that their naked souls go about in the semblance of their bodies. ”

“ The Heaven of Heavens is now your Habitation; and you may far better benefit your Father by benign Influence, than by keeping Sheep. Your Country too may experience your favourable Aspect. Milk and Cheese must yield Place for the future to Nectar and Ambrosia; the Care of Cattle to the Office of waiting on your enamour’d Jupiter: And what is more than all I have told you; your Beauty, upon which Time, ere long, wou’d have laid his shrivelling Hand, shall bloom for ever, refined to brighter Radiance. ”

“ Being delighted with this smell, and hoping for better fortunes after our long labours, we got within a little of the isle, in which we found many havens on every side, not subject to overflowing, and yet of great capacity, and rivers of clear water emptying themselves easily into the sea, with meadows and herbs and musical birds, some singing upon the shore, and many upon the branches of trees, a still and gentle air compassing the whole country. ”

“ Near us, to port, was Cork, where the men were going, a city built on a great round cork. At a distance and more to starboard were five islands, very large and high, from which much fire was blazing up. Dead ahead was one that was flat and low-lying, not less than five hundred furlongs off. When at length we were near it, a wonderful breeze blew about us, sweet and fragrant, like the one that, on the word of the historian Herodotus, [3] breathes perfume from Araby the blest. ”

“ Neither is there any night with them, nor indeed clear day: but like the twilight towards morning before the sun be up, such a kind of light do they live in. They know but one season of the year which is the spring, and feel no other wind but Zephyrus. The region flourisheth with all sorts of flowers, Homer. and with all pleasing plants fit for shade: their vines bear fruit twelve times a year, every month once: their pomegranate-trees, their apple-trees, and their other fruit, they say, bear thirteen times in the year, for in the month called Minous they bear twice. ”

“ Nobody grows old, but stays the same age as on coming there. Again, it is neither night among them nor yet very bright day, but the light which is on the country is like the gray morning toward dawn, when the sun has not yet risen. ”

“ He set the world in the dry light of truth, and since the vanity of mankind is a constant factor throughout the ages, there is scarce a page of Lucian's writing that wears the faded air of antiquity. His personages are as familiar to-day as they were in the second century, because, with his pitiless determination to unravel the tangled skein of human folly, he never blinded his vision to their true qualities. ”

“ Are you sea-gods, or only unlucky men like us? As for ourselves, though we are men and were bred on land, we have become sea-creatures and swim about with this beast which encompasses us, not even knowing for certain what our condition is—we suppose that we are dead, but trust that we are alive.” To this I replied: “We too are men, my good sir—newcomers, who were swallowed up yesterday, ship and all: and we set out just now with the notion of finding out how things were in the forest, for it appeared to be very large and thick. ”

“ Exquisite Creature, that thrillest every Particle of my Frame, have you ne’er heard of Jupiter, or, seen on Gargarus the celebrated Temple, where Art has labour’d Nature’s radiant Product to such a Curiosity? ”

“ Then they erected a trophy for a monument of this island fight, and fastened one of the enemy's islands with a stake upon the head of the whale. That night they lodged close by the beast, casting their cables about him, and anchored near unto him: their anchors are huge and great, made of glass, but of a wonderful strength. The morrow after, when they had sacrificed upon the top of the whale, and there buried their dead, they sailed away, with great triumph and songs of victory. And this was the manner of the islands' fight. ”

“ The coldness with which Jupiter from this Time return’d Juno’s Warmth, was certainly not to be endur’d by an honest Wife, who rigorously exacts the Lawful Tithe of her Yokefellow’s Blood. This Goddess, whose Character is not Patience, thus vents the racking Anguish of her Soul. ”

“ On the twelfth we perceived just in time that if someone did not shore his jaws open when he yawned, so that he could not close them again, we stood a chance of being shut up in the dead whale and dying there ourselves. At the last moment, then, we propped the mouth open with great beams and made our boat ready, putting aboard all the water we could and the other provisions. Our sailing-master was to be Scintharus. ”

“ If The True History fails as a parody, that is because we care not a jot for Ctesias, Iambulus and the rest, at whom the satire is levelled. Its fascination, in fact, is due to those same qualities which, in others, its author affected to despise. The facile variety of its invention can scarce be matched in literature, and the lies are told with so delightful an unconcern, that belief is never difficult. Nor does the narrative ever flag. It ends at the same high level of falsehood in which it has its beginning. ”

“ When we had returned from the pursuit we set up two trophies, one on the spider-webs for the infantry battle and the other, for the sky battle, on the clouds. We were just doing this when the scouts reported that the Cloud-centaurs, who should have come to Phaethon’s aid before the battle, were advancing on us. Before we knew it, they were coming on in plain sight, a most unparalleled spectacle, being a combination of winged horses and men. In size the men were as large as the Colossus of Rhodes from the waist up, and the horses were as large as a great merchantman. ”

“ No sooner is the preface concerning lying at an end than Lucian lapses into pure narrative. A wealth of minutely considered detail gives an air of reality to the most monstrous impossibility; the smallest facts are explicitly divulged; the remote accessories described with order and impressiveness; so that the wildest invention appears plausible, even inevitable, and you know that you are in company with the very genius of falsehood. Nor does this wild diversity of invention suggest romance. ”

“ In the interval, while I was living on the moon, I observed some strange and wonderful things that I wish to speak of. In the first place there is the fact that they are not born of women but of men: they marry men and do not even know the word woman at all! Up to the age of twenty-five each is a wife, and thereafter a husband. They carry their children in the calf of the leg instead of the belly. When conception takes place the calf begins to swell. In course of time they cut it open and deliver the child dead, and then they bring it to life by putting it in the wind with its mouth open. ”

“ Such is the work which, itself a masterpiece, has been a pattern and an exemplar unto others. If Utopia and its unnumbered rivals derive from Plato, there is not a single Imaginary Traveller that is not modelled upon Lucian. The True History was, in effect, the beginning of a new literature. Not only was its framework borrowed, not only was its habit of fantastic names piously imitated, but the disciples, like the master, turned their voyages to the purpose of satire. ”

“ After stopping five days on the island we started out on the sixth, with a bit of breeze propelling us over a rippling sea. On the eighth day, by which time we were no longer sailing through the milk but in briny blue water, we came in sight of many men running over the sea, like us in every way, both in shape and in size, except only their feet, which were of cork: that is why they were called Corkfeet, if I am not mistaken. ”

“ And yet by an irony it was this very love of truth which suggested The True History, that enduring masterpiece of phantasy. Setting out to prove his hatred of other men's lies, he shows himself on the road the greatest liar of them all. "The father and founder of all this foolery was Homer's Ulysses": thus he writes in his Preface, confessing that in a spirit of emulation he "turned his style to publish untruths," but with an honester mind, "for this one thing I confidently pronounce for a truth, that I lie." ”

“ Then we travelled all the country over, which now was desert, and dwelt there afterwards without fear of enemies, spending the time in exercise of the body and in hunting, in planting vineyards and gathering fruit of the trees, like such men as live delicately and have the world at will, in a spacious and unavoidable prison. ”

“ Over each man’s rump grows a long cabbage-leaf, like a tail, which is always green and does not break if he falls on his back. Their noses run honey of great pungency, and when they work or take exercise, they sweat milk all over their bodies, of such quality that cheese can actually be made from it by dripping in a little of the honey. ”

“ When a man grows old, he does not die, but is dissolved like smoke and turns into air. They all eat the same food; they light a fire and cook frogs on the coals—they have quantities of frogs, that fly about in the air—and while they are cooking, they sit about them as if at table, snuff up the rising smoke and gorge themselves. ”

“ And yet with all his irony, all his scorn, Lucian has ever a side-glance at literature. The verse of Homer is constantly upon his lips, and it is from Homer that the Gods take their ditties in the Elysian fields. Again, when the traveller visits the city of Nephelococcygia, it is but to think upon the poet Aristophanes, "how wise a man he was, and how true a reporter, and how little cause there is to question his fidelity for what he hath written." ”

“ BOOK II From that time on, as I could no longer endure the life in the whale and was discontented with the loneliness, I sought a way of escape. First we determined to dig through the right side and make off, and we made a beginning and fell to cutting in. But when we had advanced some five furlongs without getting anywhere, we left off digging and decided to set the forest afire, thinking that in this way the whale could be killed, and in that case our escape would be easy. ”

“ This city is seated in the air between the Pleiades and the Hyades, somewhat lower than the Zodiac, and arriving there, not a man was to be seen, but lights in great numbers running to and fro, which were employed, some in the market place, and some about the haven, of which many were little, and as a man may say, but poor things; some again were great and mighty, exceeding glorious and resplendent, and there were places of receipt for them all; every one had his name as well as men ”

“ This time sing me, O Muse, of the shades of the
heroes in battle!
But to return—they cooked beans, [13] as is their custom when they are successful at war, had a feast in honour of the victory and made a great holiday. Pythagoras was the only one who did not take part in it; he sat by himself and went dinnerless because he detested beans. Six months had passed and it was about the middle of the seventh when sedition arose. Cinyras, the son of Scintharus, a tall and handsome lad, had long been in love with Helen, and it was no secret that she herself was madly enamoured of the boy. ”

“ It is a commonplace of criticism that Lucian was the first of the moderns, but in truth he is near to our time because of all the ancients he is nearest to his own. With Petronius he shared the discovery that there is material for literature in the debased and various life of every day—that to the seeing eye the individual is more wonderful in colour and complexity than the severely simple abstraction of the poets. ”

“ When he had come to a conclusion, sentence was given that for being inquisitive and not staying at home we should be tried after death, but that for the present we might stop a definite time in the island and share the life of the heroes, and then we must be off. They set the length of our stay at not more than seven months.
Thereupon our garlands fell away of themselves, and we were set free and taken into the city and to the table of the blessed. The city itself is all of gold and the wall around it of emerald. ”

“ Indeed, he was Scepticism in human shape, but as the weapon of his destruction is always raillery, as he never takes either himself or his victims with exaggerated seriousness, you may delight in his attack, even though you care not which side wins the battle. ”

“ As far as Sicily we had a fortunate voyage, but there we were caught by a violent wind and driven out into the ocean for three days, where we fell in with the whale, were swallowed up crew and all, and only we two survived, the others being killed. We buried our comrades, built a temple to Poseidon and live this sort of life, raising vegetables and eating fish and nuts. As you see, the forest is extensive, and besides, it contains many grape-vines, which yield the sweetest of wine. ”