Part 14

Lucian’s treatment of Homer shows his most genial irony. In his preface he makes Homer’s Odysseus the guide and teacher of all historians of imaginary travels, Odysseus “who tells Alcinous and his court about winds in bondage, one-eyed men, cannibals and savages; also about animals with many heads, and transformations of his comrades wrought with drugs,” and with such marvels “humbugged the illiterate Phaeacians.”[341] But in the Island of the Blessed, Homer is the shade in whose talk Lucian most delights. Homer indeed is most affable in discussing all the literary problems of his epics, especially since he had just won a lawsuit in which Thersites accused him of libel, through the aid of his lawyer Odysseus.[342] Homer as a shade is still writing for when there was war in heaven, he produced a new epic about the battle of the shades of the heroes,[343] which Lucian unfortunately lost on the way home, and on Lucian’s departure Homer composed a commemorative epigram which described him as dear to the blessed gods.[344]

Lucian introduces Homer’s characters into his scenes. Achilles is one of the most honored heroes on the Island of the Blessed, serving as joint judge with Theseus at the Games of the Dead.[345] Helen is the leading lady in the court-room scene where Rhadamanthus had to decide whose wife she should be in Elysium. She has forgiven Stesichorus for saying she caused the Trojan War.[346] But she creates a new scandal by trying to desert Menelaus again in an elopement with Scintharus’ son.[347] Calypso on receiving Odysseus’ letter from Lucian’s hand weeps as she reads that he always regretted giving up his life with her, and then with true feminine curiosity asks how Penelope is looking now and whether she is as wise as Odysseus used to boast. Lucian made such replies as he thought would gratify her![348]

Minor episodes are reminiscent of the Odyssey. Rhadamanthus gives Lucian a talisman of mallow as Hermes gave Odysseus the moly.[349] To the Land of Dreams Lucian must erect four gates in place of Homer’s two, one of horn, one of ivory.[350] And the Singing Sirens that tried to beguile Odysseus have been metamorphosed into fair young ladies in long chitons which conceal the legs of she-asses.[351] But whatever changes are made in the source-material taken from the Odyssey, Lucian’s gentle raillery does not hide his admiration of great Homer. He gives the lie to the myth that Homer was blind.[352] And in the contest of the poets at the Games of the Dead in the Island of the Blessed, he ironically makes Hesiod the victor though he affirms that in truth Homer was by far the best of poets.

Lucian’s style in his _True History_ illustrates many of his own criteria for writing history. The short preface is in proportion to the short two-book _True History_. The narrative is concise, rapid, lucid and shows consistent progress, one event following naturally and quickly upon another without extravagant use of details. The few speeches are short, lively and suited to the character of the speaker. The descriptions are realistic and pointed. Extraordinary stories are told simply with an appearance of veracity.

A few typical elements of the Greek Romances appear in the _True History_. There is a suggestion of a court-room scene where Rhadamanthus judges Helen’s accomplices in escape. One letter is inserted, Odysseus’ to Calypso, for the purpose of ironic satire of Homeric characters. An inscription on bronze is discovered and a laudatory couplet in hexameter is composed and inscribed on stone. But love and religion, the commonest themes of the Greek Romances, are eliminated from this tale of marvellous adventures.

Satire though this story is, it ranks easily first among imaginary voyagings both in fantasy and style. In his narration Lucian pours all his spirit, his liveliness of observation, his brilliant imagination, his vivacious wit. His own enjoyment in his facile, marvellous inventions is contagious. As he rushes his breathless readers over the earth, through the air, under the sea, as he introduces us to innumerable natural phenomena and monstrous beings, he convinces us that this world of fantasy is a real world. He has made many others wish to record similar travels, for the _True History_ is the model of all those imaginary voyages with which Rabelais, Cyrano de Bergerac, Swift, Voltaire and others amused their contemporaries. No work of Lucian found so many imitators as this.[353]

The readers of Lucian’s _True History_ on finishing it feel that they have drunk with him more from his eternal springs of joy and laughter than from his irony, in fact that his irony gives only a few drops of angostura bitters to the heady cocktails of his wit. And at the end the readers of this romance are ready today to salute the shade of Lucian as Andrew Lang did:[354]

“In what bower, oh Lucian, of your rediscovered Islands Fortunate are you now reclining; the delight of the fair, the learned, the witty, and the brave?...

“There, among the vines that bear twelve times in the year, more excellent than all the vineyards of Touraine, while the song-birds bring you flowers from vales enchanted, and the shapes of the Blessed come and go, beautiful in wind-woven raiment of sunset hues; there, in a land that knows not age, nor winter, midnight, nor autumn, nor noon, where the silver twilight of summer-dawn is perennial, where youth does not wax spectre-pale and die; there, my Lucian, you are crowned the Prince of the Paradise of Mirth.”

It may seem anti-climax to turn from the _True History_ to Lucian’s other romance, the _Metamorphoses_, for the second exists only in an epitome by another hand. Since however this epitome is included in all the best manuscripts and has been proved conclusively by B. E. Perry to be a condensation of an original _Metamorphoses_ by Lucian on the basis of spirit, vocabulary, syntax and phraseology, we must try to form some idea of this other romance.[355]

As the _True History_ is a satire of travellers’ tales, this epitome, _Lucius or Ass_, is primarily a satire of magic and magic rites. Just as in the _True History_ not only epic poets and historians were parodied, but philosophers came in for their share of ironic comment, so in _Lucius or Ass_ satire is directed not merely against magicians, but also against corrupt priests and frail women. The satire is of the earth, earthy, very near the folk-story from which it may have originated. _Lucius or Ass_ is Everyman in his credulity, gullibility and bestiality. The only heroines in his murky world are a witch-woman and a corrupt maid. This epitome has two great values: it gives us some idea of Lucian’s lost _Metamorphoses_, and hence affords a basis for comparison with Apuleius’ great Latin novel _Metamorphoses_. It will prove convenient I hope, to have a rather full outline presented here in English for purposes of discussion and comparison. This Greek _Lucius or Ass_ like the _True History_ is written in the first person, but Lucius of Patrae, the hero, not the author, is the narrator. In my brief résumé, I have found it clearer to write Lucius’ account in the third person.

Once upon a time on a journey to Thessaly Lucius inquires of some fellow travellers whereabouts in the city of Hypata a man named Hipparchus lives, for he is carrying a letter of introduction to him. On his arrival he stays at Hipparchus’ house. Only his wife and a maid Palaestra lived with him. On his host’s inquiring the object of his travels, Lucius says he is on his way to Larissa. He conceals the fact that he is searching for women who deal in magic. While walking around the city, he meets an old friend of his mother named Abroea, who warns him against the wife of Hipparchus because she is a witch. Lucius, delighted with this news, returns to Hipparchus’ house and in the absence of his host and hostess makes love to Palaestra with the purpose of persuading the maid to acquaint him with her mistress’ magic powers. At the close of a night of revel, Lucius persuades Palaestra to show him her mistress at her magic rites.

A few nights later Palaestra fulfills her promise by leading Lucius at dead of night to the door of her lady’s bedroom where through a crack he can watch her proceedings. She mutters to her lamp. She strips. She rubs her naked body with ointment from a little box. Gradually she is transformed into an owl and flies away to her lover. Lucius then prevails upon Palaestra to let him attempt the same transformation. By ill luck the maid brings him the wrong box of ointment so that he is changed not into a bird, but into an ass. Palaestra soothingly assures him that the antidote is simple, just a meal of roses, and if her dearest will pass the night quietly in the stable, in the morning she will gather the flowers and recover her Lucius.

But this simple plan gangs a-gley, for in the night robbers raid the house, secure much booty and to carry it steal also the horse and the real ass of Hipparchus and Lucius. So the man-ass, heavily burdened, is driven to the robbers’ home. One old woman is their care-taker. Several days later the robbers return from one of their forays bringing in as booty a young woman whom they have kidnapped. Later on in the absence of the brigands the girl tries to escape riding on the ass, but both are captured by the robbers. On their return, they find that the old woman in terror has hanged herself.

The robbers plan a dreadful punishment for the culprits: to kill the ass, disembowel him and sew the girl up alive in his paunch to die by slow torture. But before they achieve this horror, a company of soldiers arrives, captures the whole band and carries them off to a magistrate. They had been conducted to the robbers’ den by the fiancé of the girl. He now escorts her home on the honored ass Lucius.

After the wedding of the happy pair, the bride persuades her father to reward the ass her benefactor so he is to be turned out into pasture with the she-asses. But the servant to whom the care of the ass is intrusted wickedly takes him home and makes him labor first in a mill, then carrying fagots on a steep mountain, where a cruel driver mistreats him. In the midst of his sufferings, news comes that the bride and groom have been drowned on the seashore. So since their new masters are dead, the servants all flee, taking the ass with them. They sell him in a city of Macedonia to a eunuch priest of a Syrian goddess. In his life with the priests, Lucius is so horrified by their impure practices that he brays loudly in protest. The noise brings up some passing peasants who go off to tell the village the obscenities they have witnessed. The priests have to flee for their lives, but first they nearly kill the ass by beating him for his braying.

Lucius is in danger of his life again at the house of a rich man where they stop. For the servants who have lost the meat of a wild ass which was to be the dinner (the dogs stole it), plot to kill Lucius and serve up his flesh. He saves himself only by running away from the cook. The priests are now arrested because they are found in possession of a golden phiale which they stole from a temple, and the ass is sold to a baker. In the mill Lucius is so worn down by the hard work that he is sold as worthless to an old gardener. On the way to town, this gardener has a quarrel with a soldier and nearly kills him so the gardener and the ass have to go into hiding. Stupid Lucius betrays their hiding place by putting his head out of an upper window to see what is going on. Captured he is given to the soldier, but he soon sells him to a cook. Now Lucius fattens on good food by surreptitious filching of choice portions which the cook and his brother had reserved for themselves. By a little detective work the brothers discover that the thief is the ass. They show him eating men’s food to their master, who promptly buys the ass, has a servant train him to act like a man (easy lessons for Lucius!) and exhibits him for admission fees. A woman buys a night with him and has intercourse with him.

Then his master purposes to exhibit him couched with a woman (a condemned criminal) at a public festival. The scene is all set when some one comes up to Lucius and the woman at the banquet table bearing, among other flowers, roses. At last the ass has his meal of restorative flowers and becomes once more Lucius. He appeals to the magistrate for protection against those who cry he is a magician and must be killed. He informs the governor that his name is Lucius, he has a brother Gaius, both have the same two other names; that he himself is a writer of stories and his brother is an elegiac poet and a good prophet. The magistrate believing his story gives him hospitality. Lucius’ brother comes to take him home, but first Lucius thought it fitting to call on the woman who had given him her love when he was an ass. He is chagrined to find that as a man he has no charm for her! He sails with his brother to Patrae and there sacrifices to the gods who have saved him.

No other work attributed to Lucian has aroused greater controversy than _Lucius or Ass_. All the literature about it is reviewed in Ben Edwin Perry’s epoch-making book _The Metamorphoses Ascribed to Lucius of Patrae_, which conclusively proves that _Lucius or Ass_ is an epitome of Lucian’s _Metamorphoses_, made by another writer. Perry analyzes Photius’ description of the lost Greek _Metamorphoses_ with its theory of the three versions of the ass-story,[356] and proves that Photius’ one mistake was in thinking that the name Lucius of Patrae referred to an author of a third _Metamorphoses_, which was probably the original of Lucian’s and Apuleius’ stories: Lucius of Patrae in _Lucius or Ass_ is the hero-narrator, not the author. Perry then with convincing logic reconstructs the probable content of the _Metamorphoses_ of which _Lucius or Ass_ is an epitome and with the same irrefutable reasoning discusses the nature of this original Greek novel. The basis of it was a folk-lore story of a transformation. The style was plain, the narrative rapid, the tone ironic. The narrator keeps the character of the hero of the adventures and never identifies himself with the author. The character of the hero is that of “an unique clown” with an absorbing and credulous interest in strange phenomena especially transformations. The final proof that the _Metamorphoses_ was satirical is “the simple fact that the _Eselmensch_ is a litterateur and an investigator of marvels.” “The generic title shows that the author regarded his story as a kind of commentary on the subject of metamorphoses, and writers who interested themselves in such things.”[357]

This author, “second century Atticist, humorist, and satirist,” can be none other than Lucian himself, for the Greek _Metamorphoses_ is Lucianic in type, is a relaxation from serious work as is the _True History_; it shows the same satire of credulity that other works of Lucian (for example the _Alexander_) did; and it is colored by the same ironic humor. The epitome contains a striking Lucianic element although this is overlaid by philological errors. Perry also analyzes resemblances and differences between the reconstructed _Metamorphoses_ of Lucian and Apuleius’ novel, but this discussion I shall reserve for the next chapter.

_Lucius or Ass_ is valuable in proving that Lucian wrote not one but two romances; that in both he developed a new type of romance, the satiric; that in each he maintained the same great qualities which mark his other writings: the quest for truth, intolerance of fraud and credulity; keen observation and realistic description; condensation, rapidity, clarity; dramatic irony. The two romances also show more than any other of Lucian’s writings his brilliant imaginative powers.

A postscript to this discussion of Lucian’s satiric romances may well include an account of a novel in miniature which appears in one of his dialogues. Writing in the second century he was of course thoroughly familiar with the conventional type of the Greek romance. Though this statement might be accepted _a priori_, certain evidence of it is furnished by his insertion in his _Toxaris_ of an epitome of a Scythian romance of love and adventure. The _Toxaris_ is a Platonic dialogue written probably about A.D. 165, in Lucian’s period of transition from purely rhetorical writings to those of moral or religious satire.[358] In it a Greek Mnesippus and a Scythian Toxaris discuss friendship each giving five illustrations of famous instances in his own country. The longest one related is a Scythian romance told by Toxaris.[359] Rostovtzeff has shown that Lucian probably had in his hands a Greek romance with a Scythian background, for papyri fragments furnish incontrovertible evidence of a similar Scythian romance in Greek dating from the second century A.D.[360]

The story as told by Lucian is melodramatic. It relates the devotion of three Scythians, Macentes, Lonchates and Arsacomas, who had pledged to each other friendship for life and death in the old Scythian way of shedding some of their blood into a cup and quaffing it together. Now Arsacomas, who had gone on a mission to Leucanor, king of Bosporus, there fell madly in love at first sight with his daughter Mazaea. At a banquet when suitors were bidding for the hand of the princess with proud lists of their possessions, all Arsacomas could boast of was his two fair, brave friends. The Bosporans laughed him to scorn and the girl was awarded to Adyrmachus, who the next day was to convey his bride to the land of the Machlyans.

The outraged Arsacomas rushing home told his friends how he and their friendship had been ridiculed and the three as one man planned immediate vengeance. Lonchates promised to bring Arsacomas the head of Leucanor. Macentes was to kidnap the bride. Arsacomas was to stay at home and raise an army on the ox-hide for the war that would surely follow. All proceeded according to schedule. Arsacomas slew an ox, cut up and cooked the meat, spread the hide on the ground and sat on it with his hands held behind him. This is the greatest appeal for aid possible for a man who desires to secure help for vengeance. His friends and kinsmen coming accepted each a portion of the meat, set right foot on the hide and pledged as much aid as he could. So a goodly army was raised.

Lonchates went to Bosporus, pretending he had come as a friend to offer aid against Arsacomas’ planned invasion. King Leucanor alarmed by the news of an imminent Scythian attack was lured alone into the temple of Ares to take a secret oath of friendship with Lonchates. There Lonchates murdered him, cut off his head and escaped with it under his cloak before the guards outside knew what had happened.

Macentes too used subterfuge, for hurrying to the Machlyans he reported King Leucanor’s death, said falsely that the Bosporans called Adyrmachus as his son-in-law to be their king, and offered while Adyrmachus rode at full speed to them, to escort after him his bride Mazaea in the wagon-train, for she, he claimed, was a relative of his own. This plan worked so smoothly that Macentes, when night came on, took Mazaea from her carriage, put her on his horse with himself and galloped off with her to Arsacomas. The horse dropped dead at the end but the kidnapped bride was delivered. Then all three friends united in the battle against Adyrmachus, slew him on the field, and by nightfall had won a victory. The next day peace was negotiated. Such are the deeds of daring which Scythians perform for their friends.

In the papyrus fragments a lady in distress is weeping and lamenting in the tent of a general Eubiotus. He clears his tent because of her woe, hears her declare that she wishes she had never seen Eraseinus (apparently her lover) and prevents her attempted suicide by wresting her sword from her. She then tells Eubiotus that she is not the Amazon Themisto though she is so disguised, but a Greek girl Calligone. Here the fragments end. The only points in common with Lucian’s story are the geographical background and the name Eubiotus (in Lucian the illegitimate brother of Leucanor and an aspirant to his throne),[361] but both stories as Rostovtzeff points out look to history for characters and setting as the Ninus Romance did.

In the _Toxaris_ the coloring is only quasi-historical through the mention of names of kings and their lineage: the story is not history, but an historical novel. And the connection of the Scythians with the Sarmatians, the Alans, the Maeotians and the Bosporans corresponds only in part with their actual relations at the time. The Sauromatians are a relic of the past; the Alans represent actual conditions in the time of the author. The geographical coloring is likewise only partly historical. The picture of the Scythians even with its tendency to idealization represents the people fairly. They are nomadic, poor, with a free democratic political organization without kings, and they are warriors. Their gods are the sword and the wind. Their customs are primitive. They make war on their neighbors and have special relations with the Greek states on the Bosporus and Olbia and visit those on the south side of the Black Sea.

Lucian in composing his _Toxaris_ probably had in hand a Greek romance with a Scythian background, containing certain historical and ethnographical material. This he worked over making his story represent what his public then knew or could know of the Scythians and their neighbors. The discovery of the papyrus fragments of the Calligone novel confirms this thesis.[362] The type of the _Toxaris_ story and the papyrus story is the same. Both were love romances, though in each the erotic motif is subordinated to adventure. The interest of the age in the unfamiliar, the strange is manifested in the selection of Scythia for the background.

Lucian’s narrative is intensely exciting as well as picturesque and although it is only a miniature story it gives us an idea of another love romance of a wild type with a king’s head cut off for vengeance, a bride kidnapped on horseback and an army raised on the ox-hide. The whole _Toxaris_ indeed, as Croiset remarked,[363] with its ten anecdotes furnishes rich examples of Lucian’s art of narration.

VIII _A COMPARISON OF THE GREEK ROMANCES AND APULEIUS’_ METAMORPHOSES

Apuleius, the author of the greatest ancient novel extant, might, if he had chosen, written his book in Greek instead of Latin. Though he was born in North Africa (at Madaura) he was educated in Athens as well as Roman Carthage and Rome, indeed was completely bi-lingual. The letter from his wife produced as evidence in his trial for having won her affections by magic was in Greek. And private correspondence demonstrates fluency in the language even more than does the fact of his translation of a work by Plato and his Latin style richly colored by Greek syntax and vocabulary.