Satires by Lucian

First transcribed: second century c.e.; includes Nekrikoi dialogoi (Dialogues of the Dead, 1684); Enalioi dialogoi (Dialogues of the Sea Gods, 1684); Theōn dialogoi (Dialogues of the Gods, 1684); Hetairikoi dialogoi (Dialogues of the Courtesans, 1684)

Type of work: Essays

The Work:

Although Lucian was but one of many satirists who attacked the excesses of the Roman empire in the second century, he has the distinction of being one of the most influential of all practitioners of the genre. His works often seem motivated by personal animosity and inspired by self-serving principles, but he rises above invective to achieve a vision of humanity that inspired countless writers who have followed him. Best known for his development of the satiric dialogue, in which characters reveal their own deficiencies as they defend themselves, Lucian managed to make from the many foibles and hypocrisies of his own day material for timeless analysis of humankind’s greatest follies.

Condemned by Christian writers (and ultimately by the Catholic Church) as an atheist for his scathing portrait of the deities in Dialogues of the Gods, he fell into disrepute in the West for more than a millennium; however, with the rediscovery of classical writings in the Renaissance, Lucian’s reputation grew rapidly, and by the sixteenth century he was one of the most widely read and influential satirists of all time.

The list of literary figures indebted to Lucian is long and contains the names of some of the most distinguished writers in the European tradition. Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More fell under his spell. The rhetoricians and the dramatists of Renaissance England found his works compelling subjects for study. His satires, especially his work about Timon the misanthrope, inspired a number of works during this period, including plays by Ben Jonson, Francis Beaumont, and John Fletcher. William Shakespeare borrowed from Lucian not only for Timon of Athens (pr. c. 1607-1608, pb. 1623) but also for the famous graveyard scene in Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (pr. c. 1600-1601, pb. 1603). John Dryden found him a useful mentor and wrote a brief biography for an edition of Lucian produced at the end of the seventeenth century. Lucian’s True History is the model for Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), the greatest of all English satires. In France, both François Rabelais in the sixteenth century and Voltaire two centuries later found inspiration in his writings. Prolific and caustic, Lucian fulfills admirably the role of the satirist, using humor and invective to promote social change.

The satires of Lucian are directed not so much against social customs and manners as against the ideological attitudes of men in the Roman empire. Of a conservative spirit, Lucian wanted to recall people to old ethical standards and values by exposing the shams and affectations of religion, philosophy, pedantry, and superstition. So vehement does he become in his attacks, it often seems that he is condemning not only the abuse of the thing but also the thing itself, particularly in the satires on philosophy.

The Dialogues of the Gods is composed of twenty-six conversations among the Olympian deities. Their own words condemn them, for in their bickering, gossip, complaints, and flatteries they show themselves to be as prideful and ignorant as human beings, and as much enslaved by their ignoble passions, so that they are not at all worthy of the awe and reverence that the mortals on earth accord them. Hera nags at Zeus because of his myriad love affairs; Asclepius and Herakles argue over precedence in seating at the dinner table; Hermes whines over all his work as messenger to the gods; Zeus scolds Helius for giving the sun-chariot to Phaeton; Apollo and Hermes chat about the similarity of the twins Castor and Pollux; Ares whispers sedition behind Zeus’s back; the Judgment of Paris is enacted. Each vignette develops its own little drama, and through them Olympus is lowered to the level of the common marketplace.

The Dialogues of the Sea Gods follows the same pattern. Poseidon comforts his son Cyclops after Odysseus dupes and blinds him; the river Alpheus rehearses his protestations of love for the river Arethusa; the metamorphoses of Proteus are marveled at by his friends as if he were a circus magician; nymphs and Nereids talk about their lovers and gossip about one another.

The satire in the Dialogues of the Dead is more penetrating and mordant. The residents of the Underworld, newly dead and long-dead, live together in uneasy fellowship. They still dispute over the petty things that concerned them when they were alive. Men who on earth were highly honored, fabulously wealthy, physically beautiful, are leveled to dry and uniform bones, but still they squabble over reputation, appearances, precedence. Cynics argue with epicureans, the once-poor taunt the once-rich, and Charon prays for war or plague on earth so he may collect more fares on his ferry. Achilles learns there is no glory on the far side of the Styx, but Alexander the Great tries unsuccessfully to impress his magnificence on his fellow shades. Menippus, the Cynic philosopher, thrives in Hades because all his earthly activities are directed against the vanities that people lose at death. Socrates and Diogenes appear, also Agamemnon, Ajax, Tiresias, Menelaus, Paris—soldiers, courtiers, kings, and philosophers reduced to wandering shades who can do nothing but talk of the past.

Menippus the Cynic is one of Lucian’s favorite characters, and he is frequently used as a touchstone for satirizing pretentiousness in philosophy and in religion. In the dialogue that bears his name, Menippus tells his friend of a necromantic experiment he makes in order to visit Hades. Troubled by the great discrepancy between the licentious freedom of the gods—as the poets describe them committing murders, rapes, incest, usurpations—and the strict laws forbidding mortals to engage in the same activities, Menippus goes to the philosophers to have the situation explained to him. He discovers them to be as helpless and vicious as ordinary people, and sometimes even more ignorant. Finally he decides to seek out the seer Tiresias in Hades and ask him how one should live. With the help of a Chaldean soothsayer, Menippus gains entrance to Hades; he sees the judgment of the dead and their punishments. In the Acherusian Plain of Hell he sees the common dead and the demigods, all indistinguishable, all reduced to dusty bones. Men who were kings on earth occupy, in Hades, the same allowance of space as beggars, and they are forced to tutor or to sell fish or to cobble shoes. The philosophers indefatigably carry on their learned disquisitions. While Menippus is in Hades, an assembly is called, which he attends. A decree is sent out against rich men on earth, that their souls after death be sent to inhabit asses for a quarter-million years, to learn humility. Finally finding Tiresias, Menippus explains his dilemma. The sage tells him the life of the ordinary person is best; one should shun clever logic and metaphysical speculation, live cheerfully, and work productively. Convinced, Menippus returns to earth.

In a companion piece to this satire, Menippus tells a friend of an aerial expedition he made to visit Heaven. After observing the vices and follies of mortals, and their ignoble goals and contemptible behavior, he vows to find a worthier occupation: to discover the divine order of the universe. When he observes the workings of the stars and the nature of earth, however, he can make no sense out of them. Again he goes to the philosophers, only to find them as confused as himself but too proud to admit it. Menippus then fashions a pair of wings for himself, one from an eagle, the other from a vulture, and from the top of Mount Olympus he launches himself heavenward, hoping to get some firsthand information about the universe. A rest stop at the moon and a chat with Empedocles, whom he finds there, enables him to look down on the entire earth and its inhabitants going antlike and self-importantly about their affairs. All their crimes are revealed to him. Continuing on, he arrives in Heaven, is admitted to the presence of mighty Zeus, and explains his mission. The god, forgoing his mighty mien, quizzes Menippus about weather conditions, the price of wheat, social news, and Zeus’s own popularity among the people. Menippus is invited to a banquet, at which Zeus denounces to the company those philosophers about whom Menippus complains. The gods decide to annihilate them all in four months’ time. Menippus is returned to earth and deprived of his wings, for the gods cannot have mortals disturbing them whenever the mortals’ fancy moves them. Finishing the narrative to his friend, Menippus goes off to tell the philosophers of the doom pronounced on them.

Another story of a journey is the dialogue of Charon and Hermes. Tired of his ferryman work, Charon takes a holiday to visit the earth and to see what life is like, because he has long been impressed at how the dead so lament the loss of it when he conducts them to the underworld. Charon persuades Hermes to assist him, and the two pile up four mountains to give Charon a view of the world from a good vantage point. The greatest cities seem to him nothing but little animal dens. A charm of Hermes sharpens Charon’s eyesight enough to see all human activities. He observes people striving for fame, glory, power, and wealth, never thinking of the death that broods over them, even as Charon broods. Solon, a wise man, is the only one aware of mortality, and Charon watches him vainly trying to warn King Croesus to take less interest in his gold. Charon, who hears the dooms of many mortals pronounced by the Fates, watches the mortals and comments on the vanity of their strivings. He looks at the ostentatious tombs that the great provide for themselves and derides this worldly display. He asks to be shown the cities of Babylon, Ninevah, and Tyre, but Hermes tells him they are long destroyed. Wonderingly, Charon concludes that people are utter fools: Nothing they do either comes with them after death or endures after them on earth.

Philosophy receives another drubbing in another dialogue. Zeus auctions off philosophers: Pythagoras, Diogenes, Heraclitus, Socrates, Democritus, Epicureans, and Stoics. Various dealers question them and bid on them. Philosophy is sold as if it were any other commodity. In another dialogue, the philosophers, granted a day’s respite from Hades, come up to earth to murder Lucian for his cavalier treatment of them. Lucian protests that he is a faithful admirer of philosophy and proposes that his case be formally tried, with Philosophy herself as the judge and the several philosophers as the jury. Philosophy agrees and brings her waiting-ladies, Virtue, Temperance, Justice, Culture, and Truth. The trial opens with Diogenes speaking for the prosecution. He accuses Lucian of ridiculing, parodying, and scorning philosophy and of teaching his audiences to flout and to jeer at philosophy also. Lucian replies that he never abused the true philosophers, but only those who corrupt the doctrines, the hypocrites who want to be honored as philosophers but behave like rogues. He describes the corruptions of philosophy he sees around him in the world, and he appeals at last to Truth to confirm his words. Truth and Philosophy agree, and even the philosophers are convinced; they acquit Lucian. Together they decide to separate the true practitioners and punish the false ones. They call all who claim to be philosophers to the Acropolis, to make their defense before Virtue, Philosophy, and Justice. Very few appear. Then Lucian calls out that gifts are to be distributed to philosophers, and a horde rushes in to receive the gifts. The latter group looks more like philosophers than the honest ones. When Lucian takes a fishing rod baited with gold and figs and dangles it over the city, he catches a variety of specimens, all described according to the branch of philosophy they claim to represent, all like monstrous fish. There are so many of them that Philosophy decides to send Lucian out with Exposure to crown or to brand them all as needed.

Lucian’s other satires are numerous and equally pointed. In another, a cobbler’s rooster turns out to be a reincarnation of Pythagoras. The cobbler complains about the injustice of his poverty, and the bird answers, showing the misery that often accompanies riches and the vices of wealthy men. The cobbler, Mycyllus, learns to be content with his station in life. The gods are again satirized and their dignities punctured in more dialogues. Further dialogues inspect superstitions and prejudices. Still not through, Lucian again attacks, in additional dialogues, philosophy, oratory, the gods, egotists, and parasites. Lucian’s satire occasionally becomes so personal and venomous that it seems more a venting of spleen than a social corrective. It is always vivid and entertaining, however, and often uncomfortably just.

Bibliography

Allinson, Francis G. Lucian: Satirist and Artist. New York: Longmans, Green, 1927. Excellent on the topic of the supernatural in Lucian, discussing his work in terms of its treatment of the ancient gods, superstition, and Christianity. Spells out the major influences on Lucian.

Baldwin, Barry. Studies in Lucian. Toronto, Ont.: Hakkert, 1973. Traces the scant evidence concerning Lucian’s life and speculates on who may have been Lucian’s important friends and enemies. Strong emphasis is placed on Lucian’s satire in comparison with that of other notable contemporaries. Stresses Lucian’s intense involvement with “fashions and living issues” of his time.

Craig, Hardin. The Written Word, and Other Essays. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953. The essay on “The Vitality of an Old Classic: Lucian and Lucianism” is a graceful appreciation of the best features of Lucian. The discussion of Lucian’s skill with the dialogue is excellent.

Gilhuly, Kate. “Bronze for Gold: Subjectivity in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans.” American Journal of Philology 128, no. 1 (Spring, 2007): 59-94. Focuses on dialogue 6, describing how Lucian manipulates his audience’s expectations by combining comedic characters with a philosophical form.

Jones, C. P. Culture and Society in Lucian. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. Separate chapters discuss, among other topics, Lucian’s inconsistent treatment of philosophy, the “concealed victims” of the satires, and the gods and the oracles.

Marsh, David. Lucian and the Latins: Humor and Humanism in the Early Renaissance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. Describes how European authors in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries rediscovered Lucian’s comic writings, tracing how the themes and structures of his works were adapted by Renaissance writers. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 focus on The Dialogue of the Dead and The Dialogue of the Gods.