Trips to the Moon - Lucian
TRIPS TO THE MOON
by Lucian.
Translated from the Greek by Thomas Francklin, D.D.
CONTENTS.
Introduction by Professor Henry Morley.
Instructions for Writing History.
The True History.
Preface.
Book 1.
Book 2.
Icaro-Menippus--A Dialogue.
INTRODUCTION.
Lucian, in Greek Loukianos, was a Syrian, born about the year 120 at
Samosata, where a bend of the Euphrates brings that river nearest to
the borders of Cilicia in Asia Minor. He had in him by nature a
quick flow of wit, with a bent towards Greek literature. It was
thought at home that he showed as a boy the artist nature by his
skill in making little waxen images. An uncle on his mother's side
happened to be a sculptor. The home was poor, Lucian would have his
bread to earn, and when he was fourteen he was apprenticed to his
uncle that he might learn to become a sculptor. Before long, while
polishing a marble tablet he pressed on it too heavily and broke it.
His uncle thrashed him. Lucian's spirit rebelled, and he went home
giving the comic reason that his uncle beat him because jealous of
the extraordinary power he showed in his art.
After some debate Lucian abandoned training as a sculptor, studied
literature and rhetoric, and qualified himself for the career of an
advocate and teacher at a time when rhetoric had still a chief place
in the schools. He practised for a short time unsuccessfully at
Antioch, and then travelled for the cultivation of his mind in
Greece, Italy, and Gaul, making his way by use of his wits, as
Goldsmith did long afterwards when he started, at the outset also of
his career as a writer, on a grand tour of the continent with
nothing in his pocket. Lucian earned as he went by public use of
his skill as a rhetorician. His travel was not unlike the modern
American lecturing tour, made also for the money it may bring and
for the new experience acquired by it.
Lucian stayed long enough in Athens to acquire a mastery of Attic
Greek, and his public discourses could not have been without full
seasoning of Attic salt. In Italy and Gaul his success brought him
money beyond his present needs, and he went back to Samosata, when
about forty years old, able to choose and follow his own course in
life.
He then ceased to be a professional talker, and became a writer,
bold and witty, against everything that seemed to him to want
foundation for the honour that it claimed. He attacked the gods of
Greece, and the whole system of mythology, when, in its second
century, the Christian Church was ready to replace the forms of
heathen worship. He laughed at the philosophers, confounding
together in one censure deep conviction with shallow convention.
His vigorous winnowing sent chaff to the winds, but not without some
scattering of wheat. Delight in the power of satire leads always to
some excess in its use. But if the power be used honestly--and even
if it be used recklessly--no truth can be destroyed. Only the
reckless use of it breeds in minds of the feebler sort mere pleasure
in ridicule, that weakens them as helpers in the real work of the
world, and in that way tends to retard the forward movement. But on
the whole, ridicule adds more vigour to the strong than it takes
from the weak, and has its use even when levelled against what is
good and true. In its own way it is a test of truth, and may be
fearlessly applied to it as jewellers use nitric acid to try gold.
If it be uttered for gold and is not gold, let it perish; but if it
be true, it will stand trial.
The best translation of the works of Lucian into English was that by
Dr. Thomas Francklin, sometime Greek Professor in the University of
Cambridge, which was published in two large quarto volumes in the
year 1780, and reprinted in four volumes in 1781. Lucian had been
translated before in successive volumes by Ferrand Spence and
others, an edition, completed in 1711, for which Dryden had written
the author's Life. Dr. Francklin, who produced also the best
eighteenth century translation of Sophocles, joined to his
translation of Lucian a little apparatus of introductions and notes
by which the English reader is often assisted, and he has skilfully
avoided the translation of indecencies which never were of any use,
and being no longer sources of enjoyment, serve only to exclude good
wit, with which, under different conditions of life, they were
associated, from the welcome due to it in all our homes. There is a
just and scholarly, as well as a meddlesome and feeble way of
clearing an old writer from uncleannesses that cause him now to be a
name only where he should be a power. Dr. Francklin has understood
his work in that way better than Dr. Bowdler did. He does not
Bowdlerise who uses pumice to a blot, but he who rubs the copy into
holes wherever he can find an honest letter with a downstroke
thicker than becomes a fine-nibbed pen. A trivial play of fancy in
one of the pieces in this volume, easily removed, would have been as
a dead fly in the pot of ointment, and would have deprived one of
Lucian's best works of the currency to which it is entitled.
Lucian's works are numerous, and they have been translated into
nearly all the languages of Europe.
The "Instructions for Writing History" was probably one of the
earliest pieces written by him after Lucian had settled down at
Samosata to the free use of his pen, and it has been usually
regarded as his best critical work. With ridicule of the
affectations of historians whose names and whose books have passed
into oblivion, he joins sound doctrine upon sincerity of style.
"Nothing is lasting that is feigned," said Ben Jonson; "it will have
another face ere long." Long after Lucian's day an artificial
dignity, accorded specially to work of the historian, bound him by
its conventions to an artificial style. He used, as Johnson said of
Dr. Robertson, "too big words and too many of them." But that was
said by Johnson in his latter days, with admission of like fault in
the convention to which he had once conformed: "If Robertson's
style is bad, that is to say, too big words and too many of them, I
am afraid he caught it of me." Lucian would have dealt as
mercilessly with that later style as Archibald Campbell, ship's
purser and son of an Edinburgh Professor, who used the form of one
of Lucian's dialogues, "Lexiphanes," for an assault of ridicule upon
pretentious sentence-making, and helped a little to get rid of it.
Lucian laughed in his day at small imitators of the manner of
Thucydides, as he would laugh now at the small imitators of the
manner of Macaulay. He bade the historian first get sure facts,
then tell them in due order, simply and without exaggeration or toil
after fine writing; though he should aim not the less at an enduring
grace given by Nature to the Art that does not stray from her, and
simply speaks the highest truth it knows.
The endeavour of small Greek historians to add interest to their
work by magnifying the exploits of their countrymen, and piling
wonder upon wonder, Lucian first condemned in his "Instructions for
Writing History," and then caricatured in his "True History,"
wherein is contained the account of a trip to the moon, a piece
which must have been enjoyed by Rabelais, which suggested to Cyrano
de Bergerac his Voyages to the Moon and to the Sun, and insensibly
contributed, perhaps, directly or through Bergerac, to the
conception of "Gulliver's Travels." I have added the Icaro-
Menippus, because that Dialogue describes another trip to the moon,
though its satire is more especially directed against the
philosophers.
Menippus was born at Gadara in Coele-Syria, and from a slave he grew
to be a Cynic philosopher, chiefly occupied with scornful jests on
his neighbours, and a money-lender, who made large gains and killed
himself when he was cheated of them all. He is said to have written
thirteen pieces which are lost, but he has left his name in
literature, preserved by important pieces that have taken the name
of "Menippean Satire."
Lucian married in middle life, and had a son. He was about fifty
years old when he went to Paphlagonia, and visited a false oracle to
detect the tricks of an Alexander who made profit out of it, and who
professed to have a daughter by the Moon. When the impostor offered
Lucian his hand to kiss, Lucian bit his thumb; he also intervened to
the destruction of a profitable marriage for the daughter of the
Moon. Alexander lent Lucian a vessel of his own for the voyage
onward, and gave instructions to the sailors that they were to find
a convenient time and place for throwing their passenger into the
sea; but when the convenient time had come the goodwill of the
master of the vessel saved Lucian's life. He was landed, therefore,
at AEgialos, where he found some ambassadors to Eupator, King of
Bithynia, who took him onward upon his way.
It is believed that Lucian lived to be ninety, and it is assumed,
since he wrote a burlesque drama on gout, that the cause of his
death was not simply old age. Gout may have been the immediate
cause of death. Lucian must have spent much time at Athens, and he
held office at one time in his later years as Procurator of a part
of Egypt.
The works of Lucian consist largely of dialogues, in which he
battled against what he considered to be false opinions by bringing
the satire of Aristophanes and the sarcasm of Menippus into
disputations that sought chiefly to throw down false idols before
setting up the true. He made many enemies by bold attacks upon the
ancient faiths. His earlier "Dialogues of the Gods" only brought
out their stories in a way that made them sound ridiculous.
Afterwards he proceeded to direct attack on the belief in them. In
one Dialogue Timocles a Stoic argues for belief in the old gods
against Damis an Epicurean, and the gods, in order of dignity
determined by the worth of the material out of which they are made,
assemble to hear the argument. Damis confutes the Stoic, and laughs
him into fury. Zeus is unhappy at all this, but Hermes consoles him
with the reflection that although the Epicurean may speak for a few,
the mass of Greeks, and all the barbarians, remain true to the
ancient opinions. Suidas, who detested such teaching, wrote a Life
of him, in which he said that Lucian was at last torn to pieces by
dogs.
Dr. Francklin prefaced his edition with a Life, written by a friend
in the form of a Dialogue of the Dead in the Elysian Fields between
Lord Lyttelton--who had been, in his Dialogues of the Dead, an
imitator of the Dialogues so called in Lucian--and Lucian himself.
"By that shambling gait and length of carcase," says Lucian, "it
must be Lord Lyttelton coming this way." "And by that arch look and
sarcastic smile," says Lyttelton, "you are my old friend Lucian,
whom I have not seen this many a day. Fontenelle and I have just
now been talking of you, and the obligations we both had to our old
master: I assure you that there was not a man in all antiquity for
whom, whilst on earth, I had a greater regard than yourself." After
Lucian has told Lyttelton something about his life, his lordship
thanks Lucian for the little history, and says, "I wish with all my
heart I could convey it to a friend of mine in the other world"--
meaning Dr. Francklin--"to whom, at this juncture, it would be of
particular service: I mean a bold adventurer who has lately
undertaken to give a new and complete translation of all your works.
It is a noble design, but an arduous one; I own I tremble for him."
Lucian replies, "I heard of it the other day from Goldsmith, who
knew the man. I think he may easily succeed in it better than any
of his countrymen, who hitherto have made but miserable work with
me; nor do I make a much better appearance in my French habit,
though that I know has been admired. D'Ablancourt has made me say a
great many things, some good, some bad, which I never thought of,
and, upon the whole, what he has done is more a paraphrase than a
translation." Then, says Lord Lyttelton, "All the attempts to
represent you, at least in our language, which I have yet seen, have
failed, and all from the same cause, by the translator's departing
from the original, and substituting his own manners, phraseology,
expression, wit, and humour instead of yours. Nothing, as it has
been observed by one of our best critics, is so grave as true
humour, and every line of Lucian is a proof of it; it never laughs
itself, whilst it sets the table in a roar; a circumstance which
these gentlemen seem all to have forgotten: instead of the set
features and serious aspect which you always wear when most
entertaining, they present us for ever with a broad grin, and if you
have the least smile upon your countenance make you burst into a
vulgar horse-laugh: they are generally, indeed, such bad painters,
that the daubing would never be taken for you if they had not
written 'Lucian' under the picture. I heartily wish the Doctor
better luck." Upon which the Doctor's friend makes Lucian reply:
"And there is some reason to hope it, for I hear he has taken pains
about me, has studied my features well before he sat down to trace
them on the canvas, and done it con amore: if he brings out a good
resemblance, I shall excuse the want of grace and beauty in his
piece. I assure you I am not without pleasing expectation;
especially as my friend Sophocles, who, you know, sat to him some
time ago, tells me, though he is no Praxiteles, he does not take a
bad likeness. But I must be gone, for yonder come Swift and
Rabelais, whom I have made a little party with this morning: so, my
good lord, fare you well."
Lucian had another translator in 1820, who in no way superseded Dr.
Francklin. The reader of this volume is reminded that the notes are
Dr. Francklin's, and that any allusion in them to a current topic,
has to be read as if this present year of grace were 1780.
H. M.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR WRITING HISTORY.
Lucian, in this letter to his friend Philo, after having, with
infinite humour, exposed the absurdities of some contemporary
historians, whose works, being consigned to oblivion, have never
reached us, proceeds, in the latter part of it, to lay down most
excellent rules and directions for writing history. My readers will
find the one to the last degree pleasant and entertaining; and the
other no less useful, sensible, and instructive. This is, indeed,
one of Lucian's best pieces.
My Dear Philo,--In the reign of Lysimachus, {17} we are told that
the people of Abdera were seized with a violent epidemical fever,
which raged through the whole city, continuing for seven days, at
the expiration of which a copious discharge of blood from the
nostrils in some, and in others a profuse sweat, carried it off. It
was attended, however, with a very ridiculous circumstance: every
one of the persons affected by it being suddenly taken with a fit of
tragedising, spouting iambics, and roaring out most furiously,
particularly the Andromeda {18a} of Euripides, and the speech of
Perseus, which they recited in most lamentable accents. The city
swarmed with these pale seventh-day patients, who, with loud voices,
were perpetually bawling out--
"O tyrant love, o'er gods and men supreme," etc.
And this they continued every day for a long time, till winter and
the cold weather coming on put an end to their delirium. For this
disorder they seem, in my opinion, indebted to Archelaus, a
tragedian at that time in high estimation, who, in the middle of
summer, at the very hottest season {18b} of the year, exhibited the
Andromeda, which had such an effect on the spectators that several
of them, as soon as they rose up from it, fell insensibly into the
tragedising vein; the Andromeda naturally occurring to their
memories, and Perseus, with his Medusa, still hovering round them.
Now if, as they say, one may compare great things with small, this
Abderian disorder seems to have seized on many of our literati of
the present age; not that it sets them on acting tragedies (for the
folly would not be so great in repeating other people's verses,
especially if they were good ones), but ever since the war was begun
against the barbarians, the defeat in Armenia, {19a} and the
victories consequent on it, not one is there amongst us who does not
write a history; or rather, I may say, we are all Thucydideses,
Herodotuses, and Xenophons. Well may they say war is the parent of
all things, {19b} when one action can make so many historians. This
puts me in mind of what happened at Sinope. {20a} When the
Corinthians heard that Philip was going to attack them, they were
all alarmed, and fell to work, some brushing up their arms, others
bringing stones to prop up their walls and defend their bulwarks,
every one, in short, lending a hand. Diogenes observing this, and
having nothing to do (for nobody employed him), tucked up his robe,
and, with all his might, fell a rolling his tub which he lived in up
and down the Cranium. {20b} "What are you about?" said one of his
friends. "Rolling my tub," replied he, "that whilst everybody is
busy around me, I may not be the only idle person in the kingdom."
In like manner, I, my dear Philo, being very loath in this noisy age
to make no noise at all, or to act the part of a mute in the comedy,
think it highly proper that I should roll my tub also; not that I
mean to write history myself, or be a narrator of facts; you need
not fear me, I am not so rash, knowing the danger too well if I roll
it amongst the stones, especially such a tub as mine, which is not
over-strong, so that the least pebble I strike against would dash it
in pieces. I will tell you, however, what my design is--how I mean
to be present at the battle and yet keep out of the reach of danger.
I intend to shelter myself from the waves and the smoke, {21} and
the cares that writers are liable to, and only give them a little
good advice and a few precepts; to have, in short, some little hand
in the building, though I do not expect my name will be inscribed on
it, as I shall but just touch the mortar with the tip of my finger.
There are many, I know, who think there is no necessity for
instruction at all with regard to this business, any more than there
is for walking, seeing, or eating, and that it is the easiest thing
in the world for a man to write history if he can but say what comes
uppermost. But you, my friend, are convinced that it is no such
easy matter, nor should it be negligently and carelessly performed;
but that, on the other hand, if there be anything in the whole
circle of literature that requires more than ordinary care and
attention, it is undoubtedly this. At least, if a man would wish,
as Thucydides says, to labour for posterity. I very well know that
I cannot attack so many without rendering myself obnoxious to some,
especially those whose histories are already finished and made
public; even if what I say should be approved by them, it would be
madness to expect that they should retract anything or alter that
which had been once established and, as it were, laid up in royal
repositories. It may not be amiss, however, to give them these
instructions, that in case of another war, the Getae against the
Gauls, or the Indians, perhaps, against the barbarians (for with
regard to ourselves there is no danger, our enemies being all
subdued), by applying these rules if they like them, they may know
better how to write for the future. If they do not choose this,
they may even go on by their old measure; the physician will not
break his heart if all the people of Abdera follow their own
inclination and continue to act the Andromeda. {23}
Criticism is twofold: that which teaches us what we are to choose,
and that which teaches us what to avoid. We will begin with the
last, and consider what those faults are which a writer of history
should be free from; next, what it is that will lead him into the
right path, how he should begin, what order and method he should
observe, what he should pass over in silence, and what he should
dwell upon, how things may be best illustrated and connected. Of
these, and such as these, we will speak hereafter; in the meantime
let us point out the faults which bad writers are most generally
guilty of, the blunders which they commit in language, composition,
and sentiment, with many other marks of ignorance, which it would be
tedious to enumerate, and belong not to our present argument. The
principal faults, as I observed to you, are in the language and
composition.
You will find on examination, that history in general has a great
many of this kind, which, if you listen to them all, you will be
sufficiently convinced of; and for this purpose it may not be
unseasonable to recollect some of them by way of example. And the
first that I shall mention is that intolerable custom which most of
them have of omitting facts, and dwelling for ever on the praises of
their generals and commanders, extolling to the skies their own
leaders, and degrading beyond measure those of their enemies, not
knowing how much history differs from panegyric, that there is a
great wall between them, or that, to use a musical phrase, they are
a double octave {24a} distant from each other; the sole business of
the panegyrist is, at all events and by every means, to extol and
delight the object of his praise, and it little concerns him whether
it be true or not. But history will not admit the least degree of
falsehood any more than, as physicians say, the wind-pipe {24b} can
receive into it any kind of food.
These men seem not to know that poetry has its particular rules and
precepts; and that history is governed by others directly opposite.
That with regard to the former, the licence is immoderate, and there
is scarce any law but what the poet prescribes to himself. When he
is full of the Deity, and possessed, as it were, by the Muses, if he
has a mind to put winged horses {25a} to his chariot, and drive some
through the waters, and others over the tops of unbending corn,
there is no offence taken. Neither, if his Jupiter {25b} hangs the
earth and sea at the end of a chain, are we afraid that it should
break and destroy us all. If he wants to extol Agamemnon, who shall
forbid his bestowing on him the head and eyes of Jupiter, the breast
of his brother Neptune, and the belt of Mars? The son of Atreus and
AErope must be a composition of all the gods; nor are Jupiter, Mars,
and Neptune sufficient, perhaps, of themselves to give us an idea of
his perfection. But if history admits any adulation of this kind,
it becomes a sort of prosaic poetry, without its numbers or
magnificence; a heap of monstrous stories, only more conspicuous by
their incredibility. He is unpardonable, therefore, who cannot
distinguish one from the other; but lays on history the paint of
poetry, its flattery, fable, and hyperbole: it is just as
ridiculous as it would be to clothe one of our robust wrestlers, who
is as hard as an oak, in fine purple, or some such meretricious
garb, and put paint {26} on his cheeks; how would such ornaments
debase and degrade him! I do not mean by this, that in history we
are not to praise sometimes, but it must be done at proper seasons,
and in a proper degree, that it may not offend the readers of future
ages; for future ages must be considered in this affair, as I shall
endeavour to prove hereafter.
Those, I must here observe, are greatly mistaken who divide history
into two parts, the useful and the agreeable; and in consequence of
it, would introduce panegyric as always delectable and entertaining
to the reader. But the division itself is false and delusive; for
the great end and design of history is to be useful: a species of
merit which can only arise from its truth. If the agreeable
follows, so much the better, as there may be beauty in a wrestler.
And yet Hercules would esteem the brave though ugly Nicostratus as
much as the beautiful Alcaeus. And thus history, when she adds
pleasure to utility, may attract more admirers; though as long as
she is possessed of that greatest of perfections, truth, she need
not be anxious concerning beauty.
In history, nothing fabulous can be agreeable; and flattery is
disgusting to all readers, except the very dregs of the people; good
judges look with the eyes of Argus on every part, reject everything
that is false and adulterated, and will admit nothing but what is
true, clear, and well expressed. These are the men you are to have
a regard to when you write, rather than the vulgar, though your
flattery should delight them ever so much. If you stuff history
with fulsome encomiums and idle tales, you will make her like
Hercules in Lydia, as you may have seen him painted, waiting upon
Omphale, who is dressed in the lion's skin, with his club in her
hand; whilst he is represented clothed in yellow and purple, and
spinning, and Omphale beating him with her slipper; a ridiculous
spectacle, wherein everything manly and godlike is sunk and degraded
to effeminacy.