Delphi Complete Works of Lucian

by Lucian Samosata

  But the general principle I would have remembered — it will ever be on my lips — is this: do not write merely with an eye to the present, that those now living may commend and honour you; aim at eternity, compose for posterity, and from it ask your reward; and that reward? — that it be said of you, ‘This was a man indeed, free and free-spoken; flattery and servility were not in him; he was truth all through.’ It is a name which a man of judgement might well prefer to all the fleeting hopes of the present.

  Do you know the story of the great Cnidian architect? He was the builder of that incomparable work, whether for size or beauty, the Pharus tower. Its light was to warn ships far out at sea, and save them from running on the Paraetonia, a spot so fatal to all who get among its reefs that escape is said to be hopeless. When the building was done, he inscribed on the actual masonry his own name, but covered this up with plaster, on which he then added the name of the reigning king. He knew that, as happened later, letters and plaster would fall off together, and reveal the words:

  SOSTRATUS SON OF DEXIPHANES OF CNIDUS ON BEHALF OF ALL MARINERS TO THE SAVIOUR GODS

  He looked not, it appears, to that time, nor to the space of his own little life, but to this time, and to all time, as long as his tower shall stand and his art abide.

  So too should the historian write, consorting with Truth and not with flattery, looking to the future hope, not to the gratification of the flattered.

  There is your measuring-line for just history. If any one be found to use it, well; I have not written in vain: if none, yet have I rolled my tub on the Craneum.

  THE DIPSADS — Περὶ τῶν Διψάδων

  Translated by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler

  DIPSAS, THE THIRST-SNAKE

  The southern parts of Libya are all deep sand and parched soil, a desert of wide extent that produces nothing, one vast plain destitute of grass, herb, vegetation, and water; or if a remnant of the scanty rain stands here and there in a hollow place, it is turbid and evil-smelling, undrinkable even in the extremity of thirst. The land is consequently uninhabited; savage, dried up, barren, droughty, how should it support life? The mere temperature, an atmosphere that is rather fire than air, and a haze of burning sand, make the district quite inaccessible.

  On its borders dwell the Garamantians, a lightly clad, agile tribe of tent-dwellers subsisting mainly by the chase. These are the only people who occasionally penetrate the desert, in pursuit of game. They wait till rain falls, about the winter solstice, mitigating the excessive heat, moistening the sand, and making it just passable. Their quarry consists chiefly of wild asses, the giant ostrich that runs instead of flying, and monkeys, to which the elephant is sometimes added; these are the only creatures sufficiently proof against thirst and capable of bearing that incessant fiery sunshine. But the Garamantians, as soon as they have consumed the provisions they brought with them, instantly hurry back, in fear of the sand’s recovering its heat and becoming difficult or impassable, in which case they would be trapped, and lose their lives as well as their game. For if the sun draws up the vapour, dries the ground rapidly, and has an access of heat, throwing into its rays the fresh vigour derived from that moisture which is its aliment, there is then no escape.

  But all that I have yet mentioned, heat, thirst, desolation, barrenness, you will count less formidable than what I now come to, a sufficient reason in itself for avoiding that land. It is beset by all sorts of reptiles, of huge size, in enormous numbers, hideous and venomous beyond belief or cure. Some of them have burrows in the sand, others live on the surface — toads, asps, vipers, horned snakes and stinging beetles, lance-snakes, reversible snakes, dragons, and two kinds of scorpion, one of great size and many joints that runs on the ground, the other aerial, with gauzy wings like those of the locust, grasshopper, or bat. With the multitude of flying things like these, that part of Libya has no attraction for the traveller.

  But the direst of all the reptiles bred in the sand is the dipsas or thirst-snake; it is of no great size, and resembles the viper; its bite is sharp, and the venom acts at once, inducing agonies to which there is no relief. The flesh is burnt up and mortified, the victims feel as if on fire, and yell like men at the stake. But the most overpowering of their torments is that indicated by the creature’s name. They have an intolerable thirst; and the remarkable thing is, the more they drink, the more they want to drink, the appetite growing with what it feeds on. You will never quench their thirst, though you give them all the water in Nile or Danube; water will be fuel, as much as if you tried to put out a fire with oil.

  Doctors explain this by saying that the venom is originally thick, and gains in activity when diluted with the drink, becoming naturally more fluid and circulating more widely.

  I have not seen a man in this condition, and I pray Heaven I never may behold such human sufferings; I am happy to say I have not set foot upon Libyan soil. But I have had an epitaph repeated to me, which a friend assured me he had read on the grave of a victim. My friend, going from Libya to Egypt, had taken the only practicable land route by the Great Syrtis. He there found a tomb on the beach at the sea’s very edge, with a pillar setting forth the manner of death. On it a man was carved in the attitude familiar in pictures of Tantalus, standing by a lake’s side scooping up water to drink; the dipsas was wound about his foot, in which its fangs were fastened, while a number of women with jars were pouring water over him. Hard by were lying eggs like those of the ostrich hunted, as I mentioned, by the Garamantians. And then there was the epitaph, which it may be worth while to give you:

  See the envenom’d cravings Tantalus Could find no thirst-assuaging charm to still, The cask that daughter-brood of Danaus, For ever filling, might not ever fill.

  There are four more lines about the eggs, and how he was bitten while taking them; but I forget how they go.

  The neighbouring tribes, however, do collect and value these eggs, and not only for food; they use the empty shells for vessels and make cups of them; for, as there is nothing but sand for material, they have no pottery. A particularly large egg is a find; bisected, it furnishes two hats big enough for the human head.

  Accordingly the dipsas conceals himself near the eggs, and when a man comes, crawls out and bites the unfortunate, who then goes through the experiences just described, drinking and increasing his thirst and getting no relief.

  Now, gentlemen, I have not told you all this to show you I could do as well as the poet Nicander, nor yet by way of proof that I have taken some trouble with the natural history of Libyan reptiles; that would be more in the doctor’s line, who must know about such things with a view to treatment. No, it is only that I am conscious (and now pray do not be offended by my going to the reptiles for my illustration) — I am conscious of the same feelings towards you as a dipsas victim has towards drink; the more I have of your company, the more of it I want; my thirst for it rages uncontrollably; I shall never have enough of this drink. And no wonder; where else could one find such clear sparkling water? You must pardon me, then, if, bitten to the soul (most agreeably and wholesomely bitten), I put my head under the fountain and gulp the liquor down. My only prayer is that the stream that flows from you may never fail; never may your willingness to listen run dry and leave me thirstily gaping! On my side there is no reason why drinking should not go on for ever; the wise Plato says that you cannot have too much of a good thing.

  SATURNALIA — Τὰ πρὸς Κρόνον

  Translated by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler

  SATURNALIA

  Cronus. His Priest

  Pr. Cronus, you are in authority just now, I understand; to you our sacrifices and ceremonies are directed; now, what can I make surest of getting if I ask it of you at this holy season?

  Cro. You had better make up your own mind what to pray for, unless you expect your ruler to be a clairvoyant and know what you would like to ask. Then, I will do my best not to disappoint you.

  Pr. Oh, I have done that long ago. No or
iginality about it; the usual thing, please, — wealth, plenty of gold, landed proprietorship, a train of slaves, gay soft raiment, silver, ivory, in fact everything that is worth anything. Best of Cronuses, give me some of these; your priest should profit by your rule, and not be the one man who has to go without all his life.

  Cro. Of course! ultra vires; these are not mine to give. So do not sulk at being refused; ask Zeus for them; he will be in authority again soon enough. Mine is a limited monarchy, you see. To begin with, it only lasts a week; that over, I am a private person, just a man in the street. Secondly, during my week the serious is barred; no business allowed. Drinking and being drunk, noise and games and dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping of tremulous hands, an occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water, — such are the functions over which I preside. But the great things, wealth and gold and such, Zeus distributes as he will.

  Pr. He is not very free with them, though, Cronus. I am tired of asking for them, as I do at the top of my voice. He never listens; he shakes his aegis, gets the thunderbolt ready for action, puts on a stern look, and scares you out of worrying him. He does consent now and then, and make a man rich; but his selection is most casual; he will pass over the good and sensible, and set fools and knaves up to the lips in wealth, gaol-birds or debauchees most of them. But I want to know what are the things you can do.

  Cro. Oh, they are not to be sneezed at; it does not come to so very little, if you make allowance for my general limitations. Perhaps you think it a trifle always to win at dice, and be able to count on the sice when the ace is the best the others can throw? Anyhow, there are plenty who get as much as they can eat just because the die likes them and does what it can for them. Others you may see naked, swimming for their lives; and what was the reef that wrecked them, pray? that little die. Or again, to enjoy your wine, to sing the best song at table, at the slaves’ feast to see the other waiters ducked for incompetence, while you are acclaimed victor and carry off the sausage prize, — is all that nothing? Or you find yourself absolute monarch by favour of the knucklebone, can have no ridiculous commands laid on you, and can lay them on the rest: one must shout out a libel on himself, another dance naked, or pick up the flute-girl and carry her thrice round the house; how is that for a sample of my open-handedness? If you complain that the sovereignty is not real nor lasting, that is unreasonable of you; you see that I, the giver of it, have a short-lived tenure myself. Well, anything that is in my power — draughts, monarchy, song, and the rest I have mentioned — you can ask, and welcome; I will not scare you with aegis and thunderbolt.

  Pr. Most kind Titan, such gifts I require not of you. Give me the answer that was my first desire, and then count yourself to have repaid my sacrifice sufficiently; you shall have my receipt in full.

  Cro. Put your question. An answer you shall have, if my knowledge is equal to it.

  Pr. First, then, is the common story true? used you to eat the children Rhea bore you? and did she steal away Zeus, and give you a stone to swallow for a baby? did he when he grew to manhood make victorious war upon you and drive you from your kingdom, bind and cast you into Tartarus, you and all the powers that ranged themselves with you?

  Cro. Fellow, were it any but this festive season, when ’tis lawful to be drunken, and slaves have licence to revile their lords, the reward for thy question, for this thy rudeness to a grey-haired aged God, had been the knowledge that wrath is yet permitted me.

  Pr. It is not my story, you know, Cronus; it is Homer’s and Hesiod’s; I might say, only I don’t quite like to, that it is the belief of the generality.

  Cro. That conceited shepherd? you do not suppose he knew anything worth knowing about me? Why, think. Is a man conceivable — let alone a God — who would devour his own children? — wittingly, I mean; of course he might be a Thyestes and have a wicked brother; that is different. However, even granting that, I ask you whether he could help knowing he had a stone in his mouth instead of a baby; I envy him his teeth, that is all. The fact is, there was no war, and Zeus did not depose me; I voluntarily abdicated and retired from the cares of office. That I am not in fetters or in Tartarus you can see for yourself, or you must be as blind as Homer.

  Pr. But what possessed you to abdicate?

  Cro. Well, the long and short of it is, as I grew old and gouty — that last, by the way, accounts for the fetters of the story — I found the men of these latter days getting out of hand; I had to be for ever running up and down swinging the thunderbolt and blasting perjurers, temple-robbers, oppressors; I could get no peace; younger blood was wanted. So I had the happy thought of abdicating in Zeus’s favour. Independently of that, I thought it a good thing to divide up my authority — I had sons to take it on — and to have a pleasant easy time, free of all the petition business and the embarrassment of contradictory prayers, no thundering or lightening to do, no lamentable necessity for sending discharges of hail. None of that now; I am on the shelf, and I like it, sipping neat nectar and talking over old times with Iapetus and the others that were boys with me. And He is king, and has troubles by the thousand. But it occurred to me to reserve these few days for the employments I have mentioned; during them I resume my authority, that men may remember what life was like in my days, when all things grew without sowing or ploughing of theirs — no ears of corn, but loaves complete and meat ready cooked — , when wine flowed in rivers, and there were fountains of milk and honey; all men were good and all men were gold. Such is the purpose of this my brief reign; therefore the merry noise on every side, the song and the games; therefore the slave and the free as one. When I was king, slavery was not.

  Pr. Dear me, now! and I accounted for your kindness to slaves and prisoners from the story again; I thought that, as you were a slave yourself, you were paying slaves a compliment in memory of your own fetters.

  Cro. Cease your ribald jests.

  Pr. Quite so; I will. But here is another question, please. Used mortals to play draughts in your time?

  Cro. Surely; but not for hundreds or thousands of pounds like you; nuts were their highest stake; a man might lose without a sigh or a tear, when losing could not mean starvation.

  Pr. Wise men! though, as they were solid gold themselves, they were out of temptation. It occurred to me when you mentioned that — suppose any one were to import one of your solid gold men into our age and exhibit him, what sort of a reception would the poor thing get? They would tear him to pieces, not a doubt of it. I see them rushing at him like the Maenads at Pentheus, the Thracian women at Orpheus, or his hounds at Actaeon, trying which could get the biggest bit of him; even in the holidays they do not forget their avarice; most of them regard the holy season as a sort of harvest. In which persuasion some of them loot their friends’ tables, others complain, quite unreasonably, of you, or smash their innocent dice in revenge for losses due to their own folly.

  But tell me this, now: as you are such a delicate old deity, why pick out the most disagreeable time, when all is wrapt in snow, and the north wind blows, everything is hard frozen, trees dry and bare and leafless, meadows have lost their flowery beauty, and men are hunched up cowering over the fire like so many octogenarians, — why this season of all others for your festival? It is no time for the old or the luxurious.

  Cro. Fellow, your questions are many, and no good substitute for the flowing bowl. You have filched a good portion of my carnival with your impertinent philosophizings. Let them go, and we will make merry and clap our hands and take our holiday licence, play draughts for nuts in the good old way, elect our kings and do them fealty. I am minded to verify the saw, that old age is second childhood.

  Pr. Now dry be his cup when he thirsts, to whom such words come amiss! Cronus, a bowl with you! ’tis enough that you have made answer to my former questions. By the way, I think of reducing our little interview to writing, my questions and your so affable answers, for submission to those friends whose discretion may be trusted.

 
; HERODOTUS OR AETION — Ἡρόδοτος ἢ Ἀετίων

  Translated by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler

  HERODOTUS AND AETION

  I devoutly wish that Herodotus’s other characteristics were imitable; not all of them, of course — that is past praying for — , but any one of them: the agreeable style, the constructive skill, the native charm of his Ionic, the sententious wealth, or any of a thousand beauties which he combined into one whole, to the despair of imitators. But there is one thing — the use he made of his writings, and the speed with which he attained the respect of all Greece; from that you, or I, or any one else, might take a hint. As soon as he had sailed from his Carian home for Greece, he concentrated his thoughts on the quickest and easiest method of winning a brilliant reputation for himself and his works. He might have gone the round, and read them successively at Athens, Corinth, Argos, and Sparta; but that would be a long toilsome business, he thought, with no end to it; so he would not do it in detail, collecting his recognition by degrees, and scraping it together little by little; his idea was, if possible, to catch all Greece together. The great Olympic Games were at hand, and Herodotus bethought him that here was the very occasion on which his heart was set. He seized the moment when the gathering was at its fullest, and every city had sent the flower of its citizens; then he appeared in the temple hall, bent not on sight-seeing, but on bidding for an Olympic victory of his own; he recited his Histories, and bewitched his hearers; nothing would do but each book must be named after one of the Muses, to whose number they corresponded.