Delphi Complete Works of Lucian

by Lucian Samosata

  And here comes in the apprehension of yet another Promethean analogy: have I confounded male and female, and incurred the penalty? Or no — when will resemblances end? — have I, rather, cheated my hearers by serving them up bones wrapped in fat, comic laughter in philosophic solemnity? As for stealing — for Prometheus is the thief’s patron too — I defy you there; that is the one fault you cannot find with me: from whom should I have stolen? if any one has dealt before me in such forced unions and hybrids, I have never made his acquaintance. But after all, what am I to do? I have made my bed, and I must lie in it; Epimetheus may change his mind, but Prometheus, never.

  HALCYON — Ἀλκυὼν ἢ Περὶ Μεταμορφώσεων

  Translated by M. D. Mcleod

  IT is generally agreed that this dialogue is not by Lucian, though it occurs in Γ and other Lucianic MSS. Though it is also found in some MSS. of Plato, and is mentioned by Athenaeus 506 C when he is listing the works of Plato, Platonic scholars are agreed that it is not by Plato. Apart from the fact that it mentions Myrto (see note on c. 8), its position in the Platonic MSS., Parisinus 1807 (A) and in its copy, Vat. Gr. 1 (0) is amongst the spuria, between Sisyphus and Eryxias.

  Diogenes Laertius 3.62 says that it is a supposititious work of Plato and that it was attributed to a certain Leon by Favorinus (c. 80 to c. 150 A.D.). As Athenaeus also records that it was ascribed to Leon the Academic by Nicias of Nicaea (of unknown date), Leon must be regarded as the probable author.

  This Leon is presumably the man described by Plutarch in Phocion 14.4 as having studied along with Phocion at Athens in the Academy; he was prominent in his native Byzantium as an orator, politician and opponent of Philip of Macedon in 340 B.C. Further details about his life are uncertain; he may have died in battle c. 339 B.C. or been killed by his countrymen because Philip had told the Byzantines he had contemplated treachery. If so, this Leon could not have become a Peripatetic or written history about Alexander as recorded in the Suda given in the Suda) rather than in that of Hadrian (as generally supposed) and that he wrote Halcyon when very young, one would also have to assume that an aged Favorinus read it at once, and immediately published his mistaken views about its author. It may have found its way into the Lucianic corpus because its subject or its alternative title, On Transformations, led to confusion with The Ass (or its original The Transformations of Lucius of Patras).

  HALCYON; OR, ON TRANSFORMATIONS

  CHAEREPHON

  1. What is the voice that has come to us, Socrates, from the shore and the promontory yonder in the distance? How sweet it is to the ears! What in the world is the creature that utters it? For things that live in the sea are surely mute.

  SOCRATES

  A sort of sea-bird, Chaerephon, called the Halcyon, much given to wailing and weeping, about which from times of old a fable has been handed down by men. They say that it was once a woman, the daughter of Aeolus, son of Hellen, that she yearned for the love of her dead husband, Ceyx of Trachis, son of the Morning Star, handsome son of a handsome father, and lamented for him, and then, acquiring wings by some divine dispensation, she began to fly like a bird over the seas, once she had wandered over the whole earth without being able to find him.

  CHAEREPHON

  2. So that, you say, is the halcyon? I had never before heard its voice, and it was really quite unfamiliar to me when it came. It is indeed a mournful sound which the creature emits. How large, in fact, is it, Socrates?

  SOCRATES

  Not large; yet she has received great honour from the gods because of her love for her husband. For when these birds nest the world enjoys the days which are called halcyon, being noteworthy for their fine weather in mid-winter, and today in particular is one of these. Do you not see how clear the sky is overhead, and how all the sea is waveless and calm, almost like a mirror?

  CHAEREPHON

  You are right; for today appears to be a halcyon day, and yesterday was like that too. But, in the name of the gods, how in the world is one to believe the primeval story, Socrates, that birds once turned into women or women into birds? For anything of that sort is clearly quite impossible.

  SOCRATES

  3. My dear Chaerephon, we appear to be completely myopic judges of what is possible and impossible. We form our opinions to the best of our human ability, but that is unable to know or believe or see. Hence many things, even of those that are attainable, unattainable; often this is due to inexperience, often to the infantility of our minds. For in reality every man seems to be infantile, even if be of great age, since a lifetime is very short and as brief as one’s infancy in comparison with eternity. How, my good friend, can people who do not know the powers of the gods and the supernatural beings or indeed the powers of all Nature, say whether any such thing is possible or impossible? Did you see, Chaerephon, how great the storm was the day before yesterday? Even at the thought of those flashes of lightning, peals of thunder and enormous winds fear could well assail a man; one would have supposed that the whole earth was on the very point of collapsing in ruins.

  4. After a short time however a marvellous state of good weather came about, and this has lasted till now. Which, then, do you think is the greater and more difficult task — to change that irresistible tempest and turmoil into such fine weather or to effect the transformation of a woman’s shape into that of a bird? For, as for that sort of thing, even those children in our midst who know how to model, can, when they take clay or wax, easily fashion many different shapes, using the same lump many times. To the divine power which has great and incomparable superiority to our abilities, all such things may be very easy indeed. For how much greater than you yourself do you suppose the whole of heaven to be? Could you say?

  CHAEREPHON

  5. Whoever, Socrates, could conceive or express any such thing? It’s unattainable even in words.

  SOCRATES

  Well, when humans too are compared with one another, do we not observe that great superiorities exist in their capacities and incapacities? Men in their prime as compared with absolute infants five or ten days after their birth, have extraordinary superiority in respect of capacity and incapacity in almost all the activities of life, in all that they accomplish not only by means of those arts of ours with their many skills, but also by means of the body and the soul; for clearly children of the age I mentioned cannot even conceive of such things.

  6. Moreover the strength of a single full-grown man is immeasurably greater than theirs. For one man could easily overcome many thousands like them; for, of course, the age that first attends upon man is by natural law completely helpless and resourceless. When therefore man differs, it seems, so much from man, what shall we think that all heaven, as compared with our powers, would appear like to those capable of submitting such things to their gaze? Perhaps, then, many will think it probable that the power and wisdom and intellect of the universe similarly excel our gifts by as much as the size of the universe surpasses the stature of Socrates or Chaerephon.

  7. To you, moreover, and to me, and to many more like ourselves many things are impossible which to others are very easy. For playing on the pipes is more impossible to the unskilled in piping, and reading or writing in the manner of the literate is more impossible to the illiterate, as long as they remain ignorant, than turning birds into women, or women into birds. Nature, depositing in the honeycomb a creature that is footless and wingless, gives it feet and wings, embellishes it with a great and beautiful variety of manifold colours and produces the bee, wise artificer of divine honey; from speechless and lifeless eggs she fashions many kinds of creatures, winged, terrestrial and aquatic, by employing, as some say, holy devices of the mighty ether.

  8. Since, then, the powers of the immortals are great, we, who are mortal and quite infinitesimal, who have no insight into matters great or small, but are even perplexed by most of the things which happen around us, cannot speak with assurance either about halcyons or nightingales. But the story told about your songs, musi
cal bird of laments, shall be handed down by me to my sons in the form handed down to us by our fathers, and I shall often tell my wives, Xanthippe and Myrto, about your devout and affectionate love for your husband, and in particular of the honour which you obtained from the gods. Will you also do the same, Chaerephon?

  CHAEREPHON

  It is right that I should do so, Socrates, and what you have said contains a twofold admonition to wives and husbands as regards their relations with one another.

  SOCRATES

  Then it is time to say adieu to Halcyon and proceed from Phalerum to the city.

  CHAEREPHON

  Indeed it is; let us do so.

  THE SHIP; OR, THE WISHES — Πλοἶον ἢ Εὐχαί

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

  THE SHIP: OR, THE WISHES

  Lycinus. Timolaus. Samippus. Adimantus

  Ly. Said I not well? More easily shall a corpse lie mouldering in the sun, and the vulture mark it not, than any strange sight escape Timolaus, no matter though he must run all the way to Corinth at a stretch for it. — Indefatigable sightseer!

  Ti. Well, Lycinus, what do you expect? One has nothing to do, and just then one hears that a great monster of an Egyptian corn-ship has put in to Piraeus. What is more, I believe you and Samippus came down on precisely the same errand.

  Ly. So we did, so we did, and Adimantus with us; only he has got lost somewhere in the crowd of spectators. We came all together to the ship; and going on board you were in front, Samippus, if I remember, and Adimantus next, and I was behind, hanging on to him for dear life; he gave me a hand all up the gangway, because I had never taken my shoes off, and he had; but I saw no more of him after that, either on board or when we came ashore.

  Sa. You see when it was we lost him, Lycinus? It must have been when that nice-looking boy came up from the hold, you know, with the beautiful clean linen, and his hair parted in the middle and done up in a knot behind. If I know anything of Adimantus, he no sooner saw that charming sight, than he said good-bye to the Egyptian ship-wright who was showing us round; and now stands urging his tearful suit. You know his way; tears come natural to him in these affairs of the heart.

  Ly. Well, but, Samippus, this boy was nothing great, that he should make such a conquest; Adimantus has the beauties of Athens at his beck; nice gentlemanly boys, with good Greek on their tongues, and the mark of the gymnasium on every muscle; a man may languish under their rigours with some credit. As for this fellow, to say nothing of his dark skin, and protruding lips, and spindle shanks, his words came tumbling out in a heap, one on the top of another; it was Greek, of course, but the voice, the accent were Egyptian born. And then his hair: no freeman ever had his hair tied up in a knot behind like that.

  Ti. Oh, but that is a sign of noble birth in Egypt, Lycinus. All gentlemen’s sons wear their hair done up till they reach manhood. It was the other way with our ancestors: the topknot, and the golden grasshopper to keep it together, were the proper thing for old men in their time.

  Sa. Very much to the point, Timolaus; you allude to the remarks in Thucydides’s preface, about our old luxurious habits, as preserved in the Asiatic colonies.

  Ly. Of course! I remember now where it was we lost Adimantus. It was when we were standing all that time looking up at the mast, counting the layers of hides, and watching that marvellous fellow going up the shrouds, and running along the yards, perfectly comfortable, with just a hand on the yard-tackling.

  Sa. So it was. Well, now what are we to do? Shall we wait for him here, or do you think I had better go back on board?

  Ti. No, no, let us walk on; he has probably gone tearing off home, not being able to find us. Anyhow, he knows the way; he will never get lost for want of us to take care of him.

  Ly. It is rather a shame, perhaps, to go off and leave one’s friend to shift for himself. However, I agree, if Samippus does.

  Sa. Certainly I do. We may find the gymnasium open still. — I say, though, what a size that ship was! 180 feet long, the man said, and something over a quarter of that in width; and from deck to keel, the maximum depth, through the hold, 44 feet. And then the height of the mast, with its huge yard; and what a forestay it takes to hold it! And the lofty stern with its gradual curve, and its gilded beak, balanced at the other end by the long rising sweep of the prow, and the figures of her name-goddess, Isis, on either side. As to the other ornamental details, the paintings and the scarlet topsail, I was more struck by the anchors, and the capstans and windlasses, and the stern cabins. The crew was like a small army. And they were saying she carried as much corn as would feed every soul in Attica for a year. And all depends for its safety on one little old atomy of a man, who controls that great rudder with a mere broomstick of a tiller! He was pointed out to me; Heron was his name, I think; a woolly-pated fellow, half-bald.

  Ti. He is a wonderful hand at it, so the crew say; a very Proteus in sea-cunning. Did they tell you how he brought them here, and all their adventures? how they were saved by a star?

  Ly. No; you can tell us about that now.

  Ti. I had it from the master, a nice intelligent fellow to talk to. They set sail with a moderate wind from Pharus, and sighted Acamas on the seventh day. Then a west wind got up, and they were carried as far east as Sidon. On their way thence they came in for a heavy gale, and the tenth day brought them through the Straits to the Chelidon Isles; and there they very nearly went to the bottom. I have sailed past the Chelidons myself, and I know the sort of seas you get there, especially if the wind is SW. by S.; it is just there, of course, that the division takes place between the Lycian and Pamphylian waters; and the surge caused by the numerous currents gets broken at the headland, whose rocks have been sharpened by the action of the water till they are like razors; the result is a stupendous crash of waters, the waves often rising to the very top of the crags. This was the kind of thing they found themselves in for, according to the master, — and on a pitch dark night! However, the Gods were moved by their distress, and showed them a fire that enabled them to identify the Lycian coast; and a bright star — either Castor or Pollux — appeared at the masthead, and guided the ship into the open sea on their left; just in time, for she was making straight for the cliff. Having once lost their proper course, they sailed on through the Aegean, bearing up against the Etesian winds, until they came to anchor in Piraeus yesterday, being the seventieth day of the voyage; you see how far they had been carried out of their way; whereas if they had taken Crete on their right, they would have doubled Malea, and been at Rome by this time.

  Ly. A pretty pilot this Heron, and no mistake, to get so far out in his reckoning; a man after Nereus’s heart! — But look! that is surely Adimantus?

  Ti. Adimantus it is. Let us hail him. Adimantus!... Son of Strombichus!... of the deme of Myrrhinus! He must be offended with us, or else he is deaf; it is certainly he.

  Ly. I can make him out quite clearly now; his cloak, his walk, his cropped head. Let us mend our pace, and catch him up. — We shall have to pull you by the cloak, and compel you to turn round, Adimantus; you will take no notice of our shouts. You seem like one rapt in contemplation; you are pondering on matters of no light import?

  Ad. Oh, it is nothing serious. An idle fancy, that came to me as I walked, and engrossed my attention, so that I never heard you.

  Ly. And the fancy? Tell us without reserve, unless it is a very delicate matter. And even if it is, you know, we have all been through the Mysteries; we can keep a secret.

  Ad. No, I had rather not tell you; you would think it so childish.

  Ly. Can it be a love affair? Speak on; those mysteries too are not unknown to us; we have been initiated in full torchlight.

  Ad. Oh dear, no; nothing of that kind. — No; I was making myself an imaginary present of a fortune — that ‘vain, deluding joy,’ as it has been called; I had just reached the pinnacle of luxury and affluence when you arrived.

  Ly. Then all I have to say is, ‘Halves!’ Come, out
with your wealth! We are Adimantus’s friends: let us share his superfluities.

  Ad. Well, I lost sight of you at once on the ship — the moment I had got you safely up, Lycinus. I was measuring the thickness of the anchor, and you disappeared somewhere. However, I went on and saw everything, and then I asked one of the sailors how much the vessel brought in to her owner in an average year. Three thousand pounds, he said, was the lowest reckoning. So afterwards, on the way back, I was thinking: Suppose some God took it into his head to make me a present of that ship; what a glorious life I should have of it, and my friends too! Sometimes I could make the trip myself, at other times I could send my men. On the strength of that three thousand, I had already built myself a house, nicely situated just above the Poecile — I would have nothing more to say to my ancestral abode on the banks of the Ilissus, — and was in treaty for my wardrobe and slaves and chariots and stable. And now behold me on board, the envy of every passenger, and the terror of my crew, who regarded me as next thing to a king; I was getting matters shipshape, and taking a last look at the port in the distance, when up comes Lycinus, capsizes the vessel, just as she is scudding before a wishing wind, and sends all my wealth to the bottom.