The great 2nd century satirist Lucian was a great shock to me at one point, twenty-five years ago when I got serious about classical literature. I had never heard of him, partly because of the odd historical artifact where what he writes is called “Menippean satire” even though nothing by the Cynic satirist Menippus has survived. Menippus himself largely survives as a character in Lucian’s stories. Confusing.
Thomas More’s Utopia, Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus,
Jonathan Swift’s Tale of a Tub and my childhood favorite Gulliver’s
Travels are all direct, conscious descendants of Lucian. Most of fantasy and science fiction
literature is at least distantly Lucianic.
When I read Arisosto’s Orlando Furioso and watched a character
fly to the moon, I knew where I was in literary history.
Not that I recommend reading Lucian to learn about literary
history. The outrageous, inventive “A
True Story”; the sharp “Dialogues of the Dead”; the various angry attacks on
philosophers Lucian thinks are con artists, as in “The Death of Peregrinus” –
these all stand on their own. He’s still
pretty funny.
Lucian was not himself a Cynic, but I thought he would be
instructive because his heroes are so often Cynics. Menippus, across a number of pieces, travels
to heaven and hell, reacting as a Cynic might.
Menippus often features in the “Dialogues of the Dead” as the voice of
uncommon sense, although sometimes Diogenes fills the role, as here where the
dead Diogenes is sending messages back to the living, to Menippus, for example:
DIOGENES: Tell him that Diogenes says, “Menippus, if you’ve had enough of poking fun at things up there, come on down here; there’s much more to laugh at… Especially when you see how the millionaires and the pashas and the dictators have been cut down to size and look just like everyone else – you can only tell them apart by their whimpering and the way they’re so spineless and miserable at the memory of all they left behind.” (194)
As for the rest of the philosophers:
DIOGENES: You can tell them I said they could go to the devil. (195)
The Cynics enjoy Hades because they had nothing to lose in
the first place but can still wander around mocking everyone’s pretenses.
CROESUS: We keep remembering what we left behind, Midas here his gold and Sardanapalus his life of luxury and I my treasure, and we moan and groan. Whenever we do, he [Menippus] laughs at us and sneers and calls us slaves and scum. And sometimes he interrupts our moaning with songs. Frankly he’s a blamed nuisance. (212)
Wealth and pleasure are not just of no value in Lucian’s
dialogues, but are actually (future) punishments.
I haven’t touched on “Philosophies for Sale” or the fierce
assaults on phony philosophers. I will
just say that it has been useful to have read some of these people. As with any satirist, Lucian is funnier when
I know what the heck he is talking about.
The Selected Satires of Lucian translated by Lionel
Casson was my go-to Lucian (and the source of the page numbers), not that there
is anything wrong with Paul Turner’s Satirical Sketches. I also poked around in the old Loeb volumes,
in particular reading the rest of the journeys of Menippus and finishing up the
“Dialogues of the Dead,” all well worth reading.
