Lucian (Collins)/Chapter 7

by William Lucas Collins

CHAPTER VII.

LUCIAN AND CHRISTIANITY.

The notices of Christianity to be found in heathen authors who were either contemporary with its great Founder, or who wrote during the early ages of the Christian Church, are so few, that even the slightest has an interest beyond what would otherwise be its historical importance. The rarity of such notices, and their general brevity and indistinctness, is apt to surprise us, until we recollect that Christianity did not for some time make that impression upon the heathen world which from our own point of view we might naturally expect. The Christians were long regarded as merely a sect within a sect, and that an insignificant and despised one: even historians like Tacitus and Suetonius saw in the "Christus" whom they both mention little more than a ringleader of turbulent Jews. Superstitions of all kinds and from all quarters were crowding in, as we may see even from Lucian's own pages, upon the ground which the priesthood of pagan Rome were striving to hold by making the national religion so "catholic" as to include the gods of as many other creeds as they could. Men believed, as Wieland says, "everything, and nothing." A new god or a new superstition more or less made not much impression on the popular mind. The very feeling to which St Paul appeals at Athens, their readiness to adopt even an "unknown God," is evidence of a latitudinarianism in such matters which at once gave hope of toleration, and opened a dreary prospect of indifference. And indifference was, no doubt, the feeling with which the Christians were widely regarded, unless when by some misrepresentation of their doctrines they were denounced as plotters against the throne or the life of the reigning emperor, and the populace was hounded on against them, as in more modern times against the Jews, as atheists, sorcerers, and enemies of the state.

The attitude of Lucian towards Christianity has been the subject of more discussion than that of any other heathen writer. He has written an account of the self-immolation of one Peregrinus or Proteus, about whose character and antecedents the learned are not quite agreed. If Lucian's history of him is to be trusted, he was a Hellespontine Greek, who, after a youth of great profligacy, had, either from conviction or more probably for selfish ends, become a Christian, had held high office in the Church, and attained a position of great influence in the body, combining the pretensions of a Cynic philosopher with those of a Christian priest. He had even suffered for his professed faith, and been imprisoned by the governor of Syria. But this imprisonment Lucian thinks he purposely sought in order to obtain notoriety, which object the governor was aware of, and disappointed him by setting him free. He afterwards travelled, supported, according to apostolic precedent, by his fellow-believers; but being detected in some profanation (apparently) of the Eucharist,^[1] he threw off his profession, and returned to his old profligate life. Expelled from Rome by the authorities for his scandalous conduct there, he endeavoured without success to excite the people of Elis to revolt against the Roman Government; and at length, finding his popularity and influence on the wane, sought to restore it by giving out publicly that he would burn himself solemnly at the forthcoming Olympic games. This intention, strange to say, he actually carried into execution; whether from an insane desire for posthumous notoriety, or whether, hoping to be rescued at the last moment by his friends, he had gone too far to recede, is not at all clear from any version of the story.

Lucian was an eyewitness of this very remarkable spectacle, of which he gives an account in the shape of a letter to a friend, prefacing it with a short biographical sketch, touched in very dark colours, of a man whom he considers to have been, both in his life and death, a consummate impostor. These are the passages in which he speaks of the Christians:—

"About this time, Peregrinus became a disciple of that extraordinary philosophy of the Christians, having met with some of their priests and scribes in Palestine. He soon convinced them that they were all mere children to him, becoming their prophet and choir-leader and chief of their synagogue, and, in short, everything to them. Several of their sacred books he annotated and interpreted, and some he wrote himself. They held him almost as a god, and made him their lawgiver and president.^[2] You know they still reverence that great man, Him that was crucified in Palestine for introducing these new doctrines into the world. On this account Proteus was apprehended and thrown into prison, which very thing brought him no small renown for the future, and the admiration and notoriety which he was so fond of. For, during the time that he was in prison, the Christians, looking upon it as a general misfortune, tried every means to get him released. Then, when this was found impossible, their attention to him in all other ways was zealous and unremitting. From early dawn you might see widows and orphans waiting at the prison-doors; and the men of rank among them even bribed the jailors to allow them to pass the night with him inside the walls. Then they brought in to him there sumptuous meals, and read their sacred books together; and this good Peregrinus (for he was then called so) was termed by them a second Socrates. There came certain Christians, too, from some of the cities in Asia, deputed by their community to bring him aid, and to counsel and encourage him. For they are wonderfully ready whenever their public interest is concerned—in short, they grudge nothing; and so much money came in to Peregrinus at that time, by reason of his imprisonment, that he made a considerable income by it. For these poor wretches persuade themselves that they shall be immortal, and live for everlasting; so that they despise death, and some of them offer themselves to it voluntarily. Again, their first lawgiver taught them that they were all brothers, when once they had committed themselves so far as to renounce the gods of the Greeks, and worship that crucified sophist, and live according to its laws. So they hold all things alike in contempt, and consider all property common, trusting each other in such matters without any valid security. If, therefore, any clever impostor came among them, who knew how to manage matters, he very soon made himself a rich man, by practising on the credulity of these simple people."

We have in this passage a not very unfair account of the discipline and practice of the early Christians, taking into consideration that it is given by a cynical observer, who saw in this new phase of religion only one superstition the more. There is an evident and not unnatural confusion here and there between Christians and Jews; and it is not clear whether the "first lawgiver" is a vague idea of Moses, or of St Paul, or of Christ himself. But in the "widows" we plainly see those deaconesses, or whatever we may term them, of whom Phœbe at Cenchrea was one; the "sumptuous meals" are almost certainly the "love-feasts" of the Church; while in the reading of the sacred books we have one of the most striking features of their public worship. In the account of the prison-life of Peregrinus, impostor if he were, we seem to be reading but another version of that of St Paul—of the "prayer that was made of the Church" for him—of the good Philemon and Onesiphorus, who "ministered to him in his bonds," and those of "the chief of Asia who were his friends." The whole passage, brief as it is, bears token of having been penned by a writer who, if not acquainted with the tenets and practices of the Christians of those days from personal observation and experience, had at least gained his information from some fairly accurate source.

Such a passage was sure to exercise the criticism of Christian scholars, and very conflicting theories have been set up as to its interpretation, as bearing upon the author's own relations and feelings towards Christianity. Some over-ingenious speculators, reading it side by side with his bitter satire on the accepted theology of Paganism, have fancied that they saw in it evidence that Lucian himself was a Christian—in disguise. That after boldly and openly attacking Polytheism, and exhibiting it in the most grotesque caricature, he cautiously, as one treading on perilous ground, and still in a tone of half-banter, opens to his readers a half-view of the new philosophy whose ideal republic is a grander scheme than Plato's—the "simple people," the leading features of whose polity are "universal brotherhood" and "community of goods."

Such a view was tempting, no doubt, to a clever scholar, from the very paradox which it involved. But, except as a paradox, it is hard to conceive its having been propounded. It was much more natural to take, as many honest theologians did take and hotly maintain, quite the opposite view of Lucian's feelings towards the new religion. And these could certainly produce better evidence in support of their opinion. They traced in the sceptical tone of his writings the voice of an enemy to all forms of religion, true as well as false. They called him loudly "atheist" and "blasphemer." Some of them invented, and probably told until they believed it, a story of his having met his death by being torn in pieces by dogs—as such impiety well deserved. And one—Suidas—went so far as to express the charitable hope and belief that his punishment did not end there, but is still proceeding.^[3] In the passage which has been here quoted, they saw a sneer at the holiest mysteries. Yet surely no such interpretation is self-evident to any candid reader. It is a cold, unimpassioned statement; half serious and half satiric, as is Lucian's wont; but neither prejudiced nor malicious. We have nothing here like the bitterness of Fronto or Celsus, or the stern anathema which Tacitus, ranking Christianity among other hated introductions from the East, hurls against it as an "execrable superstition." The tenets of this obscure sect did seem to Lucian—the man of the world—"extraordinary;" nothing more or less, whatever irony some may find in the word. Even the term "crucified sophist," however offensive to our ears, had nothing necessarily offensive as used by the writer. The clever Greek has no special sympathy with the "simple people" who were content with bad security for their money, and proved such an easy prey to any designing adventurer; but all his contempt and wrath is reserved for the impostor who cheated them. On him, and not on the Christians, he pours it out unsparingly. Here is his account of Peregrinus's last moments. The great games were over, but the crowd still lingered at Olympia to see the promised spectacle. It was deferred from night to night, but at last an hour was appointed. Attended by a troop of friends and admirers (a criminal going to execution, says the merciless narrator, has usually a long train), Peregrinus approached the pile, which had been prepared near the Hippodrome.

"Then the more foolish among the crowd shouted, 'Live, for the sake of the Greeks!' But the more hard-hearted cried, 'Fulfil your promise!' At this the old man was not a little put out, for he had expected that they would surely all lay hold on him, and not let him get into the fire, but force him to live against his will. But this exhortation to 'keep his promise' fell on him quite unexpectedly, and made him paler than ever, though his colour looked like death before. He trembled, and became silent. . . . When the moon rose (for she, too, must needs look upon this grand sight) he came forward, clad in his usual dress, and followed by his train of Cynics, and specially the notorious Theagenes of Patræ, well fitted to play second in such a performance. Teregrinus, too, carried a torch; and approaching the pile—a very large one, made up of pitch-pine and brushwood—they lighted it at either end. Then the hero (mark what I say) laid down his scrip and his cloak, and the Herculean club he used to carry, and stood in his under garment—and very dirty it was. He next asked for frankincense to cast on the fire; and when some one brought it, he threw it on, and turning his face towards the south (this turning towards the south is an important point in the performance) he exclaimed, 'Shades of any father and my mother, be propitious, and receive me!' When he had said this, he leaped into the burning pile and was seen no more, the flames rising high and enveloping him at once."

Lucian goes on to say, that when the followers of Peregrinus stood round weeping and lamenting, he could not resist some jokes at their expense, which very nearly cost him a beating. On his way home he met several persons who were too late for the sight; and when they begged him to give them an account of it, he added to the story a few touches of his own: how the earth shook, and how a vulture^[4] was seen soaring out of the flames, and crying, "I have left earth, and mount to Olympus!" These little embellishments of the fact were, as he assures his friend, repeated afterwards as integral parts of the story. Some time afterwards he had met "a grey-haired old man, whose beard and venerable aspect might have seemed to bespeak a trustworthy witness," who solemnly declared that he had seen Proteus after his burning, "all in white, wearing a crown of olive;" nay, that he had not long ago left him "alive and cheerful, walking in the Hall of the Seven Echoes."

This portion of the narrative has also given rise to considerable discussion. Those who could see in Lucian nothing but a scoffer, asserted that the whole story was fictitious, and that his sole intention was to ridicule and caricature the deaths of Christian martyrs. They noted in this account of the last moments of Peregrinus many circumstances apparently borrowed from the deaths of the famous martyrs of the times. The previous attempts at rescue and the bribing of the jailors have their exact parallels in the case of Ignatius, and the Christians in their dreams saw him walking about in a glorified shape; the "olive-crown" might be an embodiment of that "crown of victory" of which he spoke at his death, or "the crown of immortality" which Polycarp saw before him; the stripping and "standing in the under garment only" is related of Cyprian at his martyrdom; and Lucian's vulture seems but a parody of the dove which the imaginative piety of Christian legend saw rising from the funeral-pile of Polycarp.^[5] The very year (A.D. 165) of Polycarp's death, which we are distinctly told "was discussed everywhere among the heathen," seems possibly to correspond. Bishop Pearson appears to have considered the whole account as nothing more than a kind of travesty of the martyrdom of Ignatius, and in this idea he has been followed by many German scholars. It has been conjectured that possibly Lucian may have intended to satirise the contempt of death which he speaks of as a characteristic of the Christian sect, and that positive desire for martyrdom which we know from other authorities to have prevailed among some of them to a morbid degree, as a new development of cynicism.

But there seems no good reason to doubt the main accuracy of the account given by Lucian, or to attribute to him any sinister motive in telling the story as he does. The extraordinary fact of this self-immolation of Peregrinus is related, though briefly, by Christian writers—by Tatian, Tertullian, and Eusebius. Aulus Gellius, indeed, speaks of having known him in his earlier life, as living in a cottage in the suburbs of Athens, "a grave and earnest man," to whose wise discourse he had often listened with much pleasure. But a consummate impostor such as Lucian describes may well have succeeded in imposing upon the Roman antiquarian as upon the officers of the Christian Church.^[6] He had probably, as Eusebius relates of him, joined that community for a time, most likely for his own ends, though he may not have held the high position among them which is here ascribed to him. On the motives which led him to the extraordinary act which closed his life, Lucian must have had better opportunities of judging than are open to us; and he plainly considers that he was actuated at first by a fanatical desire for notoriety, and possibly forced at the last to carry out his announcement against his will. It might have required more courage to draw back, in the face of public ridicule and certain exposure, than to brave death amidst the applause of the crowd.

The abuse showered upon Lucian by Christian writers as a "blasphemer" and an "Antichrist" is due partly to his having had ascribed to him a Dialogue called "Philopatris," in which the Christians are maliciously accused of prophesying misfortunes to the state, and which bears internal evidence of having been written by one who had been at some period a member of a Christian Church. As the author of this, they charged him with worse than infidelity—apostasy from the faith, and treason to his former associates. But it has been pretty clearly proved that this work is of much later date, and could not possibly have come from the hand of Lucian. It is true that in his account of the pseudo-prophet Alexander, the only other occasion on which he mentions the Christians by name, he has classed them with "atheists and Epicureans;"^[7] but this is only so far as to show that they were all equally incredulous of the pretended miracles of that impostor.

Of the new Kingdom which had risen Lucian had in fact no conception. What opportunities he may have had, or may have missed, of making acquaintance with it, we cannot tell. Its silent growth seems to have been little noted by him. The contempt for death and indifference to riches professed by this new sect would seem to him only echoes of what he had long heard from the lips of those Stoic and Cynic pretenders whom he had made it his special business to unmask; the vagrant preachers of this new faith, supported by contributions, were confounded by him with the half-mendicant professors of philosophy whom he had known too well. He did not care enough about the Christians to hate them much. Their refusal to sacrifice to the national idols—the great testing-point of their martyrs under the reigning emperors—could have been no great crime in the eyes of the author of the "Dialogues of the Gods." Fanaticism in that direction was no worse than fanaticism in the other. His chief attention seems to have been concentrated on that remarkable revival of paganism which began under Hadrian and the Antonines, against which he protests with all the force of a keen intellect and a biting wit. But, far from being the enemy of Christianity, he was, however unintentionally and unconsciously, one of its most active allies. He fought its battle on a totally different ground from its own apologists, and would have been astonished to know that he was fighting it at all; but he was weakening the common enemy. He did the same service to the advancing forces of Christianity as the explosion of a mine does to the storming party who are waiting in the trenches: he blew into ruins the fortifications of pagan superstition, already grievously shaken. He did not know who was to enter in at the breach; but he had a strong conviction that the old stronghold of falsehood ought at any cost not to stand.

 

END OF LUCIAN.

 

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

1. Lucian's words are, "I believe it was eating certain food forbidden among them." This may have reference to the "meats offered to idols:" or he may very probably here, as elsewhere, confound Christians with Jews.
2. The Greek word here used (προστατης) possibly means bishop. St Cyril calls St Paul and St Peter by that name.
3. Suidas shall express himself in his own Latin, and if any English reader does not understand him, he will have no great loss: "Quare et rabiei istius pœnas sufficientes in præseuti vita dedit, et in futurum hæres æterni ignis una cum Satana erit."—Life of Lucian, prefixed to Zuinger's edit., 1602.
4. The vulture among birds was the general scavenger, as the dog among beasts; and Lucian perhaps imagines the soul of the Cynic naturally taking that form.
5. The dove is omitted in the account given by Eusebius.
6. See Noct. Att., xii, 11. Wieland, all whose remarks on Lucian deserve respect, thought his portrait of Peregrinus manifestly unfair, and wrote a kind of novelette, cast in the form of a Dialogue between Lucian and Peregrinus in Elysium, in which the latter gives a very different account of his life from the version here presented to us. There is a good notice of this little work of Wieland's in W. Taylor's 'Historic Survey of German Poetry,' ii. 482.
7. "Alexander," 38.