Bernays' Lucian and the Cynics

Author(s): I. Bywater
Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 1 (1880), pp. 301-304
Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies
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BERNAYS'LUCIAN AND THE CYNICS.

301

BERNAYS' LUClAN AND) THE CYNICS.'

PROFESSORBERNAYS is among the few who possess the art
of writing what can be read by men of culture as well as by
professional scholars and historians; a monograph from his pen
is sure to be at once a real contribution to knowledge, full of
striking and original suggestions, and a work of literature,
written with the attention to form and finish which we admire
in some of the classic productions of a former age. The present
work on Lucian and the Cynics is in every respect a worthy
companion to the Theophrastus on Piety published in 1866.
Though it is shorter and less elaborate in details than its
predecessor, the subject is one which allows of a more consecutive mode of statement, and has perhaps in itself a more
immediate interest for the general reader. Prof. Bernays now
deals with an aspect of the civilization of the Roman empire, in
which he demonstrates-what to many of us, I suppose, will be
a sort of revelation-the existence of a popular religious movement, distinct from the established Paganism and from the
philosophies of the schools. This new interpretation of Cynicism
enables us to realize the fact that the Cynic of the first and
second centuries was not a philosophical oddity, to be relegated
to a chapter of a history of ancient philosophy, but a religious
reformer at a moment when the Greek world seemed to have
lost the power of religious initiative, and the spokesman of a
kind of popular opposition when opposition to the existing
political order of things was least to be expected.
In reference to the book De morte Peregrini I may here
remark, for the benefit of readers of Mr. Cotterill's Peregrinus
Proteus, that Prof. Bernays does not seem disturbed by any
1 Lucian und die Kyniker. Von Jacob
Bernays. Mit einer Uebersetzung der

Schrift Lucians Uiber das Lebensende

des Peregrinus. Berlin: W. Hertz.

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302

BERNAYS' LUCIAN AND THE CYNICS.

sceptical doubts as to the genuineness of the book: had the

English work appeared in time to raise the question, I fancy
that he would have made- short work of difficulties and
objections of the sort which Mr. Cotterill has found it so easy
to raise.
What weight are we to attach to Lucian's judgments on his
contemporaries? This is a very old literary problem, which must
force itself on the attention of a critical reader of the De morte
Peregrini. By the opportune discovery ih Galen (De methodo
medendi, xiii. 15) of a passage relating to Theagenes, who is
made to play the part of second Cynic in Lucian's satire, Prof.
Bernays had been able to put the problem in a light, by the aid
of which we can henceforth, to a certain extent, control Lucian's
statement, and see what manner of man Theagenes was in the
eyes of a learned and unprejudiced physician. Writing as a
physician for physicians, Galen has occasion to describe the last
illness of the Cynic, whose death he attributes to the erroneous
course of treatment adopted by certain of the medical men of
the day. What he has to say about the man himself is all the
more trustworthy from the fact of its being brought in incidentally. We gather from Galen's narrative that at the time of his
own residence in Rome Theagenes, then an old man, was a
familiar figure at Trajan's Gymnasium, where he was to be
found daily talking and teaching, and that his life at this time
was one of ideal austerity,' without wife, child, or attendant'
-hardly the sort of life that a ranting hypocrite would be
likely to choose. If this is what Theagenes was to Galen, just as
Peregrinus, the principal personage in the satire, seemed a 'vir
gravis atque constans' to the candid Aulus Gellius, what is one
to think of Lucian and the very different version he has left us
of their ways and character? The account of Lucian as a man
and as a littirateur given in these pages (p. 42 seqq.)is a model
of literary portraiture which I commend to the careful consideration of all students of the witty Syrian. As for the
hackneyed comparison between him and Voltaire, Prof. Bernays
very rightly maintains that the comparison is superficial, and
in every way unfair to Voltaire. Lucian lacked among other
things the varied knowledge, the intellectual sincerity, the
revolt at injustice and oppression of the great Frenchman;
and his ambition was to end his days as a Roman official.

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BERNAYS' LUCIAN AND THE CYNICS.

303

He attacked the failings of the gods and the philosophers,

who could not retaliate, but discreetly spared the vices and
prejudices of the ruling classes and the abuses of the Imperial
system of government. To the public which Lucian addressed
the Cynic was a disquieting social anomaly; his renunciation
of worldly wealth and comfort seemed mere hypocrisy; his
contempt for received standards of belief and conduct was an
unpardonable offence in so conventional a state of society.
Freethinking, as a mere form of enlightenment, was then as
now a thing which the polite world could tolerate, but the
Cynic was not a freethinker of the harmless professorial type;
he was too much in earnest in his mockery at polytheism, with
its paraphernalia of priests, sacrifices and oracles; he set
himself up as a sort of preacher of righteousness, talked of
'freedom' in a way distressing to official ears, and did not
mind speaking the truth even of the greatest. Such men were
obviously an element of danger to a 'mechanical civilization'
(p. 45) like that of the Empire; and Lucian as the littrateur
of the period showed that he knew how to please the influential
classes when he undertook to turn the life and death of
Peregrinus into ridicule, and made it seem as though his end,
so far from being evidence of honesty, were the appropriate
finale of a long career of fraud and imposture.
The story of Peregrinus as told by Lucian may be analyzed
into two portions-the facts, and the colouring Lucian has put
upon the facts. Remove the colouring, the innuendoes, motives,
and other inventions which constitute so much of the picture,
and we may easily conceive the Peregrinus and Theagenes of
reality to have been very unlike the pair of vulgar charlatans
Lucian makes them out to have been. I must not omit to
mention, however, that while thus vindicating the memory of
Peregrinus and insisting on the religious and social significance
of Cynicism, Prof. Bernays duly recognizes that there were
Cynics and Cynics, and that the cloak of the sect might easily
come to be worn as a cloak for hypocrisy. If this had not been
the case sometimes, Cynicism would certainly have been a
wholly unique phenomenon in the history of religions. As
regards the self-immolation of Peregrinus, we know that,
although ancient opinion was divided on the question of the
lawfulness of suicide, the step was sanctioned by the example

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304

BERNAYS'LUCIANAND THE CYNICS.

of many of the philosophers of an earlier age. With Cynics,

however, there was a, special motive for suicide; the idea of a
life of valetudinarianism was intolerable to such robust natures.
Accordingly we find it intimated in the biographies of Diogenes
and the semi-Cynic Zeno that they 'made their exit' when
infirmity or some bodily accident came to warn them that it
was time to depart. The fever which brought Peregrinus to
death's door may have served to remind him of these ancient
precedents. His history indeed presents some singular points of
resemblance to what is recorded of the founders of his sect;
and if we suppose his mode of life to have been more or less
consciously influenced by a desire to imitate such precedents,
the hypothesis would have the support of many analogies in the
lives of Christian Saints. I would suggest, therefore, that
the motives for his voluntary death are partially explained by the
influence of tradition and the circumstance that he was at the
time old and wasted with disease.
Of the translation of Lucian's text I need not say more than
this, that it is the work of one who is a very experienced
translator as well as an accomplished scholar. The notes in the
Appendix are for the most part in illustration or defence of
assertions made in the introductory Essay, which is thus
relieved of matter calculated to interfere with the unity and
consecutiveness of the main discussion.
I. BYWATER.

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