Rhetorum praeceptor

“Let your friends spring to their feet constantly and pay you for their dinners by lending you a hand whenever they perceive that you are about to fall down, and giving you a chance to find what to say next in the intervals afforded by their applause. Of course you must make it your business to have a well-attuned chorus of your own.[*](The word chorus here approaches the sense that it has in Libanius, where it designates the different bands of scholars attached to the various professors at Athens. So Aelian (Var. Hist. 3, 19) says of Aristotle that he gathered about him a chorus of pupils, and set upon Plato. Cf. Plato, Prot. 315 B. ) “There you have what concerns the speaking. Afterwards let them[*](Not simply the friends, but the spectators also. See Lucian’s Zeus. ) dance attendance upon you as you go away with your head swathed in your mantle, reviewing what you have said. And if any one accosts you, make marvellous assertions about yourself, be extravagant in your self-praise, and make yourself a nuisance to him.[*](This is not the orator, but Lucian himself, breaking through the veil of irony and saying what he really thinks. See below. ) ‘What was Demosthenes beside me?’ ‘Perhaps one of the ancients is in the running with me!’ and that sort of thing.

“I almost omitted the thing that is most important and most needful for maintaining your reputation. Laugh at all the speakers. If anyone makes a fine speech, let it appear that he is parading something that belongs to someone else and is not his own ; and if he is mildly criticized, let everything that he says be objectionable. At public lectures, go in after everybody else, for that makes you conspicuous; and when everybody is silent, let fall an uncouth expression of praise which will draw the attention of the company and so annoy them that they will all be disgusted at the vulgarity of your

“For the rest, you need have no fear. Effrontery and shamelessness, a prompt lie, with an oath to confirm it always on the edge of your lips, jealousy and hatred of everyone, abuse and plausible slanders —all this will make you famous and distinguished in an instant.

“So much for your life in public and in the open. In your private life, be resolved to do anything and everything—to dice, to drink deep, to live high and to keep mistresses, or at all events to boast of it even if you do not do it, telling everyone about it and showing notes that purport to be written by women. You must aim to be elegant, you know, and take pains to create the impression that women are devoted to you. This also will be set down to the credit of your rhetoric by the public, who will infer from it that your fame extends even to the women’s quarters. And I say—do not be ashamed to have the name of being an effeminate, even if you are bearded or actually bald. There should be some who hang about you on that account, but if there are none, your slaves will answer. This helps your rhetoric in many ways; it increases your shameless-

“If you thoroughly learn all this, my lad—and you can, for there is nothing difficult about it—I promise you confidently that right soon you will turn out an excellent speaker, just like myself. And there is no need for me to tell you what will follow—all the blessings that will instantly accrue to you from Rhetoric. You see my own case. My father was an insignificant fellow without even a clear title to his freedom, who had been a slave above Xois and Thmuis,[*](Xois and Thmuis were towns in the Nile delta, the one in the Sebennitic nome, the other to the eastward, capital of the Thmuite nome. Lucian may mean simply “up-country in the Delta”; but it is better, I think, to take his words more literally as meaning “up-country in each of those two nomes.” ) and my mother was a seamstress in the slums. For myself, as my personal attractions were considered not wholly contemptible, at first I lived with an ill-conditioned, stingy admirer just for my keep. But then I detected the easi-

I was bundled out neck and crop, yet even then I was not at a loss for the necessaries of life. No, I enjoy the name of a speaker, and prove myself such in the courts, generally playing false to my clients, although I promise the poor fools to deliver their juries to them.[*](He is an accomplished praevaricator, not only selling out to the other side, but extracting money from his own clients under pretext of bribing the jury. ) To be sure I am generally unsuccessful, but the palm-leaves at my door are green and twined with fillets, for I use them as bait for my victims.[*](For palm-branches as a token of success at the bar see Juvenal 7, 118, and Mayor’s note. ) But even to be detested by everyone, to be notorious for the badness of my character and the still greater badness of my speeches, to be pointed out with the finger—‘ There he is, the man who, they say, is foremost in all iniquity !’—seems to me no slight achievement.

“This is the advice which I bestow upon you. By Our Lady of the Stews, I bestowed it upon myself long ago, and am deeply grateful to myself for it.”

Well, the gentleman will end his remarks with that, and then it is up to you. If you heed what he has said, you may consider that even now you are where in the beginning you yearned to be; and nothing can hinder you, as long as you follow his rules, from holding the mastery in the courts, enjoying high favour with the public, being attractive, and marrying, not an old woman out of a comedy, as did your law-giver and tutor, but Rhetoric, fairest of brides. Consequently, Plato’s famous phrase about driving full-tilt in a winged car can be applied by you to yourself with a better grace than by him to Zeus! As for me, I am spiritless and fainthearted, so I will get out of the road for you, and stop trifling with Rhetoric, being unable to recommend myself to her by qualifications like those of yourself and your friend. Indeed, I have stopped already ; so get the herald to proclaim an uncontested victory and take your tribute of admiration, remembering only this, that it is not by your speed that you have defeated us, through proving yourself more swift of foot than we, but because you took the road that was easy and downhill.