And now, they say, he is playing the mountebank over that very thing, digging a pit, collecting logs, and promising really awesome fortitude.

Thanks to Paul Graindor, the date of the Olympiads mentioned in connection with Peregrinus can now be determined. He has deduced from the apparent ages of the children represented in the exedra erected ty Herodes on the comlotion of his aqueduct that this took place in a.d. 153 (Hérode Atticus et Sa Famille, pp. 87-88). His deduction finds support in the text of Lucian as soon as we recognise that Lucian is talking about four different Olympiads, not three. The first is that on which Peregrinus criticised the aqueduct, which will be the year of its completion, a.d. 153. At the nezt (τὴν ἑξῆς, A.D. 157) he withdrew his criticism. The Olympiad just after which he announced his intention of cremating himself need not and cannot be identical with the one of a.D. 157; it is called by the speaker the last, or previous (τὴν ἐμπρόσθεν), and the text clearly implies a lapse of time. It must therefore be the one of a.d. 161. Then comes the fourth, on which the cremation took place, dated by Eusebius in a.d. 165.

“What he should have done, I think, was first and foremost to await death and not to cut and run from life ; but if he had determined to be off at all costs, not to use fire or any of these devices out of tragedy, but to choose for his departure some other form of death out of the myriads that there are. If, however, he is partial to fire as something connected with Heracles,. why in the world did he not quietly select a wellwooded mountain and cremate himself upon it in solitude, taking along only one person such as Theagenes here for his Philoctetes?

Philoctetes had helped Heracles to cremate himself on Mt. Oeta by kindling the pyre for him.

“The spectacle is being planned, I suppose, as Something awe-inspiring—a fellow getting burnt up in a holy place where it is impious even to bury the others who die. But you have heard, no doubt, that long ago a man who wished to become famous burned the temple of Ephesian Artemis, not being able to attain that end in any other way.

Herostratus, in356 3.0, The Ephesians sought to defeat his object by forbidding anyone for all time to mention his name (Valerius Maximus, VIII, 14, 5). The prohibition, which very likely was accompanied by a curse, was far from ineffective, for nearly all ancient authors who mention the story, including Cicero and Plutarch, omit the name just as Lucian does,

“He alleges, however, that he is doing it for the sake of his fellow men, that he may teach them to despise death and endure what is fearsome. For my part, I should like to ask, not him but you, whether you would wish malefactors to become his disciples in this fortitude of his, and to despise death and burning and similar terrors. No, you would not, I am very sure. How, then, is Proteus to draw distinctions in this matter, and to benefit the good without making the bad more adventurous and daring?

“Nevertheless, suppose it possible that only those will present themselves at this affair who will see it to their advantage. Once more I shall question you: would you desire your children to become imitators of such a man? You will not say so. But why did I ask that question, when even of his disciples them- selves not one would imitate him? In fact, the thing for which one might blame Theagenes most of all is that although he copies the man in everything else, he does not follow his teacher and take the road with him, now that he is off, as he says, to join Heracles; why, he has the opportunity to attain absolute felicity instanter by plunging headlong into the fire with him!

“Emulation is not a matter of wallet, staff, and mantle; all this is safe and easy and within anyone’s power. One should emulate the consummation and culmination, build a pyre of fig-wood logs as green as can be, and stifle one’s selfin the smoke of them. Fire itself belongs not only to Heracles and Asclepius, but to doers of sacrilege and murder, who can be seen enduring it by judicial sentence. Therefore it is better to employ smoke, which would be peculiar and belong only to you and your like.

“Besides, if Heracles really did venture any such act, he did it because he was ailing, because the blood of the Centaur, as the tragedies tell us, was preying upon him; but for what reason does this man throw himself bodily into the fire? Oh, yes! to demonstrate his fortitude, like the Brahmans, for Theagenes thought fit to compare him with them, just as if there could not be fools and notoriety-seekers even among the Indians. Well, then, let him at least imitate them. They do not leap into the fire (so Onesicritus says, Alexander’s navigator, who saw Calanus burning), but when they have built their pyre, they stand close beside it motionless and en- dure being toasted; then, mounting upon it, they cremate themselves decorously, without the slightest alteration of the position in which they are lying.

“In this man’s case, what great thing will it be if he tumbles in and dies in the sudden grip of the fire? It is not beyond expectation that he will jump out half consumed, unless, as they say, he is going to see to it that the pyre is deep down in a pit.

There are people who say that he has even changed his mind, and is telling certain dreams, to the effect that Zeus does not permit pollution of a holy place.

See above, p. 25, and n. 3.

“Thave heard that he no longer deigns to be called Proteus but has changed his name to Phoenix, because the phoenix, the Indian bird, is said to mount a pyre when it is very far advanced in age. Indeed, he even manufactures myths and repeats certain oracles, ancient, of course, to the purport that he is to become a guardian spirit of the night; it is plain, too, that he already covets altars and expects to be imaged in gold.

“By Zeus, it would be nothing unnatural if, among all the dolts that there are, some should be found to assert that they were relieved of quartan fevers by him, and that in the dark they had encountered the guardian spirit of the night! Then too these accursed disciples of his will make an oracular shrine, I suppose, with a holy of holies, at the site of the pyre, because the famous Proteus, son of Zeus, the progenitor of his name, was given to soothsaying.

Athenagoras reports that Parium, where Peregrinus was born, cherished a statue of him from which oracles were derived (Leg. de Christ., 26).

"Theagenes, as I have been told by one of my friends, recently said that the Sibyl had made a prediction about all this; in fact, he quoted the verses from memory : But when the time shall come that Proteus, noblest of Cynics,Kindleth fire in the precinct of Zeus, our Lord of the Thunder,Leapeth into the flame, and cometh to lofty Olympus,Then do I bid all alike who eat the fruit of the ploughland Honour to pay unto him that walketh abroad in the night-time,Greatest of spirits, thronéd with Heracles and Hephaestus.

“That is what Theagenes alleges he heard from the Sibyl. But I will quote him one of the oracles of Bacis dealing with these matters.

Lucian gives the Cynic a Roland for his Oliver. Bacis was a title rather than a name, and in early Greece prophets who bore it were little less numerous than the Sibyls. Naturally it was a convenient tag for a spurious oracle, whether composed with fraudulent intention or, as often in Aristophanes, for fun.

When he had said these words, all the bystanders shouted: “Let them be burned right now; they deserve the flames!” And the man got down again laughing; but “Nestor failed not to mark the din: 3 I mean Theagenes. When he heard the shouting he came at once, took the platform, and fell to ranting and telling countless malicious tales about the man who had just got down—I do not know what that excellent gentleman’s name was. For my part, I left him splitting his lungs and went off to see the athletes, as the Hellanodicae were said to be already in the Plethrium.

According to Pausanias (VI, 23, 2), a place in the Gymnasium of Elis where the officials of the games (Hellanodicae) determined by lot the matching of the athletes.

Well, there you have what happened at Elis; and when we reached Olympia, the rear chamber

Of the temple of Zeus; as it was open at the end, it formed a sort of portico. Cf. Runaways, 7; Herodotus, 1.

This much, however, I overheard; he said that he wanted to put a tip of gold on a golden bow;

Pandarus the Trojan (Iliad, IV, 111) put a tip of gold on the bow he had fashioned of horn. The golden bow (βιῷ) of Peregrinus is his life (βίῳ).

You can imagine, I expect, how I laughed; for it was not fitting to pity a man so desperately in love with glory beyond all others who are driven by the same Fury. Anyhow, he was being escorted by crowds and getting his fill of glory as he gazed at the number of his admirers, not knowing, poor wretch, that men on their way to the cross or in the grip of the executioner have many more at their heels.

Soon the Olympic games were ended, the most splendid Olympics that I have seen, though it was then the fourth time that I had been a spectator. As it was not easy to secure a carriage, since many were leaving at the same time, I lingered on against my will, and Peregrinus kept making postponements, but at last had announced a night on which he would stage his cremation; so, as one of my friends had invited me to go along, I arose at midnight and took the road to Harpina, where the pyre was. This is quite twenty furlongs from Olympia as one goes past the hippodrome towards the east. As soon as we arrived, we found a pyre built in a pit about six feet deep. It was composed mostly of torchwood, and the interstices filled with brush, that it might take fire quickly.

When the moon was rising—for she too had to witness this glorious deed—he came forward, dressed in his usual fashion, and with him the leaders of the Cynics; in particular, the gentleman from Patras, with a torch—no bad understudy. Proteus too was bearing a torch. Men, approaching from this side and that, kindled the fire into a very great flame, since it came from torchwood and brush. Peregrinus—and give me your close attention now !— laying aside the wallet, the cloak, and that notable Heracles-club, stood there in a shirt that was downright filthy. Then he requested incense to throw on the fire; when someone had proffered it, he threw it on, and gazing towards the south—even the south, too, had to do with the show

C. R. Lanman (in Allinson, Lucian: Selected Writings, p. 200) thus explains the mystic allusion to the South: “It is to be noted that Yama—the first man who died and found out for all men the pathway ‘to a distant home, a dwellingplace secure ’—conducts souls to the ‘ Blessed Fathers’ in the south, the region of the Manes. See Atharvaveda 18, 3, 13; 4, 40, 2. So the monthly offerings (¢raddhas) to the Manes are performed in such a way that they end in the south (Manu’s Laws, 3,214). The invoking of the daipoves is in accord with Hindu thought; eg. the liturge in Hiranyakegin’s Grhya-sutra, 2, 10° (see F. Max Müller’s Sacred Books of the Kast, XXX, p. 226), after inviting the Manes, sprinkles water towards the south, saying: ‘ Divine waters, send us Agni.’ The νεκράγγελοι and νερτεροδρόμοι in 41 may be an echo of Yama’s messengers that has reached Lucian. See Atharvaveda 18, 2, 27 and H. C. Warren’s Buddhism in Translations, pp. 225-262.”

With that he leaped into the fire; he was not visible, however, but was encompassed by the flames, which had risen to a great height. Once more I see you laughing, Cronius, my urbane friend, at the dénouement of the play. For my own part, when he called upon the guardian spirits of his mother, I did not criticise him very strongly, but when he invoked those of his father as well, I recalled the tales that had been told about his murder, and I could not control my laughter. The Cynics stood about the pyre, not weeping, to be sure, but silently evincing a certain. amount of grief as they gazed into the fire, until my gorge rose at them, and I said: “Let us go away, you simpletons. It is not an agreeable spectacle to look at an old man who has been roasted, getting our nostrils filled with a villainous reek. Or are you waiting for a painter to come and picture you as the companions of Socrates in prison are portrayed beside him?” They were indignant and reviled me, and several even took to their sticks. Then, when I threatened to gather up a few of them and throw them into the fire, so that they might follow their master, they checked themselves and kept the peace.

As I returned, I was thinking busily, my friend, reflecting what a strange thing love of glory is; how this passion alone is unescapable even by those who are considered wholly admirable, let alone that man who in other respects had led a life that was insane and reckless, and not undeserving of the fire.

Then I encountered many people coming out to see the show themselves, for they expected to find him still alive. You see, on the day before it had been given out that he would greet the rising sun, as, in fact, they say the Brahmans do, before mounting the pyre. Well, I turned back most of them by saying the deed had been done already, those to whom it was not in itself highly desirable to see the actual spot, anyhow, and gather up some relic of the fire. In that business, I assure you, my friend, I had no end of trouble, telling the story to all while they asked questions and sought exact information. Whenever I noticed a man of taste, I would tell him the facts without embellishment, as I have to you; but for the benefit of the dullards, agog to listen, I would thicken the plot a bit on my own account, saying that when the pyre was kindled and Proteus flung himself bodily in, a great earthquake first took place, accompanied by a bellowing of the ground, and then a vulture, flying up out of the midst of the flames, went off to Heaven,

At the death of Plato and of Augustus it was an eagle; in the case of Polycarp, a dove.

On my return to the festival, I came upon a greyhaired man whose face, I assure you, inspired confidence in addition to his beard and his general air of consequence, telling all about Proteus, and how, since his cremation, he had beheld him in white raiment a little while ago, and had just now left him walking about cheerfully in the Portico of the Seven Voices,

This was a portico on the east side of the Altis which had a sevenfold echo (Pausan., V, 21, 17; Pliny, XXXVI, 100).