Philopsuedes sive incredulus

Can you tell me, Philocles, what in the world it is that makes many men so fond of lying that they delight in telling preposterous tales themselves and listen with especial attention to those who spin yarns of that sort?

PHILOCLES There are many reasons, Tychiades, which constrain men occasionally to tell falsehoods with an eye to the usefulness of it.

TYCHIADES That has nothing to do with the case, as the phrase is, for I did not ask about men who lie for advantage. They are pardonable—yes, even praiseworthy, some of them, who have deceived national enemies or for safety’s sake have used this kind of expedient in extremities, as Odysseus often did in seeking to win his own life and the return of his comrades.[*](An echo of Odyssey1, 5. ) No, my dear sir, I am speaking of those men who put sheer useless lying far ahead of truth, liking the thing and whiling away their time at it without any valid excuse. I want to know about these men, to what end they do this.

PHILOCLES Have you really noted any such men anywhere in whom this passion for lying is ingrained ?

TYCHIADES Yes, there are many such men.

PHILOCLES What other reason, then, than folly may they be said to have for telling untruths, since they choose the worst course instead of the best? —

TYCHIADES That too has nothing to do with the case, Philocles, for I could show you many men otherwise sensible and remarkable for their intelligence who have somehow become infected with this plague and are lovers of lying, so that it irks me when such men, excellent in every way, yet delight in deceiving themselves and their associates. Those of olden time should be known to you before I mention them— Herodotus, and Ctesias of Cnidus, and before them the poets, including Homer himself—men of renown, who made use of the written lie, so that they not only deceived those who listened to them then, but transmitted the falsehood from generation to generation even down to us, conserved in the choicest of diction and rhythm. For my part it. often occurs to me to blush for them when they tell of the castration of Uranus, and the fetters of Prometheus, and the revolt of the Giants, and the whole sorry show in Hades, and how Zeus turned into a bull or a swan on account of a loveaffair, and how some woman changed into a bird or a

Yet as far as the poets are concerned, perhaps the case is not so bad; but is it not ridiculous that even cities and whole peoples tell lies unanimously and officially ? The Cretans exhibit the tomb of Zeus and are not ashamed of it, and the Athenians assert that Erichthonius sprang from the earth and that the first men came up out of the soil of Attica like vegetables ; but at that their story is much more dignified than that of the Thebans, who relate that ““Sown Men” grew up from serpents’ teeth. If any man, however, does not think that these silly stories are true, but sanely puts them to the proof and holds that only a Coroebus or a Margites[*](Coroebus is known as a typical fool only from this passage, and the scholion upon it, which attributes to him a story told elsewhere of Margites, the hero of the dost mockepic ascribed to Homer. ) can believe either that Triptolemus drove through the air behind winged serpents, or that Pan came from Arcadia to Marathon to take a hand in the battle, or that Oreithyia was carried off by Boreas, they consider that man a sacrilegious fool for doubting facts so evident and genuine ; to such an extent does falsehood prevail.

PHILOCLES Well, as far as the poets are concerned, Tychiades, and the cities too, they may properly be pardoned. The poets flavour their writings with the delectability that the fable yields, a most seductive thing, which they need above all else for the benefit of their readers ; and the Athenians, Thebans and others, if

TYCHIADES You are quite right in what you say. For example, I come to you from Eucrates the magnificent, having listened to a great lot of incredible yarns; to put it more accurately, I took myself off in the midst of the conversation because I could not stand the exaggeration of the thing: they drove me out as if they had been the Furies by telling quantities of extraordinary miracles.

PHILOCLES But, Tychiades, Eucrates is a trustworthy person, and nobody could ever believe that he, with such a long beard, a man of sixty, and a great devotee of philosophy too, would abide even to hear someone else tell a lie in his presence, let alone venturing to do anything of that sort himself.

TYCHIADES Why, my dear fellow, you do not know what sort of statements he made, and how he confirmed them, and how he actually swore to most of them, taking oath upon his children, so that as I gazed at him all sorts of ideas came into my head, now that he was insane and out of his right mind, now that he was only a fraud, after all, and I had failed, in all these

PHILOCLES What were they, Tychiades, in the name of Hestia?[*](The oath amounts to “In the name of friendship.” ) I should like to know what sort of quackery he has been screening behind that great beard.

TYCHIADES I used to visit. him previously, Philocles, whenever I had a good deal of leisure; and to-day, when I wanted to find Leontichus, a close friend of mine, as you know, and was told by his boy that he had gone off to the house of Eucrates in the early morning to pay him a call because he was ill, I went there for two reasons, both to find Leontichus and to see Eucrates, for I had not known that he was ill.

I did not find Leontichus there, for he had just gone out a little while before, they said ; but I found plenty of others, among whom there was Cleodemus the Peripatetic, and Deinomachus the Stoic, and Ion —you know the one that thinks he ought to be admired for his mastery of Plato’s doctrines as the only person who has accurately sensed the man’s meaning and can expound it to the rest of the world. You see what sort of men I am naming to you, allwise and all-virtuous, the very fore-front of each school, every one venerable, almost terrible, to look at. In addition, the physician Antigonus was there, called in, I suppose, by reason of the illness. Eucrates seemed to be feeling better already, and the ailment was of a chronic character; he had had another attack of rheumatism in his feet.

He bade me sit by him on the couch, letting his voice drop a little to the tone of an invalid when he saw me, although as I was coming in I heard him shouting and vigorously pressing some point or other. I took very good care not to touch his feet, and after making the customary excuses that I did not know he was ill and that when I learned of it I came in hot haste, sat down beside him.

It so happened that the company had already, I think, talked at some length about his ailment and were then discussing it further; they were each suggesting certain remedies, moreover. At any rate Cleodemus said : “Well then, if you take up from the ground in your left hand the tooth of the weasel which has been killed in the way I have already described and wrap it up in the skin of a lion just flayed, and then bind it about your legs, the pain ceases instantly.”

“Not in a lion’s skin, I was told,” said Deinomachus, “but that of a hind still immature and unmated ; and the thing is more plausible that way, for the hind is fleet and her strength lies especially in her legs. The lion is brave, of course, and his fat and his right fore-paw and the stiff bristles of his whiskers are very potent if one knew how to use them with the incantation appropriate to each ; but for curing the feet he is not at all promising.”

“I myself,” said Cleodemus, “was of that opinion formerly, that it ought to be the skin of a hind because the hind is fleet ; but recently a man from

The company applauded, in the belief that the Libyan was right in what he said. But I said, “Do you really think that certain incantations put a stop to this sort of thing, or external applications, when the trouble has its seat within?” They laughed at my remark andclearly held meconvicted of great stupidity if I did not know the most obvious things, of which nobody in his right mind would maintain that they were not so. The doctor Antigonus, however, seemed to me to be pleased with my question, for he had been overlooked a long time, I suppose, when he wanted to aid Eucrates in a professional — way by advising him to abstain from wine, adopt a vegetarian diet, and in general to “lower his pitch.”

But Cleodemus, with a faint smile, said: ‘“What is that, Tychiades? Do you consider it incredible that any alleviations of ailments are effected by such means?” “TI do,’ said I, “not being altogether full of drivel, so as to believe that external remedies which have nothing to do with the internal causes of the ailments, applied as you say in combination with set phrases and _ hocus-pocus of some sort, are efficacious and bring on the cure. That could never happen, not even if you should wrap sixteen entire weasels in the skin of the Nemean lion; in fact I have often seen the lion himself limping in pain with his skin intact upon him!”

“You are a mere layman, you see,’ said Deinomachus, “and you have not made it a point to learn

“You are reasoning from false premises, Deinomachus,” I replied, “and, as the saying goes, driving. out one nail with another; for it is not clear that precisely what you are speaking of takes place by the aid of any such power. If, then, you do not first convince me by logical proof that it takes place in this way naturally, because the fever or the inflammation is afraid of a holy name or a foreign phrase and so takes flight from the swelling, your stories still remain old wives’ fables.”

“It seems to me,” said Deinomachus, “that when you talk like that you do not believe in the gods, either, since you do not think that cures can be effected through holy names.’ “Don’t say that, my dear sir!” I replied. “Even though the gods exist, there is nothing to prevent that sort of thing from being false just the same. For my part, I revere the gods and I see their cures and all the good that they do by restoring the sick to health with drugs and doctoring. In fact, Asclepius himself and his sons ministered to the sick by laying on healing drugs, not by fastening on lions’ skins and weasels.”[*](Iliad4, 218; 11, 830. )

“Never mind him,” said Ion, “and I will tell you

“As this report was being maile, we saw Midas himself being brought up on a litter by his fellowslaves, all swollen and livid, with a clammy skin and but little breath left in him. Naturally my father was distressed, but a friend who was there said to him: ‘Cheer up: I will at once go and get you a Babylonian, one of the so-called Chaldeans, who will cure the fellow.’ Not to make a long story of it, the Babylonian came and brought Midas back to life, driving the poison out of his body by a spell, and also binding upon his foot a fragment which he broke from the tombstone of a dead maiden.

“Perhaps this is nothing out of the common: although Midas himself picked up the litter on which he had been carried and went off to the farm, so potent was the spell and the fragment of the tombstone.

But the Babylonian did other things that were truly miraculous. Going to the farm in the early morning, he repeated seven sacred names out of an old book, purified the place with sulphur and torches, going about. it three times, and called out all the

“Tell me, Ion,” said I, “did the messenger snake, the young one, give his arm to the python, who you say was aged, or did the python have a stick and lean on it?”

“You are joking,” said Cleodemus: “I myself was formerly more incredulous than you in regard to such things, for I thought it in no way possible that they could happen; but when first I saw the foreign stranger fly—he came from the land of the Hyperboreans, he said—, I believed and was conquered after long resistance. What was I to do when I saw him soar through the air in broad daylight and walk on the water and go through fire slowly on foot?” “Did you see that?’ said I—“the Hyperborean flying, or stepping on the water?” “Certainly,” said he, “with brogues on his feet such as people of that country commonly wear. As for the trivial

But after all, I will tell you what I saw him do in the house of Glaucias, son of Alexicles.

“Immediately after Glaucias’ father died and he acquired the property, he fell in love with Chrysis, the wife of Demeas. I was in his employ as his tutor in philosophy, and if that love-affair had not kept him too busy, he would have known all the teachings of the Peripatetic school, for even at eighteen he was solving fallacies and had completed the course of lectures on natural philosophy.[*](Aristotle’s Physics. ) At his wit’s end, however, with his love-affair, he told me the whole story; and as was natural, since I was his tutor, I brought him that Hyperborean magician at a fee of four minas down (it was necessary to pay something in advance towards the cost of the victims) and sixteen if he should obtain Chrysis. The man waited for the moon to wax, as it is then, for the most part, that such rites are performed ; and after digging a pit in an open court of the house, at about midnight he first summoned up for us Alexicles, Glaucias’ father, who had died seven months before. The old gentleman was indignant over the love-affair . and flew into a passion, but at length he permitted him to go on with it after all. Next he brought up Hecate, who fetched Cerberus with her, and he drew down the moon, a many-shaped spectacle, appearing differently at different times; for at first she exhibited the form of a woman, then she turned into a handsome bull, and then she looked like a puppy.

If you had seen that, Tychiades, you would no longer have doubted that there is much good in spells.”

“Quite so,” said I, “I should have believed if I had seen it, but as things are I may perhaps be pardoned if I am not able to see as clearly as you. However, I know the Chrysis whom you speak of, an amorous dame and an accessible one, and I do not see why you needed the clay messenger and the Hyperborean magician and the moon in person to fetch her, when for twenty drachmas she could have been brought to the Hyperboreans! The woman is very susceptible to that spell, and her case is the opposite to that of ghosts; if they hear a chink of bronze or iron, they take flight, so you say, but as for her, if silver chinks anywhere, she goes toward the sound. Besides, I am surprised at the magician himself, if he was able to have the love of the richest women and get whole talents from them, and yet made Glaucias fascinating, penny-wise that he is, for four minas.”’

“You act ridiculously,” said Ion, “to doubt everything.

For my part, I should like to ask you what you say to those who free possessed men from their terrors by exorcising the spirits so manifestly. I need not discuss this: everyone knows about the Syrian from Palestine, the adept in it,[*](A scholiast takes this as a reference to Christ, but he is surely in error. The Syrian is Lucian’s contemporary, and probably not a Christian at all. Exorcists were common then. 2 1.¢. the “ideas,” ) how many he. takes in hand who fall down in the light of the moon and roll their eyes and fill their mouths with foam ; nevertheless, he restores them to health and sends them, away normal in mind, delivering them from their straits for a large fee. When he stands beside them as they lie there and asks: ‘Whence came you into his body?’ the patient himself is silent, but the spirit answers in Greek or in the language of whatever foreign country he comes from, telling how and whence he entered into the man; whereupon, by adjuring the spirit and if he does not obey, threatening him, he drives him out. Indeed, I actually saw one coming out, black and smoky in colour.” “It is nothing much,” I remarked, “for you, Ion, to see that kind of sight, when even the ‘ forms’? that the father of your school, Plato, points out are plain to you, a hazy object of vision to the rest of us, whose eyes are weak.”

“Why, is Ion the only one who has seen that kind of sight?” said Eucrates. “Have not many others encountered spirits, some at night and some by day? For myself, I have seen such things, not merely once but almost hundreds of times. At first I was disturbed by them, but now, of course, because of

“Anyhow,” said Eucrates, “the affair of the statue was observed every night by everybody in the house, boys, young men and old men, and you could hear about it not only from me but from all our people.”” “Statue!” said I, ‘what do you mean?”

“Have you not observed on coming in,’ said he, “avery fine statue set up in the hall, the work of Demetrius, the maker of portrait-statues ?” “Do you mean the discus-thrower,”’ said I, “the one bent over in the position of the throw, with his head turned back toward the hand that holds the discus, with one leg slightly bent, looking as if he would spring up all at once with the cast?” “Not that one,” said he, “for that is one of Myron’s works, the discus-thrower you speak of. Neither do I mean the one beside it, the one binding his head with the fillet, the handsome Jad, for that is Polycleitus’ work. Never mind those to the right as you come in, among which stand the tyrant-slayers, modelled’ by Critius and Nesiotes; but if you noticed one beside the fountain, pot-bellied, bald on the forehead, half bared by the hang of his cloak, with some of the hairs of his beard wind-blown and his veins prominent, the image of a real man, that is the one I mean;

“Yes,” I said, “I saw one to the right of the spout, wearing fillets and withered wreaths, his breast covered with gilt leaves.” “I myself puton the gilt leaves,’ said Eucrates, “when he cured me of the ague that was torturing me to death every other day.” “Really, is our excellent Pellichus a doctor also?” said I. “Do not mock,” Eucrates replied, “or before long the man will punish you. I know what virtue there is in this statue that you make fun of. Don’t you suppose that he can send fevers upon whomsoever he will, since it is possible for him to send them away?” “May the manikin be gracious and kindly,” said I, “since he is so manful. But what else does everyone in the house see him doing ?”

“As soon as night comes,” he said, “he gets down from the pedestal on which he stands and goes all about the house; we all encounter him, sometimes singing, and he has never harmed anybody. One has but to turn aside, and he passes without molesting in any way those who saw him. Upon my word, he often takes baths and disports himself all night, so that the water can be heard splashing.” “See here, then,” said I, “perhaps the statue is not Pellichus but Talos the Cretan, the son of Minos; he was a

“See here, Tychiades,” said he, “‘perhaps you will be sorry for your joke later on. I know what happened to the man who stole the obols that we offer him on the first of each month.” “It ought to have been something very dreadful,” said Ion, “since he committed a sacrilege. How was he punished, Eucrates? I should like to hear about it, no matter how much Tychiades here is going to doubt it.”

“A number of obols,” he said, “were lying at his feet, and some other small coins of silver had been stuck to his thigh with wax, and leaves of silver, votive offerings or payment for a cure from one or another of those who through him had ceased to be subject to fever. We had a plaguy Libyan servant, a groom; the fellow undertook to steal and did steal everything that was there, at night, after waiting until the statue had descended. But as soon as Pellichus came back and discovered that he had been robbed, mark how he punished and exposed the Libyan! The unhappy man ran about the hall the whole night long unable to get out, just as if he had been thrown into a labyrinth, until finally he was caught in possession of the stolen property when daycame. He got a sound thrashing then, on being caught, and he did not long survive the incident, dying a rogue’s death from being flogged, he said, every night, so that welts showed on his body the