De Morte Peregrini

Lucian of Samosata

Lucian, Vol. 5. Harmon, A. M., editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936.

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.” )—he said: “Spirits of my mother and my father, receive me with favour.”

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

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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.

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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. ) saying, in human speech, with a loud voice:

I am through with the earth; to Olympus I fare.

They were wonder-struck and blessed themselves with a shudder, and asked me whether the vulture sped eastwards or westwards; I made them whatever reply occurred to me.

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). ) wearing a garland of wild olive. Then on

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top of it all he put the vulture, swearing that he himself had seen it flying up out of the pyre, when I myself had just previously let it fly to ridicule fools and dullards.