Apologia

Lucian of Samosata

Lucian, Vol. 6. Kilburn, K., translator. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959.

I have long been wondering, my dear Sabinus, what it probably occurred to you to say now that you have read my essay on “Salaried Posts in Great Houses.” It is quite certain that you had a good laugh when you read it; but I am trying now to fit the detailed and general comments you made to the text. If I am any good at divination, I think I can hear you saying: “To think that anyone could write that and work up such a devastating indictment against that sort of life, then, when the die falls the other way up, completely forget it and himself of his own free will rush headlong into a slavery so manifest and conspicuous! How many Midases and Croesuses and whole Pactoluses have persuaded him to throw away his liberty, the object of his care and companion of his nurture since childhood? Already within sight of Aeacus himself, with one foot almost in the ferry-boat he lets himself be dragged and pulled along as though by a golden collar fastened round his throat! [*](See On Sal, Posts., Loeb, vol. iii, 7.) What bracelets and necklaces the idle rich must have! There is much inconsistency here between his present life and his essay—‘rivers

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flowing uphill’ and ‘the world upside down’ and ‘recantation for the worse,’ not for a Helen indeed, or what happened at Troy; [*](The poet Stesichorus recanted his attack on Helen of Troy.) no, here in very fact are your words turned upside down, although they seemed well enough before.”

That’s what you said to yourself, I’ve no doubt. Perhaps you will offer me some such advice, not untimely, but friendly, and becoming to an honest philosopher like yourself. If I put your mask on and answer properly, all will be well for us, and we shall sacrifice to the God of Reason. If not, well, you will add what is lacking. Well then it is time for us to change the scene; I must keep quiet and endure your cutting and cautery if need be for survival’s sake; you must apply the ointment and at the same time have the knife ready and the cauterising iron red-hot. Now you, Sabinus, take the word and thus you now address me:

“My dear friend, your essay, as is right, has long been admired, both before a great crowd at its first appearance, as those who then heard it told me, and privately among educated people who have not hesitated to use and handle it. The style could not be censured, its content was ample and showed a knowledge of the world; it was clear in detail and, most important of all, it was useful for everybody and particularly for the educated, to save them falling into servitude through ignorance. Now all is changed; this course seems better to you, to bid

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freedom good-bye for ever, and to follow that sordid verse
  1. ‘Where gain is, be a slave beyond your nature.’
Take care no one hears you reading it again; keep written copies out of the way of anyone who sees your present life, and pray Hermes down below to sprinkle plenty of Lethe on those who have already heard it. Otherwise you will be like the man in the Corinthian story, a Bellerophon who wrote the book against yourself. [*](Bellerophon carried a letter requesting his execution. Hom., Il. vi, 155 sqq.) Indeed I don’t see what answer you can make to give you a good face before your accusers, especially if they are laughing at you and praise the essay and its freedom while they see the writer himself enslaved and willingly putting his neck under the yoke.

It would be reasonable enough, at least, if they said that someone else was the noble author, and you were a jackdaw strutting in borrowed plumes; or, if it is yours, that you were another Salaethus who made a most severe law against adultery at Croton and was admired for it, but shortly afterwards was himself caught seducing his brother’s wife. It would be said that you were exactly that Salaethus—no, he was much more restrained than you; love caught him, as he said in his defence, and he jumped readily and bravely into the fire, although the people of Croton now pitied him and granted him exile if he preferred. But your case is much more shocking; you gave a precise description

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in your essay of the slavishness of a life of that sort and added your condemnation of the thousand unpleasant things a man suffered and did once he fell into a rich man’s power and put himself in chains, yet in extreme old age you chose such an ignoble service when you were almost over the threshold into death, and furthermore you all but plumed yourself on entering that service. At any rate the more distinguished a person everyone thinks you, the more ridiculous you will seem if your present life contradicts your essay.

“However, why need I look for a new charge against you when that splendid tragedy says:

  1. ‘I hate a wiseacre who’s not wise for himself.’
Your accusers will find plenty more examples to quote against you. Some will compare you to tragic actors, on stage each an Agamemnon, Creon, or Heracles himself, but with their masks off a Polus or Aristodemus, playing a part for money, hissed and whistled off the stage, and sometimes some of them are flogged, if the audience wishes. Others will say you are like the monkey which they say the famous Cleopatra owned; it was trained to dance most elegantly and in time, and was much admired as it kept up a part, behaving in a seemly fashion as it accompanied the singers and flautists of the bridal procession. But when he saw a fig, I suppose, or an almond some way off on the ground, then good-bye to flutes and rhythms and
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dances! he grabbed and ate it up after pulling off his mask and even tearing it up.

You then, they would say, were not a mere actor, but a poet of the noblest sentiments and a lawgiver; but when this fig appeared you were shown up a monkey, with philosophy on your lips, ‘hiding one thing in your heart, while saying another.’ [*](Hom., Il. ix, 313.) So it may be fairly said against you that what you say and the matters for which you ask to be praised ‘wet your lips, but leave the palate dry.’ [*](Homer, Il. xxiii, 495.) So retribution has followed close. You rushed headlong to attack human needs, then a little later forswore your freedom in what was almost a public proclamation. If Adrasteia [*](Nemesis.) stood behind you when your accusations were winning your reputation, she must have laughed, knowing as a god would what a turncoat you were going to be; you couldn’t have spat in your bosom, [*](To avert nemesis.) she would think, before thinking fit to accuse those who were driven to do this sort of thing by fortune’s fickleness.

Suppose for argument’s sake that after Aeschines had made his accusation against Timarchus he had been caught doing just the same, in the very act, don’t you think those who saw it would have roared with laughter at this fellow who censured Timarchus for the sins of youth, and committed the same crimes himself in his old age? [*](Aeschines was impeached by Timarchus, and brought a countercharge of debauchery against him. This made it illegal for Timarchus to undertake any prosecution.) In short you seem just like that drug-seller who was advertising cough medicine and promising immediate relief to sufferers, while he himself was racked by a cough as he talked for all to see.”

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This and a lot more of the sort could be said by a prosecutor like you in a case with such scope and countless opportunities for criticism. But now I am wondering to what defence I should turn. Is it best to play the coward, turn my back, and admit my wrong-doing, taking refuge in the universal defence, Fortune, Fate, Destiny? Shall I ask pardon from my critics, who know that we have no control and are driven by a mightier power, especially one of those just mentioned? Shall I say we do not wish it, but have no responsibility at all for what we say or do? Surely this is a very vulgar excuse, and, my good friend, you would not let me use any such defence or call in Homer as an advocate and chant his:

  1. “No man, say I, ever escaped Fate.” [*](Homer, Il. vi, 488.)
and again,
  1. “Spun the thread at his birth, the day his mother
  2. bore him.” [*](Homer, Il. xx, 128.)

But if I abandoned this argument as quite unconvincing and said this that I was not hooked by money or any such expectation when I formed the present association, but that I admired my patron’s intelligence and courage and elevation of thought and wished to share the fortunes of such a man, I fear that besides the accusation being brought against me I

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may be accused of flattery, and find myself knocking out a nail with a nail, as they say, and a small one with a big one at that, since flattery is considered the most servile—and therefore the worst—of all the vices.

Well then, if I am pleased with neither line of defence, am I driven to agree or to confess that I have no honourable argument? Perhaps I have still one anchor left on board, to complain of old age and disease and poverty as well, which persuades one to do or endure anything to get away from it. In such a case perhaps it is not untimely to call on Euripides’ Medea to come and say in my defence those iambic lines, parodied a little:

  1. “I know the evil that I’m going to do,
  2. But poverty is stronger than my plans.” [*](Euripides, Medea, 1078, with “passion” for “poverty.”)
I do not quote the Theognis passage, but everybody knows it, where he thinks it not improper for men to throw themselves from lofty crags into the deep yawning sea with its monsters, if one can escape poverty in that way. [*](Theognis, 173–178 (Loeb ed. J. M. Edwards, Elegy and Iambus, 1).)

Such are the pleas one might bring in defence in such a case as this, none of them pretty. But don’t be afraid, my friend, I’m not going to use any of them. May there never be such a famine at Argos that they try to sow the gymnasium at Cyllarabis, and may I never be so destitute of a reasonable defence that in my need I look for refuges of this sort against the accusation. But realise this: there is a very great

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difference between entering a rich man’s house as a hireling, where one is a slave and endures what my essay describes, and entering public service, where one administers affairs as well as possible and is paid by the Emperor for doing it. Consider every detail and examine it for yourself. You will find the two lives two octaves apart, to use a musical phrase, and as like each other as lead and silver, bronze and gold, anemone and rose, monkey and man. You are paid in both cases and are under a master’s orders, but there is a world of difference. In the one case the slavery is obvious, and those who enter on these conditions are not much different from slaves, whether bought or bred at home, while those who handle public business and make themselves of service to states and whole provinces cannot rightly be criticised merely because they are paid, or be brought down to the same level of general denunciation. Otherwise you must post-haste abolish all offices of this kind: neither administrators of all the provinces nor governors of cities nor commanders of corps or whole armies will please since they are paid for their work. No, you must not, I fancy, overturn everything because of an isolated example, or lump all wage-earners together.

In short I did not say that all wage-earners lived a mean and petty existence: no, it was those in private houses who endured slavery under the pretext of education that I pitied. My present situation, my friend, is altogether different. My private standing is not reduced, and in public life I take a share and

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play my part in the mightiest of empires. If you consider the matter you will realise that my personal responsibility in this administration of Egypt is not the least important—the initiation of court-cases and their arrangement, the recording of all that is done and said, guiding counsel in their speeches, keeping the clearest and most accurate copy of the president’s decisions in all faithfulness and putting them on public record to be preserved for all time; and my salary not from any private person, but from the emperor, and it is no small one at that, many talents in fact. For the future I have no small hopes, if what is likely comes about—the supervision of a province or some other imperial service.

So I am willing to be bolder than I need be, to close with the charge against me, and to advance beyond defence. Moreover I say to you that no one does anything without pay, not even if you instance those at the head of things, for not even the emperor himself is unpaid. I do not mean tributes and taxes that come in every year from his subjects; no, the king’s most important reward is praise, universal fame, reverence for his benefactions, statues and temples and shrines bestowed on him by his subjects—all these are payment for the thought and care which such men evidence in their continual watch over the common weal and its improvement. To compare small with great, if you will begin at the top of the heap and descend to each of its component parts, you

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will see that we differ from those at the top in size, but that in other respects we are all wage-earners alike.

Now if I had laid down a law that no one must do any work, I would rightly be thought guilty of breaking it; but if this was nowhere said in my essay, but rather that a good man ought to be active, how better could he employ himself than to work with his friends for the best ends and in full view under the open sky to let his loyalty, seriousness of purpose, and good will in his undertakings be put to the test, so that he may not be “a useless burden to the earth” [*](Homer, Il. xviii, 104.) in Homer’s words?

Above all, those who censure me must remember that it is not a wise man—if such there be anywhere—whom they will censure but one from the common people, one who has trained himself in words and received moderate praise for them, but one completely unpractised in that acme of the virtues that the cream of men display. And surely I ought not to be grieved even on this account, for I at any rate have met no other who fulfilled the promise of wisdom. However I should be surprised if you were to condemn me for my present life—you knew me long ago when I was commanding the highest fees for the public practice of rhetoric, at the time when you went to see the Western Ocean and the lands of the Celts and met me: my fees were as high as those of any professor. This then, my friend, is the defence which I offer

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to you, busy though I am with countless tasks, thinking it of prime importance to secure my full acquittal at your hands. As for the rest, even if they all condemn me unanimously, I shall be content to quote “Hippoclides doesn’t care.” [*](A proverb from the story in Herodotus, vi, 127–129.)