



Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org
(Images generously made available by the Internet Archive)





LUCIAN'S TRUE HISTORY


TRANSLATED BY FRANCIS HICKES ILLUSTRATED BY WILLIAM STRANG
J. B. CLARK AND AUBREY BEARDSLEY WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
CHARLES WHIBLEY

(Originally published with the Greek text in 1894.)


A. H. BULLEN

18 Cecil Court

LONDON

MCMII




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.



AFTER THE TEMPEST (Strang)
ADORATION (Clark)
"A SNARE OF VINTAGE" (Beardsley)
SPIDERS OF MIGHTY BIGNESS (Strang)
THE BATTLE OF THE TURNIPS (Clark)
THE SUPPER OF FISH (Strang)
UNDERPROPPING THE WHALE'S CHOPS (Clark)
SOCRATES' GARDEN (Clark)
THE BANQUET OF BEANS (Strang)
THE PILLAR OF BERYLSTONE (Clark)
OWLS AND POPPIES (Strang)
DREAMS (Beardsley)
THE HALCYON'S NEST (Strang)
THE FLOATING FOREST (Clark)
THE ISLAND WOMEN (Strang)
WATER INCARNADINE (Clark)




INTRODUCTION.


It is a commonplace of criticism that Lucian was the first of the
moderns, but in truth he is near to our time because of all the
ancients he is nearest to his own. With Petronius he shared the
discovery that there is material for literature in the debased and
various life of every day--that to the seeing eye the individual is
more wonderful in colour and complexity than the severely simple
abstraction of the poets. He replaced the tradition, respected of
his fathers, by an observation more vivid and less pedantic than
the note-book of the naturalist. He set the world in the dry light
of truth, and since the vanity of mankind is a constant factor
throughout the ages, there is scarce a page of Lucian's writing that
wears the faded air of antiquity. His personages are as familiar
to-day as they were in the second century, because, with his pitiless
determination to unravel the tangled skein of human folly, he never
blinded his vision to their true qualities. And the multiplicity of
his interest is as fresh as his penetration. Nothing came amiss to
his eager curiosity. For the first time in the history of literature
(with the doubtful exception of Cicero) we encounter a writer whose
ceaseless activity includes the world. While others had declared
themselves poets, historians, philosophers, Lucian comes forth as a
man of letters. Had he lived to-day, he would have edited a newspaper,
written leading articles, and kept his name ever before the public
in the magazines. For he possessed the qualities, if he avoided the
defects, of the journalist. His phrase had not been worn by constant
use to imbecility; his sentences were not marred by the association
of commonness; his style was still his own and fit for the expression
of a personal view. But he noted such types and incidents as make an
immediate, if perennial, appeal, and to study him is to be convinced
that literature and journalism are not necessarily divorced.

The profession was new, and with the joy of the innovator Lucian was
never tired of inventing new genres. Romance, criticism, satire--he
mastered them all. In _Toxaris_ and _The Ass_ he proves with what
delicacy and restraint he could handle the story. His ill-omened
apprenticeship to a sculptor gave him that taste and feeling for
art which