Nigrinus
Lucian of Samosata (lucian-of-samosata)Nigr 38 · perseus-eng2More by Lucian of Samosata (lucian-of-samosata)
Choose a text
id="mobileReaderAuthor" class="mobile-reader-author" href="/authors/lucian-of-samosata" aria-label="More works by Lucian of Samosata (lucian-of-samosata)">
—
⋯
Original / primary: Perseus Eng2
intro
LETTER TO NIGRINUS Best wishes to Nigrinus from Lucian! The proverb says “An owl to Athens!” meaning that it would be ridiculous for anyone to bring owls there, because they have plenty in the city. If I wanted to display my command of language, and were sending Nigrinus a book written for that purpose, I should be exposing myself to ridicule as a genuine importer of owls. But it is only my state of mind which I wish to reveal to you, how I feel now, and how deeply I have been moved by your discourse. So I may fairly be acquitted even of the charge contained in Thucydides’ saying2, 40, 3. that ignorance makes men bold, but discourse To bring out the play on words, "discourse” is used here in the obsolete sense of "consideration, reflection.” cautious, for clearly this great hardihood of mine is not due to ignorance alone, but also to fondness for discourse! Good health to you!
1
THE WISDOM OF NIGRINUS A How very lordly and exalted you are since you came back! Really, you don’t deign to notice us any more, you don’t associate with us, and you don’t join in our conversations: you have changed all of a sudden, and, in short, have a supercilious air. I should be glad to find out from you how it comes that you are so peculiar, and what is the cause of all this? B Nothing but good fortune, my dear fellow. A What do you mean? B I have come back to you transformed by the wayside into a happy and a blissful man—in the language of the stage, “thrice blessed.” A Heracles! in so short a time? B Yes, truly. A But what is the rest of it? What is it that you are puffed up about? Let us enjoy something more than a mere hint: let us have a chance to get at the facts by hearing the whole story. B Don’t you think it wonderful, in the name of Zeus, that once a slave, I am now free! « once poor, now rich indeed”; once witless and befogged, now saner?Apparently a free quotation from some play that is lost. (Kock, adesp. 1419.)
2
A Why, yes! nothing could be more fmportant. But even yet I don’t clearly understand what you mean. B Well, I made straight for Rome, wanting to see an oculist; for I was having more and more trouble with my eye. A I know all that, and hoped you would find an able man. B As I had resolved to pay my respects to Nigrinus the Platonic philosopher, which I had not done for a long time, I got up early and went to his house, and when I had knocked at the door and the man had announced me, I was asked in. On entering, I found him with a book in his hands and many busts of ancient philosophers standing round about. Beside him there had been placed a tablet filled with figures in geometry and a reed globe, made, I thought, to represent the universe.
3
3
Well, he greeted me in very friendly way and asked me how I was getting on. I told him everything, and naturally in my own tum wanted to know how he was getting on, and whether he had made up his mind to take the trip to Greece again. Beginning:-to talk on these topics and to explain his position, my dear fellow, he poured enough ambrosial speech over me to put out of date the famous Sirens
3
1
3
(if there ever were any) and the nightingales
3
2
3
and the lotus of Homer.
3
3
3
A divine utterance!
4
4
For he went on to praise philosophy and the freedom that it gives, and to ridicule the things that are popularly considered blessings— wealth and reputation, dominion and honour, yes and purple and gold—things accounted very desirable by most men, and till then by me also. I took it all in with eager, wide-open soul, and at the moment I couldn’t imagine what had come over me; I was all confused. Then I felt hurt because he had criticised what was dearest to me—wealth and money and reputation,—and I all but cried over their downfall; and then I thought them paltry and ridiculous, and was glad to be looking up, as it were, out of the murky atmosphere of my past life to.a clear sky and a great light. In consequence, I actually forgot my eye and its ailment—would you believe it?—and by degrees grew sharper-sighted in my soul; which, all unawares, I had been carrying about in a purblind condition till then.
5
5
I went on and on, and so got into the state with which you just reproached me: what he said has made me proud and exalted, and in a word, I take no more notice of trifles. I suppose I have had the same sort of experience with philosophy that the Hindoos are said to have had with wine when they first tasted it. As they are by nature more hot-blooded than we, on taking such strong drink they became uproarious at once, and were crazed by the unwatered beverage twice as much as other people. There you have it! I am going about enraptured and drunk with the wine of his discourse.
6
A Why, that isn’t drunkenness, it is sobriety and temperance! I should like to hear just what he said, if possible. It is far, very far from right, in my opinion, to be stingy with it, especially if the person who wants to hear is a friend and has the same interests. B Cheer up, good soul! you spur a willing horse, as Homer says,Iliad 8, 293. and if you hadn’t got ahead of me, I myself should have begged you to listen to my tale, for I want to have you bear witness before the world that my madness has reason in it. Then, too, I take pleasure in calling his words to mind frequently, and have already made it a regular exercise: even if nobody happens to be at hand, I repeat them to myself two or three times a day just the same.
7
7
I am in the same case with lovers. In the absence of the objects of their fancy they think over their actions and their words, and by dallying with these beguile their lovesickness into the belief that they have their sweethearts near; in fact, sometimes they even imagine they are chatting with them and are as pleased with what they formerly heard as if it were just being said, and by applying their minds to the memory of the past give themselves no time to be annoyed ‘by the present. So I, too, in the absence of my mistress Philosophy, get no little comfort out of gathering together the words that I then heard and turning them over to myself. In short, I fix my gaze on that man as if he were a lighthouse and I were adrift at sea in the dead of night, fancying him by me whenever I do anything and always hearing him repeat his former words. Sometimes, especially when I put pressure on my soul, his face appears to me and the sound of his voice abides in my ears. Truly, as the comedian says,
7
1
7
“he left a sting implanted in his hearers!”
8
A Have done with your long prelude, “you strange fellow; begin at the beginning and tell me what he said. You irritate me more than a little with your beating about the bush. B You are right! I must do so. But look here, _ my friend: you’ve seen bad actors in tragedy before now—yes, and in comedy too, I'll swear? I mean the sort that are hissed and ruin pieces and finally get driven off the stage, though their plays are often good and have won a prize. A I know plenty of the sort. But what of it? B I am afraid that, as you follow me, you may think that I present my lines ridiculously, hurrying through some of them regardless of metre, and sometimes even spoiling the very sense by my incapacity; and that you may gradually be led to condemn the play itself. As far as I am concerned, I don’t care at all; but if the play shares my failure and comes to grief on my account, it will naturally hurt me more than a little.
9
9
Please bear it in mind, then, all through the performance that the poet is not accountable to us for faults of this nature, and’ is sitting somewhere far away from the stage, completely unconcerned about what is going on in the theatre, while I am but giving you a chance to test my powers and see what sort of actor I am in point of memory; in other respects my réle is no more important than that of a messenger in tragedy. Therefore, in case I appear. to be saying something rather poor, have the excuse to hand that it was better, and that the poet no doubt-told it differently. As for myself, even if you hiss me off the stage, I shan’t be hurt at all!
10
10
A
10
Hermes!
10
1
10
what a fine introduction you have made, just like a professor of public speaking! You intend, I am sure, to add that your conversation was short, that you didn’t come prepared to speak, and that it would be better to hear him tell it himself, for really you have only carried in mind what little you could. Weren’t you going to say that? Well, there is no longer any necessity for it on my account; consider your whole introduction finished as far as I am concerned, for I am ready to cheer and to clap. But if you keep shilly-shallying, I'll bear you a grudge all through the speech and will hiss right, sharply.
11
11
B Yes, I should have liked to say all that you mention, and also that I do not intend to quote him without a break and in his own words, in a long speech covering everything, for that would be quite beyond my powers; nor yet to quote him in the first person, for fear of making myself like the actors whom I mentioned in another way. Time and again when they have assumed the role of Agamemnon or Creon or even Heracles himself, costumed in cloth of gold, with fierce eyes and mouths wide agape, they speak in a voice that is small, thin, womanish, and far too poor for Hecuba or Polyxena. Therefore, to avoid being criticised like them for wearing a mask altogether too big for my head and for being a disgrace to my costume, I want to talk to you with my features exposed, so that the hero whose part I am taking may not be brought down with me if I stumble.
12
A Will the man never stop talking so much stage and tragedy to me? B Why, yes! I will stop, certainly, and will now turn to my subject. The talk began with praise of Greece and of the men of Athens, because Philosophy and Poverty have ever been their fuster-brothers, and they do not look with pleasure on any man, be he citizen or stranger, who strives to introduce luxury among them, but if ever anyone comes to them in that frame of mind, they gradually correct him and lend a hand in his schooling and convert him to the simple life.
13
13
For example, he mentioned a millionaire who came to Athens, a very conspicuous and vulgar person with his crowd of attendants and his gay clothes and jewelry, and expected to be envied by all the Athenians and to be looked up to as a happy man. But they thought the creature unfortunate, and undertook to educate him, not in a harsh way, however, nor yet by directly forbidding him to live as he would in a free city. But when he made himself a nuisance at the athletic clubs and the baths by jostling and crowding passers with his retinue, someone or other would say in a low tone, pretending to be covert, as if he were not directing the remark at the man himself: “He is afraid of being murdered in his tub! Why, profound peace reigns in the baths; there is no need of an army, then!” And the man, who never failed to hear, got a bit of instruction in passing. His gay clothes and his purple gown they stripped from him very neatly by making fun of his flowery colours, saying, “Spring already?” ‘How did that peacock get here f” “Perhaps it’s his mother’s” and the like. His other vulgarities they turned into jest in the same way— the number of his rings, the over-niceness of his hair, the extravagance of his life. So he was disciplined little by little, and went away much improved by the public education he had received.
14
14
To show that they are not ashamed to confess poverty, he mentioned to me a remark which he said he had heard everybody make with one accord at the Panathenaic games. One of the citizens had been arrested and brought before the director of the games because he was looking on in a coloured cloak. Those who saw it were sorry for him and tried to beg him off, and when the herald proclaimed that he had broken the law by wearing such clothing at the games, they all cried out in one voice, as if by pre-arrangement, to excuse him for being in that dress, because, they said, he had no other. Well, he praised all this, and also the freedom there and the blamelessness of their mode of living, their quiet and leisure; and these advantages they certainly have in plenty. He declared, for instance, that a life like theirs is in harmony with philosophy - and can keep the character pure; so that a serious man who has been taught to despise wealth and elects to live for what is intrinsically good will find Athens éxactly suited to him.
15
15
But a man who loves wealth and is enthralled by gold and measures happiness by purple and power, who has not tasted liberty or tested free speech or contemplated truth, whose constant companions are flattery and servility; a min who has unreservedly committed his soul to pleasure and has resolved to serve none but her, fond of extravagant fare and fond of wine and women, full of trickery, deceit and falsehood; a man who likes to hear twanging, fluting and emasculated singing—
16
16
"Such folk,” said he, “should live in Rome, for every street and every square is full of the things they cherish most,
16
1
16
and they can admit pleasure by every gate—by the eyes, by the ears and nostrils, by the throat and reins, Its everflowing, turbid stream widens every street; it brings in adultery, avarice, perjury and the whole family of the vices, and sweeps the flooded soul bare of self-respect, virtue, and righteousness; and then the ground which they have left a desert, ever parched with thirst, puts forth a rank, wild growth of lusts.” That was the character of the city, he declared, and those all the good things it taught.
17
17
“For my part,” said he, “when I first came back from Greece, on getting into the neighbourhood of Rome I stopped and asked myself why I had come here, repeating the well-known words of Homer:
17
1
17
‘Why left you, luckless man, the light of day’—Greece, to wit, and all that happiness and freedom— and came to see’ the hurly-burly here—informers, haughty greetings, dinners, flatterers, murders, legacy-hunting, feigned friendships? And what in the world do you intend to do, since you can neither go away nor do as the Romans do?”
18
18
“After communing with myself in this vein and pulling myself out of bowshot as Zeus did Hector in Homer,
18
From out the slaughter, blood, and battle-din,
18
Iliad 11, 163.
18
I decided to be a stay-at-home in future. Choosing thereby a sort of life which seems to most people womanish and spiritless, I converse with Plato, Philosophy and Truth, and seating myself, as it were, high up in a theatre full of untold thousands, I look down on what takes place, which is of a quality sometimes to afford amusement and laughter, sometimes to prove a man’s true steadfastness.
19
19
“Indeed (if it is right to speak in praise of what is bad), don’t suppose that there is any better school for virtue or any truer test of the soul than this city and the life here; it is no small matter to make a stand against so many desires, so many sights and sounds that lay rival hands on a man and pull him in every direction. One must simply imitate Odysseus and sail past them; not, however, with his hands bound (for that would be cowardly) nor with his ears stopped with wax, but with ears open and body free, and in a spirit of genuine contempt.
20
20
Furthermore, one has cause to admire philosophy when he beholds so much folly, and to despise the gifts of fortune when he sees on the stage of life a play of many réles, in which one man enters first as servant, then as master; another first as rich, then as poor; another now as beggar, now as nabob or king; another as So-and-so’s friend, another as his enemy; another as an exile. And the strangest part of it all is that although Fortune attests that she makes light of human affairs and admits that there is no stability in them, and in spite of the fact that men see this demonstrated every day, they still yearn for wealth and power, and go about every one of them full of unrealised hopes.
21
21
“But I have said that there is food for laughter and amusement in what goes on; let me now explain it. To begin with, are not the rich ridiculous? They display their purple gowns and show their rings and betray an unbounded lack of taste. Would you believe it?—they make use of another man’s
21
1
21
voice in greeting people they meet, expecting them to be thankful for a glance and nothing more, while some, lordlier than the rest, even require obeisance to be made to them: not at long range, though, or in the Persian style. No, you must go up, bow your head, humbling your soul and showing its feelings by carrying yourself to match them, and kiss the man’s breast or his hand, while those who are denied even this privilege envy and admire you! And the man stands for hours and lets himself be duped! At any rate there is one point in their inhumanity that I commend them for—they forbid us their lips!
22
22
“Far more ridiculous, however, than the rich are those who visit them and pay them court. They get up at midnight, run all about the city, let servants bolt the doors in their faces and suffer themselves to be called dogs, toadies and similar names. By way of reward for this galling round of visits they get the much-talked-of dinner, a vulgar thing, the source of many evils. How much they eat there, how much they drink that they do not want, and how much they say that should not have been said! At last they go away either finding fault or nursing a grievance, either abusing the dinner or accusing ‘the host of insolence and neglectfulness. They fill the side-streets, puking and fighting at the doors of brothels, and most of them go to bed by daylight and give the doctors a reason for making their rounds. Not all, though; for some—would you believe it?—haven’t even time to be ill!
23
23
“For my part I hold that the toadies are far worse than the men they toady to, and that they alone are to blame for the arrogance of the others. When they admire their possessions, praise their plate, crowd their doorways in the early morning and go up and speak to them as a slave speaks to his master, how can you expect the rich to feel? If by common consent they refrained but a short time from this voluntary servitude, don’t you think that the tables would be turned, and that the rich would come to the doors of the poor and beg them not to leave their happiness unobserved and unattested and their beautiful tables and great houses unenjoyed and unused? It is not so much being rich that they like as being congratulated on it. The fact is, of course, that the man who lives in a fine house gets no good of it, nor of his ivory and gold either, unless someone admires it all. What men ought to do, then, is to reduce and cheapen the rank of the rich in this way, erecting in the face of their wealth a breastwork of contempt. But as things are, they turn their heads with servility.
24
24
“That common men who unreservedly admit their want of culture should do such things might fairly be thought reasonable; but that many selfstyled philosophers should act still more ridiculously than they—this is the surprising thing! How do you suppose I feel in spirit when I see one of them, especially if he be well on in years, among a crowd of toadies, at the heels of some Jack-in-office, in conference with the dispensers of his dinner-invitations? His dress only marks him out among the rest and makes him more conspicuous. What irritates me most is that they do not change their costume: certainly they are consistent play-actors in everything else. Take their conduct at dinners—to what ethical ideal are we to ascribe it?
25
25
Do they not stuff themselves more vulgarly, get drunk more conspicuously, leave the table last of all, and expect to carry away more delicacies than anyone else? Some, more subtle than the rest, have often gone so far as to sing.” All this, he thought, was ridiculous: and he made special mention of people who cultivate philosophy for hire and put virtue on sale over a counter, as it were: indeed, he called the lecture-rooms of these men factories and bazaars. For he maintained that one who intends to teach contempt for wealth should first of all show that he is himself above gain.
26
26
Certainly he used to put these principles into practice consistently, not only giving instruction without recompense to all who desired it, but helping the needy and holding all manner of super- fluity in contempt. So far was he from coveting the property of others that even when his own property was going to rack and ruin he did not concern himself about it. Although he had a farm not far from the city, he’ did not care to set foot on it for many years. More than this, he used to say that it was not his at all. His idea was, I take it, that we are not “owners” of any of these things by natural law, but that we take over the use of them for an indefinite period by custom and inheritance, and are considered their proprietors for a brief space; and when our allotted days of grace are past another takes them over and enjoys the title. He likewise sets no mean example for those who care to imitate him in his simple diet, his moderate physical exercises, his earnest face, his plain clothes and above all, his well-balanced understanding and his kindly ways.
27
27
He always advised his disciples not to postpone being good, as most people do, by setting themselves a limit in the form of a holiday or a festival, with the intention of beginning from that date to shun lies and do as they should; for he deemed that an inclination towards the higher life brooked no delay. He made no secret of his condemnation of the sort of philosophers who think it a course in virtue if. they train the young to enduré “full many pains and toils,"
27
1
27
the majority recommending cold baths, though some whip them, and still others, the more refined. of their sort, scrape ” the surface of their skin with a knife-blade.
28
28
It was his opinion that this hardness and insensibility should be created rather in the souls of men, and that he who elects to give the best possible education ought to have an eye to soul, to body, and to age and previous training, that he may not subject himself to criticism on the score of setting his pupils tasks beyond their strength. Indeed, he asserted that many die as a result of strains so unreasonable. I myself saw one student who, after a taste of the tribulations in that camp, had made off without a backward glance as soon as he heard true doctrine, and had come to Nigrinus: he was clearly the better for it.
29
29
At length leaving the philosophers, he recurred to the rest of mankind, and told about the uproar of the city, the crowding, the theatres, the races, the statues. of the drivers, the names of the horses, and the conversations in the streets about these matters. The craze for horses is really great, you know, and men with a name for earnestness have caught it in great numbers.
30
30
Next he touched upon another human comedy, played by the people who occupy themselves with life beyond the grave and with last wills, adding that sons of Rome speak the truth only once in their whole lives (meaning in their wills), in order that they may not reap the fruits of their truthfulness!
30
1
30
I could not help interrupting him with laughter when he said that they want to have their follies buried with them and to leave their stupidity on record, inasmuch as some of them leave instructions
30
that clothing be burned with them which they prized in life, others that servants stay by their tombs, and here and there another that his gravestone be wreathed with flowers. They remain foolish even on their deathbeds.
31
31
He thought he could guess what they had done in life when they issued such injunctions touching the hereafter: “It is they,” said he, “who buy expensive dainties and let wine flow freely at dinners in an atmosphere of saffron and perfumes, who glut themselves with roses in midwinter, loving their rarity and unseasonableness and despising what is seasonable and natural because of its cheapness’; it is they who drink myrrh.” And that was the point in which he criticised them especially, that they do not even know how to give play to their desires, but transgress in them and obliterate the boundary-lines, on all sides surrendering their souls to luxury to be trodden under foot, and as they say in tragedy and comedy, “forcing an entrance alongside the door."
31
1
31
These he called unidiomatic pleasures.
32
32
From the same standpoint he made a comment exactly like that of Momus. Just as the latter found fault with the god
32
1
32
who made the bull for not putting the horns in front of the eyes, so he censured those who wear garlands for not knowing where they should go. “If it is the scent of their violets
32
and roses that they like,” he said, “they certainly ought to put their garlands under their noses, as close as may be to the intake of the breath, so as to inhale the greatest possible amount of pleasure.”
33
33
Another thing, he ridiculed the men who devote such a surprising degree of energy to dinners in the effort to secure variety in flavours and new effects in pastry. He said that these underwent a great deal of inconvenience through their devotion to a brief and temporary pleasure. Indeed, he pointed out that all their trouble was taken for the sake of four finger-breadths, the extent of the’ longest human throat. “Before eating,” said he, “they get no good out of what they have bought, _\and after eating, the sense of fulness is no more agreeable because it derives from expensive food; it follows, then, that it is the pleasure of swallowing which has cost them so dear.” And he said that it served them right for being uneducated and consequently unfamiliar with the truer pleasures, which are all dispensed by philosophy to those who elect a life of toil.
34
34
He had much to say about their behaviour in the baths—the number of their attendants, their offensive actions, and the fact that some of them are carried by servants almost as if they were corpses on their way to the graveyard. There is one practice, however, which he appeared to detest above all others, a wide-spread custom in the city and in the baths. It is the duty of certain servants, going in advance of their masters, to cry out and warn them to mind their footing when they are about to pass something high or low, thus reminding them, oddly enough, that they are walking! He was indignant, you see, that although they do not need the mouths or the hands of others in eating or the ears of others in hearing, they need the eyes of others to see their way in spite of the soundness of their own, and suffer themselves to be given directions fit only for unfortunates and blind men. - “Why,” said- he, “this is actually done in public squares at midday, even to governors of cities!”
35
35
When he had said this and much more of the © same sort, he ended his talk. Until then I had listened to him in awe, fearing that he would cease. When he stopped, I felt like the Phaeacians of old,
35
1
35
for I stared at him a long time spellbound. Afterwards, in a great fit of confusion and giddiness, I dripped with sweat, I stumbled and stuck in the endeavour to speak, my voice failed, my tongue faltered, and finally I began to cry in embarrassment; for the effect he produced: in me was not superficial or casual. My wound was deep and vital, and his words, shot with great accuracy, clove, if I may say so, my very soul in twain.
36
36
For if I too may now adopt the language of a philosopher, my conception of the matter is that the soul of a well-endowed man resembles a very tender target. Many bowmen, their quivers full of words of all sorts and kinds, shoot at it during life, but not with success in every case. Some draw to the head and let fly harder than they should: though they hit the target, their arrows do not stick in it, but owing to
36
their momentum go through and continue their flight, leaving only a gaping wound in the soul.. Others, again, do the opposite; themselves too weak, their bows too slack, the arrows do not even carry to the target as a rule, but often fall spent at half the distance; and if ever they do carry, they strike
36
with a mere fret o’ the skin,
36
Iliad 17, 599.
36
and do not make a deep wound, as they were not sped with a strong pull.
37
37
But a good bowman like Nigrinus first of all scans the target closely for fear that it may be either very soft or too hard for his arrow—for of course there are impenetrable targets. When he is clear on this point, he dips his arrow, not in venom like those of the Scythians nor in vegetable poison like those of the Curetes, but in a sweet, gently-working drug, and then shoots with skill. The arrow, driven by just the right amount of force, penetrates to ghe point of passing through, and then sticks fast and gives off a quantity of the drug, which naturally spreads and completely pervades the soul. That is why people laugh and cry as they listen, as I did— of course the drug was quietly circulating in my soul. I could not help quoting him the well-known line:
37
Shoot thus, and bring, mayhap, a ray of hope!
37
Iliad 8, 282.
37
Not everyone who hears the Phrygian flute goes frantic, but only those who are possessed of ‘Rhea and are put in mind of their condition by the music. In, like manner, naturally, not all who listen to philosophers go away enraptured and wounded, but only those who previously had in their nature some secret bond of kinship with philosophy.
38
A What a noble, marvellous,—yes, divine tale you have told, my dear fellow! I did not realise it, but you certainly were chock-full of your ambrosia and your lotus! The coysequence is that as you talked I felt something like a change of heart, and now that you have stopped I am put out: to speak in your own style, I am wounded. And no wonder! for yeu. know that people bitten by mad dogs not: only go mad themselves, but if in their fury they treat others as the dogs treated them, the others take leave of their senses too. Something of the affection is transmitted with the bite; the diseage multiplies, and there is a great run of-madness. B Then you admit your madness? A Why, certainly; and more than that, I ask you to think out some course of treatment for us both. B We must do as Telephus did, I suppose. A What’s your meaning now? B Go to the man who inflicted the wound and beg him to heal us! Telephus had been grievously wounded by Achilles. Acting on the advice of the oracle at Delphi: "He who burt will heal you” (ὁ τρώσας καὶ ἰάσεται), he applied to Achilles for relief, and was at last cured with the rust of his spear. All that we know of Demonax derives from this essay, except for a few sayings elsewhere attributed to him. The authenticity of the essay has been repeatedly questioned, but should not be made to depend on the critic’s opinion of Demonax’s jokes, for—to paraphrase Lucian—we do not need a George Meredith to tell us that the flavour of a joke grows weak with age,