(pp. 301-304) i. bywater - bernays' lucian and the cynics
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8/9/2019 (Pp. 301-304) I. Bywater - Bernays' Lucian and the Cynics
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Bernays' Lucian and the CynicsAuthor(s): I. BywaterSource: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 1 (1880), pp. 301-304Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies
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8/9/2019 (Pp. 301-304) I. Bywater - Bernays' Lucian and the Cynics
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BERNAYS
LUCIAN
AND
THE
CYNICS.
301
BERNAYS
LUClAN
AND)
THE
CYNICS.
PROFESSORBERNAYS
is among the few who possess the art
of
writing
what
can
be
read
by
men
of
culture as
well
as
by
professional
scholars and
historians;
a
monograph
from
his
pen
is
sure
to
be at
once
a
real
contribution
to
knowledge,
full of
striking
and
original
suggestions,
and
a
work
of
literature,
written
with the
attention
to form
and
finish which
we admire
in
some of
the classic
productions
of a
former
age.
The
present
work
on
Lucian and the
Cynics
is
in
every
respect
a
worthy
companion to the Theophrastus on Piety published in 1866.
Though
it
is
shorter
and
less elaborate
in
details
than
its
predecessor,
the
subject
is
one
which
allows
of a
more con-
secutive
mode of
statement,
and
has
perhaps
in itself
a
more
immediate
interest
for the
general
reader.
Prof.
Bernays
now
deals
with
an
aspect
of the
civilization of
the Roman
empire,
in
which
he
demonstrates-what
to
many
of
us,
I
suppose,
will
be
a sort
of
revelation-the existence
of
a
popular
religious
move-
ment,
distinct
from
the
established
Paganism
and
from
the
philosophies
of
the
schools.
This
new
interpretation
of
Cynicism
enables
us
to
realize
the
fact
that
the
Cynic
of the
first and
second
centuries was
not a
philosophical oddity,
to be
relegated
to a
chapter
of a
history
of
ancient
philosophy,
but
a
religious
reformer
at a
moment when the Greek world
seemed
to
have
lost
the
power
of
religious
initiative,
and
the
spokesman
of
a
kind
of
popular opposition
when
opposition
to
the
existing
political
order
of
things
was
least to
be
expected.
In reference to the book De morte
Peregrini
I
may
here
remark,
for
the
benefit
of readers
of Mr.
Cotterill s
Peregrinus
Proteus,
that Prof.
Bernays
does not seem
disturbed
by
any
1
Lucian und
die
Kyniker.
Von
Jacob
Bernays.
Mit
einer
Uebersetzung
der
Schrift
Lucians Uiber das
Lebensende
des
Peregrinus.
Berlin:
W.
Hertz.
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8/9/2019 (Pp. 301-304) I. Bywater - Bernays' Lucian and the Cynics
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302 BERNAYS
LUCIAN
AND
THE
CYNICS.
sceptical
doubts
as
to the
genuineness
of the
book:
had the
English
work
appeared
in time
to raise the
question,
I
fancy
that he would have made- short work of difficulties and
objections
of the
sort
which Mr. Cotterill has
found it so
easy
to
raise.
What
weight
are we to attach
to
Lucian s
judgments
on
his
contemporaries
?
This is
a
very
old
literary
problem,
which must
force itself
on
the
attention
of
a critical
reader of
the
De morte
Peregrini.
By
the
opportune discovery
ih
Galen
(De
methodo
medendi,
xiii.
15)
of a
passage
relating
to
Theagenes,
who is
made to play the part of second Cynic in Lucian s satire, Prof.
Bernays
had
been
able
to
put
the
problem
in
a
light,
by
the aid
of
which
we
can
henceforth,
to a
certain
extent,
control
Lucian s
statement,
and
see
what manner
of
man
Theagenes
was
in the
eyes
of a learned
and
unprejudiced
physician.
Writing
as
a
physician
for
physicians,
Galen has
occasion
to describe
the last
illness of the
Cynic,
whose death
he
attributes to
the
erroneous
course
of
treatment
adopted by
certain
of the
medical
men of
the day. What he has to say about the man himself is all the
more
trustworthy
from the fact
of its
being
brought
in
incident-
ally.
We
gather
from
Galen s
narrative that at the time of
his
own
residence
in
Rome
Theagenes,
then an old
man,
was
a
familiar
figure
at
Trajan s Gymnasium,
where
he
was
to
be
found
daily talking
and
teaching,
and that
his life at this
time
was
one
of ideal
austerity,
without
wife,
child,
or attendant
-hardly
the sort
of life
that a
ranting hypocrite
would
be
likely
to
choose.
If
this
is
what
Theagenes
was to
Galen,
just
as
Peregrinus,
the
principal
personage
in
the
satire,
seemed
a
vir
gravis
atque
constans
to the
candid
Aulus
Gellius,
what
is one
to
think of Lucian
and the
very
different version he
has
left
us
of
their
ways
and
character
? The account
of
Lucian
as
a man
and
as
a
littirateur
given
in these
pages
(p.
42
seqq.)
s a
model
of
literary
portraiture
which
I
commend to
the
careful
con-
sideration
of all students
of the
witty
Syrian.
As
for
the
hackneyed
comparison
between
him
and
Voltaire,
Prof.
Bernays
very
rightly maintains that the comparison is superficial, and
in
every
way
unfair
to Voltaire. Lucian lacked
among
other
things
the varied
knowledge,
the intellectual
sincerity,
the
revolt
at
injustice
and
oppression
of
the
great
Frenchman;
and his ambition
was
to
end
his
days
as
a
Roman
official.
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8/9/2019 (Pp. 301-304) I. Bywater - Bernays' Lucian and the Cynics
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BERNAYS
LUCIAN
AND THE CYNICS. 303
He
attacked the
failings
of the
gods
and the
philosophers,
who could
not
retaliate,
but
discreetly spared
the vices
and
prejudices
of the
ruling
classes and the abuses of the
Imperial
system
of
government.
To
the
public
which
Lucian
addressed
the
Cynic
was a
disquieting
social
anomaly;
his
renunciation
of
worldly
wealth
and
comfort
seemed
mere
hypocrisy;
his
contempt
for received standards of
belief and
conduct
was
an
unpardonable
offence
in
so
conventional
a
state
of
society.
Freethinking,
as
a
mere form of
enlightenment,
was
then
as
now a
thing
which
the
polite
world
could
tolerate,
but
the
Cynic was not a freethinker of the harmless professorial type;
he
was
too
much
in
earnest
in
his
mockery
at
polytheism,
with
its
paraphernalia
of
priests,
sacrifices
and
oracles;
he
set
himself
up
as
a
sort
of
preacher
of
righteousness,
talked
of
freedom
in a
way
distressing
to official
ears,
and
did
not
mind
speaking
the
truth even
of
the
greatest.
Such
men
were
obviously
an
element of
danger
to a mechanical
civilization
(p.
45)
like
that of
the
Empire;
and Lucian
as
the
littrateur
of the period showed that he knew how to please the influential
classes
when
he
undertook to
turn the life
and
death
of
Peregrinus
into
ridicule,
and
made it
seem as
though
his
end,
so far
from
being
evidence of
honesty,
were
the
appropriate
finale
of
a
long
career of
fraud
and
imposture.
The
story
of
Peregrinus
as
told
by
Lucian
may
be
analyzed
into
two
portions-the
facts,
and
the
colouring
Lucian
has
put
upon
the facts.
Remove the
colouring,
the
innuendoes,
motives,
and
other
inventions
which
constitute so
much of
the
picture,
and
we
may
easily
conceive
the
Peregrinus
and
Theagenes
of
reality
to have
been
very
unlike
the
pair
of
vulgar
charlatans
Lucian
makes them
out
to
have
been.
I
must not
omit
to
mention,
however,
that
while
thus
vindicating
the
memory
of
Peregrinus
and
insisting
on
the
religious
and
social
significance
of
Cynicism,
Prof.
Bernays
duly recognizes
that there were
Cynics
and
Cynics,
and
that the cloak
of the
sect
might
easily
come to
be worn
as a
cloak for
hypocrisy.
If
this
had not
been
the case
sometimes,
Cynicism
would
certainly
have been a
wholly
unique
phenomenon
in
the
history
of
religions.
As
regards
the
self-immolation of
Peregrinus,
we
know
that,
although
ancient
opinion
was
divided on
the
question
of the
lawfulness
of
suicide,
the
step
was
sanctioned
by
the
example
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8/9/2019 (Pp. 301-304) I. Bywater - Bernays' Lucian and the Cynics
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304
BERNAYS
LUCIAN
AND
THE
CYNICS.
of
many
of the
philosophers
of an earlier
age.
With
Cynics,
however,
there was
a,
special
motive
for
suicide;
the idea of
a
life of valetudinarianism was intolerable to such robust natures.
Accordingly
we find it intimated
in
the
biographies
of
Diogenes
and
the
semi-Cynic
Zeno
that
they
made their
exit
when
infirmity
or
some
bodily
accident came
to
warn them
that
it
was
time to
depart.
The
fever
which
brought
Peregrinus
to
death s
door
may
have served to remind him of
these
ancient
precedents.
His
history
indeed
presents
some
singular points
of
resemblance to
what is
recorded of the
founders
of his
sect;
and if we suppose his mode of life to have been more or less
consciously
influenced
by
a desire to imitate
such
precedents,
the
hypothesis
would
have
the
support
of
many
analogies
in
the
lives of
Christian
Saints.
I
would
suggest,
therefore,
that
the
motives for
his
voluntary
death
are
partially explained
by
the
influence
of
tradition and
the
circumstance
that he
was
at the
time
old
and
wasted with disease.
Of
the
translation
of
Lucian s
text
I
need
not
say
more
than
this, that it is the work of one who is a very experienced
translator
as well as
an
accomplished
scholar.
The
notes
in
the
Appendix
are
for the most
part
in
illustration
or
defence of
assertions
made in
the
introductory Essay,
which
is
thus
relieved
of
matter
calculated
to
interfere
with
the
unity
and
consecutiveness of the main discussion.
I.
BYWATER.
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