CHAPTER V.
SATIRES ON SOCIETY:
THE PARASITE—UPON HIRED COMPANIONS.
It needs but a slight acquaintance with Greek and Roman literature, and with social life at Athens in its later days, and at Rome in the times of the emperors, to know that the men of rank and wealth filled their tables not only with their private friends, but also with guests who stood lower in the social scale, and were invited because they contributed in some way either to the amusement of the company or to the glorification of the host. A rich man, if he had any pretence to a good position in society, kept almost open house: and there was a class of men who, by means of sponging and toadying, and all those kindred arts which are practised, only under somewhat finer disguises, in modern society, contrived seldom either to go without a dinner or to dine at home. This disreputable fraternity of diners-out—"Parasites," as the Greek term was—supplied an inexhaustible subject for the satirist and the play-writer, as has been already noticed in these volumes, in examining the comedies of Plautus and Terence. Lucian has not omitted to handle, in his own style, a character so well known, and which presented such fair game to the writer who set himself to hunt down the follies of the times. Yet the little dialogue called "The Parasite," in which he introduces one of these mendicants of society arguing stoutly in defence of his vocation, is one of the most good-humoured of all. Perhaps there was an amount of bonhomie about a man who could not afford to he disagreeable which disarmed the satirist, together with a serio-comic "poor-devil" misery inevitable to his position which excited pity as well as contempt. Few readers can lay down the "Phormio" of Terence without a kindly feeling towards its unabashed and ingenious hero.
Simo, the Parasite of Lucian's Dialogue, makes open profession of his vocation, like Phormio. The friend with whom the conversation is carried on, knowing that Simo's private means are small, is curious to know by what trade or employment he gains his living, since he cannot make out that he follows any. Simo assures him that there is a school of art in which he is a perfect master, and which never allows him to be in want. It is the art of Parasitism. And he proceeds to prove, by an argument in the catechetical style of Socrates and Plato, that it is an art of the highest and most perfect kind. It falls quite within the definition of art as given by the philosophers—"a system of approved rules co-operating to a certain end, useful to society." As to the usefulness of the end, nothing is so useful—nay, so absolutely needful—as eating and drinking. It is not a gift of nature, but acquired, therefore an art, if the schoolmen be right in their technical distinctions. It is also most practical, which is the essence of a perfect art: other arts may exist in their possessor in posse, yet be seldom or never in operation; whereas this must be always at work—for when the parasite ceases to get his dinners, there is an end, not only of the art, but of the artificer. It excels all other arts also in this,—that whereas most arts require toil and discipline, and even threats and stripes, in order to be learnt thoroughly—which things are manifestly contrary to our nature—this art can be studied pleasantly and cheerfully without any of these disagreeable accompaniments. "Who ever yet returned in tears from a feast, as many scholars do from their masters? Who that is going to a good dinner ever looks pale and melancholy, as those do who frequent the Schools?" Other arts we pay to learn, this we are paid for learning; others require a master, this may he learnt without. Other systems seem vague; all give different definitions of wisdom and happiness—and that which is so indefinite can have no real existence at all; whereas the end and object of Parasitism is distinct and obvious. And in this alone of all systems the practice of the school agrees with its professions. And whereas no parasite was ever known to desert his art and turn philosopher, many philosophers have turned parasites, and do so to this day. Euripides became the dependant of Archelaus of Macedon; and even Plato was content to sit at the table of the tyrant Dionysius. If the testimony of the wise men of old is to be taken in evidence of the value and antiquity of the art, look only at Homer, a witness whom, the speaker hopes, every one will admit. He makes some of his greatest heroes parasites—old Nestor, always a guest at the table of the King of Men, and Patroclus, who was nothing more or less than the parasite of Achilles, and whom it took the combined power of two mortal warriors and a god to kill,[1] whereas Paris alone proved a match for his master Achilles, as Achilles had for Hector. Listen, he says, to the poet's own words touching this great school of the table:—
Than is a people's gladness, when good cheer
Reigns, and all listening pause in deep delight,
When in mid feast the bard his song doth rear,
What time the board with all good things is dight."
And, as if this were not praise enough, he adds again—
"Methinks that nothing can more lovely be!"[2]
By such ingenious arguments, not at all an unfair burlesque upon the style of Plato and Aristotle, Simo succeeds in convincing his friend of the superiority in every way of the art which he himself follows with so much success. His listener determines to come to him for instruction, and hopes, as he is his first pupil, that he will teach him gratis.
But besides this lower class of parasites, who sought a precarious dinner from day to day by making themselves agreeable or useful to their entertainers, the great men of the day were in the habit of receiving at their tables as daily guests, or even of entertaining altogether as members of their household,—often in the really or professed capacity of tutors to their sons,—guests of a different stamp. The man of wealth and position hardly thought his establishment complete, unless it comprised some of the representatives of literature and science—a philosopher or two, a poet, a rhetorician, or a historian. There was not necessarily anything degrading in the arrangement to the recipient of such hospitality. He might consider himself as the rightful successor of the bard of olden times, whose divine song was more than payment for his place at the feast, and to whom, by prerogative of genius, the highest seat at the king's board, and the best portion from the king's table, was by all willingly accorded. On such terms we may suppose that Plato, in spite of Simo's sarcasm, lived at the court of Dionysius; and with a scarcely less independent feeling, Horace would tell us that he accepted the gracious welcome of Mæcenas. But guests of the calibre of Plato and Horace were few; and men who had neither the munificence of Dionysius nor the taste of Mæcenas yet wanted to have the Muses represented at their banquets. If one was not a philosopher or a poet or play-writer one's self, at least it was well, since such things were the fashion, to be in the fashion so far as to have them in the house. If it was as troublesome for the rich man to do his own thinking for himself as the oriental would consider it to do his own dancing, it was desirable to have it done for him. A swarm of small sciolists, and worse than mediocre poets, and littérateurs of all varieties, rose to meet the demand, and sought places at great men's tables. Conscious that their services were scarcely worth the wages, they learnt to be not too fastidious as to the circumstances under which they were paid: while the patron, feeling that after all he had not got the genuine article, was not always careful to make the payment in the most gracious manner.
With this in his mind, Lucian writes his bitter essay "Upon Hired Companions," cast in the form of a letter to a friend who is supposed to be under some temptation to adopt that line of life. He draws a vivid picture of the humiliations and indignities to which the Greek scholar is likely to be subjected who enters the family of a wealthy nobleman at Rome, in the capacity either of tutor to his children or humble literary companion to the master himself. They are curiously similar in character to those which, if we trust our own satirists, existed in English society a century ago. First, there is the difficulty of securing a proper introduction to the patron. The candidate must be early at the great man's door, and wait his leisure, and fee the porter well; must dress more expensively than his purse can well afford, to make a good figure in his eyes; must dance attendance at his levee perhaps for days, and at last, when he suddenly condescends to notice and address his humble servant, nervousness and embarrassment will so overcome the unfortunate man, that he makes an absolute fool of himself in the interview which he has so anxiously desired, and leaves an impression of nothing but awkwardness and ignorance.
But, pursues the letter-writer, supposing that your introduction is successful: supposing that the great man's friends do not set him against you, that the lady of the house does not take a violent dislike to you, that the steward and the housekeeper are graciously pleased to approve of you on the whole,—still, what an ordeal you have to go through at your very first dinner!
"My lord's gentleman, a suave personage, brings you the invitation. You must win his goodwill, to begin with: so, not to seem wanting in good manners, you slip five drachmæ into his hand, at the least. He affects to refuse if. 'From you, sir? Oh dear, no! on no account—I couldn't think of it.' But he is persuaded at last, and smiles with his white teeth as he takes his leave. Well, you put on your best suit, and get yourself up as correctly as you can, and reach the door—very much afraid of arriving before the other guests, which is as awkward as coming last is rude. So you take careful pains to hit the happy medium, are graciously received, and are placed within a few seats of the host,—just below two or three old friends of the house. You stare at everything as if you had been introduced all at once into the palace of Jupiter, and watch every detail anxiously—all is so new and strange; while the whole family have their eyes on you, and are watching what you will do next. Indeed the great man has even given orders to some of the attendants to take notice whether you seem to admire his wife and children sufficiently. Even the servants of the other guests who are present notice your evident embarrassment, and laugh at your ignorance of the ways of society, guessing that you have never been to a regular dinner-party before, and that even the napkin laid for you is something quite new to you. No wonder that you are actually in a cold sweat from embarrassment, and neither venture to ask for drink when you want it, for fear they should think yon a hard drinker, or know which to take first and which last of the various dishes which are arranged before you evidently in some kind of recognised sequence and order. So that you are obliged furtively to watch and imitate what your next neighbour does, and so make yourself acquainted with the ceremonial of dinner."
"Such," says the letter-writer, after a little more description of the same kind,—"such is your first dinner in a great man's house: I had rather, for my part, have an onion and some salt, and be allowed to eat it when and how I please." Then come the delicate arrangements about salary. When one reads Lucian's description of this, it is almost difficult to believe that he had not before him one of those modern advertisements for a governess, who is expected to possess all the virtues and all the accomplishments, and to whom "a very small salary is offered, as she will be treated as one of the family." "We are quite plain people here, as you see," says the pompous Roman to the new tutor; "but you will consider yourself quite at home with us, I hope. I know you are a sensible man: I know you have that happy disposition which is its own best reward, and quite understand that you do not enter my house from any mercenary motives, but for other reasons,—because you know the regard I have for you, and the good position it will give you in the eyes of the world. Still, some definite sum should he fixed, perhaps. I leave it to you to name your own terms; remembering, of course, that you will have a good many presents made you in the course of the year: but you scholars, as becomes your profession, are above mere money considerations, I know." At last it is agreed to leave the amount of the tutor's salary to a friend of the family; and the referee, a mere creature and toady himself, after reminding the poor scholar of his extreme good fortune in having made "such a valuable connection," names a sum which is quite ridiculously inadequate.
This is not the worst. The unhappy dependant will soon find his treatment in the house very different from his first introduction. "You must not expect to have the same fare as strangers and others have: that would be considered insufferable presumption. The dish placed before you will not be the same as the others. Their fowl will be plump and well fed: yours will he half a skinny chicken, or a dry tough pigeon; a direct slight and insult. Nay, often, if the bill of fare is scanty, and an additional guest comes in, the servant will actually take the dish from before you and give it to him; whispering familiarly in your ear—'you're one of the family, you know.'[3] While they are drinking good old wine, you will be expected to swallow some muddy vapid stuff: and you will do well to drink it out of gold or silver goblets, that it may not be plain to all, from the colour of the liquor, how little respect is paid to you in the household. Even of this poor stuff you will not be allowed your fill; for often, when you call for it, the servant will pretend not to hear."
He warns him, also, that in such a household the preceptor or the poet will be held of less account than the flutist, or the dancing-master, or the Egyptian boy who can sing love-songs. And after all, do what he will, he will hardly please. If he preserves a grave and dignified behaviour, he will be called churlish and morose; if he tries to be gay, and puts on a smiling face, the company will only stare and laugh at him.
If the town life of the unfortunate dependant is full of such mortifications, matters do not mend much when he accompanies his patron into the country. "Amongst other things, if it rains ever so hard, you must come last (that is your recognised place), and wait for a conveyance; and, if there is no room, be crammed into the litter with the cook and my lady's woman, with scarce straw enough to keep you warm." And the writer goes on to relate a veritable anecdote, told him, as he declares, by a Stoic philosopher who had been so unfortunate as thus to hire himself out into the service of a rich Roman lady. The story reads almost like a bit out of Swift. Travelling one day into the country in the suite of his patroness, he found a seat allotted him next a perfumed and smooth-shaven gentleman who held an equivocal position in the lady's household, and whose bearing might answer to that of the French dancing-master of modern satirists; not a very suitable companion for the grave philosopher, who rather prided himself on a venerable beard and dignified deportment. Just as they were starting, the lady, with tears in her eyes, appealed to his known kindness of heart to do her a personal favour. Even a philosopher could not refuse a request couched in such terms. "Will you then so far oblige me," said she, "as just to take my dear little dog Myrrhina with you in the carriage, and nurse her carefully? She is not at all well, poor dear—in fact, very near her accouchement; and those abominable careless servants of mine will give themselves no trouble about me,—much less about her." So, during the whole journey, there was the little beast peeping out of the grave philosopher's cloak, yelping at intervals, and now and then licking his face, and making herself disagreeable in divers ways; giving occasion to his companion to remark, with a mincing wit, that he had become a Cynic philosoper instead of a Stoic for the present."[4] Those who liked to make a good story complete declared afterwards to the present narrator that the philosopher, before they reached their journey's end, found himself nurse to of litter of puppies as well as to their interesting mother.
Scarcely less distasteful is the duty which belongs to the literary companion of listening to his patron's compositions, if he is a dabbler, as so many are, in poetry, or history, or the drama, since one must not only listen but loudly applaud his wretched attempts as an author. Or, where the companion is expected himself to give readings of his own to amuse the leisure of his patron, the mortification may be even greater—especially if, as in the case just mentioned, the patron be of the softer sex. "It will often happen that while the philosopher is reading, the maid will bring in a billet from a lover. Straightway the lecture upon wisdom and chastity is brought to a stand-still, until the lady has read and answered the missive, after which they return to it with all convenient speed."[5]
The writer entreats his friend to have too much self-respect to adopt a line of life so utterly distasteful to any man of independent spirit. "Is there no pulse still growing," he asks indignantly—"no wholesome herbs on which a man may sustain life, no streams of pure water left, that you should he driven to this direst strait for existence?" If a man will deliberately choose such a life, he bids him not rail at his fate hereafter, as many do, but remember those words of Plato,—"Heaven is blameless—the fault lies in our own choice."
It must be borne in mind that we here are reading satire, and not social history, and that it would be unfair to judge of the common position of literary men in the houses of the great from this highly coloured sketch of Lucian's. No doubt there were still to be found hosts like Mæcenas wherever there were companions like Horace. Few readers can have followed these extracts from Lucian's description of the literary dependant of his own day, without having forcibly recalled to them Macaulay's well-known picture of the domestic chaplain of the days of the Stuarts. There is abundant material for that brilliant caricature to be found, of course, in the satirists and the comedy-writers of those times,—the Lucians of the day; and they no doubt could have pointed to the original of every feature in their portraits. If does not follow that such portraits are to be taken as fair representatives of a class. But we must remember that the lively author we have now before us did not profess to be writing history; and it is well not to forget in reading the English historian's pages that we are following Oldham and Swift.
THE MARVEL-MONGERS.
We have seen the bitter and unsparing ridicule which, not without a purpose, Lucian brings to bear against the fables which passed under the name of religion in his day. But, if he laughed at Greek mythology, he hated the strange and outlandish superstitions which he saw creeping in at Athens and at Rome. He threw something of his own feeling into the remonstrance of the "old families" of Olympus, when they saw dog-headed monsters like Anubis, and apes and bulls from Memphis, introduced into the sacred circle. We have no need to depend upon satirists like Horace, or Juvenal, or Lucian—we need only go to the pages of the historian Tacitus—to learn how the superstitions of Egypt and Asia were gaining favour with the aristocracy of Rome. "Never," says Wieland, "was the propensity to supernatural prodigies and the eagerness to credit them more vehement than in this very enlightened age. The priestcraft of Upper Egypt, the different branches of magic, divination, and oracles of all kinds, the so-called occult sciences, which associated mankind with a fabulous world of spirts, and pretended to give them the control over the powers of nature, were almost universally respected. Persons of all ranks and descriptions—great lords and ladies, statesmen, scholars, the recognised and paid professors of the Pythagorean, the Platonic, the Stoic, and even the Aristotelian school, thought on these topics exactly as did the simplest of the people. . . . Men believed everything—and nothing."
It is in derision of this passion for the marvellous that Lucian composed this Dialogue between two friends, Tychiades and Philocles, of whom the former may be taken to represent the author himself. Tychiades wants to know why so many people prefer lies to truth? Well, replies his friend, in some cases men are almost obliged to tell lies for the sake of their own interest; and in war, lies to deceive an enemy are allowable. But some people, rejoins the other, seem to take a pleasure in lying for its own sake; and this is what puzzles him. Herodotus and Homer, so far as he can make out, were notorious liars; and lied withal in such a charming way, that their lies, unlike most others, have had immense vitality.
Philocles thinks something may be said in their defence: they were obliged, in order to be popular, to consult the universal taste for the marvellous. Besides, if all the old Greek fables are to be set aside, what is to become of the unfortunate people who get their living by showing the antiquities and curiosities?
Be this as it may, Tychiades has been quite shocked and astonished at what he has heard at a party lately given by his friend Eucrates—a grey-headed philosopher, who at least ought to have known better. He was laid up with gout; and the lying absurdities which his friends and physicians were prescribing for him by way of remedies were atrocious. A weasel's tooth wrapped in a lion's skin—though the doctors gravely squabbled whether it should not rather be a deer-skin—did any one ever hear the like? And then the guests had all set to work to tell the most marvellous stories—stories which go a long way to show how little novelty there is in the inventions of superstition; of magic rings made out of gibbet-irons; of haunted houses in which ghosts appeared and showed the way to their unburied bones; of a statue which at night stepped down from its pedestal and walked about the house, and even took a bath—you might hear him splashing in the water; of a slave who, having stolen his master's goods, was every night flogged by an invisible hand—you could count the wheals upon his back in the morning; of a little bronze figure of Hippocrates, only two spans high (this is the doctor's story), who is also given to nocturnal perambulations, and, small as he is, makes a great clatter in the surgery, upsetting the pill-boxes and changing the places of the bottles, if he has not had proper honour paid to him in the way of sacrifice during the year; of a colossal figure terminating in a serpent—Eucrates has seen it himself—before whose feet the infernal regions opened. Eucrates' own wife, again, whom he had burnt and buried handsomely, with all her favourite dresses too, in order to make her as comfortable as possible in her new state of existence,[6] had appeared to him seven months afterwards—"while I was lying on my couch, just as I am now, and reading Plato on the immortality of the soul"—and frightened him terribly. She had missed an article of her wardrobe—one of a pair of golden slippers to which she was particularly attached, and there was no rest for her perturbed spirit without it. Happily the slipper was found next morning in the very place which the lady had indicated, behind a chest, and was duly burned; and both husband and household had peace afterwards.
Eucrates had another story to tell also, of something which had happened to himself—a story with which we are tolerably familiar in more than one modern form, but which it may be amusing to read here in an older version. The narrator had the good fortune, on a voyage up the Nile, to make the acquaintance of a certain Pancrates, one of the holy scribes of Memphis, who had learnt magic from the goddess Isis herself. They became so intimate that they agreed to continue their travels together, Pancrates assuring his friend that they should have no need of servants.
"When we got to an inn, this remarkable man would take the bar of the door, or a broom, or a pestle, put some clothes on it, mutter a charm over it, and make it walk, looking to every one else's eyes for all the world like a man: it would go and draw water, fetch provisions and set them out, and make an excellent servant and waiter in all respects. Then, when its office was done to our contentment, he would mutter a counter-charm, and make the broom become a broom again, and the pestle a pestle. Now this charm I never could got him to disclose to me, with all my entreaties; he was jealous on this one point, though in everything else he was most obliging. But one day, standing in a dark corner, I overheard the spell—it was but three syllables—without his knowing it. He went off to market after giving the pestle its orders. So next day, when he was gone out on business, I took the pestle, dressed it up, and bid it go and draw water. When it had filled the pitcher and brought it back, "Stop!" said I; "draw no more water; be a pestle again." But it paid no attention to me, but went on drawing water till the whole house was full. Not knowing what on earth to do (for Pancrates was sure to be in a terrible way when he came back, as indeed fell out), I laid hold on a hatchet, and split the pestle in two. At once both halves took up a pitcher apiece, and began drawing water. So instead of one water-carrier, I had two. In the middle of it all, in came Pancrates, and understanding how matters stood, changed them back into wood again as they were before. But he went off and left me without a word, and I never knew what became of him."
They afterwards went on to tell so many horrible stories, that Tychiades left them in disgust; and he declares to his friend that even now he has nothing but goblins and spectres before his eyes ever since, and would give something to forget the conversation.
A passage occurs in this Dialogue worthy of remark, as containing, in the opinion of some, one of the few notices of Christianity which occur in contemporary heathen writers. One of the party at which the narrator was present speaks of having been an eyewitness of certain cures worked upon "demoniacs" by a person of whom he speaks as "that Syrian from Palestine, whom all men know." "He would stand over those possessed, and ask the spirits from whence they had entered into the body? and the sick man himself would be silent, but the devil would reply, either in Greek or some barbarous tongue of his own country, how and from whence he had entered into the man. Then the exorcist, using adjurations, and, if these had no effect, even threats, would expel the spirit."[7] It has been thought that here we have a record of healing wrought by some one of the successors of the Christian apostles. It must be observed, however, that the cure is here expressly said to have been performed "for a large fee," and that we have distinct mention in the Acts of the Apostles of professed exorcists who were not Christians.
The "Saturnalia," and the piece called "Nigrinus," may also be classed with the preceding. In the first, the author takes occasion of the well-known annual festival, kept in remembrance of the "good old times," at which so much general licence was allowed even to slaves, to deal some good-humoured blows at the follies of the day; and at the same time to introduce Saturn himself as a poor gouty decrepit old deity, quite out of date, and to remark upon Jupiter's unfilial conduct in turning him out of his kingdom. In the latter Dialogue, a Platonic philosopher named Nigrinus (whether a real or imaginary personage is not certainly known) contrasts the pomp and luxury of Roman city life with the simpler habits of the Athenians.
- ↑ Euphorbus, Hector, and Apollo. See Iliad, xvi.
- ↑ Odyss., ix. 5, &c.
- ↑ Lucian is not very original here. He had probably read the fifth Satire of Juvenal, where, among other indignities offered to the poor dependant, even the bread set before him is of very inferior quality—
"Black mouldy fragments which defy the saw,
The mere despair of every aching jaw,
While manchets of the finest flour are set
Before your lord."—Gifford. - ↑ It is hardly necessary to repeat that the term "Cynic" is derived from the Greek for "dog."
- ↑ Some readers will remember the anecdote told of Dr , one of Queen Anne's chaplains. His duty was to reed the Church prayers in the anteroom, while the queen was at her toilet within. Occasionally the door was shut, "while her majesty was shifting herself," during which interval the doctor left off, and resumed when the door was reopened. The other chaplains had not been so fastidious; and the doctor was asked by one of her majesty's women, why he did not go straight on with his reading: upon which he replied that he "would never whistle the Word of God through a key-hole."
- ↑ Probably founded on the story of Melissa's complaint to her husband Periander, that she was cold in the Shades below, because her clothes had only been buried, and not burnt, with her.—Heradotus, v. 92.
- ↑ "The Marvel-Mongers" (Philopseudes), 16.