only by some startling novelty—such as that which this Alexander provided in the new birth of Aesculapius—that the flagging interest of the populace could be revived. The general deadness of the pagan world in regard to religion, and the dearth of higher intellectual interests, made an opening for every kind of superstition, which could not be too gross or too stupid if only it furnished excitement.
In the satire which Lucian directs against the pagan gods, irony is blended with Aristophanic mockery; but the tone of the whole is far removed from that of the old comedy. It is not the tone of the Attic Dionysia, a festival at which the gods themselves were deemed to permit and enjoy raillery; it is that of an age in which the divinities of the old popular faith were no longer seriously taken by the majority of intellectual men, even though such men might acquiesce or participate in the ceremonies of a cult still upheld by the State. The pervading idea of Lucian's satire in this province is exceedingly simple. Pagan polytheism was anthropomorphic. Be it so, says Lucian; your gods are men and women; let us then represent them consistently as men and women. His device consists merely in pushing bare anthropomorphism to its extreme logical result; much as Swift, in Gulliver's Travels, deduces all the marvels, with logical precision, from the relative scales and properties of certain given creatures. As an example, we may take a passage from that ingenious piece, Zeus Tragoedus, "Jupiter in Buskins." At the opening of the scene Zeus is
