would endure it no longer. She had led him a very unquiet life of it, he declares, for some years. He makes poor Rhetoric, indeed, say in her defence in the same Dialogue, and with at least some degree of truth, that she had taken him up when he was young, poor, and unknown, had brought him fame and reputation, and lastly in Gaul had made him a wealthy man.[1] It is possible that the declining reputation in which the science, owing to the abuses introduced by unworthy professors, was beginning to be held throughout Greece, may have been one great reason for his withdrawing from it.
He delivered his last lecture on the subject at Thessalonica,—where he would again meet with, or at least hear something of, the members of the Christian Church. Thence he returned to his native town of Samosata, found his father still alive there,[2] and soon removed him and his whole family into Greece. He devoted the rest of his life to the study of philosophy and to his literary work, living in good style at Athens. It was here, as he tells us himself, that he got rid of his "barbarous Syrian speech," and perfected himself in that pure Attic diction which is marvellous in a writer who was virtually a foreigner. For such Greek as was spoken in Syria during the Empire was, as Lucian confesses, little better than a patois. To these years of his life at Athens are naturally assigned those Dialogues of his which have in them so much of the Aristophanic spirit and manner. There also he enjoyed
