little embellishments of the fact were, as he assures his friend, repeated afterwards as integral parts of the story. Some time afterwards he had met "a grey-haired old man, whose beard and venerable aspect might have seemed to bespeak a trustworthy witness," who solemnly declared that he had seen Proteus after his burning, "all in white, wearing a crown of olive;" nay, that he had not long ago left him "alive and cheerful, walking in the Hall of the Seven Echoes."
This portion of the narrative has also given rise to considerable discussion. Those who could see in Lucian nothing but a scoffer, asserted that the whole story was fictitious, and that his sole intention was to ridicule and caricature the deaths of Christian martyrs. They noted in this account of the last moments of Peregrinus many circumstances apparently borrowed from the deaths of the famous martyrs of the times. The previous attempts at rescue and the bribing of the jailors have their exact parallels in the case of Ignatius, and the Christians in their dreams saw him walking about in a glorified shape; the "olive-crown" might be an embodiment of that "crown of victory" of which he spoke at his death, or "the crown of immortality" which Polycarp saw before him; the stripping and "standing in the under garment only" is related of Cyprian at his martyrdom; and Lucian's vulture seems but a parody of the dove which the imaginative piety of Christian legend saw rising from the funeral-pile of Polycarp.[1] The very year (A.D. 165)
- ↑ The dove is omitted in the account given by Eusebius.
