probably, as Eusebius relates of him, joined that community for a time, most likely for his own ends, though he may not have held the high position among them which is here ascribed to him. On the motives which led him to the extraordinary act which closed his life, Lucian must have had better opportunities of judging than are open to us; and he plainly considers that he was actuated at first by a fanatical desire for notoriety, and possibly forced at the last to carry out his announcement against his will. It might have required more courage to draw back, in the face of public ridicule and certain exposure, than to brave death amidst the applause of the crowd.
The abuse showered upon Lucian by Christian writers as a "blasphemer" and an "Antichrist" is due partly to his having had ascribed to him a Dialogue called "Philopatris," in which the Christians are maliciously accused of prophesying misfortunes to the state, and which bears internal evidence of having been written by one who had been at some period a member of a Christian Church. As the author of this, they charged him with worse than infidelity—apostasy from the faith, and treason to his former associates. But it has been pretty clearly proved that this work is of much later date, and could not possibly have come from the hand of Lucian. It is true that in his account of the pseudo-prophet Alexander, the only other occasion on which he mentions the Christians by name,
the version here presented to us. There is a good notice of this little work of Wieland's in W. Taylor's 'Historic Survey of German Poetry,' ii. 482.
