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76
LUCIAN.
and all the power he had while on earth, and in the thought of his past pleasures.
Rhad. Excellently well advised! Sentence is passed. Let him be fettered and carried away to Tartarus, there to remember all his past life.
The keen intellect which rejected, as some of the greatest minds of antiquity had done before him, the inventions of poet and mythologist as to the future state, could appreciate the awful truth of a moral hell which the sinner carried always within him. Lucian would have said, with that great Roman poet who found no refuge from superstition but in materialism,—
"No vultures rend the breast of Tityos,
As his vast bulk lies tost on Acheron's wave;
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But he is Tityos, whose prostrate soul
The fangs of guilty love and vain regret,
And fruitless longings ever vex and tear."[1]
As his vast bulk lies tost on Acheron's wave;
·····
But he is Tityos, whose prostrate soul
The fangs of guilty love and vain regret,
And fruitless longings ever vex and tear."[1]
In that thought, at least, the Christian poet is in accord with the heathen. It is the punishment which Milton imagines for the Great Tempter himself:—
"Horror and doubt distract
His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir
The Hell within him; for within him Hell
He brings, and round about him now from Hell
One step, no more than from himself, can fly
By change of place; now conscience works despair
That slumbered,—wakes the bitter memory
Of what he was, what is, and what must be."[2]
His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir
The Hell within him; for within him Hell
He brings, and round about him now from Hell
One step, no more than from himself, can fly
By change of place; now conscience works despair
That slumbered,—wakes the bitter memory
Of what he was, what is, and what must be."[2]
