Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/687

 into ordering the release of the prisoners he had apprehended. The story ends with an account of the baptism of the three soldiers who had had charge of St. Paul, and been converted by him. After his death he directs them to go to his grave, where they find SS. Luke and Titus praying and receive baptism at their hands.

Lipsius infers, from the coincidences of the tolerably numerous N.T. citations in Linus with the Vulg., that our present Latin Linus must be later than Jerome; but he does not seem to have appreciated the conservative character of Jerome′s revision or to have consulted the older versions. We have found no coincidence with the Vulg. which is not equally a coincidence with an older version; and in one case, "relinque mortuos sepelire mortuos suos," the text agrees with the quotations of Ambrose, Jerome′s translation being "dimitte." We conjecture the compiler to have been a Manichean, but he is quite orthodox in his views as to the work of creation, the point on which Gnostic speculation was most apt to go astray.

[G.S.]

Lucanus (1), or Lucianus, Marcionite (Lucanus, Pseudo-Tert. 18; Philast. 46, and so probably their source, the Syntagma of Hippolytus; Tertull. de Resur. Carn. 2; Λουκᾶνος, Orig. cont. Cels. ii. 27; on the other hand, Λουκιανός Hippol. Ref. vii. 37; Epiph. Haer. 43). The former is the better attested form, and more likely to have been altered into the other. The Lucianites are reckoned as a sect distinct from the Marcionites, as well by Origen as by Hippolytus and his followers; but lack of authentic report of any important difference in doctrine leads us to believe that Lucanus did not separate from Marcion, but that after the latter's death Lucanus was a Marcionite teacher (probably at Rome), whose celebrity caused his followers to be known by his name rather than by that of the original founder of the sect. They may have been so called in contradistinction to the Marcionites of the school of Apelles, who approached more nearly to the orthodox. Origen's language (οἶμαι) implies that he had no very intimate knowledge of the teaching of Lucanus; he will not speak positively as to whether Lucanus tampered with the Gospels. Epiphanius owns that, the sect being extinct in his time, he had difficulty in obtaining accurate information about it. Tertullian alone (u.s.) seems to have direct knowledge of the teaching of Lucanus. He accuses him of going beyond other heretics who merely denied the resurrection of the body, and of maintaining that not even the soul would rise, but some other thing, neither soul nor body. Neander (Ch. Hist. ii. 189) interprets this to mean that Lucanus held that the ψυχή would perish and the πνεῦμα alone be immortal; and possibly this may be so, though Tertullian's language would lead us to attribute to Lucanus a theory more peculiar to himself than this would be. Some commentators, taking a jest of Tertullian's too literally, have, without good reason, ascribed to Lucanus a doctrine of transmigration of souls of men into bodies of brutes. They have, however, the authority of Epiphanius (Haer. 42, p. 330) for regarding this doctrine as one likely to be held by a Marcionite. Lucanus has been conjectured to be the author of the apocryphal Acts which bore the name of, and Lardner treats the identification as certain. Even, however, if it were certain that the Acts of Leucius were Marcionite, not Manichean, and as early as the 2nd cent., there is no ground for this identification but the similarity of name.

[G.S.]

Lucianus (8), a famous satirist, the wittiest, except Aristophanes, of all the extant writers of antiquity. Born (probably c. 120) at Samosata on the Euphrates, the son of poor parents, he gradually betook himself to the composing and reciting of rhetorical exercises, which he did with continually increasing success as he journeyed westwards, visiting Greece, Italy, and Gaul, where his success reached the highest pitch. As in course of time his rhetorical vein exhausted itself, he betook himself, when about 40 years old, to that style of writing-dialogue on which his permanent fame has rested. About the same time he returned eastwards through Athens, and was at Olympia in 165, when he saw the extraordinary self-immolation by fire of the sophist Peregrinus. A little later he visited Paphlagonia, where he vehemently attacked, and made a bitter enemy of, the impostor Alexander of Abonoteichos. Of the extraordinary success of this man in deluding the weak and credulous minds of the rude people of those parts, and even the cultivated senators of Rome, Lucian has left us an animated account in the False Prophet (ψευδόμαντις). Lucian once had an interview with him, and stooping down, instead of kissing his hand, as was the custom, bit it severely. Luckily he had a guard of two soldiers with him, sent by his friend the governor of Cappadocia (a proof of Lucian's importance at this time), or he would have fared badly at the hands of the attendants of Alexander. The latter pretended reconciliation, and subsequently lent Lucian a ship to return home in, but gave secret instructions to the crew to throw him overboard on the voyage. The master of the ship, however, repented, and Lucian was landed at Aegialos, and thence conveyed to Amastris in a ship belonging to the ambassadors of king Eupator. He endeavoured to get Alexander punished for this piece of treachery, but the latter's influence was too strong. Of his later years we know but little; he was, however, appointed by the emperor (probably Commodus) to a post of honour and emolument in Egypt.

We do not know the cause, manner, or time of his death. His writings, with all their brilliancy, do not convey the impression of a warm-hearted man; the Peregrinus is especially noticeable for the hard unconcern with which he describes both the self-sacrificing love of the Christians and the tragic self-sought death of the sophist. For cool common sense and determination to see everything in its naked reality, apart from the disturbing influences of hope, fear, enthusiasm, or superstition, he has never in any age been surpassed. His most essential characteristic could not be better described than in his own words, in the dialogue entitled Ἁλιεύς, or the Fisherman: "I am a hater of imposture, jugglery, lies, and ostentation, and in short of all that rascally sort of men; and there are very many of them" (§ 20). Shortly