Page:Lucian (IA lucianlucas00collrich).pdf/183

Rh having been propounded. It was much more natural to take, as many honest theologians did take and hotly maintain, quite the opposite view of Lucian's feelings towards the new religion. And these could certainly produce better evidence in support of their opinion. They traced in the sceptical tone of his writings the voice of an enemy to all forms of religion, true as well as false. They called him loudly "atheist" and "blasphemer." Some of them invented, and probably told until they believed it, a story of his having met his death by being torn in pieces by dogs—as such impiety well deserved. And one—Suidas—went so far as to express the charitable hope and belief that his punishment did not end there, but is still proceeding. In the passage which has been here quoted, they saw a sneer at the holiest mysteries. Yet surely no such interpretation is self-evident to any candid reader. It is a cold, unimpassioned statement; half serious and half satiric, as is Lucian's wont; but neither prejudiced nor malicious. We have nothing here like the bitterness of Fronto or Celsus, or the stern anathema which Tacitus, ranking Christianity among other hated introductions from the East, hurls against it as an "execrable superstition." The tenets of this obscure sect did seem to Lucian—the man of the