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444 LUCIAN

Ltjcian, " the first of the moderns," was born more than three hundred years after Theocritus, about 125 A. D. He vas not a Greek by birth, but a Syrian of Samosata, near Antioch. He prepared himself to be a sculptor, but in a dream, he tells us, Culture appeared to him and per- suaded him to take up the profession of Sophist. After studying and practising eloquence at home for some time, he travelled from city to city through Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, and Gaul, delivering lectures with great success. At the age of forty he established himself for a time in Athens, and devoted himself to literature. When he was already old, he was compelled by poverty to take a minor office in a court of law, and died in Egypt at an advanced age.

The writings of Lucian are sermons on the vanities of human life. He belongs to no school of philosophy, but mocks at all schools. He derides alike the ancient gods of the Pantheon and the new doctrine of Christianity ; he scoffs at the ignorance in the past and the rising science of this present time. But he uses his weapons of ridicule and satire, not for the mere joy of using them, no matter against what, but with the definite purpose of wounding all that he believes rotten or false in the men and doctrines of the time. In one of his Dialogues, the sequel to the Sale of the Philosophers, when he is arraigned for judgment before Philosophy itself, he says in his own defence : —

" I make it my business to hate quacks, hate jugglery, hate lies, and hate conceit, and I hate every such class of wicked men. . . . Yet, in spite of this, I have a very pre- cise knowledge of the opposite sentiment also. . . . For I 'm