The gospel of philosophy expounded by Seneca was rather an esoteric or aristocratic creed. With all his liberal sentiment, his cosmopolitanism, his clear conception of human equality and brotherhood, Seneca always remains the director of souls like his own, enervated by wealth, tortured with the ennui of jaded sensibility, haunted by the terror of the Caesars.1792 Indeed Stoicism was always rather a creed for the cultivated upper class than for the crowd. In its prime, its apparatus of logical formulae, its elaborate physics and metaphysics, its essentially intellectual solution of the problems both of the universe and human life, necessarily disabled it from ever developing into a popular system. And in the later days of the Republic, theory became more important than practice, and logic passed into casuistry.1793 But in the first century, Stoicism came to be much more a religion than a philosophy, or even a theology. Its main business, as conceived by men like Seneca, is to save souls from the universal shipwreck of character1794 caused by the capricious excesses of luxury, the idolatry of the world and the flesh, which sprang from a riotous pride in the material advantages of imperial power, without a sobering sense of duty or a moral ideal. But, in the nature of things, this wreck of character was most glaringly seen among the men who were in close contact with the half insane masters of the world in the first century, and who possessed the resources to exhaust the possi[pg 335]bilities of pleasure or the capacities of the senses to enjoy. It is to people of this class, who still retained some lingering instincts of goodness, weary with indulgence, bewildered and tortured by the conflict of the lower nature with the weak, but still disturbing, protests of the higher, that Seneca addresses his counsels.

But what of the great masses lying outside the circle of cultivated and exhausted self-indulgence, that plebeian world of which we have seen the picture in their municipalities and colleges? It is clear from the records of their daily life, their ambitions, their tasks and amusements, that, although perhaps not generally tainted with such deep corruption as the nobles of the Neronian age, their moral tone and aspirations hardly correspond to the material splendour of the Empire. Even apart from the glimpses of low life in Petronius, Martial, and Apuleius, apart from the revelations of Pompeii, and the ghastly traditions which haunt the ruins of countless theatres and amphitheatres, the warnings of preachers of that age, such as Dion Chrysostom, and the reflections of the infinitely charitable M. Aurelius, leave no very favourable impression of the moral condition of the masses.1795 How could it be otherwise? The old paganism of Rome did indeed foster certain ancestral pieties which were the salt of the Roman character. But it unfortunately also gave its sanction to scenes of lust and cruelty which went far to counteract in later times any good it did. Nor had the old religion any means for edification and the culture of character. It had no organisation for the care and direction of souls in moral doubt and peril. If its oracles might, from a few old-world examples, seem to supply such a spiritual want, the appearance is delusive even according to pagan testimony. Poets and moralists alike thundered against the shameless impiety which often begged the sanction of a prophetic shrine for some meditated sin,1796 and the charge has been confirmed by the resurrection of these old profanities from the ruins of Dodona.1797 But even without [pg 336]direct testimony, we might fairly conclude that the Antonine Age was, by reason of its material development, in special need of spiritual teaching and evangelism. The whole stress of public and private effort was towards the provision of comfort or splendour or amusement for the masses. And, within the range of its ambition, it succeeded marvellously. Nor should an impartial inquirer refuse to admit that such an immense energy has its good moral side. The rich were rigorously taught their duty to society, and they improved upon the lesson. The masses responded to their generous public spirit with gratitude and affection; and the universal kindliness and fraternity diffused through all ranks on days of high religious festival or civic interest, afforded a very wholesome and gratifying spectacle.1798 There was an undoubted softening of the Roman character. And the labours of the great Stoic lawyers were giving expression to cultivated moral feeling, in a more liberal recognition of the natural rights of the weak and oppressed, of women and of slaves. Yet a society may be humane and kindly while it is also worldly and materialised. To us at least, the forces of the Antonine age seem to have expended themselves chiefly on the popular pleasures and external adornments of life, or a revival, often in the grossest and most absurd forms, as we shall see in a later chapter, of the superstitions of the past. With all its humanitarian sentiment and all its material glories, the Roman world had entered on that fatal incline, which, by an unperceived yet irresistible movement, led on to the sterilisation of the higher intellect, and the petrifaction of Roman society which ended in the catastrophe of the fifth century.

The triumphs and splendour of corporate life in the age of the Antonines are certainly a dazzling spectacle. Yet to the student who is more occupied with the painful moral education of the race, the interest lies in a different direction. It was a worldly age, but it was also an age ennobled by a powerful protest against worldliness. And in this chapter we shall study a great movement, which, under the name of philosophy or culture, called the masses of men to a higher standard of life. This movement, like all others of the same kind, had its [pg 337]impostors who disgraced it. Yet the man who has pursued them with such mordant ridicule and pitiless scorn, the man who was utterly sceptical as to the value of all philosophic effort, in the last resort approaches very near to the view of human life which was preached by the men whom he derides.1799 Lucian belonged to no philosophic school; he would himself have repudiated adhesion to any system. The advice of Teiresias to Menippus, when he sought him in the shades, would certainly have been Lucian’s to any young disciple who consulted him. Have done with all these verbal subtleties and chimeras; swear allegiance to no sect; make the best of the present; and take things generally with a smile.1800 Yet who can read the Dialogues of the Dead without feeling that there is a deeper and more serious vein in Lucian than he would confess? Although he poured his contempt upon the Cynic street preachers, although in the Auction of Lives the Cynic’s sells for the most paltry price, the Cynic alone is allowed to carry with him across the river of death his characteristic qualities, his boldness and freedom of speech, his bitter laughter at the follies and illusions of mankind.1801 There are many indications in these dialogues that, if Lucian had turned Cynic preacher, he would have waged the same war on the pleasures and illusory ambitions of man, he would have outdone the Cynics in brutal frankness of exposure and denunciation, as he would have surpassed them in rhetorical and imaginative charm of style.1802 He has a vivid and awful conception of Death, the great leveller, and sees all earthly wealth and glory in the grey light of the land where all things are forgotten. Rank and riches, beauty and strength, the lust of the eye and the pride of life, are all left behind on the borders of the realm of “sapless heads.”1803 If Lucian has any gospel it is that the kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor. He is as ready as some of the Christian Fathers to condemn the rich eternally.1804 And therefore we are not surprised that Lucian has little eye for the splendour of his age, unless indeed in [pg 338]the phrase, “Great cities die as well as men.”1805 He seems to have little appreciation for its real services to humanity. Its vain, pretentious philosophy, its selfishness of wealth, its vices hidden under the guise of virtue, drew down his hatred and scorn. Yet one cannot help feeling, in reading some of Lucian’s pieces, that, man of genius as he was, a man of no age, or a man of all ages, he is looking at human life from far above, with no limitations of time, and passing a judgment which may be repeated in the thirtieth century.1806

This lofty or airy detachment in regarding the toils and ambitions of men is perhaps best seen in the Charon. In this piece Lucian shows us the ideal spectator taking an outlook over the scene of human life. The ferryman of the dead, who has heard so many laments from his passengers for the joys they have lost, wishes to have a glance at this upper world which it seems so hard to leave behind. He joins the company of Hermes, and, by an old-world miracle, they gain an observatory on high-piled Thessalian mountains from which to watch for a while the comedy or the tragedy of human life.1807 A magic verse of Homer gives the spectral visitor the power to observe the scene so far below. And what a sight it is! It is a confused spectacle of various effort and passion—men sailing, fighting, ploughing, lending at usury, suing in the law-courts. It is also a human swarm stinging and being stung. And over all the scene flits a confused cloud of hopes and fears and follies and hatreds, the love of pleasure and the love of gold. Higher still, you may see the eternal Fates spinning for each one of the motley crowd his several thread. One man, raised high for the moment, has a resounding fall; another, mounting but a little way, sinks unperceived. And amidst all the tumult and excitement of their hopes and alarms, death kindly snatches them away by one of his many messengers. Yet they weep and lament, forgetting that they have been mere sojourners for a brief space upon earth and are only losing the pleasures of a dream.1808 To Charon the bubbles in a fountain are the truest image of their phantom [pg 339]life—some forming and bursting speedily, others swelling out for a little longer and more showy life, but all bursting at the last. Charon is so moved by the pathos of it all, that, from his mountain peaks, he would fain preach a sermon to the silly crowd and warn them of the doom which is in store for all. But the wiser or more cynical Hermes tells him that all except a few have their ears more closely stopped than the crew of Odysseus when they passed the Siren isles.

This view of human life, half-contemptuous, half-pathetic, which the great iconoclast of all the dreams of religion or philosophy in his time has sketched with his own graphic power, was the view of the very philosophy which he derided. Philosophy had a second time turned from heaven to earth. The effort to solve the riddle of the universe by a single formula, or by the fine-drawn subtleties of dialectic, has been abandoned. In Lucian’s Auction of Lives, in which the merits of the various schools are balanced and estimated in terms of cash, it is significant that only a slight and perfunctory reference is made to the great cosmic or metaphysical theories of Elea or Ionia, to the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers, to the Ephesian doctrine of the eternal flow, or the ideal system of Plato.1809 We have seen that, although Seneca has a certain interest in the logic and physics of the older Stoicism, he makes all purely speculative inquiry ancillary to moral progress. The same diversion of interest from the field of speculation to that of conduct is seen even more decidedly in Epictetus and M. Aurelius.1810 The philosophic Emperor had, of course, studied the great cosmic systems of Heraclitus and Epicurus, Plato and Aristotle.1811 They furnish a scenery or background, sometimes, especially that of Heraclitus, a dimly-seen foundation, for his theory of conduct. But, in spite of his sad, weary view of the pettiness and sameness of the brief space of consciousness between “the two eternities,” the whole thought of M. Aurelius is concentrated on the manner in which that brief moment may be worthily spent. So, Epictetus asks, What do I care whether all things are composed of atoms or similar parts or of fire or earth? Is it not enough to know the [pg 340]nature of good and evil?1812 Just as in the days of Socrates the whole stress of philosophy is directed towards the discovery of a rule of life, a source of moral clearness and guidance, with a view to the formation or reformation of character.

Seneca and Epictetus and Lucian and M. Aurelius all alike give a gloomy picture of the moral condition of the masses. And we may well believe that, in spite of the splendour of that age, in spite of a great moral movement which was stirring among the leaders of society, the mass of men, as in every age, had little taste for idealist views of life. Yet Seneca, notwithstanding his pessimism, speaks of the multitudes who were stretching out their hands for moral help. There must have been some demand for that popular moral teaching which is a striking feature of the time. Men might jeer at the philosophic missionary, but they seem to have crowded to listen to him—on the temple steps of Rome or Ephesus, in the great squares of Alexandria,1813 or in the colonnades at Olympia, or under the half-ruined walls of an old Milesian colony on the Euxine.1814 The rush of the porters and smiths and carpenters to join the ranks of the Cynic friars, which moved the scorn of Lucian,1815 must have corresponded to some general demand, even if the motive of the vagrant missionary was not of the purest kind. There must have been many an example of moral earnestness like that of Hermotimus, who had laboured hard for twenty years to find the true way of life, and had only obtained a distant glimpse of the celestial city.1816 After Dion’s conversion, as we may fairly call it, he deems it a sacred duty to call men to the way of wisdom by persuasion or reproach, and to appeal even to the turbulent masses.1817 We shall see how well he fulfilled the duty. For nearly a century at Athens, the gentle Demonax embodied the ideal which his friend Epictetus had formed of the Cynic father of all men in God; and his immense ascendency testifies at least to a widespread respect and admiration for such teaching and example.1818 It is not necessary [pg 341]to suppose that the people who thought it an honour if Demonax invited himself to their tables, the magistrates who rose up to do him reverence as he passed, or the riotous assembly which was awed into stillness by his mere presence, were people generally who had caught his moral enthusiasm.1819 They were at the very time eager to have gladiatorial shows established under the shadow of the Acropolis. But it is something when men begin to revere a character inspired by moral forces of which they have only a dim conjecture. And amid all the material splendour and apparent content of the Antonine age, there were signs that men were becoming conscious of a great spiritual need, which they often tried to satisfy by accumulated superstitions. The ancient routine was broken up; the forms of ancestral piety no longer satisfied even the vulgar; the forms of ancient scholastic speculation had become stale and frigid to the cultivated; the old philosophies had left men bewildered. Henceforth, philosophy must make itself a religion; the philosopher must become an “ambassador of God.”

“There is no philosophy without virtue; there is no virtue without philosophy,” said Seneca,1820 and herein he expressed truly the most earnest thought of his own age and the next. Lucian, in the dialogue which is perhaps his most powerful exposure of the failure of philosophy, bears testimony to the boundless expectations which it aroused in its votaries. Hermotimus, the elderly enthusiast, whom the mocker meets hurrying with his books to the philosophic school, has been an ardent student for twenty years; he has grown pale and withered with eager thought. Yet he admits that he has only taken a single step on the steep upward road. Few and faint and weary are they who ever reach the summit.1821 Yet Hermotimus is content if, at the close of the efforts of a lifetime, he should, if but for a moment, breathe the air of the far-off heights and look down on the human ant-hill below. Such spirits dream of an apotheosis like that which crowned the hero on Mount Oeta, when the soul shall be purged of its earthly passions as by fire, and hardly a memory of the illusions of the past will remain.1822 Lycinus, his friend, has once himself had a vision of a celestial city, from [pg 342]which ambition and the greed of gold are banished, where there is no discord or strife, but the citizens live in a deep peace of sober virtue. He had once heard from an aged man how any one might share its citizenship, rich or poor, bond or free, Greek or barbarian, if only he had the passion for nobleness and were not overcome by the hardness of the journey. And the sceptic avows that long since he would have enrolled himself among its citizens, but the city is far off, and only dimly visible. The paths which are said to lead to it run in the most various directions, through soft meadows and cool shaded slopes, or mounting over bare rough crags under a pitiless blaze. And at the entrance to each avenue there is a clamorous crowd of guides, each vaunting his peculiar skill, abusing his rivals, and pointing to the one sure access of which he alone has the secret key. A similar scene, equally illustrative of the moral ferment of the time, is sketched in another charming piece.1823 It is that in which the rustic Pan, with his memories of the shepherd’s pipe and the peace of Arcadian pastures, describes the strange turmoil of contending sects which rings around his cave on the edge of the Acropolis. There, in the Agora below, rival teachers, with dripping brow and distended veins, are shouting one another down before an admiring crowd. And the simple old deity, to whom the language of their dialectic is strange, seems to think that the victory rests with the loudest voice and the most blatant self-assertion.

The sly ridicule of Lucian, so often crossed by a touch of pathos, is perhaps the best testimony to the overpowering interest which his age felt in the philosophy of conduct. And it was no longer the pursuit merely of an intellectual aristocracy. Common, ignorant folk have caught the passion for apostleship. Everywhere might be met the familiar figure, with long cloak and staff and scrip, haranguing in the squares or lanes to unlettered crowds.1824 And the preacher is often as unlearned as they, having left the forge or the carpenter’s bench or the slave prison,1825 to proclaim his simple gospel of renunciation, with more or less sincerity. Lucian makes sport of the quarrels and contradictions of the schools. And it is true that the old [pg 343]names still marked men off in different camps, or rather churches. But their quarrels in Lucian and in Philostratus1826 seem to be personal, the offspring of very unphilosophic ambition and jealousy, or greed or petty vanity, rather than the wholesome and stimulating collision of earnest minds contending for what they think a great system of truth. The rival Sophists under the Acropolis were quarrelling for an audience and not for a dogma. Scientific interest in philosophy was to a great extent dead. For centuries no great original thinker had arisen to rekindle it. And in the purely moral sphere to which philosophy was now confined, the natural tendency of the different schools, not even excluding the Epicurean, was to assimilation and eclecticism.1827 They were all impartially endowed at the university of Athens, and a youth of enthusiasm would attend the professors of all the schools. Apollonius, although he finally adopted the Pythagorean discipline, pursued his studies at Aegae under Platonists and Stoics,1828 and even under Epicureans. Seneca came under Pythagorean influences in his youth, and he constantly rounds off a letter to Lucilius with a quotation from Epicurus. Among the tutors of M. Aurelius were the Peripatetic Claudius Severus, and Sextus the Platonist of Chaeronea.1829 Hence, although a man in the second century might be labelled Platonist or Stoic, Cynic or Pythagorean, it would often be difficult from his moral teaching to discover his philosophic ancestry and affinities. And, just as in modern Christendom, although sectarian landmarks and designations are kept up, the popular preaching of nearly all the sects tends to a certain uniformity of emphasis on a limited number of momentous moral truths, so the preaching of pagan philosophy dwells, almost to weariness, on the same eternal principles of true gain and loss, of the illusions of passion, of freedom through renunciation.

The moral teaching or preaching of the Antonine age naturally adapted its tone to the tastes of its audience; there was the discourse of the lecture-room, and the ruder and more boisterous appeal to the crowd. Both passed under the name of philosophy, and both often degraded that great name by an affectation and insincerity which cast discredit on a [pg 344]great and beneficent movement of reform. The philosophic lecturer who has a serious moral purpose is in theory distinguished from the rhetorical sophist, who trades in startling effects, who rejoices in displaying his skill on any subject however trivial or grotesque, who will expatiate on the gnat or the parrot, or debate the propriety of a Vestal’s marriage.1830 The exercises of the rhetorical school had gone on for five hundred years, and, with momentous effects on Roman culture, they were destined to continue with little change till the Goths were masters of Rome.1831 The greed, the frivolity, and the overweening vanity of these intellectual acrobats are a commonplace of literary history.1832 The sophist and the lecturing philosopher were theoretically distinct. But unfortunately a mass of evidence goes to show that in many cases the lecturing philosopher became a mere showy rhetorician. A similar desecration of a serious mission is not unknown in modern times. The fault is often not with the preacher, but with his audience. If people come not to be made better, but to be amused, to have their ears soothed by flowing declamation, to have a shallow intellectual curiosity titillated by cheap displays of verbal subtlety or novelty, the unfortunate preacher will often descend to the level of his audience. And in that ancient world, according to the testimony of Seneca, Musonius, Plutarch, and Epictetus, the philosophic preacher too often was tempted to win a vulgar applause by vulgar rhetorical arts.1833 He was sometimes a man of no very serious purpose, with little real science or originality. He had been trained in the school of rhetoric, which abhorred all serious thought, and deified the master of luscious periods and ingenious turns of phrase. He was, besides, too often a mere vain and mercenary adventurer, trading on an attenuated stock of philosophic tradition, and a boundless command of a versatile rhetoric, cultivating intellectual insolence as a fine art, yet with a servile craving for the applause of his audience.1834 Many a scene in the now faded history of their failures or futile triumphs comes down to us [pg 345]from Plutarch and Epictetus and Philostratus.1835 Sometimes the gaps upon the benches, the listless, inattentive air, the slow feeble applause, sent the vain preacher home with gloomy fears for his popularity. On other days, he was lifted to the seventh heaven by an enthusiastic genteel mob, who followed every deft turn of expression with shouts and gestures of delight, and far-fetched preciosities of approbation. At the close, the philosophic performer goes about among his admirers to receive their renewed tribute. “Well, what did you think of me?”—“Quite marvellous, I swear by all that is dear to me.”—“But how did you like the passage about Pan and the nymphs?”—“Oh, superlative!” It is thus that a real winner of souls describes the impostor.1836 Even estimable teachers did not disdain to add to the effect of their lectures by carefully polished eloquence, an exquisite toilet, and a cultivated dignity. Such a courtly philosopher was Euphrates, the Syrian Stoic, whose acquaintance Pliny had made during his term of service in the East. Euphrates was stately and handsome, with flowing hair and beard, and a demeanour which excited reverence without overawing the hearer.1837 Irreproachable in his own life, he condemned sin, but was merciful to the sinner. Pliny, the amiable man of the world, who had no serious vices to reform, found Euphrates a charming lecturer, with a subtle and ornate style which was entirely to his taste. He treats Euphrates as a rhetorician rather than as a philosopher with a solemn message to deliver. To serious moralists like Seneca, Musonius, Plutarch, and Epictetus the showy professor of the art of arts was an offence. With their lofty conception of the task of practical philosophy, they could only feel contempt or indignation for the polished exquisite who trimmed or inflated his periods to please the ears of fashionable audiences. They all condemn such performances in almost identical terms. The mission of true philosophy is to make men examine themselves, to excite shame and pain and penitence, to reveal a law of life and moral freedom which may lead to amendment and peace.1838 [pg 346]“There is no good in a bath or in a discourse which does not cleanse.” The true disciple and the true teacher will be too much absorbed in the gravity of the business to think of the pleasure of mere style. To make aesthetic effect the object of such discourses, when the fate of character is at stake, is to turn the school into a theatre or a music-hall, the philosopher into a flute-player.1839

The volume and unanimity of these criticisms of the rhetorical philosopher show that such men abounded; but they also show that there must have been a great mass of serious teachers whom they travestied. It has perhaps been too little recognised that in the first and second centuries there was a great propaganda of pagan morality running parallel to the evangelism of the Church.1840 The preaching was of very different kinds, according to the character of the audiences. The preachers, as we have said, belonged to all the different schools, Stoic or Platonist, Cynic or Pythagorean; sometimes, like Dion, they owed little academic allegiance at all. Sometimes the preaching approached to modern conceptions of its office;1841 at others, it dealt with subjects and used a style unknown to our pulpits.1842 The life of Apollonius of Tyana may be a romance; it certainly contains many narratives of miracles and wonders which cast a suspicion upon its historical value. Yet even a romance must have real facts behind to give it probability, and the preaching, at least, of Apollonius seems to belong to the world of reality. Apollonius was probably much nearer to the true ecclesiastic and priest of modern times than any ancient preacher. He had been trained in all the philosophies; he had drunk inspiration from the fountain of all spiritual religion, the East. He was both a mystic and a ritualist. He rejoiced in converse with the Brahmans, and he occupied himself with the revival or reform of the ritual in countless Greek and Italian temples.1843 He had an immense and curious faith in ancient legend.1844 The man who could busy himself [pg 347]with the restoration of the true antique form of an obsolete rite at Eleusis or Athens or Dodona, also held conceptions of prayer and sacrifice and mystic communion with God, which might seem irreconcilable with any rigidly formal worship.1845 The ritualist was also the preacher of a higher morality. From the steps of the temples he used to address great audiences on their conspicuous faults, as Dion did after him. In the parable of the sparrow who by his twitter called his brethren to a heap of spilt grain, he taught the people of Ephesus the duty of brotherly helpfulness.1846 He found Smyrna torn by factious strife, and he preached a rivalry of public spirit.1847 Even at Olympia, before a crowd intent on the strife of racers and boxers and athletes, he discoursed on wisdom and courage and temperance.1848 At Rome, under the tyranny of Nero, he moved from temple to temple exciting a religious revival by his preaching.1849 One text, perhaps, contains a truth for all generations—“My prayer before the altars is—Grant me, ye Gods, what is my due.”1850 What effect on the masses such preaching had we cannot tell—who can tell at any time? But there are well-attested cases of individual conversion under pagan preaching. Polemon, the son of a rich Athenian, was a very dissolute youth who squandered his wealth on low pleasure. Once, coming from some revel, he burst with his companions into the lecture room of Xenocrates, who happened to be discoursing on temperance. Xenocrates calmly continued his remarks. The tipsy youth listened for a while, then flung away his garland, and with it also his evil ways;1851 he became the head of the Academy. A similar change was wrought by the teaching of Apollonius on a debauched youth of Corcyra, which we need not doubt although it was accompanied by a miracle.1852

Musonius, another preacher, was a younger contemporary of Apollonius. His fame as an apostle of the philosophic life aroused the suspicions of Nero, and he was exiled to Gyarus.1853 [pg 348]The suspicion may have been confirmed by his intimacy with Rubellius Plautus and great Stoics like Thrasea.1854 He met with gentler treatment under the Flavians,1855 and he probably saw the reign of Trajan. He is not known to have written anything. The fragments of his teaching in Stobaeus are probably drawn from notes of his lectures, as the teaching of Epictetus has been preserved by Arrian. Musonius is not a speculative philosopher but a physician of souls. Philosophy is the way to goodness: goodness is the goal of philosophy. And philosophy is not the monopoly of an intellectual caste; it is a matter of precept and practice, not of theory. The true moral teacher, working on the germ of virtue which there is in each human soul, thinking only of reforming his disciples, and nothing of applause, may win them to his ideal. Musonius fortified the austere Stoic and Cynic precepts by the ascetic discipline of the Pythagorean school. He taught the forgiveness of injuries and gentleness to wrongdoers. He is one of the few in the ancient world who have a glimpse of a remote ideal of sexual virtue. While his ascetic principles do not lead him to look askance at honourable marriage, he denounces all unchastity, and demands equal virtue in man and woman.1856 He was, according to Epictetus, a searching preacher. He spoke to the conscience, so that each hearer felt as if his own faults were set before his eyes. His name will go down for ever in the pages of Tacitus. When the troops of Vespasian and Vitellius were fighting in the lanes and gardens under the walls of Rome, Musonius joined the envoys of the Senate, and at the risk of his life harangued the infuriated soldiery on the blessings of peace and the horrors of civil war.1857 Many of the moral treatises of Plutarch are probably redacted from notes of lectures delivered in Rome. As we shall see in a later chapter, Plutarch is rather a moral director and theologian than a preacher. But his wide knowledge of human nature, his keen analysis of character and motive and human weakness, his spiritual discernment in discovering remedies and sources of strength, above all his lofty moral ideal, would have made him a powerful preacher in any age of the world. But it is in [pg 349]the discourses of Maximus of Tyre that we have perhaps the nearest approach in antiquity to our conception of the sermon. Probably if any of us were asked to explain that conception, he might say that a sermon was founded on some definite idea of the relation of man to the Infinite Spirit, that its object was, on the one hand, to bring man into communion with God, and, on the other, to teach him his duty to his fellowmen and to himself. The discourses of Maximus have all these characteristics. Maximus of Tyre is little known now, and although to the historian of thought and moral life he is attractive, he has not the strength of a great personality. Yet, along with Plutarch, he shows us paganism at its best, striving to reform itself, groping after new sources of spiritual strength, trying to wed new and purer spiritual ideals to the worn-out mythology of the past. Maximus is very much in the position of one of our divines who finds himself bound in duty to edify the spiritual life of his flock, without disowning the religious traditions of the past, and without refusing to accept the ever-broadening revelation of God. Some of his discourses may seem to us frigid and scholastic, with a literary rather than a religious interest. But in others, there is a combination of a systematic theology with a mystic fervour and a moral purpose, which seems hardly to belong to the ancient world.1858

In his oration to the Alexandrians,1859 Dion Chrysostom speaks with unwonted asperity of the Cynics, haranguing with coarse buffoonery a gaping crowd in the squares and alleys or in the porches of the temples. He thinks that these men are doing no good, but rather bringing the name of philosophy into contempt. It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that this view of the Cynic profession was very general in that age. The vulgar Cynic, with his unkempt beard, his mantle, wallet, and staff, his filth and rudeness and obscenity, insulting every passer-by with insolent questions, exchanging coarse jests and jeers with the vagabond mob which gathers at his approach, is the commonest figure in Greek and Roman literature of the time. The “mendicant monks” of paganism have been painted with all the vices of the dog and ape by Martial and Petronius [pg 350]and Seneca, by Dion and Athenaeus and Alciphron and Epictetus, above all by Lucian.1860 The great foe of all extravagance or enthusiasm in religion and philosophy fastened on the later followers of Diogenes with peculiar bitterness. His hostility, we may surmise, is directed not against their tenets, but their want of decent culture. In the Banquet, the Cynic Alcidamas is drawn with a coarse vigour of touch which is intended to match the coarseness of the subject. He bursts into the dinner-party of Aristaenetus uninvited, to the terror of the company, ranges about the room, snatching tit-bits from the dishes as they pass him, and finally sinks down upon the floor beside a mighty flagon of strong wine. He drinks to the bride in no elegant fashion, challenges the jester to fight, and, when the lamp is extinguished in the obscene tumult, is finally found trying to embrace the dancing girl.1861 But Lucian’s bitterest attack on the class is perhaps delivered in the dialogue entitled the Fugitives. Philosophy, in the form of a woman bathed in tears, appears before the Father of the gods. That kindly potentate is affected by her grief, and inquires the cause of it. Philosophy, who had been commissioned by Zeus to bring healing and peace to human life in all its confusion and ignorance and violence, then unfolds the tale of her wrongs.1862 It is a picture of vulgar pretence, by which her fair name has been besmirched and disgraced. Observing the love and reverence which her true servants may win from men, a base crew of ignorant fellows, trained in the lowest handicrafts, have forsaken them, to assume the garb and name of her real followers.1863 It is a pleasant change from a life of toil and danger and hardship, to an easy vagabond existence, nor is the transformation difficult. A cloak and a club, a loud voice and a brazen face and a copious vocabulary of scurrilous abuse, these are all the necessary equipment. Impudent assurance has its usual success with the crowd, who are unable to see through the disguise. If any one attempts to challenge the [pg 351]claims of the impostors, he is answered with a blow or a taunt. And thus by terrorism or deceit, they usurp the respect which is due to the real philosopher, and manage to live in plenty and even in luxury. Nor is this the worst. For these pretended ascetics, who profess to scorn delights, and to endure all manner of hardness, are really coarse common sensualists, who go about corrupting and seducing. Many of them heap up a fortune in their wanderings, and then bid farewell to scrip and cloak and the tub of Diogenes. And so plain unlearned men come to regard the very name of philosophy with hatred and contempt, and all her work is undone, like another Penelope’s web.1864

Even the stoutest defender of the Cynic movement, as a whole, feels constrained to admit that the charges against the Cynics were, perhaps, in many cases, true.1865 It was a movement peculiarly attractive to the lawless, restless hangers-on of society, who found in an open defiance of social restraints and a wandering existence, a field of licence and a chance of gain. Some of the great Cynics, indeed, were interested in physical speculation, and were widely cultivated men.1866 But the Cynic movement, as a whole, rested on no scientific tradition, and the most serious and effective preacher of its doctrine needed only a firm hold of a few simple truths, with a command of seizing and incisive phrase.1867 There was no professional barrier to exclude the ignorant and corrupt pretender. For the Cynics, from the very nature of their mission and their aims, never formed an organised school or society. Each went his own way in complete detachment. To the superficial observer, the only common bond and characteristic were the purely external marks of dress and rough bearing and ostentatious contempt for the most ordinary comforts and decencies of life, which could easily be assumed by the knave and the libertine. Hence, as time went on, although good Cynics, like Demonax or Demetrius, acquired a deserved influence, yet the greed, licentiousness, and brutal [pg 352]violence of others brought great discredit on the name. Epictetus, who had a lofty ideal of the Cynic preacher as an ambassador of God, lays bare the coarse vices of the pretender to that high service with an unsparing hand.1868 It is evident, however, that certain of the gravest imputations, which had been developed by prurient imaginations, were, by an unwholesome tradition, levelled at even the greatest and best of the Cynics.1869 And S. Augustine, in referring to these foul charges, affirms, with an honourable candour, that they could not be truly made against the Cynics of his own day.1870 Moreover, the Roman nature never took very kindly, even in some of the cultivated circles, to anything under the name of philosophy.1871 Even M. Aurelius could not altogether disarm the suspicion with which it was regarded. And the revolt of Avidius Cassius was to some extent an outburst of impatience with the doctrinaire spirit of the philosopha anicula, as Cassius dared to call him.1872 And there were many things in the Cynic movement which specially tended to provoke the ordinary man. It threw down the gauntlet to a materialised age. It preached absolute renunciation of all social ties and duties, and of all the pleasures and refinements with which that society had surrounded itself. In an age which, even on its tomb-stones, bears the stamp of a starched conventionality and adherence to use and wont, the Cynic was a defiant rebel against all social restraints. In an age which was becoming ever more superstitious, he did not shrink from attacking the faith in the gods, the efficacy of the mysteries, the credit of the most ancient oracles.1873 And, finally, while philosophy in general after Domitian found support and patronage at the imperial court, no emperor gave his countenance to the Cynics till the Syrian dynasty of the third century.1874 We have here surely a sufficient accumulation of reasons for hesitating to [pg 353]accept the wholesale condemnation of a class of men who, instead of disarming opposition, rather plumed themselves on provoking it.

A good example of the merciless, and not altogether scrupulous fashion in which the Cynics were handled by contemporaries is to be found in Lucian’s piece on the death of Peregrinus.1875 Peregrinus was a native of Parium on the Propontis, and a man of fortune. He loved to call himself Proteus, and, indeed, the strange vicissitudes of his career justified his assumption of the name.1876 On reaching manhood, he wandered from land to land, and in Palestine he joined a Christian brotherhood, in which he rose to a commanding influence, which drew down the suspicion of the government, and he was thrown for a time into prison.1877 His persecution called forth, as Lucian ungrudgingly admits, all the fearless love and charity of the worshippers of “the crucified Sophist.” Released by a philosophic governor of the type of Gallio, he gave up the remnant of his paternal property, amounting to fifteen talents, to his native city.1878 Peregrinus had already assumed the peculiar dress of the Cynic, and set out on fresh wanderings, having, from some difference on a point of ritual, severed his connection with the Christian brotherhood. He then came under the influence of an Egyptian ascetic and of the mysticism of the East. In a visit to Italy he acquired celebrity by his fierce invectives, which did not spare even the blameless and gentle Antoninus Pius.1879 The Emperor himself paid little heed to him, but the prefect of the city thought that Rome could well spare such a philosopher, and Peregrinus was obliged to return to the East. Henceforth Greece, and especially Elis, was the scene of his labours. He abated none of his energy, dealing out his denunciations impartially, and not sparing even the philosophic millionaire Herodes Atticus for providing the visitors to Olympia with the luxury of pure water.1880 He even tried to stir up Greece to armed revolt. His fame and power among the Cynic brotherhood were at their height, or perhaps beginning to wane, when [pg 354]he conceived the idea of electrifying the world and giving a demonstration of the triumph of philosophy even over death by a self-immolation at Olympia. There, before the eyes of men gathered from all quarters, like Heracles, the great Cynic exemplar, on Mount Oeta, he resolved to depart in the blaze and glory of the funeral pyre kindled by his own hand. And perhaps some rare lettered Cynic brother set afloat a Sibylline verse, such as abounded in those days, bidding men prepare to revere another hero, soon to be enthroned along with Heracles in the broad Olympus.

Such a career, ambiguous, perhaps, on the most charitable construction, attracted the eye of the man who sincerely believed, under all his persiflage, that both the religion and the philosophy of the past were worn out, and were now being merely exploited by coarse adventurers for gain or ambition. Moreover, the Philoctetes of the Cynic Heracles, his pupil Theagenes, was attracting great audiences in the Gymnasium of Trajan at Rome.1881 The self-martyrdom of their chief had given a fresh inspiration to the Cynic brotherhood. Who knows but a legend may gather round his name, altars may be raised to him, and the ancient glamour of the “flashing Olympus” will lend itself to glorify the uncultivated crew who profane the name of philosophy, and are an offence to culture?

There is no mistaking the cold merciless spirit in which Lucian, by his own avowal, addressed himself to the task of exposing what he genuinely believed to be a feigned enthusiasm. Even the lover of Lucian receives a kind of shock from the occasional tone of almost cruel hardness in his treatment of the Cynic apostle. When Lucian’s narrative of the youthful enormities of Peregrinus is analysed, it is perceived that the accuser is anonymous, and that other names and particulars are carefully suppressed.1882 For the gravest charges of youthful depravity no proof or authority is given; they seem to be the offspring of that prurient gossip which can assail any character. They are the charges which were freely bandied about in the age of Pericles and M. Aurelius, in the age of Erasmus and the age of Milton. There must have been something at least [pg 355]remarkable and fascinating, although marred by extravagance,1883 about the man who became a great leader and prophet among the Christians of Palestine, and who was almost worshipped as a god. When he was thrown into jail, their widows and orphans watched by the gates; his jailers were bribed to admit some of the brethren to console his solitude; large sums were collected from the cities of Asia for his support and defence.1884 The surrender of his paternal property to his native city, an act of generosity which had many parallels in that age, is attributed to no higher motive than the wish to hush up a rumour that Peregrinus had murdered his father. The charge apparently rested on nothing more substantial than malignant gossip.1885 The migration of Peregrinus from the Christian to the Cynic brotherhood was not so startling in that age as it may appear to us. Transitions to and fro were not uncommon between societies which had the common bond of asceticism and contempt for the world.1886 Moreover, Lucian, with all his delicate genius, had little power of understanding the force of religious enthusiasm. It is pretty clear that Peregrinus was not an ordinary Cynic; he had felt the spell of Oriental and Pythagorean mysticism. His Cynicism was probably tinctured with a religion of the same type as that of Apollonius of Tyana.1887 And it is his failure to appreciate the fervour of this mystical elation in Peregrinus and his disciples which misled Lucian, and makes his narrative misleading.

Lucian suggests that, when he visited Olympia for the fourth time, he found that the influence of Peregrinus was on the wane.1888 Yet even from Lucian’s own narrative it is clear that Peregrinus and his doings were attracting almost as much attention as the games. On Lucian’s arrival, the first thing he heard was a rumour that the great Cynic had resolved to die upon a flaming pyre, like the hero who was the mythic patron of the school. Peregrinus professed that by his self-[pg 356]immolation he was going to teach men, in the most impressive way, to make light of death. And many a Cynic sermon was evidently delivered on the subject, the greatest preacher being Theagenes, for whom Lucian displays a particular aversion. There were, of course, many sceptics like Lucian himself. And it is in the mouth of one of these enemies of the sect, in reply to Theagenes, that Lucian has put the defamatory version of the life of Peregrinus,1889 to which we have referred.

Lucian assumes from the first that the self-martyrdom of Peregrinus was prompted by mere vulgar love of notoriety.1890 Yet it is quite possible that this is an unfair judgment. The Stoic school, with which the Cynics had such a close affinity, allowed that, in certain circumstances, suicide might be not only a permissible, but a meritorious, nay, even a glorious act of self-liberation.1891 Seneca had often looked gladly to it as the ever open door of escape from ignominy or torture. The brilliant Stoic Euphrates, the darling of Roman society, weary of age and disease, sought and obtained the permission of Hadrian to drink the hemlock.1892 And that emperor himself, in his last sickness, begged the drug from his physician who killed himself to escape compliance.1893 Diogenes had handed the dagger to his favourite pupil, Antisthenes, when tortured by disease.1894 The burden of the Cynic preaching was the nothingness of the things of sense and contempt for death. Is it not possible that what Lucian heard from the lips of Peregrinus himself was true, and that he wished, it may be with mingled motives, by his own act to show men how to treat with indifference the last terror of humanity?

That the end of Peregrinus was surrounded by superstition and magnified by grandiose effects is more than probable. Such things belonged to the spirit of the age. And the calm, critical good sense of Lucian, which had no sympathy with these weaknesses, saw nothing in the scene but calculating imposture. Already oracles were circulating in which Pere[pg 357]grinus appears as the phoenix, rising unscathed and rejuvenescent from the pyre, predicting that he is to be a guardian spirit of the night, that altars will rise in his honour, and that he will perform miracles of healing. Theagenes blazed abroad a Sibylline verse which bade men, “when the greatest of the Cynics has come to lofty Olympus, to honour the night-roaming hero who is enthroned beside Hephaestus and the princely Hector.”1895 Lucian found himself wedged in a dense crowd who came to hear the last apology of the Cynic apostle. Some were applauding, and some denouncing him as an impostor. Lucian could hear little in the melÉe. But now and then, above the roar, he could hear the pale, tremulous old man tell the surging crowd that, having lived like Heracles, he must die like Heracles, and mingle with the ether, “bringing a golden life to a golden close.”1896 Lucian thought his paleness was due to terror at the nearness of his self-imposed death. It was more probably the result of ascetic fervour and overstrained excitement. The spectacle sent Lucian away in a fit of rather cruel laughter.1897

The closing scene, which took place two or three miles from Olympia, was ordered with solemn religious effect. It evidently impressed even the sceptic’s imagination. A high pyre had been prepared, with torches and faggots ready. As the moon rose, the voluntary victim appeared in the garb of his sect, surrounded by his leading disciples. He then disrobed himself, flung incense on the flame, and, turning to the south, cried aloud—“Daemons of my father and my mother graciously receive me.” After these words, he leapt into the blaze which at once enveloped him, and he was seen no more.1898 The Cynic brothers stood long gazing into the pyre in silent grief, until Lucian aroused their anger by some jeers, not, perhaps, in the best taste. On his way back to Olympia, he pondered on the follies of men, and the craving for empty fame.1899 To Lucian there was nothing more in the tragic scene than that. And he amused himself by the way with the creation of a myth, and watching how it would grow. To some who met [pg 358]him on the road, too late for the spectacle, he told how, as the pyre burst into flame, there was a great earthquake accompanied by subterranean thunder, and a vulture rose from the fire, proclaiming in a high human voice, as it winged its way heavenwards, “I have left earth behind, and I go to Olympus.”1900 The poor fools, on whose credulity Lucian was rather heartlessly playing, with a shudder of awe fell to questioning him whether the bird flew to the east or the west. And, on his return to Olympia, he was rewarded in the way he liked best, by finding the tale which he had cradled already full grown. A venerable man, whom he encountered, related that with his own eyes he had seen the vulture rising from the pyre, and added that he had just met Peregrinus himself walking in the “seven-voiced cloister,” clothed in white raiment, and with a chaplet of olive on his head.1901

Lucian’s picture of the death of Peregrinus, whatever we may think of its fairness and discernment, is immensely valuable for many things besides the light which it casts on Lucian’s attitude to all forms of extravagance and superstition. In spite of his contempt for them, he himself reveals that the Cynics were a great popular force. We see also that Cynicism was, in spite of its generally deistic spirit, sometimes leagued with real or affected religious sentiment. As to the real character of Peregrinus, there is reason to believe that Lucian did not read it aright. The impression which the Cynic made on Aulus Gellius was very different. When Gellius was at Athens in his student days, he used often to visit Peregrinus, who was then living in a little hut in the suburbs, and he found the Cynic’s discourses profitable and high-toned. In particular, Peregrinus used to tell his hearers that the chance of apparent evasion or concealment would never tempt the wise man to sin. Concealment was really impossible, for, in the words of Sophocles, “Time, the all-seeing, the all-hearing, lays bare all secrets.” Evidently Peregrinus had other admirers besides the Cynic brethren who hailed his apotheosis at Olympia.1902 Who can draw the line, in such an age, between the fanatic and the impostor?