LUCIAN'S TRUE HISTORY TRANSLATED BY FRANCIS HICKES ILLUSTRATED BY WILLIAM STRANG J. B. CLARK AND AUBREY BEARDSLEY WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CHARLES WHIBLEY (Originally published with the Greek text in 1894.) A. H. BULLEN 18 Cecil Court LONDON MCMII LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. AFTER THE TEMPEST (Strang) ADORATION (Clark) "A SNARE OF VINTAGE" (Beardsley) SPIDERS OF MIGHTY BIGNESS (Strang) THE BATTLE OF THE TURNIPS (Clark) THE SUPPER OF FISH (Strang) UNDERPROPPING THE WHALE'S CHOPS (Clark) SOCRATES' GARDEN (Clark) THE BANQUET OF BEANS (Strang) THE PILLAR OF BERYLSTONE (Clark) OWLS AND POPPIES (Strang) DREAMS (Beardsley) THE HALCYON'S NEST (Strang) THE FLOATING FOREST (Clark) THE ISLAND WOMEN (Strang) WATER INCARNADINE (Clark) INTRODUCTION. It is a commonplace of criticism that Lucian was the first of the moderns, but in truth he is near to our time because of all the ancients he is nearest to his own. With Petronius he shared the discovery that there is material for literature in the debased and various life of every day--that to the seeing eye the individual is more wonderful in colour and complexity than the severely simple abstraction of the poets. He replaced the tradition, respected of his fathers, by an observation more vivid and less pedantic than the note-book of the naturalist. He set the world in the dry light of truth, and since the vanity of mankind is a constant factor throughout the ages, there is scarce a page of Lucian's writing that wears the faded air of antiquity. His personages are as familiar to-day as they were in the second century, because, with his pitiless determination to unravel the tangled skein of human folly, he never blinded his vision to their true qualities. And the multiplicity of his interest is as fresh as his penetration. Nothing came amiss to his eager curiosity. For the first time in the history of literature (with the doubtful exception of Cicero) we encounter a writer whose ceaseless activity includes the world. While others had declared themselves poets, historians, philosophers, Lucian comes forth as a man of letters. Had he lived to-day, he would have edited a newspaper, written leading articles, and kept his name ever before the public in the magazines. For he possessed the qualities, if he avoided the defects, of the journalist. His phrase had not been worn by constant use to imbecility; his sentences were not marred by the association of commonness; his style was still his own and fit for the expression of a personal view. But he noted such types and incidents as make an immediate, if perennial, appeal, and to study him is to be convinced that literature and journalism are not necessarily divorced.