The Works of Lucian of Samosata — Volume 03Lucian, of Samosata
Philosophy
The Works of Lucian of Samosata — Volume 03
Lucian, of Samosata
Lucian, of Samosata -- Translations into English
Next, fill your quiver with queer mysterious words used once or
twice by the ancients, ready to be discharged at a moment’s notice
in conversation. This will attract the attention of the common
herd, who will take you for a wonder, so much better educated than
themselves. Put on your clothes? of course not;_ invest yourself.
_Will you sit in the porch, when there is a_ parvys _to
hand? No earnest-money for us; let it be an_ arles-penny. _And
no breakfast-time, pray, but_ undern. _You may also do a
little word-formation of your own on occasion, and enact that a
person good, at exposition shall be known as a_ clarifier, _a
sensible one as a_ cogitant, _or a pantomime as a_ manuactor.
_If you commit a blunder or provincialism, you have only to carry
it off boldly with an instant reference to the authority of some
poet or historian, who need not exist or ever have existed; your
phrase has his approval, and he was a wise man and a past master in
language. As for your reading, leave the ancients alone; never mind
a foolish Isocrates, a tasteless Demosthenes, a frigid Plato; study
the works of the last generation; you will find the declamations,
as they call them, a plenteous store on which to draw at need.
When the time comes for you to perform, and the audience have
proposed subjects and invented cases for discussion, you should get
rid of the difficult ones by calling them trivial, and complain
that there is nothing in this selection that can really test a
man’s powers. When they have chosen, do not hesitate a moment, but
start; the tongue is an unruly member; do not attempt to rule it;
never care whether your firstly is logics firstly, or your secondly
and thirdly in the right order; just say what comes; you may greave
your head and helmet your legs, but whatever you do, move, keep
going, never pause. If your subject is assault or adultery in
Athens, cite the Indians and Medes. Always have your Marathon and
your Cynaegirus handy; they are indispensable. Hardly less so are a
fleet crossing Mount Athos, an army treading the Hellespont, a sun
eclipsed by Persian arrows, a flying Xerxes, an admired Leonidas,
an inscriptive Othryades. Salamis, Artemisium, and Plataea, should
also be in constant use. All this dressed as usual with our
seasoning-garnish aforesaid—that persuasive flavour of
_sundry_ and _methinks_; do not wait till these seem to
be called for; they are pretty words, quite apart from their
relevancy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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