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 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.