The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose Volume I - Greece Part 20

[Footnote 123: After Zeno the most eminent of the Stoic philosophers; born in 280 B.C.]

[Footnote 124: The guardian of the city of Athens. A famous statue of Athenia Polias of the fifth century B.C. is preserved in the Villa Albani at Rome.]

III

OF LIARS AND LYING[125]

_Tychiades._ Philocles, what is it that makes most men so fond of a lie? Can you explain it? Their delight in romancing themselves is only equaled by the earnest attention with which they receive other people's efforts in the same direction.

_Philocles._ Why, in some cases there is no lack of motives for lying--motives of self-interest.

_Tychiades._ Ah, but that is neither here nor there. I am not speaking of men who lie with an object. There is some excuse for that: indeed, it is sometimes to their credit, when they deceive their country's enemies, for instance, or when mendacity is but the medicine to heal their sickness. Odysseus, seeking to preserve his life and bring his companions safe home, was a liar of that kind. The men I mean are innocent of any ulterior motive: they prefer a lie to truth, simply on its own merits; they like lying, it is their favorite occupation; there is no necessity in the case. Now what good can they get out of it?

_Philocles._ Why, have you ever known any one with such a strong natural turn for lying?

_Tychiades._ Any number of them.

_Philocles._ Then I can only say they must be fools, if they really prefer evil to good.

_Tychiades._ Oh, that is not it. I could point you out plenty of men of first-rate ability, sensible enough in all other respects, who have somehow picked up this vice of romancing. It makes me quite angry: what satisfaction can there be to men of their good qualities in deceiving themselves and their neighbors? There are instances among the ancients with which you must be more familiar than I. Look at Herodotus, or Ctesias of Cnidus;[126] or, to go further back, take the poets--Homer himself: here are men of world-wide celebrity, perpetuating their mendacity in black and white; not content with deceiving their hearers, they must send their lies down to posterity, under the protection of the most admirable verse. Many a time I have blushed for them, as I read of the mutilation of Ura.n.u.s, the fetters of Prometheus, the revolt of the giants, the torments of h.e.l.l; enamored Zeus taking the shape of bull or swan; women turning into birds and bears; Pegasuses, Chimaeras, Gorgons, Cyclopes, and the rest of it; monstrous medley! fit only to charm the imaginations of children for whom Mormo and Lamia have still their terrors. However, poets, I suppose, will be poets. But when it comes to national lies, when one finds whole cities bouncing collectively like one man, how is one to keep one's countenance? A Cretan will look you in the face, and tell you that yonder is Zeus' tomb. In Athens, you are informed that Erichthonius sprang out of the earth, and that the first Athenians grew up from the soil like so many cabbages; and this story a.s.sumes quite a sober aspect when compared with that of the Sparti, for whom the Thebans claim descent from a dragon's teeth. If you presume to doubt these stories, if you choose to exert your common sense, and leave Triptolemus' winged aerial car, and Pan's Marathonian exploits, and Orithyia's mishap, to the stronger digestions of a Coroebus and a Margites, you are a fool and a blasphemer, for questioning such palpable truths. Such is the power of lies!

_Philocles._ I must say I think there is some excuse, Tychiades, both for your national liars and for the poets. The latter are quite right in throwing in a little mythology: it has a very pleasing effect, and is just the thing to secure the attention of their hearers. On the other hand, the Athenians and the Thebans and the rest are only trying to add to the l.u.s.ter of their respective cities. Take away the legendary treasures of Greece, and you condemn the whole race of ciceroni to starvation: sightseers do not want the truth; they would not take it at a gift. However, I surrender to your ridicule any one who has no such motive, and yet rejoices in lies.

_Tychiades._ Very well: now I have just been with the great Eucrates, who treated me to a whole string of old wives' tales. I came away in the middle of it; he was too much for me altogether; Furies could not have driven me out more effectually than his marvel-working tongue.

_Philocles._ What, Eucrates, of all credible witnesses? That venerably bearded s.e.xagenarian, with his philosophic leanings? I could never have believed that he would lend his countenance to other people's lies, much less that he was capable of such things himself.

_Tychiades._ My dear sir, you should have heard the stuff he told me; the way in which he vouched for the truth of it all too, solemnly staking the lives of his children on his veracity! I stared at him in amazement, not knowing what to make of it: one moment I thought he must be out of his mind; the next I concluded he had been a humbug all along, an ape in a lion's skin. Oh, it was monstrous....

"When I was a young man," said he, "I pa.s.sed some time in Egypt, my father having sent me to that country for my education. I took it into my head to sail up the Nile to Coptus, and thence pay a visit to the statue of Memnon,[127] and hear the curious sound that proceeds from it at sunrise. In this respect, I was more fortunate than most people, who hear nothing but an indistinct voice: Memnon actually opened his lips, and delivered me an oracle in seven hexameters; it is foreign to my present purpose, or I would quote you the very lines."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 125: From "The Liar." Translated by H. W. and F. G. Fowler.]

[Footnote 126: Ctesias who died after 398 B.C., and wrote a history of Persia in twenty-four books and a treatise on India. Parts only of both are now extant.]

[Footnote 127: A legendary king of Ethiopia, who was slain at Troy by Achilles--a fable, says Rawlinson, which is "one of those in which it is difficult to determine any germs of truth." His name was given by the Greeks to one of the Colossi at Thebes in Egypt, from which, when touched by the rays of the rising sun, there was said to proceed a strange sound.]