composition of the _Hermotimus_. This is in form the most philosophic
of his dialogues; it might indeed be a dialogue of Plato, of the
merely destructive kind; but it is at the same time, in matter, his
farewell to philosophy, establishing that the pursuit of it is
hopeless for mortal man. From this time onward, though he always
professes himself a lover of true philosophy, he concerns himself no
more with it, except to expose its false professors. The dialogue that
perhaps comes next, _The Parasite_, is still Platonic in form, but
only as a parody; its main interest (for a modern reader is outraged,
as in a few other pieces of Lucian's, by the disproportion between
subject and treatment) is in the combination for the first time of
satire with dialogue.

One more step remained to be taken. In the piece called _A literary
Prometheus_, we are told what Lucian himself regarded as his claim
to the title of an original writer. It was the fusing of Comedy and
Dialogue--the latter being the prose conversation hat had hitherto
been confined to philosophical discussion. The new literary form,
then, was conversation, frankly for purposes of entertainment, as in
Comedy, but to be read and not acted. In this kind of writing he
remains, though he has been often imitated, first in merit as clearly
as in time; and nearly all his great masterpieces took this form. They
followed in rapid succession, being all written, perhaps, between 165
and 175 A.D. And we make here no further comment upon them, except to
remark that they fall roughly into three groups as he drew inspiration
successively from the writers of the New Comedy (or Comedy of ordinary
life) like Menander, from the satires of Menippus, and from writers of
the Old Comedy (or Comedy of fantastic imagination) like Aristophanes.
The best specimens of the first group are _The Liar_ and the
_Dialogues of the Hetaerae;_ of the second, the _Dialogues of the