society in which our author found that, not to be too singular, he
must at least write about writing history, if he declined writing it
himself, even as Diogenes took to rolling his tub, lest he should be
the only idle man when Corinth was bustling about its defences.

As Lucian is so fond of saying, 'this is but a small selection of the
facts which might have been quoted' to illustrate the likeness between
our age and his. It may be well to allude, on the other hand, to a few
peculiarities of the time that appear conspicuously in his writings.

The Roman Empire was rather Graeco-Roman than Roman; this is now a
commonplace. It is interesting to observe that for Lucian 'we' is on
occasion the Romans; 'we' is also everywhere the Greeks; while at the
same time 'I' is a barbarian and a Syrian. Roughly speaking, the Roman
element stands for energy, material progress, authority, and the Greek
for thought; the Roman is the British Philistine, the Greek the man of
culture. Lucian is conscious enough of the distinction, and there is
no doubt where his own preference lies. He may be a materialist, so
far as he is anything, in philosophy; but in practice he puts the
things of the mind before the things of the body.

If our own age supplies parallels for most of what we meet with in the
second century, there are two phenomena which are to be matched rather
in an England that has passed away. The first is the Cynics, who swarm
in Lucian's pages like the begging friars in those of a historical
novelist painting the middle ages. Like the friars, they began nobly
in the desire for plain living and high thinking; in both cases the
thinking became plain, the living not perhaps high, but the best that
circumstances admitted of, and the class--with its numbers hugely
swelled by persons as little like their supposed teachers as a Marian