one has an uneasy suspicion that he read Plato because he liked his
humour and his style, and did not trouble himself about anything
further. Gibbon speaks of 'the philosophic maze of the writings of
Plato, of which the dramatic is perhaps more interesting than the
argumentative part.' That is quite a legitimate opinion, provided you
do not undertake to judge philosophy in the light of it. The
apparently serious rejection of geometrical truth in the _Hermotimus_
may fairly suggest that Lucian was as unphilosophic as he was
unmathematical. Twice, and perhaps twice only, does he express hearty
admiration for a philosopher. Demonax is 'the best of all
philosophers'; but then he admired him just because he was so little
of a philosopher and so much a man of ordinary common sense. And
Epicurus is 'the thinker who had grasped the nature of things and been
in solitary possession of truth'; but then that is in the _Alexander_,
and any stick was good enough to beat that dog with. The fact is,
Lucian was much too well satisfied with his own judgement to think
that he could possibly require guidance, and the commonplace test of
results was enough to assure him that philosophy was worthless: 'It is
no use having all theory at your fingers' ends, if you do not conform
your conduct to the right.' There is a description in the _Pantomime_
that is perhaps truer than it is meant to pass for. 'Lycinus' is
called 'an educated man, and _in some sort_ a student of philosophy.'

If he is not a philosopher, he is very much a moralist; it is because
philosophy deals partly with morals that he thinks he cares for it.
But here too his conclusions are of a very commonsense order. The
Stoic notion that 'Virtue consists in being uncomfortable' strikes him
as merely absurd; no asceticism for him; on the other hand, no lavish
extravagance and _Persici apparatus_; a dinner of herbs with the
righteous--that is, the cultivated Athenian--, a neat repast of Attic