descriptions of himself as resigning his place close about his lady's
(i.e. Rhetoric's) person, and as casting off his wife Rhetoric because
she did not keep herself exclusively to him, show that he regarded
himself, or wished to be regarded, as having been at the head of his
profession.

This brings us to about the year 160 A.D. We may conceive Lucian now
to have had some of that yearning for home which he ascribes in the
_Patriotism_ even to the successful exile. He returned home, we
suppose, a distinguished man at thirty-five, and enjoyed impressing
the fact on his fellow citizens in _The Vision_. He may then have
lived at Antioch as a rhetorician for some years, of which we have a
memorial in _The Portrait-study_. Lucius Verus, M. Aurelius's
colleague, was at Antioch in 162 or 163 A.D. on his way to the
Parthian war, and _The Portrait-study_ is a panegyric on Verus's
mistress Panthea, whom Lucian saw there.

A year or two later we find him migrating to Athens, taking his father
with him, and at Athens he settled and remained many years. It was on
this journey that the incident occurred, which he relates with such a
curious absence of shame in the _Alexander_, of his biting that
charlatan's hand.

This change in his manner of life corresponds nearly with the change
in habit of mind and use of his powers that earned him his
immortality. His fortieth year is the date given by himself for his
abandonment of Rhetoric and, as he calls it, taking up with Dialogue,
or, as we might say, becoming a man of letters. Between Rhetoric and
Dialogue there was a feud, which had begun when Socrates five
centuries before had fought his battles with the sophists. Rhetoric