CHAPTER ONE

VERAE HISTORIAE

Lucian's Verae Historiae can claim to be the least problematic of ancient novels. He makes it clear to the reader that he is writing parody on the grand scale, and invites him to recognise the sources: Stengel 1 has already established a respectable proportion of them. But there are two underlying problems which Lucian did not invite us to solve: how did he use Antonius Diogenes, and how far is he relying on his usual habits of composition?

A. ANTONIUS DIOGENES Lucian tells us that his victims are too well-known to require any further explanation, and names only three authors; we are left to guess the rest. None of those he names are novelists: apart from Homer we are given only Ctesias and Iambulus, a dubious historian and a fanciful geographer. But both the scholia and the Byzantine patriarch Photius connected him with a novel by one Antonius Diogenes, the -rii u1tep 0ot>AYJV &.mcr-roc: Photius describes it briefly,2 and claims that it was the mJY'Yl xoct pt~oc of Verae Historiae. Until recently the problem remained as Photius left it: scholars had to be content with discerning Antonius dimly through the pages of Lucian. Stengel noted a few points where the summary does cor• respond neatly to Lucian's parodies, but only within the framework of a vast literary mosaic embracing most classical authors.3 In 1969 however K. Reyhl published an extensive investigation of Antonius,' based on a much fuller set of sources, including Porphyry's Vita of Pythagoras, and papyrus fragments unknown to Stengel. The result

1 A. Stengel, De Luciani veris historiis, Diss. Rostock, Berlin 1911. Ollier's Erasme edition, though a school text, is also occasionally useful. For Verae Historiae in the context of Lucian's fantasy as a whole, see Bompaire 658-673- 2 Phot. Cod. 166. 8 Only four seem to me to be distinctive: the description of the moon itself (Stengel 19); living on dew (34); miraculous eyesight (37); and nights a whole year long (58). ' K. Reyhl, Antonios Diogenes, Untersuchungen zu den Roman-Fragmenten der 'Wunder jenseits von Thule' und zu den 'Wahren Geschichten' des Lukian, Diss. Tiibingen 1969. 2 VERAE HISTORIAE is an ambitious reconstruction, in which he concludes that VH is much more extensively dependent on Antonius than has hitherto been supposed. My purpose is to test this assertion against what can be known of Lucian's own sources and methods. Reyhl has used Lucian to reconstruct Antonius in much the same way as Helm had used him to re-create Menippus. He is content to see the Urquelle everywhere, and he will cite an obscure intermedi• ary when there is a parallel readily available in the school reading of both Lucian and his audience. But in any case Lucian persistently contaminates his sources-that is all part of the fun-and these sources include his own stock of themes and motifs. One example will suffice. In VH I.7 f. Lucian is writing about a river of wine and magic vinewomen. Reyhl argues that his source is 'offensichtlich eine Indienbeschreibung' (36)-so that Antonius ought to have in• cluded one as well! So indeed he might. But Lucian had a particular affection for Herodotus, and could expect his audience to recognise allusions to IV.9 (Heracles and the Scythian seductress) and I.108 (the womb of Mandane)-neither of them set in India: transporting them from Scythia or Persia is part of the game. And these are only two out of many hints in this fruitful passage; 5 Lucian's habits have to be kept in mind throughout. The highlight of his first book is a battle among the stars (l.14-20). Reyhl supposes that this too should have been borrowed from Antonius (39). Now Photius mentions that the latter included a sibylline prophecy 6 as well as a voyage to the moon: Reyhl wants to fit the cosmic battle into the prophecy, since oracles are known to contain episodes of this kind! But so is Hellenistic poetry: one need look no further than Catullus 66.93 f. Since R. himself points out that the theme recurs in Seneca (ad Marciam XXVI.4; Herc. Fur. 944-52), it is not possible to establish that Lucian's access to it could only have been through Antonius. And he was well able to con• sult prophecies through many other sources, including Alexander of Abonoteichos; but even so he had no need to look there to find such a battle. Comic engagements are one of his favourite devices in any unlikely context, from the gymnasium at Athens to the inside of the whale's stomach.7 He could easily have produced this partic-

6 For the rest, see my Lucian: Theme and Variation in the Second Sophistic, Mnemosyne Suppl. XLI, 27 f. 8 Cod. 166.110a. 7 For other examples, Theme and Variation 36 ff.