The closing scene, which took place two or three miles from Olympia, was ordered with solemn religious effect. It evidently impressed even the sceptic’s imagination. A high pyre had been prepared, with torches and faggots ready. As the moon rose, the voluntary victim appeared in the garb of his sect, surrounded by his leading disciples. He then disrobed himself, flung incense on the flame, and, turning to the south, cried aloud—“Daemons of my father and my mother graciously receive me.” After these words, he leapt into the blaze which at once enveloped him, and he was seen no more.(1898) The Cynic brothers stood long gazing into the pyre in silent grief, until Lucian aroused their anger by some jeers, not, perhaps, in the best taste. On his way back to Olympia, he pondered on the follies of men, and the craving for empty fame.(1899) To Lucian there was nothing more in the tragic scene than that. And he amused himself by the way with the creation of a myth, and watching how it would grow. To some who met him on the road, too late for the spectacle, he told how, as the pyre burst into flame, there was a great earthquake accompanied by subterranean thunder, and a vulture rose from the fire, proclaiming in a high human voice, as it winged its way heavenwards, “I have left earth behind, and I go to Olympus.”(1900) The poor fools, on whose credulity Lucian was rather heartlessly playing, with a shudder of awe fell to questioning him whether the bird flew to the east or the west. And, on his return to Olympia, he was rewarded in the way he liked best, by finding the tale which he had cradled already full grown. A venerable man, whom he encountered, related that with his own eyes he had seen the vulture rising from the pyre, and added that he had just met Peregrinus himself walking in the “seven-voiced cloister,” clothed in white raiment, and with a chaplet of olive on his head.(1901)
Lucian’s picture of the death of Peregrinus, whatever we may think of its fairness and discernment, is immensely valuable for many things besides the light which it casts on Lucian’s attitude to all forms of extravagance and superstition. In spite of his contempt for them, he himself reveals that the Cynics were a great popular force. We see also that Cynicism was, in spite of its generally deistic spirit, sometimes leagued with real or affected religious sentiment. As to the real character of Peregrinus, there is reason to believe that Lucian did not read it aright. The impression which the Cynic made on Aulus Gellius was very different. When Gellius was at Athens in his student days, he used often to visit Peregrinus, who was then living in a little hut in the suburbs, and he found the Cynic’s discourses profitable and high-toned. In particular, Peregrinus used to tell his hearers that the chance of apparent evasion or concealment would never tempt the wise man to sin. Concealment was really impossible, for, in the words of Sophocles, “Time, the all-seeing, the all-hearing, lays bare all secrets.” Evidently Peregrinus had other admirers besides the Cynic brethren who hailed his apotheosis at Olympia.(1902) Who can draw the line, in such an age, between the fanatic and the impostor?