"I humbly solicit my readers' incredulity": Lucian's True History asks to be disbelieved before the voyage starts
A close read of the preface to Lucian's A True Story, in the Fowlers' 1905 English: a second-century satirist names the liars who wrote before him, then asks his own readers to believe nothing.
Lucian of Samosata was a Greek-writing satirist born around AD 125, in a city on the Euphrates in the Roman province of Syria 1. His native language was probably Syriac, and every work of his that survives is written in Greek 1. He trained as a public speaker, lectured his way around the empire, and settled in Athens for about a decade, where he wrote most of what we have 1.
His best-known book is A True Story, a short novel in two books from the second century 2. Its narrator sails out past the Pillars of Heracles and finds a river of wine and trees that look like women 2. A whirlwind then lifts the ship to the moon, where Endymion, king of the moon, is at war with Phaethon, king of the sun, over a colony on the Morning Star 2.
The English below is H. W. and F. G. Fowler's, from their four-volume Lucian printed at the Clarendon Press in 1905 3. Henry Fowler went on to write A Dictionary of Modern English Usage 4.
The passage stands at the front of the book, sections 3 and 4, on pages 136 and 137 of the second volume 3. Page 136 carries the end of the work printed before it, How to Write History, the only treatise on the theory of history-writing to survive from antiquity 5. Lucian finishes that treatise with a measuring-line for honest history, and a shrug for the case where nobody uses it: "if none, yet have I rolled my tub on the Craneum." The next heading begins the fiction.
Passage
Ctesias, son of Ctesiochus of Cnidus, in his work on India and its characteristics, gives details for which he had neither the evidence of his eyes nor of hearsay. Iambulus's Oceanica is full of marvels; the whole thing is a manifest fiction, but at the same time pleasant reading. Many other writers have adopted the same plan, professing to relate their own travels, and describing monstrous beasts, savages, and strange ways of life. The fount and inspiration of their humour is the Homeric Odysseus, entertaining Alcinous's court with his prisoned winds, his men one-eyed or wild or cannibal, his beasts with many heads, and his metamorphosed comrades; the Phaeacians were simple folk, and he fooled them to the top of their bent.When I come across a writer of this sort, I do not much mind his lying; the practice is much too well established for that, even with professed philosophers; I am only surprised at his expecting to escape detection. Now I am myself vain enough to cherish the hope of bequeathing something to posterity; I see no reason for resigning my right to that inventive freedom which others enjoy; and, as I have no truth to put on record, having lived a very humdrum life, I fall back on falsehood—but falsehood of a more consistent variety; for I now make the only true statement you are to expect—that I am a liar. This confession is, I consider, a full defence against all imputations. My subject is, then, what I have neither seen, experienced, nor been told, what neither exists nor could conceivably do so. I humbly solicit my readers' incredulity.
Two hundred and seventy-two words, sections 3 and 4 of the introduction, in H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler's translation, The Works of Lucian of Samosata, vol. II (Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, 1905), pages 136–137 3. The wording was read off the page images of that printing. Project Gutenberg carries a transcription of the same translation, used here to check the paragraphing 6; the Greek quoted below is from the text at Greek Wikisource 7.
Gloss
- "Ctesias ... Iambulus" — Two working authors with two lost books. Ctesias of Cnidus was a Greek physician and historian who wrote an account of India in the fifth century BC 8. Iambulus wrote a tale of the Islands of the Sun that survives as a summary inside Diodorus Siculus 9. Lucian puts the pair at the head of a file.
Close read
Two paragraphs before this passage, the book opens on athletes. Roman orators were taught to begin by winning the audience's goodwill 13, and Lucian dresses that move as training advice: trainers prescribe rest, so light reading belongs to the programme. The second paragraph then drops the pose, names the real purpose as parody, and withholds the key on the grounds that the reader will spot the targets anyway 3.
The case then opens like a prosecution. Ctesias hands over details for which he had "neither the evidence of his eyes nor of hearsay," the test a historian would apply, aimed at a man who wrote history 9. Iambulus follows, and Lucian half-concedes him: a manifest fiction that is pleasant reading all the same.
Then the list widens. "Many other writers" get a single sentence and no names; the third name is Homer, whose Odyssey is among the oldest surviving works of literature 10. The order is the argument, since the case climbs from two forgotten authors to Homer and stops there.
The Odysseus sentence reads like an indictment. It compresses the Odyssey into a traveller's inventory: winds in a bag, one-eyed men, cannibals, a beast with many heads, comrades turned into pigs 10. Set beside Ctesias's India, the epic reads as one more sheet of marvels, and the comparison holds.
Its last clause turns the joke on the audience. "The Phaeacians were simple folk, and he fooled them to the top of their bent." A listener who wants the story is part of the apparatus, and in Lucian's version the Phaeacians are the mark.
The next paragraph turns to the writer. Lucian grants the lying and objects to the concealment: what surprises him is a liar who expects to escape detection. Then he joins the file himself, with a motive anyone would recognise. He wants to leave something behind, and he has no truth of his own to record.
The confession is built to be quoted. "I now make the only true statement you are to expect—that I am a liar." The sentence has the shape of the liar paradox, and Lucian uses it as a lawyer's move rather than a logical one: a confession, he says, is "a full defence against all imputations."
After that he strips out every warrant a writer could offer. His subject is what he has not seen, not experienced and not been told: three refusals, one after another. Then he goes one step further, into impossibility, since his events neither exist nor could ever come to be.
The last sentence is where the trick lands. In Greek it comes as a rule of necessity: δεῖ τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας μηδαμῶς πιστεύειν αὐτοῖς, readers must in no way believe them 7. Fowler converts the order into a courteous petition, "I humbly solicit my readers' incredulity." A petition can be granted, and the thing granted here costs the reader nothing.
Why it still matters
Later centuries kept the voyage. A True Story is the earliest known work of fiction to include travel to outer space, alien life and interplanetary war, and it has been called the first text that could be called science fiction 2.
The device that opens the book outlasted the voyage. Lucian attaches his name to an account he has just declared impossible, and the signature changes what a reader is doing. A lie with the liar's name on it becomes an invitation to watch the construction.
Modern fabrication runs the other way, by removing the signature: the invented travel book, the staged photograph, the dispatch from a street that has no such number. Lucian's comedy depends on the label staying legible, and what he sells is the pleasure of watching a labelled thing built well.
That gives a reader three questions for anything told in the first person. What has the narrator seen, what has he been told, and what would he like me to take on his word? Lucian answers all three on page 136, which is why the book still works, and still teaches.
Reflection
Lucian asks his readers for disbelief and promises them pleasure in exchange. What would you want a storyteller to admit up front — and what would you rather find out only at the end?
References
- 1Wikipedia: Lucian
en.wikipedia.org
- 2Wikipedia: A True Story
en.wikipedia.org
- 3
- 4Wikipedia: H. W. Fowler
en.wikipedia.org
- 5Wikipedia: How to Write History
en.wikipedia.org
- 6Project Gutenberg: The Works of Lucian, vol. II
gutenberg.org
- 7Wikisource (Greek): Ἀληθὴς Ἱστορία
el.wikisource.org
- 8Wikipedia: Ctesias
en.wikipedia.org
- 9Wikipedia: Iambulus
en.wikipedia.org
- 10Wikipedia: Odyssey
en.wikipedia.org
- 11Wiktionary: δουλεία
en.wiktionary.org
- 12Wiktionary: incredulity
en.wiktionary.org
- 13Wikipedia: Captatio benevolentiae
en.wikipedia.org
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