# The Dream, or Lucian's Career

Lucian, vol. III. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd, pages 215–233.
​No sooner had I left off school, being then well on in my teens, than my father and his friends began to discuss what he should have me taught next. Most of them thought that higher education required great labour, much time, considerable expense, and conspicuous social position, while our circumstances were but moderate and demanded speedy relief; but that if I were to learn one of the handicrafts, in the first place I myself would immediately receive my support from the trade instead of continuing to share the family table at my age; besides, at no distant day I would delight my father by bringing home my earnings regularly.
The next topic for discussion was opened by raising the question, which of the trades was best, easiest to learn, suitable for a man of free birth, required an outfit that was easy to come by, and offered an income that was sufficient. Each praised a different trade, according to his own judgement or experience; but my father looked at my uncle (for among the company was my uncle on my mother’s side, who had the reputation of being an excellent sculptor) and said: “It isn’t right that any other ​trade should have the preference while you are by Come, take this lad in hand” — with a gesture toward me — “and teach him to be a good stone-cutter, mason, and sculptor, for he is capable of it, since, as you know, he has a natural gift for it.” He drew this inference from the way in which I had played with wax; for whenever my teachers dismissed me I would scrape the wax from my tablets and model cattle or horses or even men, and they were true to life, my father thought. I used to get thrashings from my teachers on account of them, but at that time they brought me praise for my cleverness, and good hopes were entertained of me, on the ground that I would soon learn the trade, to judge from that modelling.
So, as soon as it seemed to be a suitable day to begin a trade, I was turned over to my uncle, and I was not greatly displeased with the arrangement, I assure you; on the contrary, I thought it involved interesting play of a sort, and a chance to show off to my schoolmates if I should turn out to be carving gods and fashioning little figures for myself and for those I liked best. Then came the first step and the usual experience of beginners. My uncle gave me a chisel and told me to strike a light blow on a slab that lay at hand, adding the trite quotation. “Well begun, half done.” But in my inexperience I struck too hard; the slab broke, and in a gust of anger he seized a stick that lay close by and put me through an initiation of no gentle or encouraging sort, so that tears were the overture to my apprenticeship.
I ran away from the place and came home sobbing continuously, with my eyes abrim with tears. I told ​about the stick, showed the welts and charged my uncle with great cruelty, adding that he did it out of jealousy, for fear that I should get ahead of him in his trade. My mother comforted me and roundly abused her brother, but when night came on, I fell asleep, still tearful and thinking of the stick.
Up to this point my story has been humorous and childish, but what you shall hear next, gentlemen, is not to be made light of; it deserves a very receptive audience. The fact is that, to use the words of Homer,
“a god-sent vision appeared unto me in my slumber Out of immortal night,”
so vivid as not to fall short of reality in any way. Indeed, even after all this time, the figures that I saw continue to abide in my eyes and the words that I heard in my ears, so plain was it all.
Two women, taking me by the hands, were each trying to drag me toward herself with might and main; in fact, they nearly pulled me to pieces in their rivalry. Now one of them would get the better of it and almost have me altogether, and now I would be in the hands of the other. They shouted at each other, too, one of them saying, “He is mine, and you want to get him!” and the other: “It is no good your claiming what belongs to someone else.” One was like a workman, masculine, with unkempt hair, hands full of callous places, clothing tucked up, and a heavy layer of ​marble-dust upon her, just as my uncle looked when he cut stone. The other, however, was very fair of face, dignified in her appearance, and nice in her dress.
At length they allowed me to decide which of them I wanted to be with. The first to state her case was the hard-favoured, masculine one.
“Dear boy, I am the trade of Sculpture which you began to learn yesterday, of kin to you and related by descent; for your grandfather” — and she gave the name of my mother’s father — “was a sculptor, and so are both your uncles, who are very famous through me. If you are willing to keep clear of this woman’s silly nonsense” —with a gesture toward the other — “and to come and live with me, you will be generously kept and will have powerful shoulders, and you will be a stranger to jealousy of any sort; besides you will never go abroad, leaving your native country and your kinsfolk, and it will not be for mere words, either, that everyone will praise you.
“Do not be disgusted at my humble figure and my soiled clothing, for this is the way in which Phidias began, who revealed Zeus, and Polycleitus, who made Hera, Myron, whom men praise, and Praxiteles, at whom they marvel. Indeed, these men receive homage second only to the gods. If you become one of them, will you not yourself be famous in the sight of all mankind, make your ​father envied, and cause your native land to be admired?“
Sculpture said all this, and even more than this, with a great deal of stumbling and bad grammar, talking very hurriedly and trying to convince me: I do not remember it all, however, for most of it has escaped my memory by this time.
When she stopped, the other began after this fashion:
My child, I am Education, with whom you are already acquainted and familiar, even if you have not yet completed your experience of me. What it shall profit you to become a sculptor, this woman has told you; you will be nothing but a labourer, toiling with your body and putting in it your entire hope of a livelihood, personally inconspicuous, getting meagre and illiberal returns, humble-witted, an insignificant figure in public, neither sought by your friends nor feared by your enemies nor envied by your fellow-citizens — nothing but just a labourer, one of the swarming rabble, ever cringing to the man above you and courting the man who can use his tongue, leading a hare’s life, and counting as a godsend to anyone stronger. Even if you should become a Phidias or a Polycleitus and should create many marvellous works, everyone would praise your craftsmanship, to be sure, but none of those who saw you, if he were sensible, would pray to be like you; for no matter what you might be, you would be considered a mechanic, a man who has naught but his hands, a man who lives by his hands.
“If you follow my advice, first of all I shall show you many works of men of old, tell you their ​wondrous deeds and words, and make you conversant with almost all knowledge, and I shall ornament your soul, which concerns you most, with many noble adornments — temperance, justice, piety, kindliness, reasonableness, understanding, steadfastness, love of all that is beautiful, ardour towards all that is sublime; for these are the truly flawless jewels of the soul. Nothing that came to pass of old will escape you, and nothing that must now come to pass; nay, you will even foresee the future with me. In a word, I shall speedily teach you everything that there is, whether it pertains to the gods or to man.
“You who are now the beggarly son of a nobody, who have entertained some thought of so illiberal a trade, will after a little inspire envy and jealousy in all men, for you will be honoured and lauded, you will be held in great esteem for the highest qualities and admired by men preeminent in lineage and in wealth, you will wear clothing such as this” — she pointed to her own, and she was very splendidly dressed — “and will be deemed worthy of office and precedence. If ever you go abroad, even on foreign soil you will not be unknown or inconspicuous, for I will attach to you such marks of identification that everyone who sees you will nudge his neighbour and point you out with his finger, saying, ‘There he is!’ If anything of grave import befalls your friends or even the entire city, all will turn their eyes upon you; and if at any time you chance to make a speech, the crowd will listen open-mouthed, marvelling and felicitating you upon your eloquence and your father upon his good fortune. They say that some men become immortal. I shall bring this to pass ​with you; for though you yourself depart from life, you will never cease associating with men of education and conversing with men of eminence. You know whose son Demosthenes was, and how great I made him. You know that Aeschines was the son of a tambourine girl, but for all that, Philip paid court to him for my sake. And Socrates himself was brought up under the tutelage of our friend Sculpture, but as soon as he understood what was better he ran away from her and joined my colours; and you have heard how his praises are sung by everyone.
“On the other hand, if you turn your back upon these men so great and noble, upon glorious deeds and sublime words, upon a dignified appearance, upon honour, esteem, praise, precedence, power and offices, upon fame for eloquence and felicitations for wit, then you will put on a filthy tunic, assume a servile appearance, and hold bars and gravers and sledges and chisels in your hands, with your back bent over your work; you will be a groundling, with groundling ambitions, altogether humble; you will never lift your head, or conceive a single manly or liberal thought, and although you will plan to make your works well-balanced and well-shapen, you will not show any concern to make yourself well-balanced and sightly; on the contrary, you will make yourself a thing of less value than a block of stone.”
While these words were still on her lips, without waiting for her to finish what she was saying, I stood up and declared myself. Abandoning the ugly ​working-woman, I went over to Education with a right good will, especially when the stick entered my mind and the fact that it had laid many a blow upon me at the very outset the day before. When I abandoned Sculpture, at first she was indignant and struck her hands together and ground her teeth; but at length, like Niobe in the story, she grew rigid and turned to stone. Her fate was strange, but do not be incredulous, for dreams work miracles.
The other fixed her eyes upon me and said: “I will therefore repay you for the justice that you have done in judging this issue rightly: come at once and mount this car” — pointing to a car with winged horses resembling Pegasus — “in order that you may know what you would have missed if you had not come with me.” When I had mounted she plied whip and reins, and I was carried up into the heights and went from the East to the very West, surveying cities and nations and peoples, sowing something broadcast over the earth like Triptolemus. I do not now remember what it was that I sowed; only that men, looking up from below, applauded, and all those above whom I passed in my flight sped me on my way with words of praise.
After all this had been shown to me and I to the men who applauded, she brought me back again, no longer dressed in the same clothing that I wore when I began the flight; I dreamed that I came back in princely purple. Finding my father standing and waiting, she pointed him out my clothing and the ​guise in which I had returned, and even reminded him gently of the plans that they had narrowly escaped making for me.
That is the dream which I remember having had when I was a slip of a lad; it was due, I suppose, to my agitation on account of the fear inspired by the thrashing.
Even as I was speaking, “Heracles!” someone said, “what a long and tiresome dream!” Then someone else broke in: “A winter dream, when the nights are longest; or perhaps it is itself a product of three nights, like Heracles! What got into him to tell us this idle tale and to speak of a night of his childhood and dreams that are ancient and super-annuated? It is flat to spin pointless yarns. Surely he doesn’t take us for interpreters of dreams?” No, my friend; and Xenophon, too, when he told one time how he dreamed that a bolt of lightning, striking his father’s house, set it afire, and all the rest of it — you know it — did not do so because he wanted the dream interpreted, nor yet because he had made up his mind to talk nonsense, particularly in time of war and in a desperate state of affairs, with the enemy on every side; no, the story had a certain usefulness.
So it was with me, and I told you this dream in order that those who are young may take the better direction and cleave to education, above all if poverty ​is making any one of them faint-hearted and inclining him toward the worse, to the detriment of a noble nature. He will be strengthened, I am very sure, by hearing the tale, if he takes me as an adequate example, reflecting what I was when 1 aspired to all that is finest and set my heart on education, showing no weakness in the face of my poverty at that time, and what I am now, on my return to you — if nothing more, at least quite as highly thought of as any sculptor.
* ↑ Iliad 2, 56.
* ↑ The Alexandrians called Heracles “him of the three nights,” because Zeus tripled the length of the night which he spent with Alcmene. See Dial. of the Gods 14 (vulg. 10).
* ↑ Anabasis 3, 1, 11. Lucian, perhaps confusing this with a later dream (4, 3, 7), evidently thinks that it was told to the soldiers to hearten them, but this is not the case. Xenophon was unable to interpret it until after the event, and did not tell it to anyone until he put it into his book.