THE LIFE OF LUCIA N.o There THE writing a Life is at all times, and in all circumstances, the most difficult task of an This Life was prefixed to a translation of the Dia- Thomas Stanley, Esq., whose HISTORY OF PHILO- the Philosophers; but we are more obliged to the various principles of their several sects, than to any thing remarkable that they did, for our entertainment. But Lucian, as pleasing and useful as he was in his writings, in the opinion of the most candid judges, has left so little of his own affairs on record, that there is scarce sufficient to fill a page, from his birth to his death. There were many of the name of Lucian among the ancients, eminent in several ways, and whose names have reached posterity with honour and applause. Suidas mentions one, as a man of singular probity, who having discharged the administration of the Chief Prefect of the Oriental Empire, under Arcadius, with extraordinary justice and praise of the people, drew on himself the envy and hate of the courtiers, (the constant attendant of eminent virtue and merit,) and the between 1655 and 1660. The whole was reprinted in 1687. 2 A. D. 375. Rufinus was Chief Prefect of the East: the person here alluded to, was only Count of fifteen provinces. See the next note. 3 It is observable that our author, though he had the good fortune to be warmly patronized by several distinguished men of his age, on whom he has certainly not been sparing of encomiums, occasionally throws out severe reflections on Great Men, in which he seems to have indulged the humour of the moment, without much solicitude concerning the propriety or truth of the charge. See the Dedication of AURENGZEBE, in vol. i. ; and vol. ii. p. 23, and p. 35. In the present instance, when the facts anger of the Emperor himself; and was at last murdered by Rufinus.* Among those who were eminent for their learning, were some divines and philosophers. Of shall have been examined, it will be found that the death of Lucian was not occasioned by the envy of the Great Men who formed the court of Arcadius, (as is here stated,) but principally by the wickedness of "one odious favourite, [Rufinus,] who in an age of civil and religious faction, has deserved from every party the imputation of every crime."-" His avarice (says Mr. Gibbon) which seems to have prevailed, in his corrupt mind, over every other sentiment, attracted the wealth of the East, by the various arts of partial and general extortion; oppressive taxes, scandalous bribery, immoderate fines, unjust confiscations, forced or fictitious testaments, by which the tyrant despoiled of their lawful inheritance the children of strangers or enemies; and the publick sale of justice, as well as of favour, which he instituted in the palace of Constantinople. - - - - The extreme parsimony of Rufinus left him only the reproach and envy of ill-gotten wealth his dependents served him without attachment; the universal hatred of mankind was repressed only by the influence of servile fear. The fate of LUCIAN proclaimed to the East, that the Prefect, whose industry was much abated in the dispatch of ordinary business, was active and indefatigable in the pursuit of revenge. Lucian, (the son of the Prefect, Florentius, the oppressor of Gaul, and the enemy of Julian,) had employed a considerable part of his inheritance, the fruit of rapine and corruption, to purchase the friendship of Rufinus, and the high office of Count of the East. But the new magistrate imprudently departed from the maxims of the court and of the times; disgraced his benefactor, by the contrast of a virtuous and temperate administration; the former we find one in St. Cyprian, to whom the fourth and seventeenth Epistles are inscribed. There was another, priest of the church of Antioch, who, as Suidas assures us, reviewed, cor and presumed to refuse an act of injustice, which might have tended to the profit of the emperor's uncle. Arcadius was easily persuaded to resent the supposed insult; and the Prefect of the East resolved to execute in person the cruel vengeance which he meditated against this ungrateful delegate of his power. He performed with incessant speed the journey of seven or eight hundred miles, from Constantinople to Antioch, entered the capital of Syria at the dead of night, and spread universal consternation among a people, ignorant of his design, but not ignorant of his character. The Count of the fifteen provinces of the East was dragged, like the vilest malefactor, before the arbitrary tribunal of Rufinus. Notwithstanding the clearest evidence of his integrity, which was not impeached even by the voice of an accuser, Lucian was condemned, almost without a trial, to suffer a cruel and ignominious punishment. The ministers of the tyrant, by the order, and in the presence of their master, beat him on the neck with leather thongs, armed at the extremities with lead; and when he fainted under the violence of the pain, he was removed in a close litter, to conceal his dying agonies from the eyes of the indignant city. No sooner had Rufinus perpetrated this inhuman act, the sole object of his expedition, than he returned amidst the deep and silent curses of a trembling people, from Antioch to Constantinople; and his diligence was accelerated by the hope of accomplishing, without delay, the nuptials of his daughter with the Emperor of the East." Gibbon's DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, vol. iii. p. 209. 4 The punctuation throughout this piece is so inaccu |