of the popular ideas
about the gods. For the latter were, in fact, popular and traditional, and
the whole aim of the Cynics was to antagonise the current estimate of
values. A characteristic instance of their manner is provided by this very
period in the fragments of the work of Oenomaus. The work was entitled
_The Swindlers Unmasked_, and it contained a violent attack on oracles.
Its tone is exceedingly pungent. In the extant fragments Oenomaus
addresses the god in Delphi and overwhelms him with insults. But we are
expressly told--and one utterance of Oenomaus himself verifies it--that the
attack was not really directed against the god, but against the men who
gave oracles in his name. In his opinion the whole thing was a priestly
fraud--a view which otherwise was rather unfamiliar to the ancients, but
played an important part later. Incidentally there is a violent attack on
idolatry. The work is not without acuteness of thought and a certain
coarse wit of the true Cynical kind; but it is entirely uncritical
(oracles are used which are evidently inventions of later times) and of no
great significance. It is even difficult to avoid the impression that the
author's aim is in some degree to create a sensation. Cynics of that day
were not strangers to that kind of thing. But it is at any rate a proof of
the fact that there were at the time tendencies opposed to the religious
reaction.

A more significant phenomenon of the same kind is to be found in the
writings of Lucian. Lucian was by education a rhetorician, by profession
an itinerant lecturer and essayist. At a certain stage of his life he
became acquainted with the Cynic philosophy and for some time felt much
attracted to it. From that he evidently acquired a sincere contempt of the
vulgar superstition which flourished in his time, even in circles of which
one might have expected something better. In writings which for the
greater part belong to his later period, he pilloried individuals who
traded (or seemed to trade) in the religious ferment of the time, as well
as satirised superstition as such. In this way he made an important
contribution to the spiritual history of the age. But simultaneously he
produced, for the entertainment of his public, a series of writings the
aim of which is to make fun of the Olympian gods. In this work also he
leant on the literature of the Cynics, but substituted for their grave and
biting satire light causeries or slight dramatic sket