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118-431: Lucian of Samosata (Λουκιανὸς ὁ Σαμοσατεύς, c. 125 – after 180) was a Hellenized Syrian satirist , rhetorician and pamphleteer who is best known for his characteristic tongue-in-cheek style, with which he frequently ridiculed superstition, religious practices, and belief in the paranormal. Although his native language was probably Syriac , all of his extant works are written entirely in ancient Greek (mostly in

236-524: A Syrian Christian such as Ephrem the Syrian . Following the declaration of Syria in 1936, the term "Syrian" came to designate citizens of that state, regardless of ethnicity. The adjective "Syriac" ( suryāni سُرْيَانِي ) has come into common use since as an ethnonym to avoid the ambiguity of "Syrian". Currently, the Arabic term Sūriya usually refers to the modern state of Syria, as opposed to

354-480: A "eulogy of Platonism", but may, in fact, be satirical, or merely an excuse to ridicule Roman society. Nonetheless, at other times, Lucian writes approvingly of individual philosophies. According to Turner, although Lucian makes fun of Skeptic philosophers , he displays a temperamental inclination towards that philosophy. Edwyn Bevan identifies Lucian as a Skeptic, and in his Hermotimus , Lucian rejects all philosophical systems as contradictory and concludes that life

472-472: A barbarous manner and all but wearing a caftan [ kandys ] in the Assyrian fashion". Rhetoric states that she "took him in hand and ... gave him paideia ". Scholars have long interpreted the "Syrian" in this work as Lucian himself and taken this speech to mean that Lucian ran away to Ionia, where he pursued his education. Richter, however, argues that the "Syrian" is not Lucian himself, but rather

590-608: A comedic routine. Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead ( Νεκρικοὶ Διάλογοι ) is a satirical work centering around the Cynic philosophers Diogenes and his pupil Menippus , who lived modestly while they were alive and are now living comfortably in the abysmal conditions of the Underworld, while those who had lived lives of luxury are in torment when faced by the same conditions. The dialogue draws on earlier literary precursors, including

708-504: A fantastic voyage through a familiar dialogue, and his trick of constructing proper names with deliberately humorous etymological meanings. During the Protestant Reformation , Lucian provided literary precedent for writers making fun of Catholic clergy . Desiderius Erasmus 's Encomium Moriae (1509) displays Lucianic influences. Perhaps the most notable example of Lucian's impact in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries

826-470: A fictional narrative work written in prose, he parodies some of the fantastic tales told by Homer in the Odyssey and also the not-so-fantastic tales from the historian Thucydides . He anticipated modern science fiction themes including voyages to the moon and Venus, extraterrestrial life , interplanetary warfare, and artificial life, nearly two millennia before Jules Verne and H. G. Wells . The novel

944-435: A generally negative opinion of Herodotus and his historiography, which he viewed as faulty. Over eighty works attributed to Lucian have survived. These works belong to a diverse variety of styles and genres, and include comic dialogues, rhetorical essays, and prose fiction. Lucian's writings were targeted towards a highly educated, upper-class Greek audience and make almost constant allusions to Greek cultural history, leading

1062-545: A higher education, so, after he completed his elementary schooling, Lucian's uncle took him on as an apprentice and began teaching him how to sculpt. Lucian, however, soon proved to be poor at sculpting and ruined the statue he had been working on. His uncle beat him, causing him to run off. Lucian fell asleep and experienced a dream in which he was being fought over by the personifications of Statuary and Culture. He decided to listen to Culture and thus sought out an education. Although The Dream has long been treated by scholars as

1180-475: A highly paid government official in Egypt , after which point he disappears from the historical record. Lucian's works were wildly popular in antiquity, and more than eighty writings attributed to him have survived to the present day, a considerably higher quantity than for most other classical writers. His most famous work is A True Story , a tongue-in-cheek satire against authors who tell incredible tales, which

1298-474: A lawyer, but that he had become disillusioned by the deceitfulness of the trade and resolved to become a philosopher instead. Lucian travelled across the Empire, lecturing throughout Greece, Italy, and Gaul . In Gaul, Lucian may have held a position as a highly paid government professor. In around 160, Lucian returned to Ionia as a wealthy celebrity. He visited Samosata and stayed in the east for several years. He

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1416-521: A list of labels for these poetic devices. These include For a longer list, see Figure of speech: Tropes . Kenneth Burke has called metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony the "four master tropes" owing to their frequency in everyday discourse. These tropes can be used to represent common recurring themes throughout creative works, and in a modern setting relationships and character interactions. It can also be used to denote examples of common repeating figures of speech and situations. Whilst most of

1534-652: A literary device Lucian uses to subvert literary and ethnic norms. Ionia was the center of rhetorical learning at the time. The most prestigious universities of rhetoric were in Ephesus and Smyrna , but it is unlikely that Lucian could have afforded to pay the tuition at either of these schools. It is not known how Lucian obtained his education, but somehow he managed to acquire an extensive knowledge of rhetoric as well as classical literature and philosophy. Lucian mentions in his dialogue The Fisherman that he had initially attempted to apply his knowledge of rhetoric and become

1652-625: A marker indicating that Heracles and Dionysus have traveled to this point, and trees that look like women. Shortly after leaving the island, they are caught up by a whirlwind and taken to the Moon , where they find themselves embroiled in a full-scale war between the king of the Moon and the king of the Sun over colonization of the Morning Star . Both armies include bizarre hybrid lifeforms. The armies of

1770-449: A morally constructive discipline, but he is critical of pseudo-philosophers, whom he portrays as greedy, bad-tempered, sexually immoral hypocrites. Lucian was not known to be a member of any of the major philosophical schools. In his Philosophies for Sale , he makes fun of members of every school. Lucian was critical of Stoicism and Platonism , because he regarded them as encouraging superstition. His Nigrinus superficially appears to be

1888-518: A native Syrian. Scholars dispute whether the treatise is an accurate description of Syrian cultural practices because very little is known about Hierapolis other than what is recorded in On the Syrian Goddess itself. Coins minted in the late fourth century BC, municipal decrees from Seleucid rulers, and a late Hellenistic relief carving have confirmed Lucian's statement that the city's original name

2006-497: A promise which a disappointed scholiast described as "the biggest lie of all". In his Double Indictment , Lucian declares that his proudest literary achievement is the invention of the "satirical dialogue", which was modeled on the earlier Platonic dialogue , but was comedic in tone rather than philosophical. The prolaliai to his Dialogues of the Courtesans suggests that Lucian acted out his dialogues himself as part of

2124-613: A province of the Roman Empire, following the conquest by Pompey . Roman Syria bordered Judea to the south, Anatolian Greek domains to the north, Phoenicia to the West, and was in constant struggle with Parthians to the East. In 135 AD, Syria-Palaestina became to incorporate the entire Levant and Western Mesopotamia. In 193, the province was divided into Syria proper ( Coele-Syria ) and Phoenice . Sometime between 330 and 350 (likely c. 341),

2242-569: A pyre at the Olympic Games of AD 165. The letter is historically significant because it preserves one of the earliest pagan evaluations of Christianity. In the letter, one of Lucian's characters delivers a speech ridiculing Christians for their perceived credulity and ignorance, but he also affords them some level of respect on account of their morality. In the letter Against the Ignorant Book Collector , Lucian ridicules

2360-427: A summarized version of a story by Lucian, and contains largely the same basic plot elements as The Golden Ass (or Metamorphoses ) of Apuleius , but with fewer inset tales and a different ending. Amores is usually dated to the third or fourth centuries based on stylistic grounds. Lucian is mentioned only sporadically between his death and the ninth century, even among pagan authors. The first author to mention him

2478-416: A theory for the etymology of Arabia Felix denoting Yemen, by translation of that sense. The Shaam region is sometimes defined as the area dominated by Damascus , long an important regional center. Ash-Sām on its own can refer to the city of Damascus. Continuing with the similar contrasting theme, Damascus was the commercial destination and representative of the region in the same way Sanaa held for

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2596-628: A trope is the Quem quaeritis? , an amplification before the Introit of the Easter Sunday service and the source for liturgical drama . This particular practice came to an end with the Tridentine Mass , the unification of the liturgy in 1570 promulgated by Pope Pius V . Rhetoricians have analyzed a variety of "twists and turns" used in poetry and literature and have provided

2714-670: A truthful autobiography of Lucian, its historical accuracy is questionable at best. Classicist Simon Swain calls it "a fine but rather apocryphal version of Lucian's education" and Karin Schlapbach calls it "ironical". Richter argues that it is not autobiographical at all, but rather a prolalia ( προλᾰλιά ), or playful literary work, and a "complicated meditation on a young man's acquisition of paideia " [i.e. education]. Russell dismisses The Dream as entirely fictional, noting, "We recall that Socrates too started as sculptor, and Ovid 's vision of Elegy and Tragedy ( Amores 3.1)

2832-576: A type of biblical exegesis ) is the historical study of tropes, which aims to "define the dominant tropes of an epoch" and to "find those tropes in literary and non-literary texts", an interdisciplinary investigation of which Michel Foucault was an "important exemplar". A specialized use is the medieval amplification of texts from the liturgy, such as in the Kyrie Eleison ( Kyrie, / magnae Deus potentia, / liberator hominis, / transgressoris mandati, / eleison ). The most important example of such

2950-617: A young man, he was apprenticed to his uncle to become a sculptor, but, after a failed attempt at sculpting, he ran away to pursue an education in Ionia . He may have become a travelling lecturer and visited universities throughout the Roman Empire . After acquiring fame and wealth through his teaching, Lucian finally settled down in Athens for a decade, during which he wrote most of his extant works. In his fifties, he may have been appointed as

3068-527: Is Lactantius . He is made a character in the sixth-century letters of Aristaenetus . In the same century, portions of his On Slander were translated into Syriac as part of a monastic compendium. He was reassessed positively in the ninth century by the first generation of Byzantine humanists, such as Leo the Mathematician , Basil of Adada and Photios . In his Bibliotheca , Photios notes that Lucian "ridicules pagan things in almost all his texts",

3186-713: Is a historical region located east of the Mediterranean Sea in West Asia , broadly synonymous with the Levant . Other synonyms are Greater Syria or Syria-Palestine . The region boundaries have changed throughout history. However, in modern times, the term "Syria" alone is used to refer to the Syrian Arab Republic . The term is originally derived from Assyria , an ancient civilization centered in northern Mesopotamia , modern-day Iraq . During

3304-487: Is all too similar to Lucian's." In Lucian's Double Indictment , the personification of Rhetoric delivers a speech in which she describes the unnamed defendant, who is described as a "Syrian" author of transgressive dialogues, at the time she found him, as a young man wandering in Ionia in Anatolia "with no idea what he ought to do with himself". She describes "the Syrian" at this stage in his career as "still speaking in

3422-679: Is never serious and never reveals his own opinion. In the tenth century, Lucian was known in some circles as an anti-Christian writer, as seen in the works of Arethas of Caesarea and the Suda encyclopedia. The authors of the Suda concludes that Lucian's soul is burning in Hell for his negative remarks about Christians in the Passing of Peregrinus . In general, however, the Byzantine reception of Lucian

3540-464: Is often regarded as the earliest known work of science fiction. The novel begins with an explanation that the story is not at all "true" and that everything in it is, in fact, a complete and utter lie. The narrative begins with Lucian and his fellow travelers journeying out past the Pillars of Heracles . Blown off course by a storm, they come to an island with a river of wine filled with fish and bears,

3658-534: Is recorded as having been in Antioch in either 162 or 163. In around 165, he bought a house in Athens and invited his parents to come live with him in the city. Lucian must have married at some point during his travels because in one of his writings, he mentions having a son at this point. Lucian lived in Athens for around a decade, during which time he gave up lecturing and instead devoted his attention to writing. It

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3776-427: Is regarded by some as the earliest known work of science fiction . Lucian invented the genre of comic dialogue, a parody of the traditional Socratic dialogue . His dialogue Lover of Lies makes fun of people who believe in the supernatural and contains the oldest known version of " The Sorcerer's Apprentice ". Lucian wrote numerous satires making fun of traditional stories about the gods including The Dialogues of

3894-476: Is shown to be a "feckless ruler" and a serial adulterer. Lucian also wrote several other works in a similar vein, including Zeus Catechized , Zeus Rants , and The Parliament of the Gods . Throughout all his dialogues, Lucian displays a particular fascination with Hermes , the messenger of the gods, who frequently appears as a major character in the role of an intermediary who travels between worlds. The Dialogues of

4012-497: Is too short to determine which of them comes nearest to the truth, so the best solution is to rely on common sense, which was what the Pyrrhonian Skeptics advocated. The maxim that "Eyes are better witnesses than ears" is echoed repeatedly throughout several of Lucian's dialogues. Lucian was skeptical of oracles , though he was by no means the only person of his time to voice such skepticism. Lucian rejected belief in

4130-480: The nekyia in Book XI of Homer's Odyssey , but also adds new elements not found in them. Homer's nekyia describes transgressors against the gods being punished for their sins, but Lucian embellished this idea by having cruel and greedy persons also be punished. In his dialogue The Lover of Lies ( Φιλοψευδὴς ), Lucian satirizes belief in the supernatural and paranormal through a framing story in which

4248-622: The Ahvaz region of Iran, and the Kilikian region of Turkey. The region has sites that are significant to Abrahamic religions : Nearby is Mount Carmel . Being associated with the Biblical figure Elijah , it is important to Christians, Druze , Jews and Muslims. Trope (literature) The term trope derives from the Greek τρόπος ( tropos ), 'a turn, a change', related to

4366-685: The Armenian Apostolic Church . There are also Levantines or Franco-Levantines who adhere to Roman Catholicism . There are also Assyrians belonging to the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church . Other religious groups in the Levant include Jews , Samaritans , Yazidis and Druze . [REDACTED] Asia portal Herodotus uses Ancient Greek : Συρία to refer to

4484-602: The Attic Greek dialect popular during the Second Sophistic period). Everything that is known about Lucian's life comes from his own writings, which are often difficult to interpret because of his extensive use of sarcasm. According to his oration The Dream , he was the son of a lower middle class family from the city of Samosata along the banks of the Euphrates in the remote Roman province of Syria . As

4602-555: The Bilad al-Sham province of the medieval Arab caliphates , encompassing the Eastern Mediterranean (or Levant) and Western Mesopotamia. The Muslim conquest of the Levant in the seventh century gave rise to this province, which encompassed much of the region of Syria, and came to largely overlap with this concept. Other sources indicate that the term Greater Syria was coined during Ottoman rule , after 1516, to designate

4720-730: The Emirate of Transjordan . The Syrian-mandate states were gradually unified as the State of Syria and finally became the independent Syria in 1946. Throughout this period, Antoun Saadeh and his party, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party , envisioned "Greater Syria" or "Natural Syria", based on the etymological connection between the name "Syria" and "Assyria" , as encompassing the Sinai Peninsula , Cyprus, modern Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait,

4838-424: The Emirate of Transjordan . The term Syria itself was applied to several mandate states under French rule and the contemporaneous but short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria . The Syrian-mandate states were gradually unified as the State of Syria and finally became the independent Syria in 1946. Throughout this period, pan-Syrian nationalists advocated for the creation of a Greater Syria. Several sources indicate that

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4956-695: The Franco-Syrian War , in July 1920, in which French armies defeated the newly proclaimed kingdom and captured Damascus, aborting the Arab state. Thereafter, the French general Henri Gouraud , in breach of the conditions of the mandate, subdivided the French Mandate of Syria into six states. They were the states of Damascus (1920), Aleppo (1920), Alawite State (1920), Jabal Druze (1921),

5074-577: The Hellenistic period , the term Syria was applied to the entire Levant as Coele-Syria . Under Roman rule , the term was used to refer to the province of Syria , later divided into Syria Phoenicia and Coele Syria , and to the province of Syria Palaestina . Under the Byzantines, the provinces of Syria Prima and Syria Secunda emerged out of Coele Syria. After the Muslim conquest of the Levant ,

5192-526: The Roman Empire , Syria and Assyria came to be used as distinct geographical terms. "Syria" in the Roman Empire period referred to "those parts of the Empire situated between Asia Minor and Egypt", i.e. the western Levant , while "Assyria" was part of the Persian Empire , and only very briefly came under Roman control (116–118 AD, marking the historical peak of Roman expansion ). In the Roman era,

5310-753: The Seleucid Empire , this term was also applied to The Levant , and henceforth the Greeks applied the term without distinction between the Assyrians of Mesopotamia and Arameans of the Levant. The oldest attestation of the name 'Syria' is from the 8th century BC in a bilingual inscription in Hieroglyphic Luwian and Phoenician . In this inscription, the Luwian word Sura/i was translated to Phoenician ʔšr " Assyria ." For Herodotus in

5428-630: The Southeastern Anatolia Region of southern Turkey. This late definition is equivalent to the region known in Classical Arabic by the name ash-Shām ( ٱلشَّام /ʔaʃ-ʃaːm/ ), which means the north [country] (from the root šʔm شَأْم "left, north"). After the Islamic conquest of Byzantine Syria in the seventh century, the name Syria fell out of primary use in the region itself, being superseded by

5546-638: The ancient Near East during the Bronze and Iron Ages . Others such as Bedouin Arabs inhabit the Syrian Desert and Naqab, and speak a dialect known as Bedouin Arabic that originated in Arabian Peninsula . Other minor ethnic groups in the Levant include Circassians , Chechens , Turks , Turkmens , Assyrians , Kurds , Nawars and Armenians . Islam became the predominant religion in

5664-439: The paranormal , regarding it as superstition . In his dialogue The Lover of Lies , he probably voices some of his own opinions through his character Tychiades, perhaps including the declaration by Tychiades that he does not believe in daemones , phantoms , or ghosts because he has never seen such things. Tychiades, however, still professes belief in the gods' existence : Dinomachus: 'In other words, you do not believe in

5782-510: The 5th century BC, Syria extended as far north as the Halys (the modern Kızılırmak River ) and as far south as Arabia and Egypt. The name 'Syria' derives from the ancient Greek name for Assyrians, Greek : Σύριοι Syrioi , which the Greeks applied without distinction to various Near Eastern peoples living under the rule of Assyria . Modern scholarship confirms the Greek word traces back to

5900-482: The Arabic equivalent Bilād ash-Shām ("Northern Land'"), but survived in its original sense in Byzantine and Western European usage, and in Syriac Christian literature. In the 19th century, the name Syria was revived in its modern Arabic form to denote the whole of Bilad al-Sham, either as Suriyah or the modern form Suriyya , which eventually replaced the Arabic name of Bilad al-Sham. After World War I ,

6018-414: The Arabic name of Bilad al-Sham. After World War I , the boundaries of the region were last defined in modern times by the proclamation of and subsequent definition by French and British mandatory agreement. The area was passed to French and British Mandates following World War I and divided into Greater Lebanon , various states under Mandatory French rule , British-controlled Mandatory Palestine and

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6136-574: The Centaur are both based on descriptions of paintings found in Lucian's works. Lucian's prose narrative Timon the Misanthrope was the inspiration for William Shakespeare's tragedy Timon of Athens and the scene from Hamlet with the gravediggers echoes several scenes from Dialogues of the Dead . Christopher Marlowe 's famous verse "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships/And burnt

6254-586: The Christians. Lucian's treatise On the Syrian Goddess is a detailed description of the cult of the Syrian goddess Atargatis at Hierapolis (now Manbij ). It is written in a faux-Ionic Greek and imitates the ethnographic methodology of the Greek historian Herodotus, which Lucian elsewhere derides as faulty. For generations, many scholars doubted the authenticity of On the Syrian Goddess because it seemed too genuinely reverent to have really been written by Lucian. More recently, scholars have come to recognize

6372-492: The Courtesans is a collection of short dialogues involving various courtesans. This collection is unique as one of the only surviving works of Greek literature to mention female homosexuality. It is also unusual for mixing Lucian's characters from other dialogues with stock characters from New Comedy ; over half of the men mentioned in Dialogues of the Courtesans are also mentioned in Lucian's other dialogues, but almost all of

6490-610: The Cynic philosopher Peregrinus Proteus in his letter The Passing of Peregrinus and the fraudulent oracle Alexander of Abonoteichus in his treatise Alexander the False Prophet . Lucian's treatise On the Syrian Goddess satirizes cultural distinctions between Greeks and Syrians and is the main source of information about the cult of Atargatis . Lucian had an enormous, wide-ranging impact on Western literature. Works inspired by his writings include Thomas More 's Utopia ,

6608-718: The Elder and Pomponius Mela , Syria covered the entire Fertile Crescent . In Late Antiquity , "Syria" meant a region located to the east of the Mediterranean Sea , west of the Euphrates River , north of the Arabian Desert and south of the Taurus Mountains , thereby including modern Syria , Lebanon , Jordan , Israel , Palestine , and parts of Southern Turkey, namely the Hatay Province and

6726-399: The Elder and Pomponius Mela , Syria covered the entire Fertile Crescent . In Late Antiquity , "Syria" meant a region located to the east of the Mediterranean Sea , west of the Euphrates River , north of the Arabian Desert , and south of the Taurus Mountains , thereby including modern Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, the State of Palestine, and the Hatay Province and the western half of

6844-572: The False Prophet as "truly holy and prophetic". Later, in the same dialogue, he praises a book written by Epicurus: What blessings that book creates for its readers and what peace, tranquillity, and freedom it engenders in them, liberating them as it does from terrors and apparitions and portents, from vain hopes and extravagant cravings, developing in them intelligence and truth, and truly purifying their understanding, not with torches and squills [i. e. sea onions] and that sort of foolery, but with straight thinking, truthfulness and frankness. Lucian had

6962-412: The Gods , Icaromenippus , Zeus Rants , Zeus Catechized , and The Parliament of the Gods . His Dialogues of the Dead focuses on the Cynic philosophers Diogenes and Menippus . Philosophies for Sale and The Carousal, or The Lapiths make fun of various philosophical schools, and The Fisherman or the Dead Come to Life is a defense of this mockery. Lucian often ridiculed public figures, such as

7080-414: The Island of the Blessed, they deliver a letter to Calypso given to them by Odysseus explaining that he wishes he had stayed with her so he could have lived eternally. They then discover a chasm in the Ocean, but eventually sail around it, discover a far-off continent and decide to explore it. The book ends abruptly with Lucian stating that their future adventures will be described in the upcoming sequels,

7198-401: The Sun win the war by clouding over the Moon and blocking out the Sun's light. Both parties then come to a peace agreement. Lucian then describes life on the Moon and how it is different from life on Earth. After returning to Earth, the adventurers are swallowed by a 200-mile-long whale, in whose belly they discover a variety of fish people, whom they wage war against and triumph over. They kill

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7316-413: The antithesis of true philosophy. His Symposium is a parody of Plato's Symposium in which, instead of discussing the nature of love, the philosophers get drunk, tell smutty tales, argue relentlessly over whose school is the best, and eventually break out into a full-scale brawl. In Icaromenippus  [ fi ] , the Cynic philosopher Menippus fashions a set of wings for himself in imitation of

7434-427: The approximate area included in present-day Palestine , Syria, Jordan, Lebanon. The uncertainty in the definition of the extent of "Syria" is aggravated by the etymological confusion of the similar-sounding names Syria and Assyria . The question of the etymological identity of the two names remains open today. Regardless of etymology, both were thought of as interchangeable around the time of Herodotus. However, by

7552-461: The area of Jordan). Later Jund Qinnasrîn was created out of part of Jund Hims. The city of Damascus was the capital of the Islamic Caliphate, until the rise of the Abbasid Caliphate . In the later ages of the Ottoman times, it was divided into wilayahs or sub-provinces the borders of which and the choice of cities as seats of government within them varied over time. The vilayets or sub-provinces of Aleppo, Damascus, and Beirut, in addition to

7670-437: The author. Daniel S. Richter criticizes the frequent tendency to interpret such "Lucian-like figures" as self-inserts by the author and argues that they are, in fact, merely fictional characters Lucian uses to "think with" when satirizing conventional distinctions between Greeks and Syrians. He suggests that they are primarily a literary trope used by Lucian to deflect accusations that he as the Syrian author "has somehow outraged

7788-557: The autonomous Sanjak of Alexandretta (1921) (modern-day Hatay in Turkey), and Greater Lebanon (1920) which later became the modern country of Lebanon. The boundaries of the region have changed throughout history, and were last defined in modern times by the proclamation of the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria and subsequent definition by French and British mandatory agreement. The area was passed to French and British Mandates following World War I and divided into Greater Lebanon , various Syrian-mandate states, Mandatory Palestine and

7906-436: The book as satirical and have restored its Lucianic authorship. In the treatise, Lucian satirizes the arbitrary cultural distinctions between "Greeks" and "Assyrians" by emphasizing the manner in which Syrians have adopted Greek customs and thereby effectively become "Greeks" themselves. The anonymous narrator of the treatise initially seems to be a Greek Sophist, but, as the treatise progresses, he reveals himself to actually be

8024-452: The classical scholar R. Bracht Branham to label Lucian's highly sophisticated style "the comedy of tradition". By the time Lucian's writings were rediscovered during the Renaissance , most of the works of literature referenced in them had been lost or forgotten, making it difficult for readers of later periods to understand his works. Lucian was one of the earliest novelists in Western civilization. In A True Story ( Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα ),

8142-429: The cognate Greek : Ἀσσυρία , Assyria . The classical Arabic pronunciation of Syria is Sūriya (as opposed to the Modern Standard Arabic pronunciation Sūrya ). That name was not widely used among Muslims before about 1870, but it had been used by Christians earlier. According to the Syriac Orthodox Church , "Syrian" meant "Christian" in early Christianity . In English, "Syrian" historically meant

8260-401: The common practice whereby Near Easterners collect massive libraries of Greek texts for the sake of appearing "cultured", but without actually reading any of them. Some of the writings attributed to Lucian, such as the Amores and the Ass , are usually not considered genuine works of Lucian and are normally cited under the name of "Pseudo-Lucian". The Ass ( Λούκιος ἢ ῎Oνος ) is probably

8378-418: The courtesans themselves are characters borrowed from the plays of Menander and other comedic playwrights. Lucian's treatise Alexander the False Prophet describes the rise of Alexander of Abonoteichus, a charlatan who claimed to be the prophet of the serpent-god Glycon . Though the account is satirical in tone, it seems to be a largely accurate report of the Glycon cult and many of Lucian's statements about

8496-635: The creation of the first modern Arab state to come into existence, the Hashemite Arab Kingdom of Syria on 8 March 1920. The kingdom claimed the entire region of Syria whilst exercising control over only the inland region known as OETA East. This led to the acceleration of the declaration of the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon and British Mandate for Palestine at the 19–26 April 1920 San Remo conference , and subsequently

8614-499: The cult have been confirmed through archaeological evidence, including coins, statues, and inscriptions. Lucian describes his own meeting with Alexander in which he posed as a friendly philosopher, but, when Alexander invited him to kiss his hand, Lucian bit it instead. Lucian reports that, aside from himself, the only others who dared challenge Alexander's reputation as a true prophet were the Epicureans (whom he lauds as heroes) and

8732-570: The customers to buy his philosophy. In The Banquet, or Lapiths , Lucian points out the hypocrisies of representatives from all the major philosophical schools. In The Fisherman, or the Dead Come to Life , Lucian defends his other dialogues by comparing the venerable philosophers of ancient times with their unworthy contemporary followers. Lucian was often particularly critical of people who pretended to be philosophers when they really were not and his dialogue The Runaways portrays an imposter Cynic as

8850-519: The existence of the Gods, since you maintain that cures cannot be wrought by the use of holy names?' Tychiades: 'Nay, say not so, my dear Dinomachus,' I answered; 'the Gods may exist, and these things may yet be lies. I respect the Gods: I see the cures performed by them, I see their beneficence at work in restoring the sick through the medium of the medical faculty and their drugs. Asclepius , and his sons after him, compounded soothing medicines and healed

8968-443: The historian should remain absolutely impartial and tell the events as they really happened, even if they are likely to cause disapproval. Lucian names Thucydides as a specific example of a historian who models these virtues. In his satirical letter Passing of Peregrinus ( Περὶ τῆς Περεγρίνου Τελευτῆς ), Lucian describes the death of the controversial Cynic philosopher Peregrinus Proteus , who had publicly immolated himself on

9086-484: The historical region of Syria. Greater Syria has been widely known as Ash-Shām . The term etymologically in Arabic means "the left-hand side" or "the north", as someone in the Hejaz facing east, oriented to the sunrise, will find the north to the left. This is contrasted with the name of Yemen ( اَلْيَمَن al-Yaman ), correspondingly meaning "the right-hand side" or "the south". The variation ش ء م ( š-ʾ-m ), of

9204-429: The main narrator, a skeptic named Tychiades, goes to visit an elderly friend named Eukrates. At Eukrates's house, he encounters a large group of guests who have recently gathered together due to Eukrates suddenly falling ill. The other guests offer Eukrates a variety of folk remedies to help him recover. When Tychiades objects that such remedies do not work, the others all laugh at him and try to persuade him to believe in

9322-499: The more typical ش م ل ( š-m-l ) , is also attested in Old South Arabian , 𐩦𐩱𐩣 ( s²ʾm ), with the same semantic development. The root of Shaam , ش ء م ( š-ʾ-m ) also has connotations of unluckiness, which is traditionally associated with the left-hand and with the colder north-winds. Again this is in contrast with Yemen, with felicity and success, and the positively-viewed warm-moist southerly wind;

9440-399: The mythical Icarus and flies to Heaven, where he receives a guided tour from Zeus himself. The dialogue ends with Zeus announcing his decision to destroy all philosophers, since all they do is bicker, though he agrees to grant them a temporary reprieve until spring. Nektyomanteia is a dialogue written in parallel to Icaromenippus in which, rather than flying to Heaven, Menippus descends to

9558-444: The name Syria itself is derived from Luwian term "Sura/i", and the derivative ancient Greek name: Σύριοι , Sýrioi , or Σύροι , Sýroi , both of which originally derived from Aššūrāyu ( Assyria ) in northern Mesopotamia , modern-day Iraq and greater Syria For Herodotus in the 5th century BC, Syria extended as far north as the Halys (the modern Kızılırmak River ) and as far south as Arabia and Egypt. For Pliny

9676-585: The name 'Syria' was applied to the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon , and the contemporaneous but short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria . Today, the largest metropolitan areas in the region are Amman , Tel Aviv , Damascus , Beirut , Aleppo and Gaza City . Several sources indicate that the name Syria itself is derived from Luwian term "Sura/i", and the derivative ancient Greek name: Σύριοι , Sýrioi , or Σύροι , Sýroi , both of which originally derived from Aššūrāyu ( Assyria ) in northern Mesopotamia , modern-day Iraq However, during

9794-723: The name Syria was applied to the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon and the contemporaneous but short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria . In the most common historical sense, 'Syria' refers to the entire northern Levant , including Alexandretta and the Ancient City of Antioch or in an extended sense the entire Levant as far south as Roman Egypt , including Mesopotamia . The area of "Greater Syria" (Arabic: سُوْرِيَّة ٱلْكُبْرَىٰ , Sūrīyah al-Kubrā ); also called "Natural Syria" (Arabic: سُوْرِيَّة ٱلطَّبِيْعِيَّة , Sūrīyah aṭ-Ṭabīʿīyah ) or "Northern Land" (Arabic: بِلَاد ٱلشَّام , Bilād ash-Shām ), extends roughly over

9912-526: The philosopher Demonax eulogizes him as a great philosopher and portrays him as a hero of parrhesia ("boldness of speech"). In his treatise, How to Write History , Lucian criticizes the historical methodology used by writers such as Herodotus and Ctesias, who wrote vivid and self-indulgent descriptions of events they had never actually seen. Instead, Lucian argues that the historian never embellish his stories and should place his commitment to accuracy above his desire to entertain his audience. He also argues

10030-594: The philosopher Demonax , who was a philosophical eclectic , but whose ideology most closely resembled Cynicism. Demonax's main divergence from the Cynics was that he did not disapprove of ordinary life. Paul Turner observes that Lucian's Cynicus reads as a straightforward defense of Cynicism, but also remarks that Lucian savagely ridicules the Cynic philosopher Peregrinus in his Passing of Peregrinus . Lucian also greatly admired Epicurus , whom he describes in Alexander

10148-519: The province of Euphratensis was created out of the territory of Syria Coele and the former realm of Commagene, with Hierapolis as its capital. After c. 415 Syria Coele was further subdivided into Syria I, with the capital remaining at Antioch , and Syria II or Salutaris, with capital at Apamea on the Orontes River . In 528, Justinian I carved out the small coastal province Theodorias out of territory from both provinces. The region

10266-480: The purity of Greek idiom or genre" through his invention of the comic dialogue. British classicist Donald Russell states, "A good deal of what Lucian says about himself is no more to be trusted than the voyage to the moon that he recounts so persuasively in the first person in True Stories " and warns that "it is foolish to treat [the information he gives about himself in his writings] as autobiography." Lucian

10384-700: The region after the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the 7th century. The majority of Levantine Muslims are Sunni with Alawite and Shia ( Twelver and Nizari Ismaili ) minorities. Alawites and Ismaili Shiites mainly inhabit Hatay and the Syrian Coastal Mountain Range , while Twelver Shiites are mainly concentrated in parts of Lebanon . Levantine Christian groups are plenty and include Greek Orthodox ( Antiochian Greek ), Syriac Orthodox , Eastern Catholic ( Syriac Catholic , Melkite and Maronite ), Roman Catholic ( Latin ), Nestorian , and Protestant . Armenians mostly belong to

10502-674: The region in 1150 and assigned the northern regions of Bilad al-Sham as the following: In the Levantine sea are two islands: Rhodes and Cyprus; and in Levantine lands: Antarsus, Laodice , Antioch , Mopsuhestia , Adana , Anazarbus , Tarsus , Circesium , Ḥamrtash, Antalya , al-Batira, al-Mira, Macri , Astroboli; and in the interior lands: Apamea , Salamiya , Qinnasrin , al-Castel, Aleppo , Resafa , Raqqa , Rafeqa, al-Jisr, Manbij , Mar'ash , Saruj , Ḥarran , Edessa , Al-Ḥadath , Samosata , Malatiya , Ḥusn Mansur, Zabatra, Jersoon, al-Leen, al-Bedandour, Cirra and Touleb. For Pliny

10620-493: The region itself, being superseded by the Arabic equivalent Shām , but survived in its original sense in Byzantine and Western European usage, and in Syriac Christian literature. In the 19th century the name Syria was revived in its modern Arabic form to denote the whole of Bilad al-Sham , either as Suriyah or the modern form Suriyya , which eventually replaced the Arabic name of Bilad al-Sham. After World War I ,

10738-511: The region's population was dominated by Sunni Muslims , it also contained sizable populations of Shi'ite , Alawite and Ismaili Muslims, Syriac Orthodox , Maronite , Greek Orthodox , Roman Catholics and Melkite Christians, Jews and Druze . The Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA) was a British, French and Arab military administration over areas of the former Ottoman Empire between 1917 and 1920, during and following World War I . The wave of Arab nationalism evolved towards

10856-532: The reign of Emperor Commodus (180–192), the aging Lucian may have been appointed to a lucrative government position in Egypt. After this point, he disappears from the historical record entirely, and nothing is known about his death. Lucian's philosophical views are difficult to categorize due to his persistent use of irony and sarcasm. In The Fisherman , Lucian describes himself as a champion of philosophy and throughout his other writings he characterizes philosophy as

10974-444: The root of the verb τρέπειν ( trepein ), 'to turn, to direct, to alter, to change'; this means that the term is used metaphorically to denote, among other things, metaphorical language. Tropes and their classification were an important field in classical rhetoric . The study of tropes has been taken up again in modern criticism, especially in deconstruction . Tropological criticism (not to be confused with tropological reading ,

11092-585: The sick, – without the lion's-skin-and-field-mouse process.' According to Everett Ferguson , Lucian was strongly influenced by the Cynics . The Dream or the Cock , Timon the Misanthrope , Charon or Inspectors , and The Downward Journey or the Tyrant all display Cynic themes. Lucian was particularly indebted to Menippus , a Cynic philosopher and satirist of the third century BC. Lucian wrote an admiring biography of

11210-475: The south. Quran 106:2 alludes to this practice of caravans traveling to Syria in the summer to avoid the colder weather and to likewise sell commodities in Yemen in the winter. The largest religious group in the Levant are Muslims and the largest ethnic group are Arabs . Levantines predominantly speak Levantine Arabic , who derive their ancestry from the many ancient Semitic-speaking peoples who inhabited

11328-580: The stretch of land from the Halys river, including Cappadocia (The Histories, I.6) in today's Turkey to the Mount Casius (The Histories II.158), which Herodotus says is located just south of Lake Serbonis (The Histories III.5). According to Herodotus various remarks in different locations, he describes Syria to include the entire stretch of Phoenician coastal line as well as cities such Cadytis (Jerusalem) (The Histories III.159). In Greek usage, Syria and Assyria were used almost interchangeably, but in

11446-645: The supernatural by telling him stories, which grow increasingly ridiculous as the conversation progresses. One of the last stories they tell is " The Sorcerer's Apprentice ", which the German playwright Goethe later adapted into a famous ballad. Lucian frequently made fun of philosophers and no school was spared from his mockery. In the dialogue Philosophies for Sale , Lucian creates an imaginary slave market in which Zeus puts famous philosophers up for sale, including Pythagoras, Diogenes, Heraclitus , Socrates , Chrysippus , and Pyrrho , each of whom attempts to persuade

11564-455: The teachings of master rhetoricians. His treatise On Dancing is a major source of information about Greco-Roman dance. In it, he describes dance as an act of mimesis ("imitation") and rationalizes the myth of Proteus as being nothing more than an account of a highly skilled Egyptian dancer. He also wrote about visual arts in Portraits and On Behalf of Portraits . Lucian's biography of

11682-560: The term Syria is used to comprise the entire northern Levant and has an uncertain border to the northeast that Pliny the Elder describes as including, from west to east, the Kingdom of Commagene , Sophene , and Adiabene , "formerly known as Assyria". Various writers used the term to describe the entire Levant region during this period; the New Testament used the name in this sense on numerous occasions. In 64 BC, Syria became

11800-461: The term was superseded by the Arabic equivalent Shām, and under the Rashidun , Umayyad , Abbasid , and Fatimid caliphates , Bilad al-Sham was the name of a metropolitan province encompassing most of the region. In the 19th century, the name Syria was revived in its modem Arabic form to denote the whole of Bilad al-Sham, either as Suriyah or the modern form Suriyya , which eventually replaced

11918-444: The time of the Roman Empire , 'Syria' and 'Assyria' began to refer to two separate entities, Roman Syria and Roman Assyria . Killebrew and Steiner, treating the Levant as the Syrian region, gave the boundaries of the region as such: the Mediterranean Sea to the west, the Arabian Desert to the south, Mesopotamia to the east, and the Taurus Mountains of Anatolia to the north. The Muslim geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi visited

12036-591: The time when Lucian lived, traditional Greco-Roman religion was in decline and its role in society had become largely ceremonial. As a substitute for traditional religion, many people in the Hellenistic world joined mystery cults , such as the Mysteries of Isis , Mithraism , the cult of Cybele , and the Eleusinian Mysteries . Superstition had always been common throughout ancient society, but it

12154-477: The topless towers of Ilium?" is a paraphrase of Lucian: ΕΡΜΗΣ: Τουτὶ τὸ κρανίον ἡ Ἑλένη ἐστίν. ΜΕΝΙΠΠΟΣ: Εἶτα διὰ τοῦτο αἱ χίλιαι νῆες ἐπληρώθησαν ἐξ ἁπάσης τῆς Ἑλλάδος καὶ τοσοῦτοι ἔπεσον Ἕλληνές τε καὶ βάρβαροι καὶ τοσαῦται πόλεις ἀνάστατοι γεγόνασιν; Hermes: This skull is Helen. Menippos: And for this a thousand ships carried warriors from every part of Greece, Greeks and barbarians were slain, and cities made desolate? Syria (region) Syria

12272-649: The two special districts of Mount Lebanon and Jerusalem . Aleppo consisted of northern modern-day Syria plus parts of southern Turkey, Damascus covered southern Syria and modern-day Jordan, Beirut covered Lebanon and the Syrian coast from the port-city of Latakia southward to the Galilee , while Jerusalem consisted of the land south of the Galilee and west of the Jordan River and the Wadi Arabah . Although

12390-400: The underworld to consult the prophet Tiresias . Lucian wrote numerous dialogues making fun of traditional Greek stories about the gods. His Dialogues of the Gods ( Θεῶν Διάλογοι ) consists of numerous short vignettes parodying a variety of the scenes from Greek mythology . The dialogues portray the gods as comically weak and prone to all the foibles of human emotion. Zeus in particular

12508-457: The western half of the Southeastern Anatolia Region . This late definition is equivalent to the region known in Classical Arabic by the name ash-Shām ( Arabic : ٱَلشَّام /ʔaʃ-ʃaːm/ , which means the north [country] (from the root šʔm Arabic : شَأْم "left, north")). After the Arab conquest of Byzantine Syria in the 7th century CE , the name Syria fell out of primary use in

12626-609: The whale by starting a bonfire and escape by propping its mouth open. Next, they encounter a sea of milk, an island of cheese, and the Island of the Blessed . There, Lucian meets the heroes of the Trojan War , other mythical men and animals, as well as Homer and Pythagoras . They find sinners being punished, the worst of them being the ones who had written books with lies and fantasies, including Herodotus and Ctesias . After leaving

12744-763: The works of François Rabelais , William Shakespeare 's Timon of Athens and Jonathan Swift 's Gulliver's Travels . Lucian is not mentioned in any contemporary texts or inscriptions written by others and he is not included in Philostratus 's Lives of the Sophists . As a result of this, everything that is known about Lucian comes exclusively from his own writings. A variety of characters with names very similar to Lucian, including "Lukinos", "Lukianos", "Lucius", and "The Syrian" appear throughout Lucian's writings. These have been frequently interpreted by scholars and biographers as "masks", "alter-egos", or "mouthpieces" of

12862-642: The works of Lucian as there were for the writings of Plato and Plutarch . By ridiculing plutocracy as absurd, Lucian helped facilitate one of Renaissance humanism's most basic themes. His Dialogues of the Dead were especially popular and were widely used for moral instruction. As a result of this popularity, Lucian's writings had a profound influence on writers from the Renaissance and the Early Modern period . Many early modern European writers adopted Lucian's lighthearted tone, his technique of relating

12980-535: Was Manbog and that the city was closely associated with the cults of Atargatis and Hadad . A Jewish rabbi later listed the temple at Hierapolis as one of the five most important pagan temples in the Near East. Macrobii ("Long-Livers") is an essay about famous philosophers who lived for many years. It describes how long each of them lived, and gives an account of each of their deaths. In his treatises Teacher of Rhetoric and On Salaried Posts , Lucian criticizes

13098-616: Was Theodore Prodromos . In the Norman–Arab–Byzantine culture of twelfth-century Sicily , Lucian influenced the Greek authors Philagathus of Cerami and Eugenius of Palermo . In the West, Lucian's writings were mostly forgotten during the Middle Ages . When they were rediscovered in the West around 1400, they immediately became popular with the Renaissance humanists . By 1400, there were just as many Latin translations of

13216-796: Was annexed to the Rashidun Caliphate after the Muslim victory over the Byzantine Empire at the Battle of Yarmouk , and became known as the province of Bilad al-Sham . During the Umayyad Caliphate , the Shām was divided into five junds or military districts. They were Jund Dimashq (for the area of Damascus), Jund Ḥimṣ (for the area of Homs ), Jund Filasṭīn (for the area of Palestine ) and Jund al-Urdunn (for

13334-456: Was born in the town of Samosata on the banks of the Euphrates on the far eastern outskirts of the Roman Empire. Samosata had been the capital of the kingdom of Commagene until 72 AD when it was annexed by Vespasian and became part of the Roman province of Syria. The population of the town was mostly Syrian and Lucian's native tongue was probably Syriac, a form of Middle Aramaic . During

13452-614: Was during this decade that Lucian composed nearly all his most famous works. Lucian wrote exclusively in Greek, mainly in the Attic Greek popular during the Second Sophistic, but On the Syrian Goddess , which is attributed to Lucian, is written in a highly successful imitation of Herodotus' Ionic Greek , leading some scholars to believe that Lucian may not be the real author. For unknown reasons, Lucian stopped writing around 175 and began travelling and lecturing again. During

13570-504: Was especially prevalent during the second century. Most educated people of Lucian's time adhered to one of the various Hellenistic philosophies , of which the major ones were Stoicism , Platonism , Peripateticism , Pyrrhonism , and Epicureanism . Every major town had its own 'university' and these 'universities' often employed professional travelling lecturers, who were frequently paid high sums of money to lecture about various philosophical teachings. The most prestigious center of learning

13688-591: Was on the French writer François Rabelais , particularly in his set of five novels , Gargantua and Pantagruel , which was first published in 1532. Rabelais also is thought to be responsible for a primary introduction of Lucian to the French Renaissance and beyond through his translations of Lucian's works. Lucian's True Story inspired both Sir Thomas More 's Utopia (1516) and Jonathan Swift 's Gulliver's Travels (1726). Sandro Botticelli 's paintings The Calumny of Apelles and Pallas and

13806-473: Was positive. He was perhaps the only ancient author openly hostile to Christianity to be received positively by the Byzantines. He was regarded as not merely a pagan, but an atheist . Even so, "Lucian the atheist gave way to Lucian the master of style." From the eleventh century, he was a part of the school curriculum. There was a "Lucianic revival" in the twelfth century. The preeminent Lucianic author of this period, who imitated Lucian's style in his own works,

13924-508: Was the city of Athens in Greece, which had a long intellectual history. According to Lucian's oration The Dream , which classical scholar Lionel Casson states he probably delivered as an address upon returning to Samosata at the age of thirty-five or forty after establishing his reputation as a great orator, Lucian's parents were lower middle class and his uncles owned a local statue-making shop. Lucian's parents could not afford to give him

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