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77-425: Lucian (c. 125 – after 180) was a Roman rhetorician and satirist. Lucian or Saint Lucian may also refer to: Lucian 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

154-460: A framing story in which 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

231-486: 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

308-479: 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

385-610: 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

462-484: A decade, during which he wrote most of his extant works. In his fifties, he may have been appointed as 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

539-472: 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

616-448: 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

693-553: 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

770-481: 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

847-659: 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

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924-633: 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

1001-513: A member of the learned circle with which empress Julia Domna surrounded herself. Historians agree that Philostratus authored at least five works: Life of Apollonius of Tyana (Τὰ ἐς τὸν Τυανέα Ἀπολλώνιον; Latin : Vita Apollonii ), Lives of the Sophists ( Ancient Greek : Βίοι Σοφιστῶν , Latin : Vitae Sophistarum ), Gymnasticus (Γυμναστικός), Heroicus (Ἡρωικός) and Epistolae (Ἐπιστολαί). Another work, Imagines (Εἰκόνες),

1078-457: 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

1155-520: 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

1232-500: 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

1309-573: 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

1386-430: 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

1463-678: 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)

1540-483: Is A True Story , a tongue-in-cheek satire against authors who tell incredible tales, which 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

1617-530: 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",

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1694-595: 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

1771-561: Is given in The Lives of the Sophists and Tzetzes . Eunapius and Synesius call him a Lemnian; Photius a Tyrian ; his letters refer to him as an Athenian. His praenomen was probably Lucius , although this is not entirely confirmed. It is probable that he was born in Lemnos , studied and taught at Athens , and then settled in Rome (where he would naturally be called Atheniensis ) as

1848-682: 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

1925-474: 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,

2002-539: 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

2079-480: 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

2156-501: 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

2233-522: Is usually assigned to his son-in-law Philostratus of Lemnos . Heroicus ( On Heroes , 213–214 AD) is in the form of a dialogue between a Phoenician traveler and a vine-tender or groundskeeper (ἀμπελουργός ampelourgos ), regarding Protesilaus (or "Protosilaos"), the first Achaean warrior to be killed at the siege of Troy , as described in the Iliad . The dialogue extends into a discussion and critique of Homer 's presentation of heroes and gods, based on

2310-457: 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

2387-611: The Early Modern period . Many early modern European writers adopted Lucian's lighthearted tone, his technique of relating 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

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2464-444: 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

2541-578: 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

2618-643: 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

2695-497: 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

2772-610: 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 ,

2849-574: 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

2926-578: 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,

3003-410: 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

3080-523: The Syrian author "has somehow outraged 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

3157-415: 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

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3234-400: 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

3311-439: 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

3388-568: 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 ),

3465-504: 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

3542-475: 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

3619-502: 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

3696-574: 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

3773-519: 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

3850-451: The gods including The Dialogues of 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

3927-432: The greater authority of the dead Protosileus, who lives after death and communicates with the ampelourgos . Heroicus includes Achilles' "Ode to Echo". Life of Apollonius of Tyana , written between 217 and 238 AD, tells the story of Apollonius of Tyana (c. 40 – c. 120 AD), a Pythagorean philosopher and teacher. Philostratus wrote the book for Julia Domna , wife of Septimius Severus and mother of Caracalla . The book

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4004-446: 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

4081-734: The most notable example of Lucian's impact in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 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

4158-402: 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

4235-538: The paranormal. Although his native language was probably Syriac , all of his extant works are written entirely in ancient Greek (mostly in 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

4312-531: 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

4389-600: 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

4466-539: 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

4543-590: 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

4620-651: 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

4697-460: 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

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4774-594: 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

4851-525: 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? Philostratus Some ambiguity surrounds his name. The nomen Flavius

4928-458: The true sense biographical, but rather picturesque impressions of leading representatives of an attitude of mind full of curiosity, alert and versatile, but lacking scientific method, preferring the external excellence of style and manner to the solid achievements of serious writing. The philosopher , as he says, investigates truth; the sophist embellishes it, and takes it for granted. Gymnasticus , written after 220 AD, contains accounts concerning

5005-406: 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

5082-562: 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

5159-713: 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

5236-459: 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

5313-539: 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

5390-614: 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

5467-580: 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

5544-437: Was completed after her death. Lives of the Sophists , written between 231 and 237 AD, is a semi-biographical history of the Greek sophists. The book is dedicated to a consul Antonius Gordianus, perhaps one of the two Gordians who were killed in 238. The work is divided into two parts: the first dealing with the ancient Sophists , e.g. Gorgias , the second with the later school , e.g. Herodes Atticus . The Lives are not in

5621-620: 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

5698-511: 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

5775-539: 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,

5852-511: 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

5929-670: 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 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

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