Lucian

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The Greek satirical writer Lucian (ca. 120 A.D.-ca. 200 A.D.) is noted for his mastery of Greek prose and satirical dialogue. He was an unrelenting but delightful critic of mythological and philosophical doctrines.

Most of what we know about Lucian comes from his own works. He was born at Samosata in Syria, and his native language was probably Syriac, though he thoroughly mastered Greek. He practiced the profession of a sophistic rhetorician in Greece, Italy, and Gaul. About 165 A.D. he settled in Athens but later, apparently in desperate need of funds in his old age, accepted a governmental position in Roman Egypt. Never a philosopher in the technical sense, he knew the schools of the Academics, Skeptics, and Cynics and seemed to have leanings toward the Epicureans.

Lucian wrote about 80 works, which are principally in dialogue form. They can be divided into five periods and categories: rhetorical, literary, philosophical, satirical, and miscellaneous.

The rhetorical output of Lucian includes two speeches: in Phalaris I the tyrant Phalaris of Akragas sends his famous bull as an offering to Delphi; in Phalaris II one of the Delphians suggests accepting the offering. The Tyrannicide and the Disowned Son also belong in this category. Later in date are the Apology for a Wrong Greeting and some other works.

Lucian's literary work varies in significance and length. Lexiphanes and Trial before the Vowels make fun of extreme Atticizing; How to Write History contains advice on historiography that is still valuable; and The True History is a hilarious account of man's trip to the moon, which is remarkably modern in tone.

The philosophical category owes much to the satirist Menippus, who appears in a number of the works. Lucian himself also appears, thinly disguised. The most impressive work is probably the Hermotimus, a critique of stoicism, but Cock, Sale of Lives, Icaromenippus, Demonax, Charon, Fisher, Zeus Cross-examined, and Voyage to the Lower World are worthy of note.

In his satirical writings, Lucian attacks the philosophers. Common life (Dialogues of Courtesans) and contemporary life (Against an Ignorant Bookbuyer and Concerning Hired Companions) are described, but most notable are the attacks on religious movements (Dialogues of the Gods and the biographies of Alexandros of Abonuteichos and Peregrinos).

Miscellaneous writings by Lucian include Tragopodagra (Tragic Gout) and Ocypus (Swift Foot), mock tragedies in poetic form. The novel Lucius; or The Ass is often assigned to him.

Lucian was a versatile writer with a highly developed sense of the ridiculous. He sensed what often seems the futility of human life, but he also showed real sympathy for the poor and down-and-out. He subjected the institutions of his day to a scrutiny they deserve but cannot always survive. The classical scholar Gilbert Murray (The Literature of Ancient Greece, 3d ed. 1956) well describes Lucian's significance: "He is an important figure, both as representing a view of life which has a certain permanent value for all ages, and also a sign of the independent vigour of Eastern Hellenism when it escaped from its state patronage or rebelled against its educational duties."

Further Reading

Francis G. Allinson, ed., Lucian: Selected Writings (1905), includes some information about Lucian. A study of his life, works, and beliefs is Allinson's Lucian: Satirist-Artist (1926). See also Basil L. Gildersleeve's "Lucian" in Richard C. Jebb, Essays and Studies (1907), and John Jay Chapman, Lucian, Plato and Greek Morals (1931).

Lucian (Lūciānus, Gk. Loukiānos) (c.AD 115 to after 180), born at Samosata on the Euphrates in Syria, the author (in Greek) of some eighty prose pieces in various forms, essays, speeches, letters, dialogues, and stories, mainly satirical in tone. His native language was Syriac, but he received a good Greek education in rhetoric and became first an advocate and then, like many of his day, a travelling lecturer, although he was a satirist rather than a sophist (see SOPHISTIC, SECOND). The details of his life are known only from his own writings; no contemporary or near-contemporary mentions him. He travelled through Asia, Greece, Italy, and Gaul, but in middle age he moved to Athens and abandoned rhetoric for philosophy. It may have been after that that he developed the dialogue form (familiar from Plato) which made him famous, although it is impossible to date his works securely. His writings were influenced by Attic Old Comedy (see COMEDY, GREEK 3), the dialogues of Plato, and especially the satires of the Cynic Menippus, and he scathingly, if humorously, indicts the follies of his day. In later life he was appointed to a minor post in the Roman bureaucracy in Egypt.

1. Among his writings on literary and quasi-philosophical subjects are the following:(i) The Vision or the Life of Lucian (Somnium or Vita Luciani), a chapter of his early life, telling how he abandoned sculpture (to which his parents had apprenticed him) for learning; (ii) Nigrīnus, which contains an interesting picture of the simplicity and peace of contemporary Athens contrasted with the turbulent and luxurious life of Rome; (iii) The Literary Prometheus (Ad eum qui dixerat, ‘Prometheus es in verbis’: ‘to him who said, “you are like Prometheus in your language”’), in which he describes the basis of his satires, namely a blend of comedy and Platonic dialogue; (iv) The Way to Write History (De historia conscrībenda), an entertaining criticism of the eccentricities of contemporary historians, followed by an acute exposition of the qualities required in a history and its author; (v) Dēmōnax, an account of the character of that Cynic philosopher, Lucian's teacher, praised for his austere virtue; (vi) Imāginēs (Eikonēs), a dialogue with interesting references to the chief works of some of the great Greek artists, Pheidias, Praxitelēs, Polygnotus, and Apellēs; and (vii) True History (Vērae historiae), a parody of travellers' tales, including Homer's Odyssey and Ctesias' Indica, which Lucian begins with the assertion that he tells the truth only when he says that it is all lies. The adventures related in this last work are of the most extravagant and ingenious kind, involving a voyage to the moon and to the Isles of the Blest, where the travellers meet Homer and hear him condemn his critics, and assert, among other things, that he began the Iliad with the anger of Achilles merely from chance, without any settled plan. When the travellers arrive at the Underworld they find Herodotus and Ctesias there paying the penalty for their falsehoods. Both Rabelais in the sixteenth century and Jonathan Swift in the eighteenth found inspiration in this work.

2. Lucian's satirical dialogues are numerous, and together with his fantastic tales are his most characteristic works, showing his wit and inventiveness as well as his hatred of cant, hypocrisy, and fanaticism, especially in religion and philosophy. Among the best-known of these dialogues are the following. (i) Dialogues of the Gods (Deorum dialogi) and of the Sea Gods (Marīnorum dialogi), short dialogues making fun of the myths about e.g. the birth of Athena, Apollo's love affairs, the Judgement of Paris, and the story of Polyphemus and Galatea. (ii) Dialogues of the Dead (Mortuorum dialogi), short dialogues set in the Underworld, the interlocutors being such characters as Pluto, Hermēs, Charon, Menippus, Diogenēs, Heraclēs, Alexander the Great, and Achilles. Death shows up the vanities and pretences of living men (including the arguments of philosophers), and defeats the intrigues of expectant heirs. The irony, at the expense of all humankind, is grim and tinged with melancholy and resignation. (iii) Menippus (also called Necyomantia); Menippus, the Cynic philosopher, exasperated by the contradictions of philosophy, visits the Underworld to consult Teiresias as to the best life to lead, and is told merely to do, with smiling face and taking nothing too seriously, the task that lies to hand. Similar themes are treated in the Charon, where Charon, the ferryman from the Underworld, visits the upper world to see what life is like and what it is that makes men weep when they enter his boat (i.e. life seen from the point of view of death); this is the most poetic of Lucian's dialogues, with its comparisons of cities to bee-hives attacked by wasps, and of human lives to bubbles. The whole is a picture of the pettiness of mankind; Charon himself observes, ‘This is all laughable’. (iv) The Voyage to the Underworld (Kataplous), describing a boat-load of the dead and their attitudes. Only the cobbler Micyllus eagerly accepts his summons to the Underworld. (v) The Dream or The Cock, concerning Micyllus the cobbler again, who threatens to kill a cock which has woken him from a happy dream of riches. The cock reveals himself to be Pythagoras, in one of his incarnations (a previous one had been Aspasia), and argues that Micyllus is much happier than many rich men. To prove the point the cock and Micyllus, rendered invisible by the former's magic tail feathers, visit the houses of several rich men and observe their miseries and vices. (vi) The Sale of Lives (Vitarum auctio), an entertaining piece in which the chief proponents of various philosophic creeds are put up for sale, Hermes being the auctioneer: Diogenēs the Cynic goes for two obols, useful as a house dog; Heracleitus is unsaleable; Socrates (apparently identified with Platonic philosophy), after considerable ridicule, fetches the enormous sum of two talents, bought by Dion of Syracuse; Pyrrhon the Sceptic is disposed of last, and even after he is in the hands of the buyer is still in doubt as to whether he has been sold or not. (vii) Icaromenippus, very Aristophanic in its fantastic plot: Menippus (see (iii) above), disgusted with the disputes of the philosophers, resolves to visit the heavens himself to find out the truth, cutting off the wings of an eagle and a vulture as a mechanical aid. He finds Empedoclēs in the moon, carried there by the vapours of Aetna. He is civilly received by the gods, and watches Zeus receive human prayers, through ventholes in the floor of heaven; he attends a banquet and hears the gods decide to destroy all philosophers as useless drones. Returned to earth Menippus hastens with malicious pleasure to the Stoa Poikilē to announce to the philosophers their impending doom. (viii) The Cross-examination of Zeus (Zeus confutātus), on the conflict between the doctrine of fate and that of divine omnipotence. (ix) Meeting of the Gods (Deorum concilium), in which Momus complains of the admission among the genuine deities of a number of foreigners, mortals, and others of doubtful credentials, from Dionysus and his hangers-on to the Egyptians Apis and Anubis. (x) Dependent Scholars (De mercēde conductis), written to dissuade a Greek philosopher from accepting a place in a Roman household, with its attendant hardships and humiliations, for a pittance; it is an excellent example of Lucian's witty good sense. (xi) Peregrine (De morte Peregrīni), a satirical narrative of the career of a fanatical Cynic and apostate Christian (a historical character) who, in pursuit of notoriety, had himself burnt alive on a pyre. (xii) Lucius or the Ass (Lucius sive asinus), a short novel doubtfully ascribed to Lucian; it is perhaps an abbreviated form of an earlier Greek romance which was also the basis of the Latin novel ‘The Golden Ass’ of Apuleius. See also TIMON (1).

Quotes:

"The happy think a lifetime short, but to the unhappy one night can be an eternity."

"Wise is the person at either end. Who can in due measure spare as well as spend."

"The historian should be fearless and incorruptible; a man of independence, loving frankness and truth; one who, as the poet says, calls a fig a fig and a spade a spade. He should yield to neither hatred nor affection, but should be unsparing and unpitying. He should be neither shy nor deprecating, but an impartial judge, giving each side all it deserves but no more. He should know in his writings no country and no city; he should bow to no authority and acknowledge no king. He should never consider what this or that man will think, but should state the facts as they really occurred."

For other uses, see Lucian (disambiguation).

Lucian (Λουκιανός)
A XVIIth century fictional portrait of Lucian of Samosata.
Born	ca. 125 AD Samosata, Roman Empire (nowadays Turkey)
Died	after 180 AD
Occupation	Novelist, Rhetorician
Notable work(s)	Dialogues of the Dead, True History, Alexander the false prophet, Sale of Creeds, Philopseudes (which includes The Sorcerer's Apprentice)
Influences Homer, Menander, Menippus, Demonax, Epicurus
Influenced Apuleius, Desiderius Erasmus, Gil Vicente, Goethe

Lucian of Samosata (Greek: Λουκιανός ὁ Σαμοσατεύς, Latin: Lucianus Samosatensis; c. A.D. 125 – after A.D. 180) was an Assyrian rhetorician,^[1][2] and satirist who wrote in the Greek language. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Works 3 Language 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

Biography

Few details of Lucian's life can be verified with any degree of accuracy. He claimed to have been born in Samosata, in the former kingdom of Commagene, which had been absorbed by the Roman Empire and made part of the province of Syria. In his works, Lucian refers to himself as a "Syrian", ^[3] "Assyrian" and "barbarian", perhaps indicating "he was from the Semitic and not the imported Greek population" of Samosata.^[4] His birthplace was recently lost when the Atatürk Dam project led to the inundation of the site.^{[citation needed]} Lucian almost certainly did not write all the more than eighty works attributed to him — declamations, essays both laudatory and sarcastic, satiric epigrams, and comic dialogues and symposia with a satirical cast, studded with quotations in alarming contexts and allusions set in an unusual light, designed to be surprising and provocative. His name added luster to any entertaining and sarcastic essay: over 150 surviving manuscripts attest to his continued popularity. The first printed edition of a selection of his works was issued at Florence in 1499. His best known works are A True Story (a romance, patently not "true" at all, which he admits in his introduction to the story), and Dialogues of the Gods (Θεῶν διάλογοι) and Dialogues of the Dead (Νεκρικοί Διάλογοι).

Lucian was trained as a rhetorician, a vocation where one pleads in court, composing pleas for others, and teaching the art of pleading. Lucian's practice was to travel about, giving amusing discourses and witty lectures improvised on the spot, somewhat as a rhapsode had done in declaiming poetry at an earlier period. In this way Lucian travelled through Ionia and mainland Greece, to Italy and even to Gaul, and won much wealth and fame.

Lucian admired the works of Epicurus, for he breaks off a witty satire against Alexander of Abonoteichus, who burned a book of Epicurus, to exclaim:

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 and that sort of foolery, but with straight thinking, truthfulness and frankness.

Works

Main article: List of works by Lucian

Lucian was also one of the first novelists in occidental civilization. In A True Story, a fictional narrative work written in prose, he parodied some fantastic tales told by Homer in the Odyssey and some feeble fantasies that were popular in his time. He anticipated "modern" fictional themes like voyages to the moon and Venus, extraterrestrial life and wars between planets centuries before Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. His novel is widely regarded as an early, if not the earliest science fiction work.^{[5][6][7][8][9]}

Lucian also wrote a satire called The Passing of Peregrinus,^[10] in which the lead character, Peregrinus Proteus, takes advantage of the generosity and gullibility of Christians. This is one of the earliest surviving pagan perceptions of Christianity. His Philopseudes (Φιλοψευδής ἤ Ἀπιστῶν "Lover of Lies or Cheater") is a frame story which includes the original version of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice".

In his Symposium (Συμπόσιον), far from Plato's discourse, the diners get drunk, tell smutty tales and behave badly.

Lucian is also the presumed author of Macrobii (Μακρόβιοι) "long-livers" which is devoted to longevity. He gives some mythical examples like that of Nestor who lived three centuries or Tiresias the blind seer of Thebes who lived 600 years. Most of the examples are normal lives (80-100 yrs). He tells his readers about the Seres (Chinese) who live 300 years. He also gives some advice concerning food intake and moderation in general.

There is debate over the authorship of some works, transmitted under Lucian's name, such as De Dea Syria ("On the Syrian goddess"), the Amores and the Ass. These are usually not considered genuine works of Lucian and normally cited under the name of Pseudo-Lucian. The Ass (Λούκιος ἢ ῎Oνος) is probably an epitome (a summarised 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 digressions and a different ending.

Language

Lucian wrote Attic dialogue with a facility almost equal to Plato. He further imitated Herodotus's Ionic dialect so successfully in his work "The Syrian Goddess" that some scholars refuse to recognize him as the author^[11].

See also

• Alexander of Abonoteichus

References

General

• Lucian, Works, Loeb Classical Library, 8 volumes.

D.S. Richter, "Lives and Afterlives of Lucian of Samosata," Arion (2005) 13.1:75-100.

Specific

1. ^ Parpola, Simo (April 2003). "Assyrian Identity in Ancient Times and Today" (PDF). Assyriologist. Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies. p. 17. http://www.aina.org/articles/assyrianidentity.pdf. "In the second century AD, two prominent writers from Roman Syria, Lucian and Tatian, ostentatiously identify themselves as Assyrians (Assúrios). This self-identification is commonly misinterpreted to imply nothing more than that these writers were ethnic Syrians (in the modern sense) speaking Aramaic as their mother tongue." 
2. ^ Paul of Samosata, Zenobia and Aurelian: The Church, Local Culture and Political Allegiance in Third-Century Syria Author(s): Fergus Millar Source: The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 61 (1971), pp. 1-17.
3. ^ Harmon, A. M. "Lucian of Samosata: Introduction and Manuscripts." in Lucian, Works. Loeb Classical Library (1913)
4. ^ Keith Sidwell, introduction to Lucian: Chattering Courtesans and Other Sardonic Sketches (Penguin Classics, 2005) p.xii
5. ^ Grewell, Greg: “Colonizing the Universe: Science Fictions Then, Now, and in the (Imagined) Future”, Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, Vol. 55, No. 2 (2001), pp. 25-47 (30f.)
6. ^ Fredericks, S.C.: “Lucian's True History as SF”, Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (March 1976), pp. 49-60
7. ^ Swanson, Roy Arthur: “The True, the False, and the Truly False: Lucian's Philosophical Science Fiction”, Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Nov. 1976), pp. 227-239
8. ^ Georgiadou, Aristoula & Larmour, David H.J.: “Lucian's Science Fiction Novel True Histories. Interpretation and Commentary“, Mnemosyne Supplement 179, Leiden 1998, ISBN 9004106677, Introduction
9. ^ Gunn, James E.: “The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction”, Publisher: Viking 1988, ISBN 9780670810413, p.249
10. ^ Passing of Peregrinus at Tertullian.org
11. ^ Eerdmans commentary on the Bible By James D. G. Dunn, John William Rogerson Page 1105 ISBN 0802837115

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Lucian

Greek Wikisource has original text related to this article: Lucian

• A.M. Harmon, Introduction to Lucian of Samosata
• Works by Lucian of Samosata at Project Gutenberg
• Loeb Classical Library, vol. 3/8 of Lucian's works, with facing Greek text
• Alexander the false prophet - the successful travelling prophet of Asclepius and his oracular serpent god
• Works of Lucian of Samostata at sacred-texts.com
• The Syrian Goddess, at sacred-texts.com
• Macrobii, at attalus.org
• Contents – Harvard University Press

Persondata
NAME	Lucian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Lucian of Samosata
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Writer: a rhetorician and satirist
DATE OF BIRTH	120 - after 180
PLACE OF BIRTH	Samosata
DATE OF DEATH	120 - after 180
PLACE OF DEATH

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