Lucian

Biographical sources

Lucian is not mentioned in any contemporary texts or inscriptions written by others^[2] and he is not included in Philostratus's Lives of the Sophists.^[2] As a result of this, everything that is known about Lucian comes exclusively from his own writings.^[3][4][2] A variety of characters with names very similar to Lucian, including "Lukinos," "Lukianos," "Lucius," and "The Syrian" appear throughout Lucian's writings.^[2] These have been frequently interpreted by scholars and biographers as "masks", "alter-egos", or "mouthpieces" of the author.^[2] Daniel S. Richter criticizes the frequent tendency to interpret such "Lucian-like figures" as self-inserts by the author^[2] and argues that they are, in fact, merely fictional characters Lucian uses to "think with" when satirizing conventional distinctions between Greeks and Syrians.^[2] He suggests that they are primarily a literary trope used by Lucian to deflect accusations that he as the Syrian author "has somehow outraged the purity of Greek idiom or genre" through his invention of the comic dialogue.^[5] 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"^[6] and warns that "it is foolish to treat [the information he gives about himself in his writings] as autobiography."^[6]

Background and upbringing

Samosata

Hierapolis

Antioch

Ephesus

Smyrna

Abonoteichos

class=notpageimage|

Map of Anatolia showing locations associated with Lucian

Lucian was born in the town of Samosata on the banks of the Euphrates on the far eastern outskirts of the Roman Empire.^[7][4][8][9] 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.^[10][9] The population of the town was mostly Syrian^[7] and Lucian's native tongue was probably Syriac, a form of Middle Aramaic.^{[7][11][12][9]}

During the time when Lucian lived, traditional Greco-Roman religion was in decline and its role in society had become largely ceremonial.^[13] 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.^[14] Superstition had always been common throughout ancient society,^[14] but it was especially prevalent during the second century.^[14][15] Most educated people of Lucian's time adhered to one of the various Hellenistic philosophies,^[14] of which the major ones were Stoicism, Platonism, Peripateticism, Pyrrhonism, and Epicureanism.^[14] Every major town had its own university^[14] and these universities often employed professional travelling lecturers,^[14] who were frequently paid high sums of money to lecture about various philosophical teachings.^[16] The most prestigious center of learning was the city of Athens in Greece, which had a long intellectual history.^[16]

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,^[3] Lucian's parents were lower middle class and his uncles owned a local statue-making shop.^[7] Lucian's parents could not afford to give him a higher education,^[3] so, after he completed his elementary schooling, Lucian's uncle took him on as an apprentice and began teaching him how to sculpt.^[3] Lucian, however, soon proved to be poor at sculpting and ruined the statue he had been working on.^[3] His uncle beat him, causing him to run off.^[3] Lucian fell asleep and experienced a dream in which he was being fought over by the personifications of Statuary and Culture.^[3][17] He decided to listen to Culture and thus sought out an education.^[3][18]

Although The Dream has long been treated by scholars as a truthful autobiography of Lucian,^[3][19] its historical accuracy is questionable at best.^[20][19][6] Classicist Simon Swain calls it "a fine but rather apocryphal version of Lucian's education"^[20] and Karin Schlapbach calls it "ironical".^[17] 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].^[19] 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) is all too similar to Lucian's."^[6]

Education and career

Speculative portrayal of Lucian taken from a seventeenth-century engraving by William Faithorne

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".^[21][7][11] She describes "the Syrian" at this stage in his career as "still speaking in a barbarous manner and all but wearing a caftan [kandys] in the Assyrian fashion".^[11][21] Rhetoric states that she "took him in hand and... gave him paideia".^[11][21]

Scholars have long interpreted the "Syrian" in this work as Lucian himself^[11][7] and taken this speech to mean that Lucian ran away to Ionia, where he pursued his education.^[7] Richter, however, argues that the "Syrian" is not Lucian himself, but rather a literary device Lucian uses to subvert literary and ethnic norms.^[22]

Ionia was the center of rhetorical learning at the time.^[7] The most prestigious universities of rhetoric were in Ephesus and Smyrna,^[7] but it is unlikely that Lucian could have afforded to pay the tuition at either of these schools.^[7] It is not known how Lucian obtained his education,^[7] but somehow he managed to acquire an extensive knowledge of rhetoric as well as classical literature and philosophy.^[7][11]

Lucian mentions in his dialogue The Fisherman that he had initially attempted to apply his knowledge of rhetoric and become a lawyer,^[23] but that he had become disillusioned by the deceitfulness of the trade and resolved to become a philosopher instead.^[24] Lucian travelled across the Empire, lecturing throughout Greece, Italy, and Gaul.^[25] In Gaul, Lucian may have held a position as a highly paid government professor.^[26]

In around 160, Lucian returned to Ionia as a wealthy celebrity.^[26] He visited Samosata^[26] and stayed in the east for several years.^[26] He is recorded as having been in Antioch in either 162 or 163.^[26][4] In around 165, he bought a house in Athens and invited his parents to come live with him in the city.^[26] Lucian must have married at some point during his travels because in one of his writings, he mentions having a son at this point.^[26]

Lucian lived in Athens for around a decade, during which time he gave up lecturing and instead devoted his attention to writing.^[26] It was during this decade that Lucian composed nearly all his most famous works.^[26] Lucian wrote exclusively in Greek,^[8][27][12] 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.^[27]

For unknown reasons, Lucian stopped writing around 175 and began travelling and lecturing again.^[26] During the reign of Emperor Commodus (180–92), the aging Lucian may have been appointed to a lucrative government position in Egypt.^[26][4][12] After this point, he disappears from the historical record entirely,^[26] and nothing is known about his death.^[26]

Discover more about Life related topics

Donald Russell (classicist)

Donald Russell (classicist)

Donald Andrew Frank Moore Russell, was a British classicist and academic. He was Professor of Classical Literature at the University of Oxford between 1985 and 1988, and a fellow and tutor of classics at St John's College, Oxford, from 1948 to 1988: he was an emeritus professor and emeritus fellow. Russell died in February 2020 at the age of 99.

Manbij

Manbij

Manbij is a city in the northeast of Aleppo Governorate in northern Syria, 30 kilometers (19 mi) west of the Euphrates. In the 2004 census by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Manbij had a population of nearly 100,000. The population of Manbij is largely Arab, with Kurdish, Turkmen, Circassian, and Chechen minorities. Many of its residents practice Naqshbandi Sufism.

Antioch

Antioch

Antioch on the Orontes was a Hellenistic city founded by Seleucus I Nicator in 300 BC. The city served as the capital of the Seleucid Empire and later as regional capital to both the Roman and Byzantine Empire. During the Crusades, Antioch served as the capital of the Principality of Antioch, one of four Crusader states that were founded in the Levant. Its inhabitants were known as Antiochenes. The modern city of Antakya, in Hatay Province of Turkey, was named after the ancient city, which lies in ruins on the Orontes River and did not overlap in habitation with the modern city.

Ephesus

Ephesus

Ephesus was a city in ancient Greece on the coast of Ionia, 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) southwest of present-day Selçuk in İzmir Province, Turkey. It was built in the 10th century BC on the site of Apasa, the former Arzawan capital, by Attic and Ionian Greek colonists. During the Classical Greek era, it was one of twelve cities that were members of the Ionian League. The city came under the control of the Roman Republic in 129 BC.

Abonoteichos

Abonoteichos

Abonoteichos, later Ionopolis, was an ancient city in Asia Minor, on the site of modern İnebolu, and remains a Latin Catholic titular see.

Anatolia

Anatolia

Anatolia, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and is the western-most extension of continental Asia. The land mass of Anatolia constitutes most of the territory of contemporary Turkey. Geographically, the Anatolian region is bounded by the Turkish Straits to the north-west, the Black Sea to the north, the Armenian Highlands to the east, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Aegean Sea to the west. Topographically, the Sea of Marmara connects the Black Sea with the Aegean Sea through the Bosporus strait and the Dardanelles strait, and separates Anatolia from Thrace in the Balkan peninsula of Southeastern Europe.

Greco-Roman mysteries

Greco-Roman mysteries

Mystery religions, mystery cults, sacred mysteries or simply mysteries, were religious schools of the Greco-Roman world for which participation was reserved to initiates (mystai). The main characterization of this religion is the secrecy associated with the particulars of the initiation and the ritual practice, which may not be revealed to outsiders. The most famous mysteries of Greco-Roman antiquity were the Eleusinian Mysteries, which predated the Greek Dark Ages. The mystery schools flourished in Late Antiquity; Julian the Apostate in the mid 4th century is known to have been initiated into three distinct mystery schools—most notably the mithraists. Due to the secret nature of the school, and because the mystery religions of Late Antiquity were persecuted by the Christian Roman Empire from the 4th century, the details of these religious practices are derived from descriptions, imagery and cross-cultural studies. Much information on the Mysteries comes from Marcus Terentius Varro.

Mysteries of Isis

Mysteries of Isis

The mysteries of Isis were religious initiation rites performed in the cult of the Egyptian goddess Isis in the Greco-Roman world. They were modeled on other mystery rites, particularly the Eleusinian mysteries in honor of the Greek goddesses Demeter and Persephone, and originated sometime between the third century BCE and the second century CE. Despite their mainly Hellenistic origins, the mysteries alluded to beliefs from ancient Egyptian religion, in which the worship of Isis arose, and may have incorporated aspects of Egyptian ritual. Although Isis was worshipped across the Greco-Roman world, the mystery rites are only known to have been practiced in a few regions. In areas where they were practiced, they served to strengthen devotees' commitment to the Isis cult, although they were not required to worship her exclusively, and devotees may have risen in the cult's hierarchy by undergoing initiation. The rites may also have been thought to guarantee that the initiate's soul, with the goddess's help, would continue after death into a blissful afterlife.

Mithraism

Mithraism

Mithraism, also known as the Mithraic mysteries or the Cult of Mithras, was a Roman mystery religion centered on the god Mithras. Although inspired by Iranian worship of the Zoroastrian divinity (yazata) Mithra, the Roman Mithras is linked to a new and distinctive imagery, with the level of continuity between Persian and Greco-Roman practice debated. The mysteries were popular among the Imperial Roman army from about the 1st to the 4th-century CE.

Cybele

Cybele

Cybele is an Anatolian mother goddess; she may have a possible forerunner in the earliest neolithic at Çatalhöyük, where statues of plump women, sometimes sitting, accompanied by lionesses, have been found in excavations. Phrygia's only known goddess, she was probably its national deity. Greek colonists in Asia Minor adopted and adapted her Phrygian cult and spread it to mainland Greece and to the more distant western Greek colonies around the 6th century BC.

Eleusinian Mysteries

Eleusinian Mysteries

The Eleusinian Mysteries were initiations held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at the Panhellenic Sanctuary of Eleusis in ancient Greece. They are considered the "most famous of the secret religious rites of ancient Greece". Their basis was an old agrarian cult, and there is some evidence that they were derived from the religious practices of the Mycenean period. The Mysteries represented the myth of the abduction of Persephone from her mother Demeter by the king of the underworld Hades, in a cycle with three phases: the descent (loss), the search, and the ascent, with the main theme being the ascent of Persephone and the reunion with her mother. It was a major festival during the Hellenic era, and later spread to Rome. Similar religious rites appear in the agricultural societies of the Near East and in Minoan Crete.

Hellenistic philosophy

Hellenistic philosophy

Hellenistic philosophy is Ancient Greek philosophy corresponding to the Hellenistic period in Ancient Greece, from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC to the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. The dominant schools of this period were the Stoics, the Epicureans and the Skeptics.

Bust of Epicurus, an Athenian philosopher whom Lucian greatly admired^[28][29]

Lucian's philosophical views are difficult to categorize due to his persistent use of irony and sarcasm.^[30] In The Fisherman, Lucian describes himself as a champion of philosophy^[30] and throughout his other writings he characterizes philosophy as a morally constructive discipline,^[30] but he is critical of pseudo-philosophers, whom he portrays as greedy, bad-tempered, sexually immoral hypocrites.^[31][32] Lucian was not known to be a member of any of the major philosophical schools.^[33][31] In his Philosophies for Sale, he makes fun of members of every school.^[30][34] Lucian was critical of Stoicism and Platonism, because he regarded them as encouraging superstition.^[29] His Nigrinus superficially appears to be a "eulogy of Platonism",^[29] but may, in fact, be satirical, or merely an excuse to ridicule Roman society.^[29]

Nonetheless, at other times, Lucian writes approvingly of individual philosophies.^[30] According to Turner, although Lucian makes fun of Skeptic philosophers,^[29] he displays a temperamental inclination towards that philosophy.^[29] Edwyn Bevan identifies Lucian as a Skeptic,^[35] and in his Hermotimus, Lucian rejects all philosophical systems as contradictory and concludes that life is too short to determine which of them comes nearest to the truth, so the best solution is to rely on common sense,^[30] 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.^[36]

Lucian was skeptical of oracles,^[37] though he was by no means the only person of his time to voice such skepticism.^[37] Lucian rejected belief in the paranormal, regarding it as superstition.^[36][9] In his dialogue The Lover of Lies, he probably voices some of his own opinions through his character Tychiades,^[36][b] perhaps including the declaration by Tychiades that he does not believe in daemones, phantoms, or ghosts because he has never seen such things.^[36] Tychiades, however, still professes belief in the gods' existence:

Dinomachus: 'In other words, you do not believe in 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 the sick, – without the lion's-skin-and-field-mouse process.'^[40]

According to Everett Ferguson, Lucian was strongly influenced by the Cynics.^[41] The Dream or the Cock, Timon the Misanthrope, Charon or Inspectors, and The Downward Journey or the Tyrant all display Cynic themes.^[41] Lucian was particularly indebted to Menippus, a Cynic philosopher and satirist of the third century BC.^[41][42] Lucian wrote an admiring biography of the philosopher Demonax, who was a philosophical eclectic, but whose ideology most closely resembled Cynicism.^[41] Demonax's main divergence from the Cynics was that he did not disapprove of ordinary life.^[41] Paul Turner observes that Lucian's Cynicus reads as a straightforward defense of Cynicism,^[29] but also remarks that Lucian savagely ridicules the Cynic philosopher Peregrinus in his Passing of Peregrinus.^[29]

Lucian also greatly admired Epicurus,^[28][30] whom he describes in Alexander the False Prophet as "truly holy and prophetic".^[28] 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.^[43]

Lucian had a generally negative opinion of Herodotus and his historiography, which he viewed as faulty.^[44][45]

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Epicurus

Epicurus

Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher and sage who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosophy. He was born on the Greek island of Samos to Athenian parents. Influenced by Democritus, Aristippus, Pyrrho, and possibly the Cynics, he turned against the Platonism of his day and established his own school, known as "the Garden", in Athens. Epicurus and his followers were known for eating simple meals and discussing a wide range of philosophical subjects. He openly allowed women and slaves to join the school as a matter of policy. Of the over 300 works said to have been written by Epicurus about various subjects, the vast majority have been destroyed. Only three letters written by him—the letters to Menoeceus, Pythocles, and Herodotus—and two collections of quotes—the Principal Doctrines and the Vatican Sayings—have survived intact, along with a few fragments of his other writings. As a result of his work's destruction, most knowledge about his philosophy is due to later authors, particularly the biographer Diogenes Laërtius, the Epicurean Roman poet Lucretius and the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, and with hostile but largely accurate accounts by the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus, and the Academic Skeptic and statesman Cicero.

Edwyn Bevan

Edwyn Bevan

Edwyn Robert Bevan OBE, FBA was a versatile British philosopher and historian of the Hellenistic world.

Oracle

Oracle

An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination.

Paranormal

Paranormal

Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. Notable paranormal beliefs include those that pertain to extrasensory perception, spiritualism and the pseudosciences of ghost hunting, cryptozoology, and ufology.

Apparitional experience

Apparitional experience

In parapsychology, an apparitional experience is an anomalous experience characterized by the apparent perception of either a living being or an inanimate object without there being any material stimulus for such a perception.

Ghost

Ghost

A ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that is believed to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely, from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes to realistic, lifelike forms. The deliberate attempt to contact the spirit of a deceased person is known as necromancy, or in spiritism as a séance. Other terms associated with it are apparition, haunt, phantom, poltergeist, shade, specter, spirit, spook, wraith, demon, and ghoul.

Asclepius

Asclepius

Asclepius is a hero and god of medicine in ancient Greek religion and mythology. He is the son of Apollo and Coronis, or Arsinoe, or of Apollo alone. Asclepius represents the healing aspect of the medical arts; his daughters, the "Asclepiades", are: Hygieia, Iaso, Aceso, Aegle and Panacea. He has several sons as well. He was associated with the Roman/Etruscan god Vediovis and the Egyptian Imhotep. He shared with Apollo the epithet Paean. The rod of Asclepius, a snake-entwined staff, remains a symbol of medicine today. Those physicians and attendants who served this god were known as the Therapeutae of Asclepius.

Everett Ferguson

Everett Ferguson

Everett Ferguson currently serves as Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas. He is author of numerous books on early Christian studies and served as co-editor of the Journal of Early Christian Studies.

Cynicism (philosophy)

Cynicism (philosophy)

Cynicism is a school of thought of ancient Greek philosophy as practiced by the Cynics. For the Cynics, the purpose of life is to live in virtue, in agreement with nature. As reasoning creatures, people can gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which is natural for themselves, rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, and fame, and even flouting conventions openly and derisively in public. Instead, they were to lead a simple life free from all possessions.

Menippus

Menippus

Menippus of Gadara was a Cynic satirist. The Menippean satire genre is named after him. His works, all of which are lost, were an important influence on Varro and Lucian, who ranks Menippus with Antisthenes, Diogenes, and Crates as among the most notable of the Cynics.

Demonax

Demonax

Demonax was a Greek Cynic philosopher. Born in Cyprus, he moved to Athens, where his wisdom, and his skill in solving disputes, earned him the admiration of the citizens. He taught Lucian, who wrote a Life of Demonax in praise of his teacher. When he died he received a magnificent public funeral.

Eclecticism

Eclecticism

Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories in particular cases. However, this is often without conventions or rules dictating how or which theories were combined.

Over eighty works attributed to Lucian have survived.^{[46][47][4][6]} These works belong to a diverse variety of styles and genres,^[46][48][49] and include comic dialogues, rhetorical essays, and prose fiction.^[46][48] Lucian's writings were targeted towards a highly educated, upper-class Greek audience^[50] and make almost constant allusions to Greek cultural history,^[50] leading the classical scholar R. Bracht Branham to label Lucian's highly sophisticated style "the comedy of tradition".^[50] 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,^[50] making it difficult for readers of later periods to understand his works.^[50]

A True Story

Illustration from 1894 by William Strang depicting a battle scene from Book One of Lucian's novel A True Story

Lucian was one of the earliest novelists in Western civilization. In A True Story (Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα), 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.^[51][52] 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 is often regarded as the earliest known work of science fiction.^{[53][54][55][56][57][58]}

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.^[59][60] The narrative begins with Lucian and his fellow travelers journeying out past the Pillars of Heracles.^[61][62] Blown off course by a storm, they come to an island with a river of wine filled with fish and bears, a marker indicating that Heracles and Dionysus have traveled to this point, and trees that look like women.^[63][62] Shortly after leaving the island, they are caught up by a whirlwind and taken to the Moon,^[64][62] 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.^[65][62] Both armies include bizarre hybrid lifeforms.^[66][62] The armies of the Sun win the war by clouding over the Moon and blocking out the Sun's light.^[67][62] Both parties then come to a peace agreement.^[68] Lucian then describes life on the Moon and how it is different from life on Earth.^[69][62]

After returning to Earth, the adventurers are swallowed by a 200-mile-long whale,^[70][71] in whose belly they discover a variety of fish people, whom they wage war against and triumph over.^[72][71] They kill the whale by starting a bonfire and escape by propping its mouth open.^[73][71] Next, they encounter a sea of milk, an island of cheese, and the Island of the Blessed.^[74][75] There, Lucian meets the heroes of the Trojan War, other mythical men and animals, as well as Homer and Pythagoras.^[76][77] They find sinners being punished, the worst of them being the ones who had written books with lies and fantasies, including Herodotus and Ctesias.^[78][77] After leaving 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.^[79][77] They then discover a chasm in the Ocean, but eventually sail around it, discover a far-off continent and decide to explore it.^[80][77] The book ends abruptly with Lucian stating that their future adventures will be described in the upcoming sequels,^[81][82] a promise which a disappointed scholiast described as "the biggest lie of all".^[83]

Satirical dialogues

In his Double Indictment, Lucian declares that his proudest literary achievement is the invention of the "satirical dialogue",^[84] which was modeled on the earlier Platonic dialogue, but was comedic in tone rather than philosophical.^[84] The prolaliai to his Dialogues of the Courtesans suggests that Lucian acted out his dialogues himself as part of a comedic routine.^[85] 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.^[86] The dialogue draws on earlier literary precursors, including the nekyia in Book XI of Homer's Odyssey,^[87] but also adds new elements not found in them.^[88] 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.^[88]

Hermes, the messenger of the gods, is a major recurring character throughout many of Lucian's dialogues.^[89]

In his dialogue The Lover of Lies (Φιλοψευδὴς), Lucian satirizes belief in the supernatural and paranormal^[90] through a framing story in which the main narrator, a skeptic named Tychiades, goes to visit an elderly friend named Eukrates.^[91] At Eukrates's house, he encounters a large group of guests who have recently gathered together due to Eukrates suddenly falling ill.^[91] The other guests offer Eukrates a variety of folk remedies to help him recover.^[91] When Tychiades objects that such remedies do not work, the others all laugh at him^[91] and try to persuade him to believe in the supernatural by telling him stories, which grow increasingly ridiculous as the conversation progresses.^[91] One of the last stories they tell is "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", which the German playwright Goethe later adapted into a famous ballad.^[92][93]

Lucian frequently made fun of philosophers^[41] and no school was spared from his mockery.^[41] 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,^[94] each of whom attempts to persuade the customers to buy his philosophy.^[94] In The Banquet, or Lapiths, Lucian points out the hypocrisies of representatives from all the major philosophical schools.^[41] 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.^[41] Lucian was often particularly critical of people who pretended to be philosophers when they really were not^[41] and his dialogue The Runaways portrays an imposter Cynic as the antithesis of true philosophy.^[41] 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.^[95] In Icaromenippus, the Cynic philosopher Menippus fashions a set of wings for himself in imitation of the mythical Icarus and flies to Heaven,^[96] where he receives a guided tour from Zeus himself.^[97] 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.^[98] Nektyomanteia is a dialogue written in parallel to Icaromenippus in which, rather than flying to Heaven, Menippus descends to the underworld to consult the prophet Tiresias.^[99]

Lucian wrote numerous dialogues making fun of traditional Greek stories about the gods.^[41][100] His Dialogues of the Gods (Θεῶν Διάλογοι) consists of numerous short vignettes parodying a variety of the scenes from Greek mythology.^[101] The dialogues portray the gods as comically weak and prone to all the foibles of human emotion.^[100][41] Zeus in particular is shown to be a "feckless ruler" and a serial adulterer.^[102] Lucian also wrote several other works in a similar vein, including Zeus Catechized, Zeus Rants, and The Parliament of the Gods.^[41] Throughout all his dialogues, Lucian displays a particular fascination with Hermes, the messenger of the gods,^[89] who frequently appears as a major character in the role of an intermediary who travels between worlds.^[89] The Dialogues of the Courtesans is a collection of short dialogues involving various courtesans.^[103][104] This collection is unique as one of the only surviving works of Greek literature to mention female homosexuality.^[105] It is also unusual for mixing Lucian's characters from other dialogues with stock characters from New Comedy;^[106] over half of the men mentioned in Dialogues of the Courtesans are also mentioned in Lucian's other dialogues,^[106] but almost all of the courtesans themselves are characters borrowed from the plays of Menander and other comedic playwrights.^[106]

Treatises and letters

Statue of the snake-god Glycon, invented by the oraclemonger Alexander of Abonoteichus, whom Lucian satirizes in his treatise Alexander the False Prophet^[15]

Nabataean carving from c. 100 AD depicting the goddess Atargatis, the subject of Lucian's treatise On the Syrian Goddess^[44]

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.^[15] Though the account is satirical in tone,^[107] it seems to be a largely accurate report of the Glycon cult^[107] and many of Lucian's statements about the cult have been confirmed through archaeological evidence, including coins, statues, and inscriptions.^[107] Lucian describes his own meeting with Alexander in which he posed as a friendly philosopher,^[107] but, when Alexander invited him to kiss his hand, Lucian bit it instead.^[107] 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 the Christians.^[107]

Lucian's treatise On the Syrian Goddess is a detailed description of the cult of the Syrian goddess Atargatis at Hierapolis (now Manbij).^[44] It is written in a faux-Ionic Greek and imitates the ethnographic methodology of the Greek historian Herodotus,^[44] which Lucian elsewhere derides as faulty.^[44] 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.^[108] More recently, scholars have come to recognize the book as satirical and have restored its Lucianic authorship.^[108]

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.^[109] The anonymous narrator of the treatise initially seems to be a Greek Sophist,^[110] but, as the treatise progresses, he reveals himself to actually be a native Syrian.^[111] 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.^[44] 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 was Manbog and that the city was closely associated with the cults of Atargatis and Hadad.^[44] A Jewish rabbi later listed the temple at Hierapolis as one of the five most important pagan temples in the Near East.^[112]

Macrobii ("Long-Livers") is an essay about famous philosophers who lived for many years.^[113] It describes how long each of them lived, and gives an account of each of their deaths.^[113] In his treatises Teacher of Rhetoric and On Salaried Posts, Lucian criticizes the teachings of master rhetoricians.^[17] His treatise On Dancing is a major source of information about Greco-Roman dance.^[114] In it, he describes dance as an act of mimesis ("imitation")^[115] and rationalizes the myth of Proteus as being nothing more than an account of a highly skilled Egyptian dancer.^[114] He also wrote about visual arts in Portraits and On Behalf of Portraits.^[17] Lucian's biography of the philosopher Demonax eulogizes him as a great philosopher^[41] and portrays him as a hero of parrhesia ("boldness of speech").^[41] In his treatise, How to Write History, Lucian criticizes the historical methodology used by writers such as Herodotus and Ctesias,^[116] who wrote vivid and self-indulgent descriptions of events they had never actually seen.^[116] Instead, Lucian argues that the historian never embellish his stories and should place his commitment to accuracy above his desire to entertain his audience.^[117] He also argues the historian should remain absolutely impartial and tell the events as they really happened, even if they are likely to cause disapproval.^[117] Lucian names Thucydides as a specific example of a historian who models these virtues.^[117]

In his satirical letter Passing of Peregrinus (Περὶ τῆς Περεγρίνου Τελευτῆς), Lucian describes the death of the controversial Cynic philosopher Peregrinus Proteus,^[47] who had publicly immolated himself on a pyre at the Olympic Games of AD 165.^[47] The letter is historically significant because it preserves one of the earliest pagan evaluations of Christianity.^[118] In the letter, one of Lucian's characters delivers a speech ridiculing Christians for their perceived credulity and ignorance,^[119] but he also affords them some level of respect on account of their morality.^[119]

In the letter Against the Ignorant Book Collector, Lucian ridicules 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.^[120][121]

Pseudo-Lucian

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".^[122][123] The Ass (Λούκιος ἢ ῎Oνος) is probably 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.^[124] Amores is usually dated to the third or fourth centuries based on stylistic grounds.^[123]

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List of works by Lucian

List of works by Lucian

A list of works by Lucian, who wrote in Ancient Greek.

Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas and achievements of classical antiquity. It occurred after the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages and was associated with great social change. In addition to the standard periodization, proponents of a "long Renaissance" may put its beginning in the 14th century and its end in the 17th century.

A True Story

A True Story

A True Story, also translated as True History, is a long novella or short novel written in the second century AD by the Syrian author Lucian of Samosata. The novel is a satire of outlandish tales that had been reported in ancient sources, particularly those that presented fantastic or mythical events as if they were true. It is Lucian's best-known work.

Homer

Homer

Homer was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history.

Odyssey

Odyssey

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the Iliad, the poem is divided into 24 books. It follows the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the Trojan War. After the war, which lasted ten years, his journey lasted for ten additional years, during which time he encountered many perils and all his crewmates were killed. In his absence, Odysseus was assumed dead, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to contend with a group of unruly suitors who were competing for Penelope's hand in marriage.

Extraterrestrial life

Extraterrestrial life

Extraterrestrial life, colloquially referred to as alien life, is life that may occur outside of Earth and which did not originate on Earth. No extraterrestrial life has yet been conclusively detected, although efforts are underway. Such life might range from simple forms like prokaryotes to intelligent beings, possibly bringing forth civilizations that might be far more advanced than humankind. The Drake equation speculates about the existence of sapient life elsewhere in the universe. The science of extraterrestrial life is known as astrobiology.

Jules Verne

Jules Verne

Jules Gabriel Verne was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages extraordinaires, a series of bestselling adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). His novels, always well documented, are generally set in the second half of the 19th century, taking into account the technological advances of the time.

H. G. Wells

H. G. Wells

Herbert George Wells was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, history, popular science, satire, biography and autobiography. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and has been called the "father of science fiction."

Heracles

Heracles

Heracles, born Alcaeus or Alcides, was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon. He was a great-grandson and half-brother of Perseus, and similarly a half-brother of Dionysus. He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, the ancestor of royal clans who claimed to be Heracleidae (Ἡρακλεῖδαι), and a champion of the Olympian order against chthonic monsters. In Rome and the modern West, he is known as Hercules, with whom the later Roman emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian, often identified themselves. The Romans adopted the Greek version of his life and works essentially unchanged, but added anecdotal detail of their own, some of it linking the hero with the geography of the Central Mediterranean. Details of his cult were adapted to Rome as well.

Dionysus

Dionysus

In ancient Greek religion and myth, Dionysus is the god of the grape-harvest, wine making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre. The Romans called him Bacchus for a frenzy he is said to induce called baccheia. As Dionysus Eleutherios, his wine, music, and ecstatic dance free his followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subvert the oppressive restraints of the powerful. His thyrsus, a fennel-stem sceptre, sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey, is both a beneficent wand and a weapon used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents. Those who partake of his mysteries are believed to become possessed and empowered by the god himself.

Moon

Moon

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth. The Moon is a planetary-mass object with a differentiated rocky body, making it a satellite planet under the geophysical definitions of the term and larger than all known dwarf planets of the Solar System. It lacks any significant atmosphere, hydrosphere, or magnetic field. Its surface gravity is about one-sixth of Earth's at 0.1654 g, with Jupiter's moon Io being the only satellite in the Solar System known to have a higher surface gravity and density.

Fortunate Isles

Fortunate Isles

The Fortunate Isles or Isles of the Blessed were semi-legendary islands in the Atlantic Ocean, variously treated as a simple geographical location and as a winterless earthly paradise inhabited by the heroes of Greek mythology. The related idea of Brasil and other islands in Celtic mythology are sometimes conflated with the Greek sense of islands in the western Mediterranean: Sicily, the Aeolian Islands, the Aegadian Islands or other smaller islands of Sicily. Later on, the islands were said to lie in the Western Ocean near the encircling River Oceanus; Madeira, the Canary Islands, the Azores, Cape Verde, Bermuda, and the Lesser Antilles have sometimes been cited as possible matches.

Renaissance and Reformation

The Calumny of Apelles by Sandro Botticelli, based on a description of a painting by the Greek painter Apelles of Kos found in Lucian's ekphrasis On Calumny

Lucian's writings were mostly forgotten during the Middle Ages.^[125][126] The Suda, a tenth-century Byzantine encyclopedia, concludes that Lucian's soul is burning in Hell for his negative remarks about Christians in the Passing of Peregrinus.^[127] Lucian's writings were rediscovered during the Renaissance^[125][126] and almost immediately became popular with the Renaissance humanists.^[125][126] By 1400, there were just as many Latin translations of the works of Lucian as there were for the writings of Plato and Plutarch.^[125] By ridiculing plutocracy as absurd, Lucian helped facilitate one of Renaissance humanism's most basic themes.^[29] His Dialogues of the Dead were especially popular and were widely used for moral instruction.^[126] As a result of this popularity, Lucian's writings had a profound influence on writers from the Renaissance and the Early Modern period.^{[128][129][126]}

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.^[29] During the Protestant Reformation, Lucian provided literary precedent for writers making fun of Catholic clergy.^[29] Desiderius Erasmus's Encomium Moriae (1509) displays Lucianic influences.^[29] Perhaps 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.^{[130][131][132]}

Lucian's True Story inspired both Sir Thomas More's Utopia (1516)^[133] and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726).^[134] Sandro Botticelli's paintings The Calumny of Apelles and Pallas and the Centaur are both based on descriptions of paintings found in Lucian's works.^[129] Lucian's prose narrative Timon the Misanthrope was the inspiration for William Shakespeare's tragedy Timon of Athens^[133][135] and the scene from Hamlet with the gravediggers echoes several scenes from Dialogues of the Dead.^[133] Christopher Marlowe's famous verse "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships/And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" is a paraphrase of a quote from Lucian.^[136] Francis Bacon called Lucian a "contemplative atheist".^[29]

Early modern period

Monument commemorating Lucian of Samosata from Nordkirchen, Germany

Henry Fielding, the author of The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), owned a complete set of Lucian's writings in nine volumes.^[137] He deliberately imitated Lucian in his Journey from This World and into the Next^[137] and, in The Life and Death of Jonathan Wild, the Great (1743), he describes Lucian as "almost... like the true father of humour"^[137] and lists him alongside Miguel de Cervantes and Jonathan Swift as a true master of satire.^[137] In The Convent Garden Journal, Fielding directly states in regard to Lucian that he had modeled his style "upon that very author".^[137] Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, François Fénelon, Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, and Voltaire all wrote adaptations of Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead.^[138] According to Turner, Voltaire's Candide (1759) displays the characteristically Lucianic theme of "refuting philosophical theory by reality".^[29] Voltaire also wrote The Conversation between Lucian, Erasmus and Rabelais in the Elysian Fields,^[29] a dialogue in which he treats Lucian as "one of his masters in the strategy of intellectual revolution".^[29]

Denis Diderot drew inspiration from the writings of Lucian in his Socrates Gone Mad; or, the Dialogues of Diogenes of Sinope (1770)^[138] and his Conversations in Elysium (1780).^[138] Lucian appears as one of two speakers in Diderot's dialogue Peregrinus Proteus (1791), which was based on The Passing of Peregrinus.^[138] Lucian's True Story inspired Cyrano de Bergerac, whose writings later served as inspiration for Jules Verne.^[133] The German satirist Christoph Martin Wieland was the first person to translate the complete works of Lucian into German^[138] and he spent his entire career adapting the ideas behind Lucian's writings for a contemporary German audience.^[138] David Hume admired Lucian as a "very moral writer"^[29] and quoted him with reverence when discussing ethics or religion.^[29] Hume read Lucian's Kataplous or Downward Journey when he was on his deathbed.^[139][29] Herman Melville references Lucian in Chapter 5 of The Confidence-Man, Book 26 of Pierre, and Chapter 13 of Israel Potter.

Modern period

Thomas Carlyle's epithet "Phallus-Worship", which he used to describe the contemporary literature of French writers such as Honoré de Balzac and George Sand, was inspired by his reading of Lucian.^[140] Kataplous, or Downward Journey also served as the source for Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the Übermensch or Overman.^[139] Nietzsche declaration of a "new and super-human way of laughing – at the expense of everything serious!" echoes the exact wording of Tiresias's final advice to the eponymous hero of Lucian's dialogue Menippus: "Laugh a great deal and take nothing seriously."^[138] Professional philosophical writers since then have generally ignored Lucian,^[29] but Turner comments that "perhaps his spirit is still alive in those who, like Bertrand Russell, are prepared to flavor philosophy with wit."^[29]

Many 19th century and early 20th century classicists viewed Lucian's works negatively.^[127] The German classicist Eduard Norden admitted that he had, as a foolish youth, wasted time reading the works of Lucian,^[127] but, as an adult, had come to realize that Lucian was nothing more than an "Oriental without depth or character... who has no soul and degrades the most soulful language".^[127] Rudolf Helm, one of the leading scholars on Lucian in the early twentieth century, labelled Lucian as a "thoughtless Syrian" who "possesses none of the soul of a tragedian"^[127] and compared him to the poet Heinrich Heine, who was known as the "mockingbird in the German poetry forest".^[127] In his 1906 publication Lukian und Menipp ("Lucian and Menippus"), Helm argued that Lucian's claims of generic originality, especially his claim of having invented the comic dialogue, were actually lies intended to cover up his almost complete dependence on Menippus, whom he argued was the true inventor of the genre.^[141]

Lucian's Syrian identity received renewed attention in the early twenty-first century as Lucian became seen as what Richter calls "a sort of Second Sophistic answer to early twenty-first-century questions about cultural and ethnic hybridity".^[127] Richter states that Postcolonial critics have come to embrace Lucian as "an early imperial paradigm of the 'ethno-cultural hybrid.'"^[127]

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Calumny of Apelles (Botticelli)

Calumny of Apelles (Botticelli)

The Calumny of Apelles is a panel painting in tempera by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli. Based on the description of a lost ancient painting by Apelles, the work was completed in about 1494–95, and is now in the Uffizi, Florence.

Ekphrasis

Ekphrasis

The word ekphrasis, or ecphrasis, comes from the Greek for the written description of a work of art produced as a rhetorical or literary exercise, often used in the adjectival form ekphrastic. It is a vivid, often dramatic, verbal description of a visual work of art, either real or imagined. Thus, "an ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art." In ancient times, it might refer more broadly to a description of any thing, person, or experience. The word comes from the Greek ἐκ ek and φράσις phrásis, 'out' and 'speak' respectively, and the verb ἐκφράζειν ekphrázein, 'to proclaim or call an inanimate object by name'.

Middle Ages

Middle Ages

In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and transitioned into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages.

Hell

Hell

In religion and folklore, hell is a location or state in the afterlife in which evil souls are subjected to punitive suffering, most often through torture, as eternal punishment after death. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as eternal destinations, the biggest examples of which are Christianity and Islam, whereas religions with reincarnation usually depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations, as is the case in the dharmic religions. Religions typically locate hell in another dimension or under Earth's surface. Other afterlife destinations include heaven, paradise, purgatory, limbo, and the underworld.

Plato

Plato

Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. In Athens, Plato founded the Academy, a philosophical school where he taught the philosophical doctrines that would later became known as Platonism. Plato was a pen name derived from his nickname given to him by his wrestling coach – allegedly a reference to his physical broadness. According to Alexander of Miletus quoted by Diogenes of Sinope his actual name was Aristocles, son of Ariston, of the deme Collytus.

Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of illustrious Greeks and Romans, and Moralia, a collection of essays and speeches. Upon becoming a Roman citizen, he was possibly named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus.

Early modern Europe

Early modern Europe

Early modern Europe, also referred to as the post-medieval period, is the period of European history between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, roughly the late 15th century to the late 18th century. Historians variously mark the beginning of the early modern period with the invention of moveable type printing in the 1450s, the Fall of Constantinople and end of the Hundred Years’ War in 1453, the end of the Wars of the Roses in 1485, the beginning of the High Renaissance in Italy in the 1490s, the end of the Reconquista and subsequent voyages of Christopher Columbus to the Americas in 1492, or the start of the Protestant Reformation in 1517. The precise dates of its end point also vary and are usually linked with either the start of the French Revolution in 1789 or with the more vaguely defined beginning of the Industrial Revolution in late 18th century England.

Holy orders in the Catholic Church

Holy orders in the Catholic Church

The sacrament of holy orders in the Catholic Church includes three orders: bishops, priests, and deacons, in decreasing order of rank, collectively comprising the clergy. In the phrase "holy orders", the word "holy" means "set apart for a sacred purpose". The word "order" designates an established civil body or corporation with a hierarchy, and ordination means legal incorporation into an order. In context, therefore, a group with a hierarchical structure that is set apart for ministry in the Church.

In Praise of Folly

In Praise of Folly

In Praise of Folly, also translated as The Praise of Folly, is an essay written in Latin in 1509 by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam and first printed in June 1511. Inspired by previous works of the Italian humanist Faustino Perisauli De Triumpho Stultitiae, it is a satirical attack on superstitions, various traditions of European society, and on the Latin Church.

François Rabelais

François Rabelais

François Rabelais was a French Renaissance writer, physician, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He is primarily known as a writer of satire, of the grotesque, and of bawdy jokes and songs.

Pentalogy

Pentalogy

A pentalogy is a compound literary or narrative work that is explicitly divided into five parts. Although modern use of the word implies both that the parts are reasonably self-contained and that the structure was intended by the author, historically, neither was necessarily true: in fact, a pentalogia could be assembled by a later editor, just as Plotinus's Enneads were arranged in nines by Porphyry in order to create an overarching structure of six which would express the idea of perfection.

Gargantua and Pantagruel

Gargantua and Pantagruel

The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel is a pentalogy of novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais, telling the adventures of two giants, Gargantua and his son Pantagruel. The work is written in an amusing, extravagant, and satirical vein, features much erudition, vulgarity, and wordplay, and is regularly compared with the works of William Shakespeare and James Joyce. Rabelais was a polyglot, and the work introduced "a great number of new and difficult words [...] into the French language".

• The Works of Lucian from the Greek. Vol. I. Translated by Francklin, Thomas. London: T Cadell. 1780 – via Google Books.; volume II; volume III; volume IV.
• Lucian of Samosata from the Greek with the Comments and Illustrations of WIELAND and Others. Vol. I. Translated by Tooke, William. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown. 1820. Retrieved 22 January 2021 – via Internet Archive.; volume II.
• Lucian’s True History, with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley, William Strang, and J. B. Clark, privately printed in an edition of 251 copies, 1894.^[142]
• The Works of Lucian of Samosata. Complete with exceptions specified in the preface. Vol. I. Translated by Fowler, H. W.; Fowler, F. G. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1905.; volume II; volume III; volume IV.
• Lucian with an English translation (Loeb Classical Library), in 8 volumes: vols. 1–5 ed. Austin Morris Harmon (1913, 1915, 1921, 1925, 1936); vol. 6 ed. K. Kilburn (1959); vol. 7–8 ed. Matthew Donald Macleod (1961, 1967).
• Neil Hopkinson (ed.), Lucian: A Selection. Cambridge Greek and Latin Texts (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
• Lightfoot, Jane (2003). On the Syrian Goddess. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-925138-4.

Discover more about Editions related topics

Thomas Francklin

Thomas Francklin

Thomas Francklin was an English academic, clergyman, writer and dramatist

William Tooke

William Tooke

William Tooke was a British clergyman and historian of Russia.

Internet Archive

Internet Archive

The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge." It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, movies/videos, moving images, and millions of books. In addition to its archiving function, the Archive is an activist organization, advocating a free and open Internet. As of January 1, 2023, the Internet Archive holds over 36 million books and texts, 11.6 million movies, videos and TV shows and clips, 950 thousand software programs, 15 million audio files, 4.5 million images, 251 thousand concerts, and 780 billion web pages in the Wayback Machine.

Aubrey Beardsley

Aubrey Beardsley

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English illustrator and author. His black ink drawings were influenced by Japanese woodcuts, and depicted the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler. Beardsley's contribution to the development of the Art Nouveau and poster styles was significant despite his early death from tuberculosis. He is one of the important Modern Style figures.

William Strang

William Strang

William Strang was a Scottish painter and printmaker, notable for illustrating the works of Bunyan, Coleridge and Kipling.

Joseph Benwell Clark

Joseph Benwell Clark

Joseph Benwell Clark was an English painter, etcher, engraver in mezzotint and drypoint, and book illustrator.

Francis George Fowler

Francis George Fowler

Francis George Fowler (1871–1918), familiarly known as F. G. Fowler and sometimes Frank Fowler, was an English writer on English language, grammar and usage.

Loeb Classical Library

Loeb Classical Library

The Loeb Classical Library is a series of books originally published by Heinemann in London, but is currently published by Harvard University Press. The library contains important works of ancient Greek and Latin literature designed to make the text accessible to the broadest possible audience by presenting the original Greek or Latin text on each left-hand page, and a fairly literal translation on the facing page. The General Editor is Jeffrey Henderson, holder of the William Goodwin Aurelio Professorship of Greek Language and Literature at Boston University.

Austin Morris Harmon

Austin Morris Harmon

Austin Morris Harmon Ph.D., LL.D. was an American classical scholar. He published bilingual editions of Lucian's works in the Loeb Classical Library between 1913 and 1936 in a 5-volume series.

Neil Hopkinson

Neil Hopkinson

Neil Hopkinson was an English Hellenist. Educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, he served as a fellow and director of studies in Classics at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1983 until his death in 2021. He has been described as "one of the most influential commentators of his generation".

Jane Lightfoot

Jane Lightfoot

Jane Lucy Lightfoot is a British classical scholar. She is Professor of Greek Literature at the University of Oxford and a fellow of New College, Oxford.