Lucian

Lucian (born 120 ce, Samosata, Commagene, Syria [now Samsat, Tur.]—died after 180, Athens [Greece]) was an ancient Greek rhetorician, pamphleteer, and satirist.

One is entirely dependent on Lucian’s writings for information about his life, but he says little about himself—and not all that he says is to be taken seriously. Moreover, since the chronology of his works is very obscure, the events of his life can be reconstructed only in broad outline, and the order and dating of these events are matters of mere probability.

As a boy Lucian showed a talent for making clay models and was therefore apprenticed to his uncle, a sculptor. They quarreled, and Lucian soon left home for western Asia Minor, in whose cities he acquired a Greek literary education. He became particularly familiar with the works of Homer, Plato, and the comic poets. So successfully did he master the Greek language (he was raised speaking Aramaic) and culture that he began a career as a public speaker, traveling from city to city giving model speeches and public lectures to display his eloquence and probably also pleading in court. After touring Greece he went to Italy and then to Gaul (modern France). To this period of his life belong many of his surviving declamations on mythological and other stock themes and his rhetorical prologues.

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An Odyssey of Grecian Literature

Lucian was evidently successful as a rhetorician, but he seems never to have reached the first rank in his profession. It may have been disillusion with the emptiness of his career that led him to give up his wandering life and settle in Athens in the late ’50s of the 2nd century. In Athens he was able to extend his knowledge of Greek literature and thought far beyond anything required of a rhetorician.

In this early Athenian period Lucian gave up public speaking and took to writing critical and satirical essays on the intellectual life of his time, either in the form of Platonic dialogues or, in imitation of Menippus, in a mixture of prose and verse. Lucian’s writings apparently sustained the reputation he had won as a public speaker.

Thanks to the patronage of his Roman friends, he obtained a lucrative post in Alexandria as archistator, a kind of chief court usher. After some years he returned to Athens and took up public speaking again. The date and circumstances of his death are unknown.

Of the 80 prose works traditionally attributed to Lucian, about 10 are spurious. The writings of Lucian are outstanding for their mordant and malicious wit, embodying a sophisticated and often embittered critique of the shams and follies of the literature, philosophy, and intellectual life of his day. Lucian satirized almost every aspect of human behavior. One of his favorite topics is the human failure to realize the transience of greatness and wealth. This Cynic theme permeates his dialogue Charon, while in the Dialogues of the Dead and other pieces, the Cynic philosopher Menippus is made to jibe at kings and aristocrats, reminding them how much more they have lost by death than he.

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In Timon Lucian recounts how Timon, after impoverishing himself by his generosity and becoming a hermit, is restored to wealth, once again to be surrounded by toadies to whom he gives short shrift. Other human frailties Lucian satirized are the folly of bargaining with the gods by sacrifices, crying over spilt milk when bereaved, and the love of telling or listening to strange tales. In True History, which starts by warning the reader that its events are completely untrue and impossible, Lucian describes a voyage that starts on the sea, continues in the skies, and includes visits to the belly of a whale and to heaven and hell; the tale is a satirical parody of all those fantastic travelers’ tales that strain human credulity. In Nigrinus Lucian makes a Platonic philosopher censure the evils of Rome, contrasting the pretentiousness, lack of culture, and avarice of the Romans with the quiet, cultured life of the Athenians.

Lucian is particularly critical of those whom he considers impostors. In Alexander Lucian attacks the popular magician and wonder-working charlatan Alexander the Paphlagonian and gives an account of the various hoaxes by which Alexander was amassing wealth as a priest of Asclepius and a seer. Another contemporary personage dubbed by Lucian as an impostor was the Cynic philosopher Peregrinus, who committed public suicide by setting fire to himself on a pyre at the Olympic Games of ad 165.

Lucian regarded the worst charlatans of all to be those philosophers who failed to practice what they preached. Banquet gives an amusing account of an imaginary wedding feast given by a patron of the arts. Among the guests are representatives of every philosophical school, who all behave outrageously and start fighting over delicacies to take home when the party comes to an end. Hypocritical philosophers are also attacked in Fisher, in which the founders of the philosophical schools return to life to indict Lucian for writing The Auction of Lives, which was itself a lighthearted work in which Zeno, Epicurus, and others are auctioned by Hermes in the underworld but fetch next to nothing. Lucian’s defense is that he was attacking not the founders of the schools but their present unworthy successors. The philosophers acquit Lucian and call to trial their modern disciples, who refuse to have their lives examined until Lucian “fishes” for them from the Acropolis using a bait of gold and figs. He soon has a fine catch of philosophers, who are renounced by the founders of the schools and hurled to their deaths from the Acropolis.

Lucian follows the lead of Xenophanes, Plato, and others also in complaining about the absurd beliefs concerning the Olympian gods. Thus the discreditable love affairs of Zeus with mortal women play a prominent part in Dialogues of the Gods, and in Zeus Confuted and Tragic Zeus the leader of the gods is powerless to intervene on earth and prove his omnipotence to coldly skeptical Cynic and Epicurean philosophers. Lucian’s interest in philosophy was basically superficial, however, and his attitude to philosophical studies is best seen in Banquet, where, after noting how much worse the philosophers are behaving than the ordinary guests, he cannot help reflecting that book learning is worthless if it does not improve one’s conduct.

Lucian’s best work in the field of literary criticism is his treatise How to Write History. In this work he stresses the impartiality, detachment, and rigorous devotion to truth that characterize the ideal historian. He also comments on the ideal historical style and provides amusing descriptions of contemporary historians who imitate Thucydides by introducing plagues and funeral orations into their narratives. Less attractive are his attacks on contemporary rhetoricians. His Teacher of Orators contains ironical advice on how to become a successful orator by means of claptrap and impudence, while in Word-Flaunter he attacks a contemporary rhetorician who is excessively fond of using an archaic and recondite vocabulary.

Lucian’s primary literary models for his works were the satires of Menippus, which mocked institutions, ideas, and conventions in a mixture of prose and verse. But Lucian improved on the Menippean satire by creating his own harmonious blend of Platonic dialogue and comic fantasy, and he raised it to the level of art by his broad, fluent, and seemingly effortless command of the Attic Greek language and literary style. The only thing that had real value in his eyes and that provided him with a standard of judgment was classical Greek literature. In this turning toward a half-imaginary, idealized past, Lucian was at one with his age. His own classicizing style served as a model for writers of the later Roman Empire and for the Byzantine period.