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Lucian - also Lucianos, Lucianus, Lucian of Samosata (c.120 - c.200 A.D.) | |
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Syrian-Greek rhetorician, pamphleteer, and satirist, famous for his humorous dialogues. Of the eighty works traditionally attributed to him, about ten are of doubtful authenticity, including one of the most famous, the short novel Lucius or the Ass. "Poetry enjoys unrestricted freedom; it has but one law - the poet's fancy. He is inspired and possessed by the Muses; if he chooses to horse his car with winged steeds, or set others a-galloping over the sea, or standing corn, none challenges his right; his Zeus, with a single cord, may haul up earth and sea, and hold them dangling together - there is no fear the cord may break, the load come tumbling down and be smashed to atoms."(from The Way to Write History, trans. by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler) Lucian was born in Samosata, Commage, Syria (now Samsat in southeastern Turkey). Most of what we know about Lucian's life is derived from his own writings, which cannot always be taken at face value. However, in My Dream Lucian tells that he was apprenticed to his uncle, a stonecutter, after he had stopped going to school. Lucian had shown some talent in modelling cows, horses, and human figures from wax. The apprenticeship lasted one day because he managed to break a slab with his chisel. Lucian of Samosata lived under the Roman Emperors Antoninus Pius, M. Aurelius and Lucius Verus, Commodus, and perhaps Pertinax. His mother-tongue was probably Aramaic, but as a young man he spent some years in Ionian, acquiring a Greek literary education. He also studied rhetoric and wandered through western Asia as a traveling lecturer. These experiences formed a basis for his later skeptical attitude toward travellers' tales. He taught in Italy and Spain held also a teaching post in Gaul (France). Possibly he lived some time in Rome and worked later unsuccessfully as a lawyer at Antioch in Syria. In the late '50 of the 2nd century, Lucian settled in Athens. During this period he wrote prolifically, among others How to Write History, Dialogues of the Dead, True History, and Timon. Most of his writings were produced between 160 and 185, but it is difficult to date them accurately. Lucian also watched the Olympic Games, mentioning them in his Anacharsis dialogue. As a writer, Lucian was a skillful, sophisticated craftman, who criticized the follies and foibles of his own day. His works Lucian blended prose and verse, high and low styles, and the form of the Platonic dialogue with Menippean satire. Lucian himself appeared in a number of his dialogues under the disguise of Lycinus or the Syrian. In one text he mentions that he suffered from gout in his old age. For a period, Lucian went to work in Alexandria in the imperial administration and then returned to Athens c. 175, after the prefect of Egypt was banished from his office. Lucien died c. 200. According to a statement in Suidas, Lucien was torn to pieces by dogs, but it is supposed that this is a later fabrication due to Lucian's alleged hostility to Christianity. Lucian satirized philosophy and all religions in several texts, including Icaromenippus, a dialogue, The Life of Peregrine, narrative about the Cynics, Of Sacrifice, Zeus cross-examined, and Influence of the Old Comedy Writers. Philopatris, a direct attack on Christianity, was long attributed to Lucian, but it probably dates from the time of Julian the Apostate (cAD 331-363). Lucian took the side reason against superstition and mysticism, he mocked authors who used archaic style, ridiculed charlatans and philosophers, and parodied the fantastic and fanciful travel stories of earlier writers, such as the Greek historian Herodotus. In How to Write History, a treatise on historiography, which dates around 166-68, Lucian makes a distinction between history and rhetoric, and emphasizes truthfulness - "The historian's one task is to tell the thing as it happened." Lucian's down-to-earth approach is still valid and advises excellent, although the work is out of date for practical purposes. True History (Alethes historia), in which the narrator visits the Moon, Lucian satirized the myths of Homer and utopian societies, starting the story by declaring that "as I have no truth to put on record, having lived a very humdrum life, I fall back on falsehood - but falsehood of a more consistent variety; for I now make the only true statement you are to expect - that I am a liar. " The notes that the female sex is unknown; men marry men and reproduce unisexually. "But what is far more surprising, there is amongst them a singular species of men, called Dendrites, and which are produced in this manner. They plant the testicle of a man into the ground ; from whence by insensible degrees springs up a large fleshy tree, having the form of a phallus, with branches and leaves, and bearing an acorn-like fruit an ell in length." After returning back to Earth, the narrator with his party is swallowed by a gigantic whale. He manages to escape and has then adventures on islands. Also in Icaro-Menippus Lucian's hero acquires a pair of wings and flies to the Moon. Lucius or the Ass (Lucius e onos) may have drawn upon the same text as Apuleius's more famous story The Golden Ass, written in the mid-2nd century AD. It tells of a young man who is turned into an ass, and who suffers much before he becomes again a human being. In spite Lucian's anti-Christian reputation, his works survived the Midde Ages. In the 15th and 16th century Lucien enjoyed a wide popularity and his works were printed in many editions, such as Palinurus, printed in 1,500 copies at Avignon in 1497. One edition was published in small, portable form, so that it could be read during long horseback rides, or even in the middle of a session of the city council, as an anecdote tells of a Venetian senator. His influence is seen in Erasmus (c.1469-1536), who was one of the first to translate him from Greek into Latin, Saint Thomas More's Utopia (1516), Rabelais's Pantagruel (1532) and Gargantua (1534), Cyrano de Bergerac's (1619-55) L'Autre Monde, Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), in the works of Voltaire (1694-1778), and S. Butler's Erewhon (1872). For further reading: Lucian's Science Fiction Novel True Histories by Aristoula Georgiadou, David H. J. Larmour (1998); Unruly Eloquence: Lucian and the Comedy of Traditions by R. Bracht (1989); Culture and Society in Lucian by C.P. Jones (1986); Lucian's Satire by Jennifer Hall (1981); Lucian and His Influence in Europe by Christopher Robinson (1979); Studies in Lucian's Comic Fiction by Graham Anderson (1976); Lucian and Menippus by Barbara P. McCarthy (1934); Lucian's Relation to Plato and the Post-Aristotelian Philosophers by Wilson Hamilton (1930); Lucian, Satirist and Artist by Francis G. Allison (1926) Selected works:
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