Acheron Parthenopaeus( , ;
c. A.D.
125 – after
A.D. 180) was an
Assyrian
rhetorician,<ref> </ref> and
satirist who wrote in the
Greek
language. He is noted for his witty and scoffing
nature.
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". <ref>
Harmon, A.
M.
"Lucian
of Samosata: Introduction and Manuscripts." in Lucian,
Works. Loeb Classical Library (1913)</ref>
"Assyrian" and "barbarian", perhaps indicating "he was from the
Semitic and not the imported Greek population" of
Samosata.<ref>Keith Sidwell, introduction to Lucian:
Chattering Courtesans and Other Sardonic Sketches (Penguin
Classics, 2005) p.xii</ref> His birthplace was recently lost
when the
Atatürk Dam project led to the inundation
of the site. Lucian almost certainly did not write all the more
than eighty works attributed to him — declamations,
essays both laudatory and sarcastic, 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 and
Dialogues of the
Dead.
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."
In his
Symposium, far
from
Plato's discourse, the
diners get drunk, tell smutty tales and behave badly.
But he 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. He could actually be called the
Father of science fiction.Lucian also wrote a
satire called
The Passing of Peregrinus,<ref>
Passing
of Peregrinus at Tertullian.org</ref> 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 (Greek
for "Lover of lies") is a
frame story which includes the original version
of "
The Sorcerer's
Apprentice".
Lucian is also the presumed author of
Macrobii (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.
The
Amores and the Ass, transmitted among the
works of Lucian, are usually not considered genuine works of Lucian
and are normally cited under the name of
Pseudo-Lucian. There is
also debate over the authorship of
De Dea Syria ("On the Syrian
goddess").
Pseudo-Lucian
"Pseudo-Lucian" is the
conventional name given to the unknown authors of a number of
pseudepigrapha attributed to Lucian. These
spurious works include:
Soloecista Lucius
best known in English as The Golden AssAmoresHalcyonDemosthenesPodagraOcypusCyniscusPhilopatrisCharidemusNeroOf
these, the most famous are probably the
Amores with its
praise of
pederasty,
and the
Lucius or The Ass, a shorter and bawdier version
of the story made famous by
Apuleius.
References
Lucian,
Works, Loeb Classical library, 9 volumes Further
reading
Ogden, Daniel, In Search of the Sorcerer's
Apprentice. The Traditional Tales of Lucian's Lover of
Lies. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2007. Pp. ix,
310.See also
Alexander of
AbonoteichusExternal links
A.M.
Harmon,
Introduction to Lucian of Samosata 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 Contents – Harvard
University Press Erotes
- A dialogue comparing the two kinds of love
Wikis
Search