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Lucian seems to have been the Kurt Von­negut of the Roman World, pok­ing fun at philoso­phers and the clas­sics of Greek lit­er­a­ture with a cheer­ful cyn­i­cism. Though he was an Assyr­i­an from Mesopotamia, liv­ing in the sec­ond cen­tu­ry A.D., he wrote in Clas­si­cal Greek (the equiv­a­lent of some­one today writ­ing in Eliz­a­bethan Eng­lish). His most famous work is the True His­to­ry, some­times list­ed as the first sci­ence fic­tion sto­ry, since it incor­po­rates a trip to the moon and the sun, and an inter­plan­e­tary war. But it’s real­ly a shag­gy-dog sto­ry intend­ed to spoof the creduli­ty of Homer and Herodotus. The nar­ra­tor repeat­ed­ly tells you some­thing absurd, then says he won’t tell you anoth­er, more absurd detail because you won’t believe him. It employs tech­niques of farce and bur­lesque lat­er per­fect­ed by Baron Mün­chausen and Mark Twain. Lucius the Ass, the attri­bu­tion of which is occa­sion­al­ly ques­tioned, is notice­ably dif­fer­ent in style, and con­tains pas­sages that are obvi­ous­ly intend­ed to be read as porn. The same sto­ry (the hero is trans­formed into a don­key: trou­ble fol­lows) was also told by Apuleius. It’s inter­est­ing in that it draws atten­tion to the suf­fer­ing of an ani­mal, some­thing to which most Roman writ­ers were obliv­i­ous. Most of the oth­er pieces are com­ic dia­logues in which the Gods are spoofed in all-too-human terms. Lucian seems to have con­sid­ered all reli­gion char­la­tanism, and did not have much good to say about philoso­phers, either. Chris­tians are sat­i­rized in The Death of Pere­gri­nus. The auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal My Dream reveals that a stone-mason’s son from a back­wa­ter part of the Empire could edu­cate him­self into a suc­cess. Lucian was able to set­tle down and write spoofs after a career as a lec­tur­er that took him across the Empire. A mod­ern read­er with a rou­tine expo­sure to Greek mythol­o­gy will get at least half of Lucian’s allu­sions, though not, of course, his puns. This anthol­o­gy con­tains less than half of his known works.

con­tains:

17114. (Lionel Cas­son) Intro­duc­tion [pref­ace]
17115. (Lucian of Samosa­ta) My Dream [Περὶ τοῦ Ἐνυπνίου ἤτοι Βίος Λουκιανοῦ; Somnium]
17116. [2] (Lucian of Samosa­ta) A True Sto­ry [Ἀληθῶν διηγημάτων; Ver­ae Historiae]
[a por­tion read at 3786, and a dif­fer­ent trans­la­tion of full ver­sion read at 4705]
17117. (Lucian of Samosa­ta) Lucius, the Ass [Λούκιος ἣ Ὄνος; Asi­nus] [attr. to Lucian contested]
17118. (Lucian of Samosa­ta) Dia­logues of the Gods [Θεῶν Διάλογοι;Dialogi Deorum]
17119. (Lucian of Samosa­ta) Dia­logues of the Sea-Gods [Ἐνάλιοι Διάλογοι ; Dialo­gi Marini]
17120. (Lucian of Samosa­ta) Prometheus [Προμηθεύς]
17121. (Lucian of Samosa­ta) Zeus the Opera Star [Ζεὺς Τραγῳδός; Zeus Tragoedus]
17122. (Lucian of Samosa­ta) A Voy­age to the Under­world [Κατάπλους ἣ Τύραννος; Cataplus]
17123. (Lucian of Samosa­ta) Dia­logues of the Dead [Νεκρικοὶ Διάλογοι; Dialo­gi Mortuorum]
17124. (Lucian of Samosa­ta) Charon [Χάρων ἣ Ἐπισκοποῦντες]
17125. (Lucian of Samosa­ta) Tim­on [Τίμων]
17126. (Lucian of Samosa­ta) Alexan­der the Quack Prophet [Ἀλέξανδρος ἣ Ψευδόμαντις]
17127. (Lucian of Samosa­ta) Dia­logues of the Cour­te­sans [Ἑταιρικοὶ Διάλογοι; Dialo­gi Meretricii]
17128. (Lucian of Samosa­ta) Philoso­phies for Sale [Βίων Πρᾶσις ; Vitarum Auctio]
17129. (Lucian of Samosa­ta) The Fish­er­man [Ἀναβιοῦντες ἣ Ἁλιεύς ; Piscator]
17130. (Lucian of Samosa­ta) The Death of Peregrinus[Περὶ τῆς Περεγρίνου Τελευτῆς ; De Morte Peregrini]