55 Facts About Lucian

Everything that is known about Lucian's life comes from his own writings, which are often difficult to interpret because of his extensive use of sarcasm.

Lucian's works were wildly popular in antiquity, and more than eighty writings attributed to him have survived to the present day, a considerably higher quantity than for most other classical writers.

Lucian's most famous work is A True Story, a tongue-in-cheek satire against authors who tell incredible tales, which is regarded by some as the earliest known work of science fiction.

Lucian invented the genre of comic dialogue, a parody of the traditional Socratic dialogue.

Lucian wrote numerous satires making fun of traditional stories about the gods including The Dialogues of the Gods, Icaromenippus, Zeus Rants, Zeus Catechized, and The Parliament of the Gods.

Lucian often ridiculed public figures, such as the Cynic philosopher Peregrinus Proteus in his letter The Passing of Peregrinus and the fraudulent oracle Alexander of Abonoteichus in his treatise Alexander the False Prophet.

Lucian is not mentioned in any contemporary texts or inscriptions written by others and he is not included in Philostratus's Lives of the Sophists.

Lucian 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.

Lucian was born in the town of Samosata on the banks of the Euphrates on the far eastern outskirts of the Roman Empire.

Lucian soon proved to be poor at sculpting and ruined the statue he had been working on.

Lucian fell asleep and experienced a dream in which he was being fought over by the personifications of Statuary and Culture.

Lucian decided to listen to Culture and thus sought out an education.

Lucian 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".

The most prestigious universities of rhetoric were in Ephesus and Smyrna, but it is unlikely that Lucian could have afforded to pay the tuition at either of these schools.

Lucian travelled across the Empire, lecturing throughout Greece, Italy, and Gaul.

Lucian visited Samosata and stayed in the east for several years.

Lucian is recorded as having been in Antioch in either 162 or 163.

Lucian must have married at some point during his travels because in one of his writings, he mentions having a son at this point.

Lucian lived in Athens for around a decade, during which time he gave up lecturing and instead devoted his attention to writing.

For unknown reasons, Lucian stopped writing around 175 and began travelling and lecturing again.

Lucian was not known to be a member of any of the major philosophical schools.

Lucian was critical of Stoicism and Platonism, because he regarded them as encouraging superstition.

Nonetheless, at other times, Lucian writes approvingly of individual philosophies.

Lucian was skeptical of oracles, though he was by no means the only person of his time to voice such skepticism.

Lucian rejected belief in the paranormal, regarding it as superstition.

Lucian was particularly indebted to Menippus, a Cynic philosopher and satirist of the third century BC.

Lucian wrote an admiring biography of the philosopher Demonax, who was a philosophical eclectic, but whose ideology most closely resembled Cynicism.

Paul Turner observes that Lucian's Cynicus reads as a straightforward defense of Cynicism, but remarks that Lucian savagely ridicules the Cynic philosopher Peregrinus in his Passing of Peregrinus.

Lucian greatly admired Epicurus, whom he describes in Alexander the False Prophet as "truly holy and prophetic".

Lucian had a generally negative opinion of Herodotus and his historiography, which he viewed as faulty.

Lucian's writings were targeted towards a highly educated, upper-class Greek audience and make almost constant allusions to Greek cultural history, leading the classical scholar R Bracht Branham to label Lucian's highly sophisticated style "the comedy of tradition".

Lucian was one of the earliest novelists in Western civilization.

Lucian 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.

Lucian then describes life on the Moon and how it is different from life on Earth.

The book ends abruptly with Lucian stating that their future adventures will be described in the upcoming sequels, a promise which a disappointed scholiast described as "the biggest lie of all".

The prolaliai to his Dialogues of the Courtesans suggests that Lucian acted out his dialogues himself as part of a comedic routine.

Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead 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.

Homer's nekyia describes transgressors against the gods being punished for their sins, but Lucian embellished this idea by having cruel and greedy persons be punished.

Lucian frequently made fun of philosophers and no school was spared from his mockery.

Lucian was often particularly critical of people who pretended to be philosophers when they really were not and his dialogue The Runaways portrays an imposter Cynic as the antithesis of true philosophy.

Lucian wrote numerous dialogues making fun of traditional Greek stories about the gods.

Lucian wrote several other works in a similar vein, including Zeus Catechized, Zeus Rants, and The Parliament of the Gods.

Lucian describes his own meeting with Alexander in which he posed as a friendly philosopher, but, when Alexander invited him to kiss his hand, Lucian bit it instead.

Lucian's treatise On the Syrian Goddess is a detailed description of the cult of the Syrian goddess Atargatis at Hierapolis.

Lucian's treatise On Dancing is a major source of information about Greco-Roman dance.

Lucian wrote about visual arts in Portraits and On Behalf of Portraits.

Lucian argues the historian should remain absolutely impartial and tell the events as they really happened, even if they are likely to cause disapproval.

The Ass is probably a summarized version of a story by Lucian, and contains largely the same basic plot elements as The Golden Ass of Apuleius, but with fewer inset tales and a different ending.

Lucian is mentioned only sporadically between his death and the ninth century, even among pagan authors.

Lucian is made a character in the sixth-century letters of Aristaenetus.

Lucian was reassessed positively in the ninth century by the first generation of Byzantine humanists, such as Leo the Mathematician, Basil of Adada and Photios.

The authors of the Suda concludes that Lucian's soul is burning in Hell for his negative remarks about Christians in the Passing of Peregrinus.

Lucian was perhaps the only ancient author openly hostile to Christianity to be received positively by the Byzantines.

Lucian was regarded as not merely a pagan, but an atheist.

Lucian appears as one of two speakers in Diderot's dialogue Peregrinus Proteus, which was based on The Passing of Peregrinus.