SELECTED DIALOGUES
LUCIAN (born about AD 120, died sometime after 180) was the most enduringly enjoyable and influential of ancient comic writers, though Greek was probably his adopted language. He was born at Samosata on the Euphrates, and he seems to have spent his early years as a pleader and travelling lecturer in Asia Minor, and subsequently in Athens and Gaul. Later he gave up his oratorical career and turned to literature, where he established himself as a major satiric writer. Towards the end of his life he had a minor government post in Egypt, but the place and year of his death are unknown. His main originality and his lasting importance in the world of literature were in the development of the comic dialogue as a technique of satire. He achieved this by adapting the long established philosophical dialogue and using it primarily as a vehicle for humour, thus offering inspiring models to numerous subsequent writers in many languages. His favourite targets were false philosophers, sham prophets, and pseudo-historians (How to Write History); but he respects and praises decent, honest men; he enjoys telling stories (The Lovers of Lies); and his most famous piece (A True History) is an extended piece of narrative fantasy – an important departure from his favourite dialogue form.
C. D. N. COSTA is Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of Greek Fictional Letters (Oxford, 2002).