Lucian

Roman orator

• Born: c. 120
• Birthplace: Samosata, Commagene, Syria (now Samsat, Turkey)
• Died: c. 180
• Place of death: Probably Egypt

Lucian turned the philosophical dialogue into a form for satirizing ideas and manners. Lucianic satire became a mainstay of European literature in the Renaissance.

Early Life

Almost nothing is recorded about the life of Lucian (LEW-shuhn), outside his own works. Because most of these are satires, full of topical allusions and semiautobiographical asides, readers must be cautious before accepting the claims he makes. By his own account, Lucian was born in Samosata (modern Samsat) on the Euphrates River. It was a strategic point in the Roman province of Syria but far from the centers of culture. His father was a middle-class citizen, poor enough to suffer the tedium of life at the edge of the Roman Empire but wealthy enough to send his son to school.

Lucian left school for a while to apprentice with his uncle, a successful stonecutter and sculptor. His master beat him, however, and Lucian thought again about the value of education. He was good at Greek, the language of learning and commerce in the eastern part of the Roman world, and he developed an elegant prose style. In conversation, he may have had a provincial accent—he may have spoken a Semitic language at home—but in writing, he showed exceptional purity.

Lucian’s training qualified him to work as a public speaker—also called a rhetor (the Greek word) or an orator (the Latin word). Citizens who took a case to the law courts, or who had to defend themselves, would hire an orator who knew the finer points of law and who could argue their cases in memorable language with a voice that would carry in a large public gathering. As his reputation grew, Lucian began to give public performances of his oratorical skills, which included the ability to improvise on a theme, to speak eloquently, and to entertain large, paying crowds. He says he was a great success, but he made his appearances on the fringes of the Roman Empire—in Ionia (modern Turkey) and Gaul (modern France) rather than Athens or Alexandria—and no other orators referred to him. Several of his early orations survive, including a speech in praise of a fly and two seriocomic defenses of a tyrant named Phalaris and the officials at the oracle of Delphi who accepted the tyrant’s bribe. When Lucian was approximately forty, he stopped traveling and began a new career as a writer of satires.

Life’s Work

Having made his fortune as an orator, Lucian retired to Athens and enrolled in the school of the Stoic philosopher Demonax. He studied philosophy during a great revival of interest in ancient Greek thought known as the Second Sophistic. He became acquainted with the leading ideas of all the philosophical schools, including the Cynics and the Epicureans. He may have called himself a philosopher, but the main thing he learned was the dialogue form developed by Plato (427-347 b.c.e.). In such works as the Symposion (c. 388-368 b.c.e.; Symposium, 1701), Plato used dialogue and other dramatic devices to voice philosophical ideas—and to challenge them. In Lucian’s Symposion (The Carousal, 1684), the ideas are used for comic effect. Lucian always goes for the laugh.

Lucian was not the first to adapt the philosophical dialogue for satiric purposes. A Cynic named Menippus developed the satiric dialogue a century after Plato’s death. Menippus called himself a dog, for he wrote biting satires, and Lucian used him as his alter ego or persona. The Nekrikoi dialogoi (Dialogues of the Dead, 1684) followed Menippus into the underworld and recorded the questions he put to the gods of the dead and the heroes of old. There were conversations between the Greek and Trojan heroes Ajax and Agamemnon; between Philip of Macedon and his son, Alexander the Great; among Alexander and the general Hannibal and the Cynic philosopher Diogenes; and between Diogenes and the comic dramatist Crates.

Lucian’s dialogues have survived in several collections. Much as he satirized popular views of heroes and heroism in the Dialogues of the Dead, he satirized religious beliefs and practices in the Theōn dialogoi (Dialogues of the Gods, 1684), calling attention to the artifices of a state-sponsored revival of the Olympian religion. Greek philosophers back to Socrates (c. 470-399 b.c.e.) had questioned the morality of the Olympian gods. Lucian did not raise serious objections, though; he was too busy having fun, and he was prepared to challenge the sobersided philosophers.

One of Lucian’s longest dialogues, Bion Prasis (Philosophies for Sale, 1684), put the famous philosophers of Greece in the marketplace, where each one hawked his wares. Philosophers are supposed to be above all that, but in fact they competed fiercely for private students as well as for positions in the best towns and schools. If anything, the competition grew fiercer during the Second Sophistic. Lucian knew how to expose their rivalries. His philosophers in the dialogue, like the pedants in comedies, are their own worst enemies. They unwittingly reveal their human weaknesses.

Eventually, Lucian’s savings gave out, and he had to perform in public to support himself. It was common for readers to perform Plato’s dialogues as minidramas, and it seems likely that Lucian performed his own dialogues, perhaps doing all the voices himself. (Most dialogues are short skits that would take only five or ten minutes to perform.) He also used elements from the old Attic comedy of Aristophanes (c. 450-c. 385 b.c.e.). For example, his Hetairikoi dialogoi (Dialogues of the Courtesans, 1684) presented comic scenes that might arise among prostitutes and their clients. Although Lucian wrote down the dialogues—perhaps for sale to members of the audience—he probably improvised extensively. Indeed, his dialogues may remind modern readers of the sometimes improvisational comedy associated with such television shows as Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Saturday Night Live.

Lucian traveled again, reprising his success as a public speaker who could improvise something to say on any topic for any occasion. He also tried his hand at a new literary form, the prose romance. Two stories attributed to him are among the first forerunners of the novel. Alēthon Diēgēmaton (A True History, 1634) tells the outrageous story of his journey to the Moon. It is the first in a series of imaginary travels that includes Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), and Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872). Loukios e Onos (Lucius: Or, The Ass, 1684) is a story of a young man’s transformation into an ass. It may not be Lucian’s work, however, and at any rate it became famous only in the extended Latin reworking, Metamorphoses (second century; The Golden Ass, 1566) by a contemporary, Lucius Madura (c. 125-170).

Lucian says he married, but he says nothing about his wife nor does he mention children. Presumably, he traveled alone. Occasionally, he sought a permanent position. Perhaps it was at this time that he applied for a post as the public speaking teacher in a Greek-speaking city, a well-paid position in the civil service. He was not successful and lampooned the new teacher in the satiric speech, Rhētorōn didaskalos (A Professor of Public Speaking, 1684). Lucian traveled through Italy and into Egypt, where he found work as a public official in the law courts. He was still writing dialogues, and he described himself as an elder statesman. While in Egypt he died, in relative obscurity, at about the age of sixty.

Lucian’s contemporaries and near-contemporaries probably thought of him as a clever entertainer who was also a bit of a braggart and clown, rather than as a serious philosopher. They probably regarded his writings as “low” exercises in prose satire and comedy rather than “high” examples of poetic epic and drama. They liked his works enough to preserve a great many of them—some eighty works attributed to Lucian survive in some twelve dozen manuscripts—but they did not mention him in histories of philosophy and literature. Ironically, the works of Lucian’s model Menippus have not survived, though the name appeared often enough in ancient works on literature. The type of satire that Lucian wrote—the tough intellectual dialogue, full of gossip and farce—is most commonly known today as “Menippian” satire and less frequently as “Lucianic.” Very occasionally, it is called Varronian after the Latin writer Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27 b.c.e.), who modeled his satires on those of Menippus.

Some scholars think that Lucian may have known other great writers of Greek, including the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (121-180 c.e.), but the emperor was a true Stoic and would have preferred Lucian’s prose style to his sense of humor. There is more reason to think that Lucian influenced the emperor Julian the Apostate (331-363 c.e.), who wrote a Menippian satire about the Caesars. Julian, though, attempted a last revival of the Olympian religion—for which he became known as “the Apostate”—and could not have approved of Lucian’s levity in the Dialogues of the Gods.

Significance

With the revival of interest in Greek culture during the Renaissance, Lucian’s writings caught the interest of such humanist scholars as Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1468-1536). Soon they were translated into Latin and the modern European languages. One of the first printed books in Germany was a Latin translation of Lucian, Or, The Ass, printed in Augsburg c. 1477. One of the favorite books of Renaissance scholars was a Latin translation of selected dialogues made by Erasmus, who imitated Lucian’s style in the celebrated Moriae Encomium, 1511 (The Praise of Folly, 1549). Erasmus’s friend Sir Thomas More (c. 1478-1535) translated four dialogues into English and showed Lucian’s influence in De Optimo Reipublicae Statu, deque Nova Insula Utopia (1516; Utopia, 1551), which used the dialogue form to tell of an imaginary voyage. The religious reformer Martin Luther scolded Erasmus for translating such an irreligious, indeed anti-Christian, author, but Luther was in the minority.

Lucian has influenced many other writers of English, from Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400) to Ben Jonson (1573-1637) and Henry Fielding (1707-1754). His influence is also apparent in the works of French writers from François Rabelais (c. 1494-1553) to Voltaire (1694-1778). The literary critic Northrop Frye discussed Lucian and the “Menippian” satire in Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), one of the most influential books of literary theory to appear in the twentieth century. Frye saw this form of satire persisting in such unlikely places as The Complete Angler, by Izaak Walton (1653), and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll (1865). Frye suggested replacing the rather cumbersome term “Menippian satire” with the word “anatomy” and so placed his own book, with all its clever comments on the classics, within the tradition of Lucian. The writer who was almost forgotten by his contemporaries has thus become an important name in the history of European literature.

Bibliography

Branham, R. Bracht. Unruly Eloquence: Lucian and the Comedy of Traditions. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989. Discusses Lucian’s relation to Epicurean philosophy and to comic traditions. Emphasizes the role of laughter in a successful life.

Branham, R. Bracht, and Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé, eds. The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Collection of essays examines the ethical, social, and cultural practices inspired by the Cynics. Includes introduction, appendices, index, and annotated bibliography.

Gay, Peter. The Bridge of Criticism: Dialogues Among Lucian, Erasmus, and Voltaire on the Enlightenment. New York: Harper, 1970. Written by an influential historian, this book shows how the satiric tradition has contributed to the freedom of thought.

Highet, Gilbert. The Anatomy of Satire. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967. A history of satire, written by a great classicist. Offers a good introduction to the Menippian satire written by Lucian.

Jones, C. P. Culture and Society in Lucian. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. A careful study of social satire in Lucian’s dialogues. Discusses his historical context and his comments on the writing of history.

Payne, F. Anne. Chaucer and Menippean Satire. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981. Provides background on Lucian’s tradition in satire and his influence on the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages.

Relihan, Joel C. Ancient Menippean Satire. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Discusses the early development of the sixteenth century literary genre Menippean satire, including its continuity from early classical roots. Covers Menippus, Seneca, Lucian, and other writers. Includes bibliography and index.

Robinson, Christopher. Lucian and His Influence in Europe. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979. A study of Lucian’s times and works, with attention to his influence on the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Includes chapters on Erasmus and Fielding.