LUCIAN, lu'shan (Gk. AmaavOc, Loukianos, L. Lueianus). (c.120-e.200 A.D.). The most bril liant representative of the revived Greek litera ture under the Boman Empire, and one of the world's greatest wits. ]le was born about the year A.D. 120 at Samosata, the capital of the Syrian District of Commagene. Except for a casual denunciatory paragraph in Suidas, his biography must be reconstructed from his writ ings. In the charming little piece entitled "The Dream," he tells us how his parents, being poor, apprenticed him to his maternal uncle, who was a sculptor. One of his first careless strokes spoiled a fine slab of marble, whereupon his uncle proceeded to cudgel him, and the lad ran home weeping to his sympathetic mother. That night he saw in a dream two beautiful women contending for him—education (literary culture) and handicraft (for as such he esteemed the art of Phidias). Culture prevailed, and Lucian tells the story to one of the audiences of his success ful prime, that poor boys may be encouraged by his example to aim at the highest. Rhetoric was the surest passport to all forms of distinction for a young provincial in the Roman Empire of the second century. The young Syrian or Cappa docian who mastered the Greek language and acquired the faculty of fluent and pleasing dis course was no longer a barbarian, but a Greek and a member of an intellectual aristocracy that made him at home in Tarsus or Nassilia, in Ephesus, Alexandria, or Athens. And he had his choice of the two most honorable and lucra tive professions of the day, that of the advocate, and that of the 'sophist' or professor of rhetoric. Such was Lucian's life till about the age of forty. Of his practice at the bar of Antioch, to which Suidas alludes, he tells us nothing. But we catch glimpses of him as a popular lecturer and declaimer in Asia Minor. Greece, Macedonia, Italy. and Gaul. A few of his extant writings, by their trilling or purely formal character, be classified as 'sophistic' and presumably of this period. Such are the declamations on the Tyrannicides, on Phalaris. on "The Disin herited Son." the amusing encomium on the fly, the "Case of Sigma es. Tau." and the "Lawsuit of the Vowels." Other little pieces scattered through his works read like graceful introdue tions to more formal literary displays. Such may have been the "Dream," the "Herodot us," and the highly wrought ofZeuxis Hippoeentaur, or of the house in which the speaker was entertained in Macedonia.
It was inevitable that Lueian should outgrow this trifling. It pleased him to represent the change as a conversion to philosophy, and in the ".,Nigrinus," a Platonic philosopher of that name (perhaps invented by Lucian), eloquently con trasts the life of unsatisfying and restless lux ury led by the great at Rome with the philosophi cal peace and calm attainable at Athens. In the "Twice Accused" Rhetoric first brings suit against him for abandoning her, his lawful spouse. She had found him a little Syrian bar
barian knocking about Ionia and had made him a Greek gentleman and a prosperous man; and now he basely deserts her for Dialogus (philos ophy). On the other hand, Dialogus complains that Lucian has dragged him down from high discourse about immortality in the Academy to employ him upon vulgar and trivial themes, and has impaired the purity of his native Platonic speech by Aristophanic jests and Menippean satire.
The dialogues thus aptly characterized by Lu cian constitute the best known and largest part of his extant work. There are twenty-six little Dialogues of the Gods, the humor of which con sists in gravely accepting as facts the most gro tesque anthropomorphic tales of the mythology, and deducing the consequences with Swiftian verisimilitude. Of a like character are the fifteen dialogues of marine deities. The Dialogues of the Dead dwell with fierce and painful insistence on the impartial democracy of the grave, and the revelation that it brings of the nothingness of human life. In similar vein are the longer "Charon" 'and "3lenippus." The Dialogues of Courtesans portray one of the darker sides of ancient life, largely in literary reminiscences from the new comedy. To the Dialogues of the Gods must he added the "Zeus Confuted," in which a cynic philosopher challenges Zeus to reconcile his own supremacy with the Homeric doctrine of fate; and the very amusing "Zeus in Tragics." In other cases the dialogue is the vehicle of satire on contemporary life—especially the pretensions and weaknesses of the philos ophers and the superstitions of the multitude. Such are the "Day Dreams," the "Lie-Monger," the "Fishers," the "Sale of Lives" or auction of the Philosophies in the persons of their tradi tional representatives, the "Symposium" or "Banquet of Philosophers," which degenerates into a Donnybrook fair. Sometimes the dialogue form is abandoned for that of the essay, the • biography real or fictitious, the narrative epistle to a friend, or the novelette. "How to Write combines many sensible precepts with entertaining satire. The "Demonax" is a biogra phy of Lucian's ideal philosopher—perhaps in vented by him. The letter on the death of Pere grinus describes the self-eremation at Olympia of a typical figure of the age. half religious mys tic, half charlatan, for• whom Lucian felt no sym pathy in either character. The "Alexander," or "False Prophet." portrays the notable career of the impostor Alexander of Abonoteichos, who barely missed founding a new religion. There is a !mod account of it in Froude's Short Studies. The True History is a parody of the romances of the day. and itself the ancestor of Rabelaisian romance. The Ass is a tale of Thessalian en chantments and adventures substantially iden tical with that of Apuleius's Golden Ass.