Lucian ― Seventy Dialogues

This book contains all of Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead, Dialogues of the Sea-Gods, andDialogues of the Gods, with introduction and explanatory commentary. The Greek text is from the Loeb Classical Library, Volume Vii.

It is the fourth volume in the series of new classical texts produced under the sponsorship of the American Philological Association in cooperation with the University of Oklahoma Press. All books in the series are intended to provide texts of classical authors annotated for the level at which each work is customarily read in the United States and Canada. Thus,Lucian is intended for those who have just finished first-year Greek and are going on to Lucian as the first author to read in extensor, as well as for more advanced students who need a refresher course in Greek based on a rapid but thorough reading of a fairly simple text.

The Greek sophist and satirist Lucian (ca. A.D. 120-c.a. 190) was born in Samosata, on the Euphrates River, capital city of Commagene in northern Syria, now part of Turkey. The commentary approaches Lucian’s language and the content of his work as examples of the process whereby a non-Greek was Hellenized linguistically and culturally. Lucian reversed the biblical adage by seeing Hellenism through a glass, brightly. The glass was his own culture, which enabled him to stand apart and view the Greek classics from Homer on with a peculiar freshness; the brightness was supplied by his satirical spirit, inspired by not limited by his predecessor Menippus.

Although Lucian must have enjoyed a degree of fame in his own lifetime, it was during the Renaissance that he really came into his own. His work was translated by Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, whose writings reflect the influence of Lucian’s satiric dialogues.