Lucian

Lucian of Samosata (Greek: Λουκιανός ὁ Σαμοσατεύς, Latin: Lucianus Samosatensis; c. A.D. 125 – after A.D. 180) was an Assyrian rhetorician, and satirist who wrote in the Greek language. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature. Few details of Lucian's life can be verified with any degree of accuracy. He claimed to have been born in Samosata, in the former kingdom of Commagene, which had been absorbed by the Roman Empire and made part of the ... more

Lucian of Samosata (Greek: Λουκιανός ὁ Σαμοσατεύς, Latin: Lucianus Samosatensis; c. A.D. 125 – after A.D. 180) was an Assyrian rhetorician, and satirist who wrote in the Greek language. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature. Few details of Lucian's life can be verified with any degree of accuracy. He claimed to have been born in Samosata, in the former kingdom of Commagene, which had been absorbed by the Roman Empire and made part of the province of Syria. In his works, Lucian refers to himself as a "Syrian", "Assyrian" and "barbarian", perhaps indicating "he was from the Semitic and not the imported Greek population" of Samosata. His birthplace was recently lost when the Atatürk Dam project led to the inundation of the site. Lucian almost certainly did not write all the more than eighty works attributed to him — declamations, essays both laudatory and sarcastic, satiric epigrams, and comic dialogues and symposia with a satirical cast, studded with quotations in alarming... less