Lucian: Seventy Dialogues

This book contains all of Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, Dialogues of the Sea-Gods, and Dialogues of the Gods, with introduction and explanatory commentary. The Greek text is from the Loeb Classical Library, Volume VII. The Greek sophist and satirist Lucian (ca. A.D. 120-ca. 190) was born in Samosata, on the Euphrates River, capital city of Commagene in northern Syria. 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 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 but not limited by his predecessor Menippus. His work was translated by Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, whose writings reflect the influence of Lucian's satiric dialogues.