LOUKIANOS

LOUKIANOS

Samosata, 120 A.D. - after 180 A.D.
EDUCATION TAKES A LOT OF EFFORT AND A LONG TIME AND A LOT OF EXPENSES

Renowned sophist and writer. He was born in Samosata, that is why he is called Samosateus. Samosata belonged to the Syrian or Assyrian Country of Kimmageni, that is why he considered himself an Assyrian and dressed in the Assyrian fashion. He devoted himself to letters and wished to become an orator, which was then the pinnacle of education.

He learned the Greek language and rhetoric and became a lawyer in Antioch. But desiring fame and profit, he was later taught the sophistic rhetoric in Smyrna, and as a sophist began to display his art at festivals and fairs. He toured Asia Minor, Macedonia, and after staying long in Greece, passed into Italy to end up in Rome . After quickly recognizing the emptiness of the new profession, he renounced it, turning to philosophy, fascinated by the Platonists.

Because he was poor, he toured Gaul like a sophist, teaching and reciting, in order to acquire great wealth. After all this, he came back to Athens, where he philosophized and wrote his famous Dialogues. Lucian is reported to have written 82 works, many of which are considered pseudographies. His most beautiful works are the dialogical ones. In general, the cases of his writings attract for their variety.

With a keen eye, Lucian spread the faults of his contemporaries, the superstition, the parasitism, the pretense of the philosophers, the inexperience of the grammarians, things he stigmatized with laughable harangues and scathing remarks. A keen painter of human foibles, he sneers and mocks, not merely to make the reader laugh, but to teach, showing the luminous clarity and beauty of the Greek intellect, in comparison with the semi-barbarous mob of his contemporaries. He died in Alexandria.

Works