celebrated Greek writer, was born of poor parents at Samosata, the capital of the Syrian province of Commagene. The materials for his biography are very scanty, and are derived chiefly from hints in his own works. He is generally supposed to have lived during the reigns of the Antonines and Commodus; and Reitz, after a minute and able investigation, determines the date of his birth to be about A.D. 120. A talent which he showed in early boyhood for moulding little waxen figures seemed to indicate an adaptation for the trade of a sculptor; and accordingly, at the age of fourteen, he was apprenticed to his maternal uncle, a statuary of some note. Happening however, in his first lesson, to break a marble tablet which he was polishing, he received a severe beating from his uncle. This affront he resented by running away, and persistently refusing to return. He then contrived by some means to devote himself to the study of rhetoric and literature. About the same time, also, he seems to have applied himself to law; for shortly after this period, according to Lucian. Suidas, he settled down at Antioch as an advocate. Want of success, however, forced him to become a rhetorician; and making a professional tour, as was customary for those of that calling, he entered Greece, and fixed his abode at Athens. There he remained until his crude knowledge of the Greek language had ripened into a perfect intimacy with the graces of the Attic dialect. There, also, he formed a friendship with the philosopher Demonax, whom he has eulogized so highly. He then passed into Italy, and after staying for some time in Rome, travelled into Gaul. In this latter country he appears to have resided from ten to fifteen years, rapidly acquiring both wealth and fame.
About his fortieth year he left Gaul, but whether he returned through Macedonia to his native city, according to Massieu, or fixed his abode at Athens, according to Wieland, is uncertain. It is agreed, however, that after this period he abandoned the rhetorical profession; and devoting himself to the task of an author, composed the greater part of his works. From his writings we infer that he also travelled much; and while sojourning in Greece, A.D. 163, witnessed the self-sacrifice of the enthusiast Peregrinus at the Olympic games. In his later years he was appointed a procurator in Egypt, probably by the Emperor Commodus. He died at an advanced age. That he was torn to pieces by dogs (as Suidas relates) there is no sufficient ground for believing.
Lucian is most noted as a satirist, and in this capacity he possesses a keen insight into human foibbles, great powers of derision, a graceful diction, and a playful and fertile fancy. His great deficiency lies in mistaking both the province and the purpose of satire. Instead of lacerating only the vile and the meretricious, his lash falls indiscriminately upon virtue and vice, upon truth and falsehood. Instead of probing the wound to heal it, he tortures it merely to see his victim writhe. Thus he attacks Christianity and natural religion—not with the view of substituting other systems in their place, but simply to hold them up to derision. If his satires ever put vice and folly to the blush, the result arose more from accident than from the design of the writer. Accordingly Lucian's satire, instead of that moral tone so often effectual in elevating this species of writing into the atmosphere of poetry, not unfrequently shows a coarseness both in taste and sentiment.
The Dialogues of Lucian are at once the best and most bulky part of his works. Of these, the most notable perhaps are the Dialogues of the Dead, which, traversing the entire circle of human weakness and error, expose the hollowness of fame, wealth, and beauty, the absurd tenets of the vulgar, and the endless jargon of the sages. In his Sale of the Lives, the auction of the different philosophers affords him a good opportunity for facetiously describing the market value of the several philosophical systems. The same strain of ridicule is pursued in his Symposium, in which the various sages who had been invited to a wedding banquet, begin a contest with grave words, but end it with hard blows, and amid general uproar. A more legitimate satire is Jupiter Convicted, in which the king of the gods is proved before his own face to be utterly powerless, and the mere puppet of destiny. This attack upon the popular mythology Lucian followed up by aiming, in his Jupiter Tragedus, at the very existence of the gods. In one of his best pieces—The Dream of Micyllus or the Cock—a cobbler, Micyllus, discovers Pythagoras under the semblance of a cock, and on plucking two feathers from the tail of the philosopher, becomes invisible, and is thus enabled to pass through the mansions of the rich, and view their vice and miseries. Timon, or the Misanthrope, is written in his best manner.
Lucian's romancical writings include Lucius, or the Ass, and The True History. The former is supposed by Pho- tius to be founded on a tale by Lucius of Patrae. The latter was intended as a caricature of all extravagant narratives, including the tales of Ctesias and Iambulus, and the Odyssey of Homer; and may be considered as the prototype of Swift's Gulliver. Among Lucian's miscellaneous works, the ablest is that entitled How to write History. The best edition of Lucian is that of Hemsterhuis and Reitz, 3 vols. 4to, Amsterdam, 1743, supplemented by another volume entitled Lexicon Lucianum, by K. K. Reitz, Utrecht, 1746. There are other editions by the Bipont Society, 10 vols. 8vo, 1789–93; by Lehman, Leipzig, 9 vols. 8vo, 1821–31; and by Dindorf, 8vo, Paris, 1840.
Lucian has been translated into German by Wieland, 6 vols., Leipzig, 1788–9; into French by De Ballu, 6 vols., 8vo, Paris, 1788; and into English by Dr. Franklin, 2 vols. 4to, London, 1780, and 4 vols. 8vo, London, 1781–82.