Lucian, Volume II

Antiquity's satirist supreme.

Lucian of Samosata on the Euphrates (fl. AD 160-190) ranks among the most dazzlingly creative, virtuosic, and boldly original writers of antiquity. Although he more than once characterises his writings—many of them intended for public performance—as a combination of dialogue and comedy, in truth the diversity of his extant works is startling. His works range from philosophic and moral dialogue to invective, from mythology to contemporary biography to high fantasy, from mock encomium to Herodotean ethnography, and from generic combinations to unclassifiable novelties, all infused with ebullient wit, elegant humour, and refined satire, and all delivered in sparkling style.

Included in the Loeb edition of Lucian are all of his approximately seventy-five authentic works together with those doubtfully attributed. Highlights of Volume II include The Downward Journey, a voyage to the underworld; Timon, on the problems of being a rich misanthrope; and Sale of Lives, in which great philosophers of the past are auctioned off as slaves.

This edition, which replaces the original Loeb edition by A. M. Harmon (1915), offers text, translation, and annotation that are fully current with modern scholarship.