Lucien de Samosate

Lucien de Samosate , in Greek old Λουκιανός / Loukianós (v. 120 - died after 180) was a rhetor and satirist of Syria which wrote in Greek, in a style néo-attic.

It was born with Samosate, in old the Syria and died in Athens. He was sculptor then lawyer and travelled in all the Roman Empire.

Biography

Lucien was born with Samosate, capital of the Commagène, province of Syria. His/her parents intended it for the profession Sculpteur; but it did not have any taste for this Art. It gave up, as of the first lesson, the Master to whom one had entrusted it, and who was the brother of his mother. He devoted himself entire to the study of the humanities, and he was soon in a position to benefit from his talents. Until the forty years age, it was restricted to plead or give lessons of rhetoric, initially with Antioche, then with Athens. At this point in time it started to write for the public and to travel. It came in Italy and it made a rather long stay there. It passed from there in the Gaulle S, then in the Asia Mineure. Finally it was fixed in Egypt, where the emperor Marc-Aurèle had assigned important administrative offices and legal to him. It is with Alexandria probably that he died, in the first years of the reign of Commode.

Before arriving at the honors, it had already acquired fortune and reputation. Its writings met success, and it received considerable sums for the lessons and the declamations which it made on its passage, with the manner of the sophists and the rhéteurs of time. After having told the dream which had determined, said it, its literary vocation, it added: “The Such which will have heard account of my dream will feel, I am sure, courage to reappear in its heart. It will take it for example; it will think so that I was, when I entered the career and delivered to me with the study without anything to fear poverty which pressed me then; and he will want to imitate me, while seeing in which state I returned towards you, not less famous than any sculptor, nothing to say moreover. ”

Works

One allots to him more than 80 works. He invented the form of the humorous dialog, between the philosophical dialog and the comedy. Its most known dialogs are the Dialogs of the gods and Dialogs of dead the : This last work inspired the Phalarismus of the polemist Ulrich von Hutten, the Heroes of novel of Boileau as well as the Dialogs of Dead the , with more moral vocation, of Fénelon. He also wrote many dialogs to be ironical in a style close to the cynical against the philosophers. He wrote also exercises of rhetoric like ironic praises ( Éloge of baldness , Éloge of the fly , etc). The whole of the work of Lucien found at the XIXe century his best echo in the Petites Works morals of Leopardi.

Its true Histoire where the character travels on the the Moon is sometimes regarded as one of the first works of Science-fiction, even if it is more one facetious tale and that there is no scientific reference. It influenced the States and empires of the Moon of Cyrano of Bergerac, the Micromégas of Voltaire.

the Dream
With a man who had said to him: you are a Prométhée in your speeches
Nigrinus or the portrait of a philosopher
the judgment of the vowels
Timon or the misanthropist
Alcyon or the metamorphosis
Prométhée or the Caucasus
Dialog of the gods
marine Dialogs
Dialogs of dead the
Ménippe or the necyomancie
Charon or the contemplators
On the sacrifices
the Sects with the auction (or Sectes to sell , transl. of Belin of Ballu, re-examined, corrected and presented by Joel Gayraud, ED. Thousand and One Nights, Paris, 1996.)
the Fisherman or the ressuscities
the Crossing or the tyrant
On those which are with the pledges of large the
Apologie for those which are with the pledges of large the
On a fault made by greeting
Hermotinus or the sects
Hérodote or Ætion
Zeuxis or Antiochus
Harmonide
the Scythe or the Proxène
How it is necessary to write the true history
Histoire (1st part)
true Histoire (2nd part)
Tyrannicide
the Son disinherited
Canary grass (1st speech)
Canary grass (2nd speech)
Alexandre or the false soothsayer
Of the dance
Lexiphane
Eunuque
Of astrology
Demonax
Of the loves
the portraits
For the portraits
Toxaris or the friendship
Lucius or the ass
Jupiter confused
tragic Jupiter
the Dream or the cock
Icaroménippe or the voyage above the clouds
the Double charge or the judgments
the Parasite
Anacharsis or the Gymnasium S
On mourning
the Master of rhetoric
the Liar of inclination or the incrédule
Friends of the lie or the incrédule
Hippias or the bath
Foreword or Bacchus
Foreword or Hercules
Of amber and the swans
Praise of the fly
Against a ignoramus booklover
Whom one should not slightly accept the denouncement
Pseudologiste
On an apartment
Exemples of longevity
Éloge of the fatherland
On the dipsades
Discussion with Hésiode
the Ship or the wishes
Dialog of the courtesans
On the death of Fugitive Peregrinus
the
Saturnales
the Banquet or the Lapithes
On the Syrian goddess
Praise of Démosthène
the Parliament of the gods
Cynical the
Pseudosophiste or the solecist
Charidemus or beauty
Néron or the boring of the isthmus
Philopatris or the man which inform
Tragodopodagra
Ocype or the man with the light feet
Épigrammes

Modern edition

Works , text established and translated into French by Jacques Bompaire. Beautiful Letters, Paris, Collection of the universities of France, T. 1 to 3,2003. (Twenty-five opuscules. Continuation not yet published at dated November 8th, 2007.)

External bonds

complete Works, volume I;
complete Works, volume II;
'' Lucien de Samosate or the prince of the merry knowledge '', by Philippe Renault.

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