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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