Lucian of Samosata

Lucian
A fictionalized portrait of Lucian taken from a seventeenth century engraving by William Faithorne
Born	About 125 CE Samosata, Roman Empire (modern-day Turkey)
Died	After 180 CE probably Athens
Occupation	Novelist, rhetorician
Notable works	True History, Dialogues of the Dead, Dialogues of the Gods, Dialogues of the Courtesans, Alexander the False Prophet, Sale of Creeds, The Lover of Lies

Lucian of Samosata (/ˈluːʃən, ˈluːsiən/; Ancient Greek: Λουκιανὸς ὁ Σαμοσατεύς, Latin: Lucianus Samosatensis; about 125 CE – after 180 CE) was a rhetorician and satirist who wrote in the Greek language during the Second Sophistic. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature.

Lucian wrote exclusively in ancient Greek. He wrote mainly in the Attic dialect, but On the Syrian Goddess, which is attributed to him, is written in a faux-Ionic dialect.

Few details of Lucian's life can be verified with any degree of accuracy, though clues can be found in writings attributed to him. In several works he claims to have been born in Samosata, in the former kingdom of Commagene, which had been absorbed by the Roman Empire and made part of the province of Syria.

In On the Syrian Goddess, which may or may not have been written by Lucian, the author narrates a trip to the city of Heirpolis in Syria and into the Temple of the Syrian goddess Atargatis, describing in detail the history, rituals, and institutions of the Atargatis/Hera cult. His depictions of the cultural processes involved in the diverse and dynamic cult have many significant parallels to Syria's material culture. However, in a possible mimicry of The Histories of Herodotus, complete with faux-Ionic dialect, the narrator makes doubtful claims to have personally witnessed most of the things he narrates or otherwise learned it from a priest. On the Syrian Goddess parodies the Greek view of foreigners as barbarous, while the narrator concludes that the (As)Syrians and Greeks are actually quite similar. Throughout the account, the narrator often conflates the terms "Assyrian" and "Syrian." In The Syrian Goddess, the author claims to be an Assyrian himself. In the final paragraph of the work, the narrator describes a ritual in which initiates would dedicate a lock of their hair to Hippolytus as part of a pre-marital coming-of-age ritual. The narrator comments, as rendered in Strong and Garstang's 1913 translation, "I performed this act myself when a youth, and my hair remains still in the temple, with my name on the vessel."