Lucian of Samosata Vivus et Redivivus (review)

The survival and influence of the works of Lucian of Samosata is not to be marveled at. This prolific author of over eighty works of satire has left us a body of work that is very amusing and thought-provoking in its own right, while also providing a window on the intellectual life of the second century CE. The focus of this collection of articles is not, for the most part, on the relationship of Lucian's works to his own times. Instead, the bulk of the material focuses on the reception of Lucian's writing in the medieval and early modern periods. It is at this point that an initial minor difficulty emerges. The title implies that the focus is both on Lucian's own times and on his revival in later centuries. The two articles that fall into the first category: namely, "The Three Faces of Lucian" by Simon Swain and "Lucian on the Writing of History: Obsolescence Survived" by Christopher Ligota, while both very good in their own right, appear to sit awkwardly with the remaining six articles, all of which devote themselves to the reception of Lucian's work. The explanation for this in the case of Ligota's article, at least, is that it has as its focus the De historia conscribenda (How to Write History), which is in itself a work of literary reception, instructing the reader on how best to make use of classic writers of Greek history such as Xenophon and Thucydides six centuries after they flourished. In the case of Swain's article, the theme of reception is addressed by examining Lucian's use of the language and the style of the writers of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE some six hundred years later as a self-admitted nonnative Greek speaker. This classicizing approach is a popular topic of modern research into Lucian's epoch —the so-called Second Sophistic, which saw a great revival of rhetorical and philosophical education modeled on that of the classical period of Greek culture —and Swain's article summarizes the approaches usually taken on this topic, while adding thought-provoking discussion of the interaction of Greek and non-Greek culture that is preserved in Lucian's works. Lastly, Swain asks the question: to what extent can Lucian be considered Roman, despite the range of cultural influences that seem to dominate his identity? We have, therefore, a type of broader cultural reception by Lucian that has been the focus of discussion, showing the complex and often irreconcilable differences that sat side by side in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire.

If we turn from the reception by Lucian to the reception of Lucian, the balance of the articles focus on either particular cultural media —such as visual art in the article by Jean Michael Massing, "A Few More Calumnies: Lucian and the Visual Arts" —or on his reception by particular authors —as in "Kepler et Lucien: Des voyages extraordinaires au ludus philosophicus" by Isabelle Pantin. Massing's article, "Lucian and the Visual Arts," acknowledges the limitations involved in examining the impact of Lucian's writing on visual art, yet, unfortunately, does not mention the most important monograph devoted to that topic, Sonia Maffei's Luciano di Samosata, descrizioni di opere d'arte (1994). This leads to an interesting discussion from the point of view of the background that is presented, yet one that, unfortunately, covers a certain amount of ground already handled by others. In "Wieland's Lucian" Luc Deitz focuses on the eighteenth-century German who translated all of Lucian's works and gives a striking insight into the intellectual environment of the time, highlighting the grounds for the popularity of Lucian's works in the early modern and modern periods, as well as providing insights into the development of the most important modern editions' of Lucian's works.

This interesting and well-presented collection of articles includes...