The Works of Lucian of Samosata, Vol. 4

the periods of his life on which they throw light: Envy The Vision,
Pseud-—Demosthenes, Nigrinus, The Portrait-study Panthea and Defence (in which Lucian is Lycinus), Lycinus The Way to Write History, Pompey The Double Indictment (in which he is The Syrian), the Syrian St The Fisher (Parrhesiades), Parrh. Swans and Amber, Alexander, Hermotimus (Lycinus), Menippus and Icaromenippus (in which Menippus represents him), A Literary Prometheus, Herodotus, Zeuxis, Harmonides, The Scythian, The Death of Peregrine, The Book-fancier, Demonax, The Rhetorician's Vade Mecum Vade Mecum: A handbook or guide, Dionysus, Heracles, A Slip of the Tongue, Apology for 'The Dependent Scholar.' Of these, The Vision is a direct piece of autobiography; there is intentional but veiled autobiography in several of the other pieces; in others again, conclusions can be drawn from comparing his statements with facts known from external sources.

Lucian lived from about 125 to about 200 A.D., under the Roman Emperors Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Verus, Commodus, and perhaps Pertinax. He was a Syrian, born at Samosata on the Euphrates, to parents for whom it was important that he should earn his living without spending much time or money on education. His maternal uncle being a sculptor, he was apprenticed to him, having shown an aptitude for modeling in the wax that he secretly scraped from his school writing-tablets. The apprenticeship lasted one day. It is clear that he was impulsive throughout his life; when his uncle corrected him with a stick for breaking a piece of marble, he ran home, already disposed to think he had had enough of sculpture. His mother took his side, and he made up his mind with the aid of a vision that came to him the same night.

It was the age of the rhetoricians Rhetorician: An expert or teacher of the art of persuasive speaking. If war was not a thing of the past, the shadow of the Pax Romana: The long period of relative peace and stability experienced by the Roman Empire was over all the small states, and the aspiring provincial's readiest road to fame was through words rather than deeds. The arrival of a famous