1743 4 volumes VELLUM BOUND ANTIQUE BOOKS by LUCIANI SAMOSATENSIS
Text in Greek with Latin translation by Tiberius Hemsterhuis & Johann Matthias Gesner.
Engraved frontispiece, engraved plate.
4 volumes, including index.
Size 10 1/2 by 8 1/4"
Contemporary vellum decorated in blind. Dump stain to 1/3 of volume 3. Some foxing.

Lucian of Samosata , Latin: Lucianus Samosatensis; about 125 AD – after 180 AD) was a satirist and rhetorician who wrote in the Greek language during the Second Sophistic.

Although he claimed to be a native Assyrian, his nationality is hotly disputed; Lucian wrote exclusively in Ancient Greek. Most of his works are written in the Attic dialect, but On the Syrian Goddess, which is attributed to him, is written in a faux-Ionic dialect.

Noted for his witty and scoffing nature, Lucian frequently poked fun at superstition, religious practices, and belief in the paranormal. He admired the philosophers Democritus and Epicurus, both of whom advocated naturalistic worldviews. His works were wildly popular in antiquity and more than eighty works attributed to him have survived to the present day, a considerably higher quantity than for most other classical writers. His reception among modern scholars has been overwhelmingly positive.

His most famous work is A True Story, a tongue-in-cheek satire against authors who tell incredible tales, which is widely regarded as the earliest known work of science fiction. His framing story The Lover of Lies makes fun of people who believe in the supernatural and contains the oldest known version of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", while his letter The Passing of Peregrinus contains one of the earliest known references to Jesus Christ by a pagan author.

Lucian wrote numerous satires making fun of traditional stories about the gods including The Dialogues of the Gods, Zeus Rants, Zeus Catechized, and The Parliament of the Gods. His Dialogues of the Dead focusses on the Cynic philosophers Diogenes and Menippus. His story Timon the Misanthrope was the inspiration for William Shakespeare's tragedy Timon of Athens.



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