Lucian and His Roman Voices by Bozia, Eleni;

Short description:

Lucian and His Roman Voices examines cultural exchanges, political propaganda, and religious conflicts in the Early Roman Empire through the eyes of Lucian, his contemporary Roman authors, and Christian Apologists. Offering a multi-faceted analysis of the Lucianic corpus, this book explores how Lucian, a Syrian who wrote in Greek and who became a Roman citizen, was affected by the socio-political climate of his time, reacted to it, and how he ‘corresponded’ with the Roman intelligentsia. In the process, this unique volume raises questions such as: What did the title ‘Roman citizen’ mean to native Romans and to others? How were language and literature politicized, and how did they become a means of social propaganda? This study reveals Lucian’s recondite historical and authorial personas and the ways in which his literary activity portrayed second-century reality from the perspectives of the Romans, Greeks, pagans, Christians, and citizens of the Roman Empire

Long description:

Lucian and His Roman Voices examines cultural exchanges, political propaganda, and religious conflicts in the Early Roman Empire through the eyes of Lucian, his contemporary Roman authors, and Christian Apologists. Offering a multi-faceted analysis of the Lucianic corpus, this book explores how Lucian, a Syrian who wrote in Greek and who became a Roman citizen, was affected by the socio-political climate of his time, reacted to it, and how he ‘corresponded’ with the Roman intelligentsia. In the process, this unique volume raises questions such as: What did the title ‘Roman citizen’ mean to native Romans and to others? How were language and literature politicized, and how did they become a means of social propaganda? This study reveals Lucian’s recondite historical and authorial personas and the ways in which his literary activity portrayed second-century reality from the perspectives of the Romans, Greeks, pagans, Christians, and citizens of the Roman Empire

"[Eleni Bozia] is to be commended for putting into dialogue the cultural representations of Lucian and his Roman nearcontemporaries ... The passages she has raised bring up some interesting questions about the extent to which Lucian may be responding to Roman representations of Greeks. Useful too is her discussion of the literary context, and especially the practice of Aulus Gellius ... [Bozia] brings in a broad spectrum of both pre-Christian and Christian primary literature in her fourth chapter, ‘Lucian’s Olympus’, and convincingly argues that the convergences on Christianity in both Lucian’s work and that of the Christian apologists must mean that Lucian was not as ignorant of early Christianity as has been alleged ... Finally, the last two chapters provide stimulating discussion on Lucian’s reception, literary and artistic, which provide an update and addendum to similar studies such as that by Robinson (Lucian and His Influence in Europe [1979])."

- Dr Calum Maciver, University of Edinburgh, in The Classical Review

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction 2. Lucian and Juvenal on the Parasitic Life 3. The Literary Context and Social Sub-Context in Lucian and Gellius 4. Lucian’s Olympus and the Link to Christianity 5. The Reception of Lucian 6. Conclusion