This is the first substantial commentary on Lucian's Verae Historiae ("True Histories"), a fantastic journey narrative considered the earliest surviving example of Science Fiction in the Western tradition. The Introduction situates the work in the context of Lucian's oeuvre, especially his preoccupation with distinguishing truth from fiction and exposing the lies of philosophers. In their commentary, the editors trace the sources and the meaning of the numerous intertextual allusions and parodies of philosophers, poets, historians and paradoxographers. The Verae Historiae emerges from this scrutiny as a remarkably complex text with some very "modern" concerns: it problematizes the act of reading, allegorical interpretation, authorial reliability, and the validity of cultural norms and literary genres.

The aim of this book is to make Lucian's A True Story accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page. Lucian's A True Story is a great text for intermediate readers. Its breathless narrative does not involve many complex sentences or constructions; there is some unusual vocabulary and a few departures from Attic Greek, but for the most part it is a straightforward narrative that is fun and interesting by one of antiquity's cleverest authors. In A True Story, Lucian parodies accounts of fanciful adventures and travel to incredible places by authors such as Ctesias and Iambulus. The story's combination of mockery and learning makes it an excellent example of the Greek literature of the imperial period. Revised August, 2014.

"Trips to the Moon" by Of Samosata Lucian was originally written in the 2nd century, though it was later translated in the late 1800s. A satire about society through the lens of the ancient Greeks, the book is just as fun and insightful to read now as it was nearly two thousand years ago when it was first penned.

A True History is a novel written in the second century AD by Lucian of Samosata, a Greek-speaking author of Assyrian descent. The novel is a satire of outlandish tales that had been reported in ancient sources, particularly those that presented fantastic or mythical events as if they were true. It is Lucian's best-known work.

In a companion volume to his award-winning adaptation of The Odyssey, the incomparable graphic novelist Gareth Hinds masterfully adapts Homer’s classic wartime epic. More than three thousand years ago, two armies faced each other in an epic battle that rewrote history and came to be known as the Trojan War. The Iliad, Homer's legendary account of this nine-year ordeal, is considered the greatest war story of all time and one of the most important works of Western literature. In this stunning graphic novel adaptation — a thoroughly researched and artfully rendered masterwork — renowned illustrator Gareth Hinds captures all the grim glory of Homer's epic. Dynamic illustrations take readers directly to the plains of Troy, into the battle itself, and lay bare the complex emotions of the men, women, and gods whose struggles fueled the war and determined its outcome. This companion volume to Hinds’s award-winning adaptation of The Odyssey features notes, maps, a cast of characters, and other tools to help readers understand all the action and drama of Homer's epic.

A collection of writings by the 2nd century satirist who ridiculed tyrants, philosophers, and even the gods, in his mock dialogues and prose narratives.

Lucian of Samosata's True History is a fantastical tale of voyage and imagination. No editor, translator, or reader knows quite how to describe it or fit it comfortably into a familiar genre of Greek literature: 'satires' and 'dialogues' only partially describe the genre or genres he wrote in. Of all the ancient Greco-Roman writers, Lucian is without doubt one of the most inventive and witty. The Greek text in this edition of the True History is accompanied by a facing page English translation, making it an accessible and informative resource aimed at students and teachers of Greek. Whether used in the classroom or in research, readers will benefit from an introduction to Lucian and his place in imperial Greek literature, as well as a translation and commentary that bring out the wonders of his True History.

This book offers a captivating new interpretation of Lucian as a fictional theorist and writer to stand alongside the novelists of the day, bringing to bear on his works a whole new set of reading strategies. It argues that the aesthetic and cultural issues Lucian faced, in a world of mimesis and replication, were akin to those found in postmodern contexts: the ubiquity of the fake, the erasure of origins, the focus on the freakish and weird at the expense of the traditional. In addition to exploring the texture of Lucian's own writing, Dr ní Mheallaigh uses Lucian as a focal point through which to examine other fictional texts of the period, including Antonius Diogenes' The Incredible Things Beyond Thule, Dictys' Journal of the Trojan War and Ptolemy Chennus' Novel History, and reveals the importance of fiction's engagement with its contemporary culture of writing, entertainment and wonder.