Rightly to understand and appreciate Lucian, one must recognise that he was not a philosopher nor even a moralist, but a rhetorician, that his mission in life was not to reform society nor to chastise it, but simply to amuse it. He himself admits on every page that he is serious only in his desire to please, and he would answer all charges but that of dullness with an ον φροντις ΑπιτοκλΑορ. Judged from his own stand-point, he is successful; not only in his own times but in all the ensuing ages his witty, well-phrased comments on life, more akin to comedy than to true satire, have brought him the applause that he craved.
Among the eighty-two pieces that have come down to us under the name of Lucian, there are not a few of which his authorship has been disputed. Certainly spurious are Halcyon, Nero, Philopatris, and Astrology; and to these, it seems to me, the Consonants at Law should be added. Furthermore, Demosthenes, Charidemus, Cynic, Love, Octogenarians, Hippias, Ungrammatical Man, Swiftfoot, and the epigrams are generally considered spurious, and there are several others (Disowned and My Country in particular) which, to say the least, are of doubtful authenticity.
Beside satiric dialogues, which form the bulk of his work, and early rhetorical writings, we have from the pen of Lucian two romances, A True Story and Lucius, or the Ass (if indeed the latter is his), some introductions to readings and a number of miscellaneous treatises. Very few of his writings can be dated with any accuracy. An effort to group them on a chronological basis has been made by M. Croiset, but it cannot be called entirely successful. The order in which they are to be presented in this edition is that of the best manuscript (Vaticanus 90), which, through its adoption in Rabe’s edition of the scholia to Lucian and in Nilen’s edition of the text, bids fair to become standard.
There are a hundred and fifty manuscripts of Lucian, more or less, which give us a tradition that is none too good. There is no satisfactory critical edition of Lucian except Nilen’s, which is now in progress. His text has been followed, as far as it was available, through the True Story. Beyond this point it has been necessary to make a new text for this edition. In order that text and translation may as far as possible correspond, conjectures have been admitted with considerable freedom: for the fact that a good many of them bear the initials of the translator he need not apologize if they are good; if they are not no apology will avail him. He is deeply indebted to Professor Edward Capps for reviewing his translation in the proof.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Chief manuscripts: —
y group —
Vaticanus 90 (Γ), 9/10th century.
Harleianus 5694 (E), 9/10th century.
Laurentianus C. S. 77 (Φ), 10th century.
Marcianus 434 (Ω), 10/11th century.
Mutinensis 193 (S), 10th century.
Laurentianus 57, 51 (L), 11th century(?)
β group —
Vindobonensis 123 (B), 11th century (?)
Vaticanus 1324 (U), 11/12th century.
Vaticanus 76 (P).
Vaticanus 1323 (Z).
Parisinus 2957 (N).
Principal editions: —
Florentine, of 1496, the first edition by J. Lascaris, from the press of L. de Alopa.
Hemsterhuys-Reitz, Amsterdam 1743, containing a Latin translation by Gesner, critical notes, variorum commentary and a word-index (C. C. Reitz, 1746).
Lehmann, Leipzig 1822-1831, a convenient variorum edition which contains Gesner’s translation but lacks Reitz’s index.
Jacobitz, Leipzig 1836-1841, with critical notes, a subject-index and a word-index; it contains the scholia.
Jacobitz, Leipzig 1851, in the Teubner series of classical texts.
Bekker, Leipzig 1853.
Dindorf, Leipzig 1858, in the Tauchnitz series.
Fritzsche, Rostock 1860-1882, an incomplete edition containing only thirty pieces; excellent critical notes and prolegomena.
Sommerbrodt, Berlin 1886-1899, also incomplete, but lacking only fifteen pieces; with critical appendices.
Nilén, Leipzig 1906 — , the new Teubner text, with very full critical notes, and part of the Prolegomena in a separate gathering; the text is to appear in eight parts, of which the first is out and the second in press.
Noteworthy English Translations: —
Francklin, London 1780.
Tooke, London 1820.
Fowler (H. W.) and Fowler (F. G.), Oxford 1905. Scholia: edited by Rabe, Leipzig 1906.
Mras, Die Ueberlieferung Lucians, Vienna, 1911.
Croiset, Essai sur la Vie et les (Euvres de Lucian, Paris 1882. Foerster, Lucian in der Renaissance, Kiel 1886 Helm, Lucian und AIcnipp, Leipzig 1906.
There are also very numerous editions and translations of selections from Lucian, of which no mention has been made, besides dissertations and essays. A survey of the Lucian literature for ten years back may be found in Bursians Jahresbericht 129 (1906), pp. 237-252, and 149 (1910), pp. 44-95.
The Delphi Classics Catalogue
We are proud to present a listing of our complete catalogue of English titles, with new titles being added every month. Buying direct from our website means you can make great savings and take advantage of our instant Updates service. You can even purchase an entire series (Super Set) at a special discounted price.
Only from our website can readers purchase the special Parts Edition of our Complete Works titles. When you buy a Parts Edition, you will receive a folder of your chosen author’s works, with each novel, play, poetry collection, non-fiction book and more divided into its own special volume. This allows you to read individual novels etc. and to know precisely where you are in an eBook. For more information, please visit our Parts Edition page.
Series One
Anton Chekhov
Charles Dickens
D.H. Lawrence
Dickensiana Volume I
Edgar Allan Poe
Elizabeth Gaskell
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
George Eliot
H. G. Wells
Henry James
Ivan Turgenev
Jack London
James Joyce
Jane Austen
Joseph Conrad
Leo Tolstoy
Louisa May Alcott
Mark Twain
Oscar Wilde
Robert Louis Stevenson
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Walter Scott
The Brontës
Thomas Hardy
Virginia Woolf
Wilkie Collins
William Makepeace Thackeray
Series Two
Alexander Pushkin
Alexandre Dumas (English)
Andrew Lang
Anthony Trollope
Bram Stoker
Christopher Marlowe
Daniel Defoe
Edith Wharton
F. Scott Fitzgerald
G. K. Chesterton
Gustave Flaubert (English)
H. Rider Haggard
Herman Melville
Honoré de Balzac (English)
J. W. von Goethe (English)
Jules Verne
L. Frank Baum
Lewis Carroll
Marcel Proust (English)
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nikolai Gogol
O. Henry
Rudyard Kipling
Tobias Smollett
Victor Hugo
William Shakespeare
Series Three
Ambrose Bierce
Ann Radcliffe
Ben Jonson
Charles Lever
Émile Zola
Ford Madox Ford
Geoffrey Chaucer
George Gissing
George Orwell
Guy de Maupassant
H. P. Lovecraft
Henrik Ibsen
Henry David Thoreau
Henry Fielding
J. M. Barrie
James Fenimore Cooper
John Buchan
John Galsworthy
Jonathan Swift<
br />
Kate Chopin
Katherine Mansfield
L. M. Montgomery
Laurence Sterne
Mary Shelley
Sheridan Le Fanu
Washington Irving
Series Four
Arnold Bennett
Arthur Machen
Beatrix Potter
Bret Harte
Captain Frederick Marryat
Charles Kingsley
Charles Reade
G. A. Henty
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Wallace
E. M. Forster
E. Nesbit
George Meredith
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Jerome K. Jerome
John Ruskin
Maria Edgeworth
M. E. Braddon
Miguel de Cervantes
M. R. James
R. M. Ballantyne
Robert E. Howard
Samuel Johnson
Stendhal
Stephen Crane
Zane Grey
Series Five
Algernon Blackwood
Anatole France
Beaumont and Fletcher
Charles Darwin
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Edward Gibbon
E. F. Benson
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Friedrich Nietzsche
George Bernard Shaw
George MacDonald
Hilaire Belloc
John Bunyan
John Webster
Margaret Oliphant
Maxim Gorky
Oliver Goldsmith
Radclyffe Hall
Robert W. Chambers
Samuel Butler
Samuel Richardson
Sir Thomas Malory
Thomas Carlyle
William Harrison Ainsworth
William Dean Howells
William Morris
Series Six
Anthony Hope
Aphra Behn
Arthur Morrison
Baroness Emma Orczy
Captain Mayne Reid
Charlotte M. Yonge
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
E. W. Hornung
Ellen Wood
Frances Burney
Frank Norris
Frank R. Stockton
Hall Caine
Horace Walpole
One Thousand and One Nights
R. Austin Freeman
Rafael Sabatini
Saki
Samuel Pepys
Sir Issac Newton
Stanley J. Weyman
Thomas De Quincey
Thomas Middleton
Voltaire
William Hazlitt
William Hope Hodgson
Ancient Classics
Aeschylus
Ammianus Marcellinus
Apollodorus
Appian
Apuleius
Apollonius of Rhodes
Aristophanes
Aristotle
Arrian
Bede
Cassius Dio
Catullus
Cicero
Clement of Alexandria
Demosthenes
Diodorus Siculus
Diogenes Laërtius
Euripides
Frontius
Herodotus
Hesiod
Hippocrates
Homer
Horace
Josephus
Julius Caesar
Juvenal
Livy
Longus
Lucan
Lucian
Lucretius
Marcus Aurelius
Martial
Nonnus
Ovid
Pausanias
Petronius
Pindar
Plato
Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Younger
Plotinus
Plutarch
Polybius
Propertius
Quintus Smyrnaeus
Sallust
Sappho
Seneca the Younger
Sophocles
Statius
Strabo
Suetonius
Tacitus
Terence
Theocritus
Thucydides
Tibullus
Virgil
Xenophon
Delphi Poets Series
A. E. Housman
Alexander Pope
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Andrew Marvell
Beowulf
Charlotte Smith
Christina Rossetti
D. H Lawrence (poetry)
Dante Alighieri (English)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Delphi Poetry Anthology
Edgar Allan Poe (poetry)
Edmund Spenser
Edward Lear
Edward Thomas
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Emily Dickinson
Ezra Pound
Friedrich Schiller (English)
George Herbert
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Isaac Rosenberg
Johan Ludvig Runeberg
John Clare
John Donne
John Dryden
John Keats
John Milton
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
Lord Byron
Ludovico Ariosto
Luís de Camões
Matthew Arnold
Michael Drayton
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Robert Browning
Robert Burns
Robert Frost
Robert Southey
Rumi
Rupert Brooke
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Sir Philip Sidney
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Sir Walter Raleigh
Thomas Chatterton
Thomas Gray
Thomas Hardy (poetry)
Thomas Hood
Torquato Tasso
T. S. Eliot
W. B. Yeats
Walt Whitman
Wilfred Owen
William Blake
William Cowper
William Wordsworth
Masters of Art
Caravaggio
Claude Monet
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Diego Velázquez
Edgar Degas
Eugène Delacroix
Francisco Goya
Giotto
Gustav Klimt
J. M. W. Turner
Johannes Vermeer
John Constable
Leonardo da Vinci
Michelangelo
Paul Cézanne
Paul Klee
Peter Paul Rubens
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Sandro Botticelli
Raphael
Rembrandt van Rijn
Titian
Vincent van Gogh
Wassily Kandinsky
www.delphiclassics.com
Is there an author or artist you would like to see in a series? Contact us at [email protected] (or via the social network links below) and let us know!
Be the first to learn of new releases and special offers:
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/delphiebooks
Follow our Tweets: https://twitter.com/delphiclassics
Explore our exciting boards at Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/delphiclassics/
Athens — believed to be where Lucian spent his final days
this book with friends
Delphi Complete Works of Lucian Page 318