Lucian of Samosata

Table of Contents

  • c. 125–after 180 AD. Born in Samosata (Syria/Commagene), traveled widely across the Greek-speaking world. Wrote in Greek. A satirist rather than a card-carrying Epicurean, but a valuable sympathetic outside witness: his Alexander the False Prophet singles out Epicurus's Kyriai Doxai (Principal Doctrines) by name as "a great bulwark" against superstition and religious fraud.

    c. 125–after 180 AD. Born in Samosata (Syria/Commagene), traveled widely across the Greek-speaking world. Wrote in Greek. A satirist rather than a card-carrying Epicurean, but a valuable sympathetic outside witness: his Alexander the False Prophet singles out Epicurus's Kyriai Doxai (Principal Doctrines) by name as "a great bulwark" against superstition and religious fraud.

    1. Key Texts

    Quote from Lucian, The Double Indictment 21

    [One who] ran away to Pleasure of his own free will, cutting the meshes of [Stoic] logic as if they were bonds, because he had the spirit of a human being, not of a dolt, and thought pain painful, as indeed it is, and pleasure pleasant. ... Stoa: Do you consider pain bad? Epicurus: Yes. Stoa: And pleasure good? Epicurus: Certainly so!

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