Lucian of Samosata is well known to be the Supreme Ancient Greek Satirist and one of the most famous satirists in European history. He was born at Samosata (Samsat), a small town in the Adyman Province of Turkey on the Euphrates during the Ancient Roman Era.
When Lucian was 14 years of age, he began working on his uncle’s statue shop as an apprentice sculptor. When he was on his early apprenticeship he accidentally broke a marble by striking it too hard with his chisel and his uncle gave him thrashing causing him to storm out of the shop and wander the streets of the town, thinking hard about what he wanted to do in his life. As he said in the essay later on, that night he had a dream in which two women fought over him: one a rough workingwoman covered in stone dust who urged him to labor in the statue shop, the other an elegant lady in a smartly dressed mantle who spoke up for the benefits of a solid classical education. “Lady Education” won. …show more content…
He was educated during a period called the Second Sophistic, when Greek education had regained its original popularity, and rhetoric was once again a favored course of study. During the 2nd century period where Lucian lives during the time of the Great Roman Emperors where sharing or giving jokes can be dangerous, he took writing and satirical essays on the intellectual life of his time either in the form of Platonic dialogues or, in imitation of Menippus, in a mixture of prose and
When Lucian was 14 years of age, he began working on his uncle’s statue shop as an apprentice sculptor. When he was on his early apprenticeship he accidentally broke a marble by striking it too hard with his chisel and his uncle gave him thrashing causing him to storm out of the shop and wander the streets of the town, thinking hard about what he wanted to do in his life. As he said in the essay later on, that night he had a dream in which two women fought over him: one a rough workingwoman covered in stone dust who urged him to labor in the statue shop, the other an elegant lady in a smartly dressed mantle who spoke up for the benefits of a solid classical education. “Lady Education” won. …show more content…
He was educated during a period called the Second Sophistic, when Greek education had regained its original popularity, and rhetoric was once again a favored course of study. During the 2nd century period where Lucian lives during the time of the Great Roman Emperors where sharing or giving jokes can be dangerous, he took writing and satirical essays on the intellectual life of his time either in the form of Platonic dialogues or, in imitation of Menippus, in a mixture of prose and