Lucian Wants To Evoke The Stereoypical Utopian Society

Lucian clearly wants to evoke the stereotypical utopian society in his narrator’s account of the moon and its society. One source, from which Lucian takes the idea of a utopia, is Iambulus and his work, Islands of the Sun (Winston, David. 219). In fact Iambulus is one of the few authors whom Lucian mentions by name at the beginning of the True Histories, saying ἔγραψε δὲ καὶ Ἰαμβοῦλος περὶ τῶν ἐν τῇ μεγάλῃ θαλάττῃ πολλὰ παράδοξα, γνώριμον μὲν ἅπασι τὸ ψεῦδος πλασάμενος, οὐκ ἀτερπῆ δὲ ὅμως συνθεὶς τὴν ὑπόθεσιν (Lucian. 1.3.) Indeed, the Moonmen of Lucian’s work bear an especially striking resemblance to Iambulus’ depictions of the people who inhabit the Islands of the Sun. This is most easily seen as in the “pleasant” manner of the Moonmen’s …show more content…
Although the moon does possess some of the typical utopian traits the reader is not left with the sense that their society is actually perfect; this raises the question of whether or not Lucian’s Moonmen are actually supposed to represent a utopian world. Both cultures have distinctive characteristics which initially seem to remove them from reality and from humanity. The Sun-men are tall, inhumanly flexible, and possess forked tongues (Winston, 220.) The Sun-men of Iambulus represent a society that falls under the category of a Greek utopia and their noticeable anatomical peculiarities which can be seen as “improvements” on human physiology help to convey the perfection of the people and therefore their society (Winston, 223.) On the other hand, the Moonmen possess cabbage-leaf tails, fur lined stomachs, and removable eyes (Lucian. 1.24-26.) Features such as these do not particularly call to mind enhancement over human anatomy, instead they appear to simply be different than their terrestrial counterparts.