Λουκιανός

False Prophets, Space wars, and Freak Winds

Online Greek Course: May 29th-July 17th

For Lucian, born on the banks of the Euphrates, Attic Greek was neither his native tongue nor a language used in day to day life. The dialect was instead a language of intellect and fantasy, a vehicle for reinvoking distant worlds or fashioning models of new ones. The reader who delves into his works is confronted with a disparate array of characters: hermits and prostitutes, tyrants and tyranicides, raucous rustics and depilated dancers, soldiers, poetasters, false prophets, fake philosophers, wisemen and charlatans hailing from Scyhtia, Egypt, and India.

In this kaleidoscope of characters and settings, the prose of this author approaches the miraculous and paradoxical. Indeed, it is in an awareness of working with a dead language that Lucian succeeds in extracting its richest flavors, distilling them into a diction that is supple, vivid, and able to capture the most subtle nuances of reality. This expressive facility, mixed together with potent satire and a phantasmagoria of imagery throughout his works, is what commands the greatest fascination for an author who is simultanousely late in the classical period yet profoundly classical.Many are also drawn to Lucian’s cutting wit and irreverent gaze upon the philological methods and postures of the learned of his time. All the while, the silence of his contemporaries and those that followed him about his identity as rendered him a mystery, notwithstanding the massive body of works attributed to him.

In this course, we will focus on themes which Lucian treated with great intensity: a love for Greek that had long since fallen into disuse, hatred for imposters and fake philosophers, a fascination with dreams and discovery.

Sessions will be conducted entirely in Ancient Greek and will furnish the students with an opportunity to not only explore the depth of Lucian’s works, but to also foster an active command of Attic Greek through targeted exercises.

Registration Deadline

May 28th 2021

Register here!