Lucian's Dialogues of the Gods

by Lucian of Samosata, Nicholas Jeeves (Editor)

In this singular and uproarious collection of comic dialogues, Lucian of Samosata, writing in the second century AD, eavesdrops on the gods themselves and presents us with a sensational peek behind the curtain of life on Mount Olympus. Here is Zeus, bickering with his wife Hera over his latest infidelity; there is Eros, in trouble again for his mischievous matchmaking; and there are Hermes, Apollo, Pan, Aphrodite, and all the rest of the pantheon, each with their own foibles, and each unknowingly scandalising themselves with their every utterance. While previous editions have been heavily edited, this new collection draws on historical sources to present the Dialogues in their entirety, featuring a novel typographic layout, and including an introductory essay and extensive appendices.

Genres: Classics, Mythology, Satire, Short Stories, Humor

152 pages, Paperback

First published July 9, 1942

About the author

Lucian of Samosata was a Greek-educated Syrian rhetorician, and satirist who wrote in the Greek language. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature.

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank the gods that Lucian of Samosata, village not in Japan (as this provincial reader likes to imagine) but Assyria, above the crumbling banks of the Euphrates, failed to make it a single day as an apprentice sculptor! The story goes that, after shattering a simple plaque in his uncle's workshop, who caned him for the offense, Lucian ran home crying to his mommy, crept bitterly into bed, eventually dozed off, his pillow soaked with tears, and dreamt a vision of two women competing for his loyalty -- Statuary, on the (literal) one hand, Culture on the other: each made her case, and Lucian went with the latter. The rest is ancient history. Our boy Lucian became a man known all round the empire for his verbal facility, rhetorical acuity, and sharp wit. Around the middle years of his life, he experienced, riding through some wasteland, a Paul-like conversion. There was no great bright light or voice or what have you; there was, however, the High Priest of a burgeoning Snake-God Cult -- clearly, the orchestrator of one big scaly sham. Lucian challenged the fellow, unable to resist the opportunity to expose the fraud on deliciously ironic grounds of a professed prophetic ability ("Tell me, Mr. High Priest, when will you show yourself for who you really are, a liar and a cheat?"), nearly lost his life in flight from the man's inordinately numerous congregation (thugs, slithering after him), and just about fell into the grips of same, when all seemed suspiciously in the clear, who stooped, finally, not to chucking our man over the edge of the sailing vessel he'd embarked upon to get to where he was going on account of, one imagines, conscience. Lucian, till this point, forgetting his failure with statuary, an epically successful orator and rhetorician, had seen enough: it became all of the sudden inescapably clear that talking cleverly through courtrooms held not a candle in urgency to knocking every con-man, crook, false prophet, thief, pomp, etc., from his standing -- the savager the method the better -- so he took to writing (in much the same way that John Berger gave up, for the decisive and action-oriented written word, painting), writing all the time, and became hugely famous for it -- most notably his exposé-ish dialogues (of The Dead, The Courtesans, The Gods, The Sea-Gods...), which found popular expression up through the early 19th century, helped grandly along by Erasmus (accomplished craftsman of dialogues in his own right) who did a translation from the Greek into Latin -- living on in this way in exercise books for boys, one of the only ways one could coax such vile creatures to learn their quods and quos -- until the Victorians, the hypocrites, decided that fictions describing, inter alia, Zeus's several sexual conquests (his quarries variously women, goddesses (almost always incestuous), cute little shepherd boys) did not live up to the moral demands of their era. Well, here we have all of them, I think unexpurgated, as Erasmus, if not Lucian (who never saw the pieces collected in this way during his lifetime), would have had it -- and in a wonderfully modern translation that is over 100 years old (this is the Public Domain Review Press after all). The dialogues are not long, 2 or 3 pages each, but there is among them a loose continuity, and there is a joy in getting a feel for the gods as characters, Zeus's lecherousness and numbskullery, Hera's jealousy, Hephaestus's remarkable good nature, Eros's duplicity, all of the in-fighting, gossip, and drama. Like Sei Shonagon's Pillow-Book, reading Lucian's dialogues, for all their wretched godless-godly gaudy humanity, reminds me that this mind of mine works the same way as minds did in, yes, Heian Japan, in the Roman empire, all the way in fact to the minds of the Aurignacian, and (remembering Eliot, who, in response to animal drawings either in Altamira or Lascaux, I can't remember which -- said upon seeing them something to the effect of our having made no improvement upon the vast enterprise of Art since then, in pre-history). We haven't -- and isn't that fantastic?

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

My kind of gods. Fallible and foolish.

[Monique · Rating 3 out of 5]

"In this singular and uproarious collection of comic dialogues, Lucian of Samosata, writing in the second century AD, eavesdrops on the gods themselves and presents us with a sensational peek behind the curtain of life on Mount Olympus. Here is Zeus, bickering with his wife Hera over his latest infidelity; there is Eros, in trouble again for his mischievous matchmaking; and there are Hermes, Apollo, Pan, Aphrodite, and all the rest of the pantheon, each with their own foibles, and each unknowingly scandalising themselves with their every utterance"


This was a fun and quick read. Lucian definitely has a good sense of humour! The conversations were short, sharp and snappy- I just wish there was more with more of the gods, imagine Hades, I'm sure he'd give some sass 😂. Though there is reference to other dialogues written by Lucian so I shall have to look into those go get more bearings on Ancient Greek society and more about the gods.

[Linniegayl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this for a class on Roman and Greek mythology. It’s a short book filled with really funny dialogues between various gods (Zeus and Eros, Zeus and Hera, Hephaestus and Apollo, etc.). At this point I’ve read a fair amount of Greek mythology, both for my current class and a few others I’ve taken in the past few years. As a result, I was familiar with the stories that were turned into satirical dialogues. I don’t think this would be as enjoyable if you were unfamiliar with basic Greek mythology. But as for me, I loved it and will search out more by Lucian in the future. It's an A for me, so five stars here.

Re-Read 07/19/24: I Reread this for a second class and still enjoyed it a great deal. This time I found the sections on Dialogues of the Sea Gods and Dialogues of the Dead especially entertaining. In addition to all the gods, such real-life individuals as Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Socrates, and more all make appearances in the Dialogues of the Dead.

[Mina · Rating 4 out of 5]

To think even my Uni library would have me read the online microfilm. Bah! Works of Lucian of Samosata are easily accessible here:

English: http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/luc/w...
Français: http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/philosop...

Second century work, thematically reminiscent of Lokasenna, Dialogues of the Gods is something like a collection of skits. The tone seems to be due to the translation, similar to Aristophanes. Regardless, very entertaining

[Ⰰⱃⰿⰰⱀⰴ Ⱆⰾⰴⰵⱃⰻⰽⱁ Ⱅⰵⱄⰾⰰ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matica hrvatska
Zagreb, 2002.
Prevela i priredila Marina Bricko
Jednostavan, svakodnevan jezik, bez izraženijih natruha aktualizacije, postiže zdravi humor.
Bogovi se u ovom zbiru dijaloga, koji su zapravo ogoljene kratke priče, prikazuju kao svakodnevni ljudi, kakvi su se i prikazivali u antičkoj mitologiji, s time da je cilj Lukijana u ovim dijalozima dodatno ismijati bogove.
Sitničave, niskoenergetske, emocije upravljaju bogovima.
Nakon skoro dvije tisuće godina i dalje se nije izgubio humor. Sama ta činjenica je zadivljujuća.
Lukijane titraš i smiješ se i dalje, nakon dvije tisuće godina, ok, skoro dvije tisuće godina.
¡Hasta luego mis murcielagos!

[Cillian Flood · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure I grasped the full extent of the satire with this one. It mainly seems to be a study on "This is how weird these conversations would be if this stuff was actually real" with the occasional sexual innuendo thrown in. Still, it did make me laugh a few times even if it didn't make me think much.

[Strix · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lucian's parodies fit their subjects a biiit too well for comfort...

[Nan · Rating 3 out of 5]

[☆3.5]

[Kris Raah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious!

[Elena Ighanian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining