Playing the Historian: Lucian's Historiographical Parodies in Context

This dissertation examines how Lucian of Samosata constructs a series of mock-didactic narrators which parody aspects of Greek historiography. It focuses on parody found in three key texts: How to Write History, True Stories, and On the Syrian Goddess. By playing the role of different historians, or by engaging in distinct historiographical “modes,” Lucian satirizes a number of postclassical writers: Dionysius of Halicarnassus and his rhetorical criticism, Arrian of Nicomedia and his Periplus Euxini, and Pausanias and his Periegesis. Lucian’s sophisticated parodies constitute a direct attack on the pretensions of those who would seek to define and delimit the Greek experience under Rome, and who would compete with Lucian’s own fictional worlds.