Volume 19, 2007 - Brown University

Lucian’s Allusive Journey
Elizabeth Broadwin
Lucian of Samosata’s satirical narrative A True Story offers a parody of various
geographic, ethnographic, and travelogue texts through allusion and mimesis
with a specific focus on the works of Homer, Herodotus, and Aristophanes.
Probably born ca. AD 125 in modern day Syria, with the proper irreverence and
irony of a second-sophistic intellectual, Lucian levels jocular attacks against
those who claim to represent the truth about the world but in actuality spin fanciful
yarns about dog-headed men in faraway places. Lucian claims that his narrative
is of a better quality than those that he criticizes, for while he tells of even
more unbelievable places, peoples and events, he creates no pretense that his
falsehoods represent the truth. Through his satirical text, Lucian encourages his
readers not to behave like the unsophisticated “Phaeacians” (Lucian, 2004: I.3)
but rather to be critical readers.
Lucian juxtaposes various narrative styles and rhetorical flourishes with allusions
to a plethora of figures, philosophies, and works. He claims that the motivation
for this narrative journey, which goes from the far reaches of the moon to
the bowels of a whale, is an intellectual one: “I had a motive for my journey—
intellectual curiosity” (I.5). The pastiche, the intertextuality, the literary and
philosophical allusions, like the pretense of his journey, are narrative devices
which provide Lucian a medium through which he discusses his own society,
culture, and the nature of an aesthetic truth. Lucian creates a hierarchy of truths
with his narrative’s disparate treatment of Homer, Herodotus, and Aristophanes.
Though all three authors present travel narratives with The Odyssey, Histories,
and The Birds respectively, Lucian treats them differently based on the stated
and perceived truths within each text.
Lucian’s predilection for literary parody is manifested in the very title of
his work. The translation of the Greek title Alethe Diegemeta as either A True
Story or True Histories in the English does not fully capture Lucian’s punning
and use of allusion. According to Sidwell, “the word translated ‘histories,’
diegema, could mean ‘an unsubstantiated or false tale,’ and the combination
alethe diegemeta possibly alludes to a passage of Polybius (Histories I.I4.6),
where the historian (ca. 200-after 118 B.C.) says: ‘when the truth (aletheia) is
removed from history (historia) the residue is a useless yarn (diegema)’ (in
Lucian, 2004: 307). Given that explanation, True Tall Tales might have been a
more appropriate translation of Lucian’s work. Not only does Lucian’s intertextuality
begin before his narrative does, but the title also provides an honest
109