Volume 19, 2007 - Brown University

110 Elizabeth Broadwin
heading to his work. Lucian’s title is a pun rather than a misnomer, for, as he
says in the prologue, he has “produced a plethora of diverse falsehoods with
convincing verisimilitude” (Lucian, 2004: I.2). The narrative does offer a true
“story” for it is composed entirely of falsehoods or fictions. It becomes a story
in its truest aesthetic sense.
The prologue further elucidates the suggestion created in the title of A True
Story. Lucian introduces the work as offering a necessary respite from “serious
materials” and says, “everything in my story is more or less comical parody of
one or another of the poets, historians, and philosophers of old, who have
written much that smacks of miracles and fables” (I.2). Lucian’s work presents
fables that “smack” of the works of these historians and philosophers and he
says that he would “cite them by name, were it not that you yourself will
recognize them from your reading” (I.2). Like most of Lucian’s claims, this one
too must be taken lightly, for in fact, while he makes use of figures “of old,” he
often does so while attacking his contemporaries, not least of all his readers. The
parody depends on the reader’s willingness to engage in an intellectual journey
because “instead of affording just pure amusement based on wit and humor,” A
True Story “also boasts a little food for thought that the Muses would not
altogether spurn” (I.2). Lucian’s narrative adopts the rhetoric and style of
various geographic and ethnographic works, creating an intellectual game of
allusion for the reader. Just as Herodotus, Homer, Aristophanes, and various
other travel and itinerary writers offer journeys in their narratives, Lucian
presents a journey in his text, albeit an intellectual rather than a physical one.
Just before the narrative begins (from the Pillars of Hercules as tradition
dictates), Lucian makes the facetious claim, “I had nothing true to tell, not
having had any adventure of significance, I took to lying. But my lying is far
more honest than theirs, for though I tell the truth in nothing else, I shall at least
be truthful in saying that I am a liar” (I.4). Lucian’s narrative serves as
“appropriate recreation” because it not only offers a break from those more
serious works but also acts as a kind of guide to them. A True Story, if read as “a
little food for thought,” compels the reader to think critically and question the
content of any text which claims to offer the truth (I.2).
Lucian’s travel narrative is rife with Homeric allusions, epic language and
rhetorical flourishes which serve the parody in multifaceted ways. The first such
reference arrives near the end of the prologue and functions both as a warning to
Lucian’s readers and as a further explanation of the narrative that follows.
Lucian writes:
There have been many others who, following the same design as them, have
written of the wanderings and foreign travels they claim to be their own, telling
tales of huge beasts, cruel men and strange lifestyles. But the founding
father of this sort of buffoonery and their instructor in it was Homer’s
Odysseus, who regaled Alcinuous’ court with stories of the bondage of
winds, one-eyed men, cannibals, savages. . . . He talked a great deal of such