The Love of Wisdom and the Love of Lies: The Philosophers and Philosophical Voices of Lucian's Philopseudes

Abstract

The various characters of Tychiades' monologue in Lucian's Philopseudes are contextualised against the stock character-types Lucian constructs across his wider oeuvre. The philosophers are specifically characterised for their schools in line with their projection in the rest of the Lucianic corpus. The tales they are given to tell are all in some way linked with their school or their character-type. An appreciation of the broader Lucianic types to which the characters conform will give us access to some intriguing back-stories to the tales they tell. Conspicuous by their absence from the symposium are representatives of Lucian's two favourite philosophical schools, the Cynics and the Epicureans. However, it will be found that Tychiades himself exhibits some signature Epicurean tendencies, in Lucianic terms, whilst a disembodied Cynic voice speaks intermittently through distinctive imagery and language in the dialogue's various tales. For the most part this voice speaks in concert with Tychiades, without being identifiable as his own voice.

Daniel Ogden is Professor of Ancient History at Exeter. His books include Greek Bastardy (Oxford, 1996), Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death (London, 1999), Greek and Roman Necromancy (Princeton, 2001) and Aristomenes of Messene (Swansea, 2004), (ed.) A Companion to Greek Religion (Oxford, 2007) and In Search of the Sorcerer's Apprentice (Swansea, 2007).