What should a Companion to a specific ancient author look like? We might expect a bird’s-eye view of the current state of research into that author, or, alternatively, a primer on the contents of and relevant contexts for that author’s work. The editor of The Cambridge Companion to Lucian , Goldhill, has eschewed both kinds of approaches. In the volume’s introduction he announces that what is to follow is ‘not a handbook summarising what is known about Lucian’ (p. 24). As he explains, such an approach would be ill-suited to Lucian’s ‘fugitive, transforming’ (p. 15) nature as an author. Goldhill introduces Lucian’s writing as standing in a disruptive relationship to second-century ce Roman society and literature. His satire ‘leaves the reader laughing, laughing at society’s most pressing issues, but laughing uncertainly, uncomfortable at who and what is included in the mocking grin’ (p. 15). Invoking the metaphor of its title, Goldhill characterises the volume as ‘the sort of companion you might like to have on a trip, a trip through Lucian’s writings … to share with you the delights of the journey and add to the pleasure by sharing their perspective, knowledge, and sense of joy’ (p. 24). In this aim the editor and the contributors have succeeded, and travellers to the land of Lucian who pack this Companion in their bags will find much both to profit from and to enjoy. In this review we discuss a selection from the chapters, with an eye to both usefulness for those new to the author and innovativeness in relation to current Lucian studies.

The chapters of the Companion are arranged in three parts. Part 1 is billed as ‘general chapters that look at particular themes across the corpus’ (p. 15). Two of these address Lucian’s literary engagements. R. Hunter offers a nuanced and open-ended essay on how Lucian positioned himself simultaneously as critical observer and implicated participant in the intellectual practices of his day. Hunter traces how many of Lucian’s works cast aspersions on overly systematised and specialised approaches to literature and culture, while his own treatises on the technai of historiography and pantomime (How to Write History? and On the Dance) seemingly partake of this very style of criticism. How seriously, then, are we to take these pieces? In addition, E. Greensmith’s chapter provides an insightful overview of an area of Lucian’s corpus that has only recently started to receive sustained scholarly attention: his writing of poetry. Greensmith productively places Lucian’s creation of poetic works (Podagra and his epigrams) alongside the verse included in his Menippean works and his engagement with the poetic tradition in his prose works, arguing that ultimately Lucian ‘caricatures and collapses’ the divide between poetry and prose (p. 76).

Two further chapters in this first part address Lucian’s engagement with philosophical questions. P. van Nuffelen takes as his starting point the cogent observation that in Lucian’s lifetime ‘philosophy was at once the unavoidable butt of satire and the standpoint from which to satirise it … within Roman culture, there was no position outside of philosophy from which to criticise and reject it’ (p. 79). This facilitates an approach that takes seriously Lucian’s engagement with philosophy as a way of life. Van Nuffelen shows Lucian’s affinity with three schools (Epicureanism, Cynicism and Pyrrhonian Scepticism) that ‘share an emphasis on subordinating the acquisition of knowledge to leading a happy life’ (p. 85). It is not an accident that these three schools were also the most critical of the ‘systems and pretensions’ developed by other schools and therefore offered Lucian ‘the best springboard for satire’ (p. 86). T. Whitmarsh convincingly defends the position that we should ‘take Lucian seriously as an analyst of contemporary religious culture’ (p. 114), even if, importantly, ‘Lucian’s real religious “beliefs” will always be elusive’ (p. 105). The chapter briefly discusses some of the older scholarship on Lucian and religion, and analyses salient passages from On Sacrifices, Zeus Refuted and Peregrinus. In sum, this first part of the Companion offers solid points of entry into relevant Lucianic themes that one might profitably assign to advanced undergraduate or graduate students, or recommend to scholars new to Lucian. There are, however, some topics that could productively have received a chapter in this section and do not, most notably: Lucian’s engagement with comedy as a genre and his humorous strategies more broadly; and the socio-cultural setting (e.g. the sophists) of Lucianic performance and reception of his work in his lifetime.

Part 2 shifts from a thematic framework to focused readings of individual texts. According to the editor, these eight chapters are arranged in four pairs, which generally follow the thematic progression of Part 1. This organisation, however, is not always clear, and it could have been strengthened by the inclusion of more cross-references between the individual chapters. Still, the scope of this section is broad, with many of the chapters offering innovative readings of both well-known texts, such as the True Histories, and lesser-known works. E. Kneebone opens with a discussion of In Praise of the Fly, examining the ways in which this paradoxical encomium exploits the tropes of magnification and comparison, essential features of encomiastic rhetoric, to play with the audience’s expectations regarding scale and literary value. Next, P. Thonemann’s chapter on Phalaris I and II – long neglected by modern scholars – offers a reassessment of these fictional speeches. Thonemann’s discussion of the Delphic setting and in particular the connections to Domitian underscore the potential for these two speeches to contribute to our understanding of Lucian’s satiric politics.

Subsequent chapters in this section expand our understanding of the spatiality of Lucian’s writings. M. Formisano offers a re-reading of Lucian’s self-proclaimed ‘outsider’ status that focuses on images of liminality, while J. König’s chapter on the relationship between human bodies and their environment in the True Histories is a particular highlight of the volume. As König shows, Lucian’s text oscillates between two different ways of conceiving the human–environment relationship: expressions of humans’ capacity to control their landscape and images of bodies entangled with the landscape that expose the fragility of an anthropocentric view of the world. König makes a strong case here, as he has elsewhere, that imperial writers such as Lucian can open up new perspectives on how ancient writers conceived of their material surroundings. From a focus on the earth we shift to the heavens. Continuing her recent work on the moon in the Greek and Roman imagination, K. ní Mheallaigh offers an innovative reading of Lucian’s Icaromenippus and in particular its pretence of making mathematical arguments about the distance of the moon. The authority of scientific inquiry, as ní Mheallaigh demonstrates, is every bit as precarious as that of philosophy, historiography and even fiction-writing.

Two further chapters of this section take up Lucian’s short dialogues, another understudied portion of his corpus. D. LaValle Norman makes a compelling case for reading the Dialogues of the Courtesans as a unified collection as opposed to earlier approaches that have tended to cherry-pick specific dialogues. Themes of marginality and subjectivity once again emerge through LaValle Norman’s reading, which challenges readers to move beyond approaching the collection as evidence of female same-sex desire and social history more broadly. As a conclusion to this section, Goldhill turns to the Dialogues of the Gods and the specific conversation between Aphrodite and Selene (the Moon) regarding the latter’s infatuation with Endymion. Goldhill explores the complexities of Lucian’s comic dialogue form, in particular the ways in which Lucian manipulates a familiar myth to tease out essential questions about how female characters might talk about desire. While Goldhill’s reading is nuanced, it would have been helpful to see it extended to incorporate more of the Dialogues of the Gods in the manner of LaValle Norman’s chapter.

Part 3 treats responses to and uses of Lucian from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. I. Fantappiè’s chapter shows how initially Lucian was heralded as an edifying moral philosopher in Italy. But from the Quattrocento onwards there were several shifts in the reception of Lucian spurred on by vernacular translations, which ultimately landed the author on the index of books forbidden by the Catholic Church in the late sixteenth century. G. Loi closes the volume with an analysis of how Voltaire and Leopardi were among the last canonical authors who could allude to Lucian in their works ‘with the understanding that a significant portion of their audiences would recognise the original text of reference’; moreover, ‘by absorbing and innovating Lucian’s style’ they, in essence, ended up taking his place, and contributed to his disappearance as a widely known model for writers (p. 387). Overall, this section, the shortest of the three parts of the volume, provides an excellent taster of the vast and well-studied topic of post-classical Lucianic reception. It is followed by a list of references for the whole volume, an index locorum and a subject index.

Without a doubt this volume fills a need: in the last few decades Lucian’s popularity has skyrocketed among both scholars and students. This trend is further evidenced by the stimulating discussions found in the individual chapters. At the same time, the volume as a whole lacks coherence. Each chapter may be read as a standalone contribution to Lucianic scholarship, but readers are left to wonder how even chapters related in theme (e.g. Whitmarsh’s discussion of religious belief and E. Bozia’s treatment of Christianity in Lucian in Part 2) relate to one another. In the introduction Goldhill explains that each chapter was ‘specially commissioned’, and as such ‘indicate[s] where criticism of Lucian currently stands … and where such discussion may be taken forward in new directions’ (p. 16), but the volume’s engagement with recent Lucian scholarship often lacks depth and comprehensiveness. If a Cambridge Companion is intended to be an ‘authoritative guide … offering lively, accessible introductions’, as per the press’s website, this companion only partially fulfils that goal. While readers familiar with recent scholarship on Lucian will find much of use here, those just dipping their toes into Lucian’s corpus are unlikely to come away from this volume with a clear sense of the scope of Lucian’s corpus and its place in second-century ce Roman society. In the latter case, a better place to start (for those who read German) would be H.-G. Nesselrath’s 2024 volume (Lukian von Samosata. Der Weg eines Syrers ins Römische Reich und in die europäische Geisteswelt); for those looking for an up-to-date overview of Lucianic scholarship a lemma in Oxford Bibliographies: Classics remains a desideratum.