SOURCE: "Toxaris and Philopseudes," "The Onos: The Greek Frame-Story" in Studies in Lucian's Comic Fiction, E. J. Brill, 1976, pp. 12-49.

In the first section of the following excerpt, Anderson discusses the sources and structure of Lucian 's True History and Toxaris. In the second section, he discusses the themes, techniques, and authorship of Lucius, or The Ass.

… Among Lucian's narratives the Toxaris has been almost wholly neglected. It is too late to offer much information for the history of the Greek novella; and scholars have been deterred from looking too far afield for sources,² when Lucian himself claims that the tales of friendship are examples from recent history (10). This in itself does not make them authentic, and there have been two tentative lines of approach. Bompaire³ characteristically assumes that handbooks supplied most of Lucian's needs, and collections… were certainly available,⁴ while Rostovtseff⁵ explained the convincing background to Lucian's...