Lucian of Samosata, the philosophical satirist and satirist of philosophy, was born at Samosata (Samsat) on the Euphrates and was educated there. He then studied rhetoric in Asia Minor, after which he was a lawyer for a while, toured Greece and Italy as a lecturer, and held a chair of literature in France. In middle age he settled in Athens, where he wrote and gave public readings of his most successful dialogues, many of which were on philosophical themes. Late in life he joined the staff of the Roman governor of Egypt. Nothing is known of his death except that it occurred after 180.

Lucian's philosophical position is not easy to define because he expresses contradictory attitudes, and his persistent irony and his obvious wish to entertain make it hard to know how seriously to take his statements. The...