Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Dialogues of the Gods. Thank the gods that Lucian of Samosata, village not in Japan as this provincial reader likes to imagine but Assyria, above the crumbling banks of the Euphrates, failed to make it a single day as an apprentice sculptor!
The story goes that, after shattering a simple plaque in his uncle's workshop, who caned him for the offense, Lucian ran home crying to his mommy, crept bitterly into bed, eventually dozed off, his pillow soaked with tears, and dreamt a vision of two women competing for his loya Thank the gods that Lucian of Samosata, village not in Japan as this provincial reader likes to imagine but Assyria, above the crumbling banks of the Euphrates, failed to make it a single day as an apprentice sculptor!
The story goes that, after shattering a simple plaque in his uncle's workshop, who caned him for the offense, Lucian ran home crying to his mommy, crept bitterly into bed, eventually dozed off, his pillow soaked with tears, and dreamt a vision of two women competing for his loyalty -- Statuary, on the literal one hand, Culture on the other: each made her case, and Lucian went with the latter.
The rest is ancient history. Our boy Lucian became a man known all round the empire for his verbal facility, rhetorical acuity, and sharp wit. Around the middle years of his life, he experienced, riding through some wasteland, a Paul-like conversion.
There was no great bright light or voice or what have you; there was, however, the High Priest of a burgeoning Snake-God Cult -- clearly, the orchestrator of one big scaly sham. Lucian challenged the fellow, unable to resist the opportunity to expose the fraud on deliciously ironic grounds of a professed prophetic ability "Tell me, Mr. High Priest, when will you show yourself for who you really are, a liar and a cheat?
Lucian, till this point, forgetting his failure with statuary, an epically successful orator and rhetorician, had seen enough: it became all of the sudden inescapably clear that talking cleverly through courtrooms held not a candle in urgency to knocking every con-man, crook, false prophet, thief, pomp, etc.
Well, here we have all of them, I think unexpurgated, as Erasmus, if not Lucian who never saw the pieces collected in this way during his lifetime , would have had it -- and in a wonderfully modern translation that is over years old this is the Public Domain Review Press after all. The dialogues are not long, 2 or 3 pages each, but there is among them a loose continuity, and there is a joy in getting a feel for the gods as characters, Zeus's lecherousness and numbskullery, Hera's jealousy, Hephaestus's remarkable good nature, Eros's duplicity, all of the in-fighting, gossip, and drama.
Like Sei Shonagon's Pillow-Book, reading Lucian's dialogues, for all their wretched godless-godly gaudy humanity, reminds me that this mind of mine works the same way as minds did in, yes, Heian Japan, in the Roman empire, all the way in fact to the minds of the Aurignacian, and remembering Eliot, who, in response to animal drawings either in Altamira or Lascaux, I can't remember which -- said upon seeing them something to the effect of our having made no improvement upon the vast enterprise of Art since then, in pre-history.
We haven't -- and isn't that fantastic? View 2 comments. Nov 19, Illiterate rated it really liked it. My kind of gods. Fallible and foolish. Here is Zeus, bickering with his wife Hera over his latest infidelity; there is Eros, in trouble again for his mischievous matchmaking; and there are Hermes, Apollo, Pan, Aphrodite, and all the rest of the pantheon, each with their own foibles, and each unknowing "In this singular and uproarious collection of comic dialogues, Lucian of Samosata, writing in the second century AD, eavesdrops on the gods themselves and presents us with a sensational peek behind the curtain of life on Mount Olympus.
Here is Zeus, bickering with his wife Hera over his latest infidelity; there is Eros, in trouble again for his mischievous matchmaking; and there are Hermes, Apollo, Pan, Aphrodite, and all the rest of the pantheon, each with their own foibles, and each unknowingly scandalising themselves with their every utterance" This was a fun and quick read. Lucian definitely has a good sense of humour! Though there is reference to other dialogues written by Lucian so I shall have to look into those go get more bearings on Ancient Greek society and more about the gods.
Oct 05, Mina rated it really liked it Recommends it for: Fans of Aristophanes. Shelves: humor , gods , mythology , french. To think even my Uni library would have me read the online microfilm. Second century work, thematically reminiscent of Lokasenna , Dialogues of the Gods is something like a collection of skits. The tone seems to be due to the translation, similar to Aristophanes. Regardless, very entertaining To think even my Uni library would have me read the online microfilm.
Regardless, very entertaining Jul 20, Vatroslav Herceg rated it really liked it. Matica hrvatska Zagreb, Sama Matica hrvatska Zagreb, May 07, Kris Raah rated it it was amazing. Ezgi rated it it was amazing Aug 23, K rated it really liked it May 27, LIA rated it it was amazing Sep 25, Jane Griscti rated it really liked it Aug 01, Gabrielle rated it really liked it Jan 21, Chris rated it really liked it Oct 19, Patri rated it really liked it May 02, Natalia rated it really liked it Jan 05, Krystalia rated it it was amazing Aug 08, Arya rated it liked it Mar 24, Hackenbush rated it liked it Sep 28, Sean rated it liked it Dec 29, Emma rated it really liked it Feb 17, Kelsey rated it it was amazing Mar 01, Dialogue V: Hera upbraids Zeus with his love for Ganymedes.
Scotty Smith Foon. Dialogue VI: Ixion makes love to Hera. Owen Cook TJ Burns. Dialogue IX: Hermes refuses Poseidon admission to Zeus, and assigns as the reason the lying-in of the king of gods and men with Bacchus.
Dialogue X: Hermes conveys to Helios the order of Zeus. Stefan Von Blon Elsie Selwyn. Dialogue XI: Aphrodite charges Selene with her love for Endymion, and, at the same time, laments the tyranny of her son, Eros, over herself. Sandra Schmit Leanne Yau. Dialogue XII: Aphrodite upbraids Eros for his mischievous conduct in the past, and cautions him for the future. Sandra Schmit Tomas Peter. Dialogue XIV: Apollo recounts to hermes the manner of the death of Hyakinthus, and his grief for the same.
Stefan Von Blon Aaron White. Sonia Foon. Foon KevinS. Owen Cook Foon. Leanne Yau Stefan Von Blon.
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