A True Story

A second-century Greek satire by Lucian of Samosata, it recounts impossible voyages while openly mocking authors who present invented tales as true.

Lucian of Samosata: A second-century Greek-speaking satirist and rhetorician whose works often parody literary conventions. He narrates the voyages and frames the work’s attack on authors who lie.
Greek rhetoric: The theory and practice of persuasive public speaking and composition in ancient Greek culture. Lucian’s polished rhetorical voice gives extravagant falsehoods the surface of persuasive testimony.
Voyage to the Moon: A fictional journey beyond Earth’s atmosphere, a recurring motif in imaginative literature. Lucian’s ship is carried into the sky and reaches a world at war with the Sun.
Second Sophistic: A movement of Greek literary and rhetorical activity under the Roman Empire, flourishing especially in the first three centuries CE. Lucian’s satire belongs to this Greek-speaking imperial culture of rhetorical display.
Science fiction: Fiction that uses imagined science, technology, or altered worlds to explore possibilities beyond ordinary experience. Later accounts often call Lucian’s lunar voyage an early ancestor of science fiction.
Literary parody: Imitation of a literary style or work for comic or critical effect. The work borrows travel-writing conventions to expose their capacity for invention.
Ancient historiography: The writing of accounts about the past in ancient societies, shaped by conventions of evidence and narration. The work targets historical writers who claimed authority while recounting improbable events.
Battle of the Spiders: A fantastical battle episode in Lucian’s narrative, involving enormous spiders and celestial forces. Its grotesque scale turns epic battle description into deliberate comic excess.
Herodotus: A fifth-century BCE Greek historian whose Histories combine inquiry into the past with reports of distant peoples and wonders. Lucian’s opening criticism echoes disputes about truth and marvels associated with historical writing.
Cyrano de Bergerac: A seventeenth-century French writer whose comic prose works include voyages to the Moon and Sun. His celestial voyages continue the tradition of imaginative travel associated with Lucian.

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