LUCIAN, the most interesting of all Greek writers of prose satire, was born at Samosata, in Syria It appears from his own account of himself that his father was poor and that when a boy he served as apprentice to a sculptor, from whom he ran away after receiving a beating. In his old age he lived in Egypt and held office as Keeper of Records or Master of the Rolls in that country. He died probably about the year 200 A.D. This is as doubtful as everything else that concerns his life. His writings which have survived in abundance are almost wholly humorous or satirical. He suggested themes for Swift and the author of “Baron Munchausen” among Moderns, as well as for many who have openly borrowed his style. He excelled in the dialogue, especially in dialogue which enabled him to put into the mouths of famous persons sarcastic or humorous comment on the follies and superstitions of the day. He saw that the polytheism which had been a popular religion in southern Europe and Egypt was decadent and near its end. In his “Dialogues of the Dead” and his “Dialogues of the Gods,” he ridicules the religion of the people, while in other Dialogues he is even less merciful towards the professional philosophers who cultivated long beards and attempted to live without work on the strength of their assumed superiority. Lucian is one of the last writers of Greek prose which can be described as classical. He is sometimes criticized severely for impurities of style, but he writes with ease, and, in proof of the interest he has managed to excite and hold, his admirers can point to one hundred and twenty-four of his books and prose treatises which have survived, besides his epigrams and poems.