=Lucian= (probably 120-200 A.D.); one of the wittiest of Greek writers, was a native of Syria, and passed his boyhood on the banks of the Euphrates. Doubtless his favorite amusement of moulding wax into figures weighed with his parents, no less than their own poverty, when they bound him as an apprentice to his mother’s brother to learn the sculptor’s art. The young Lucian enthusiastically fell in with their decision, fondly anticipating the time when he should astonish his playfellows with little gods cut from the marble by his own hands. But his maiden attempt in the statuary’s shop resulted in a broken slab and a cruel whipping at the hands of his uncle. “The first wages I earned,” he said, “were tears”—but they were also the last. He never returned to the chisel and mallet. After picking up a rhetorical education, by what means he does not tell us, Lucian established himself at Antioch as a lawyer; but failing of success, he set out on a lecture tour through Europe. In Gaul, where rhetoric, the art he taught, was in special demand, he accumulated a fortune; with which he retired from his profession in the prime of life, and took up his residence at Athens. Here he prosecuted his literary studies, exchanged his Syrian Greek for pure Attic, and is believed to have written his finest Dialogues. At the age of seventy, Lucian found himself so reduced as to be obliged to accept from the Roman emperor the clerkship of the Alexandrian courts. This position, which allowed him to continue his literary labors, he is said to have enjoyed until his death. LUCIAN’S STYLE AND WRITINGS.—Piquant humor, inimitable power of satire, and wonderful versatility, are Lucian’s strong points. His style is clear and graceful. Of his voluminous writings the most popular are the “Dialogues” on various subjects, serious and humorous. He attacked falsehood and trickery, folly and superstition; and the deadly blows he rained upon his country’s mythology, which led to his being called “the Blasphemer,” indirectly, though unintentionally, helped the spread of Christianity. In the “Dialogues of the Gods,” the deities talk over the domestic affairs of the Olympian household, gossip, and wrangle, and pry into one another’s secrets, quite after the manner of humans. Such a belittling of the national divinities could not be without an unsettling effect on the popular faith.—The “Dialogues of the Dead” are equally rich with humor and ridicule.