Lucian

Lucian of Samosata (c. 125 - after 180) was a Syrian satirist, rhetorician and pamphleteer who wrote in Greek. He is best known for a biting tongue-in-cheek style that he used to ridicule philosophers and theologians, speculative beliefs about the nature of the universe, religious practices and superstitions. Lucian's works were very popular in antiquity, and more than eighty writings attributed to him have survived, making his opus one of the best preserved of classical writers. His most famous work is A True Story, a tongue-in-cheek satire against authors who tell tall tales and which is considered the earliest known work of science fiction. Lucian also invented the genre of comic dialog, a parody of traditional Socratic dialog. A variety of characters with names very similar to Lucian ­- including "Lukinos," "Lukianos," "Lucius," and "The Syrian" - appear throughout his writings and are the only source of information about him. Lucian stopped writing a few years before his death, upon which he disappears from the historical record and nothing more is known about him.