How to into Lucian?
Which collection of Lucian is the best to start with? The Oxford, Norton, or Penguin? They all contain "A True Story" afaik, but if anyone could help me on the quality of the translation and other works included, that would be great.
t. Classics major who is starting with the greeks
>>7797744
>How to into Lucian?
learn to use your passive and weave autos between abilities
its pretty simple from then on, he's freelo right now
>>7797744
I don't think this book contains A True Story but Penguin Classics Satirical Sketches are absolutely wonderful.
Do any of those publish with Greek?
If you're doing Classics where you have to learn Greek, Lucian is very handy, because his Atticizing Greek is how it should be done and his Ionian is god-tier. You'll probably want this:
http://dcc.dickinson.edu/lucian-true/introduction
If you're reading it without an interest in learning Greek, I'd still recommend that you read the notes off that on grammar, because it does really help appreciate how good he was. For translations, I can't help, but choosing something where you get other works of his you might be interested in will probably work out. You'll need to be well read in the Greeks to understand a lot of his in-jokes, so choose something you're familiar with who he might be mocking.
>>7797779
I am learning Greek, so this is very helpful. thanks.
>>7797779
Atticizing? Is it closer to plato or koine?
>>7797854
Closer to comedians, tbqh. Not close at all to Plutarch's Koine. A lot of Atticized Greek instead of taking the basic features of Attic which are easy to learn and write, and then make it baroque, so there were a lot of authors around Plutarch who sounded like an early computerized poetry programme when they wrote in Attic.
Plutarch's Koine shows off the ease Koine had for not trying to imitate classicism, while Lucian's Attic Greek still maintains the fun with words Atticism allows but without it seeming unnatural or like he raped a thesaurus.
Lucian's Ionian though is a cause of controversy, because he imitated Herodotus' voice so well that people still refuse to believe it was written later or by anyone other than Herodotus. His Attic could fit in as a contemporary to Athenian playwrights and immersed in their wit making up his own jokes, but his Ionian is indistinguishable from his source.
>tl;dr: not like Koine
>>7797904
cut out half a sentence
> A lot of Atticized Greek instead of taking the basic features of Attic which are easy to learn and write
like Koine did, take a very small amount of Attic writers' styles or features
It's late. The point being that Lucian doesn't fall into the trap most Atticists did, and his Attic sounds more natural than most other Attic imitators did, despite him writing Attic as a third language long after Plato.
