Many ancient philosophical writers from Greece and the Roman Empire had reservations and questions about the worldview that was proposed to them by their culture’s folklore and religion. In an age when belief in all manner of monsters and supernatural creatures was rampant, a number of philosophers, historians, and similarly-minded authors wrote skeptically about the fantastical elements from their ancestral tales, especially the far-fetched monstrosities that were featured in the old stories. One such critic of the folkloric worldview of the time was the satirist, Lucian of Samosata (c. 120-180+), who publicly wrote against believing in mythical beasts. A while before Lucian’s time, a similar situation occurred with the Greek-Sicilian historian, Diodorus Siculus, (c. 1st century BCE), who made an interesting approach with mythological subjects—he siphoned away the divine and fantastical elements of the ancient myths but claimed they were inspired by real events. For instance, he proposed that dragons and fire-breathing bulls featured in the Jason and the Argonauts legends may have evolved from names of actual ancient Black Sea region people, whose exotic names were morphed into monsters by storytellers. Lucian of Samosata, for his part, was even more skeptical of monsters than Diodorus. Lucian wrote, “just like Hippocentaurs and Chimaeras and Gorgons, and all other creations of dreams and unfettered imaginings of poets and painters, things that never existed and couldn’t exist. Yet most people believe them, and are charmed by seeing or hearing such things because they are strange and outlandish” (Lucian, Hermotimus or On Philosophical Schools, section 72). As the quote conveys, Lucian of Samosata agreed that monsters were likely the creation of storytelling, but, unlike Diodorus, Lucian was less willing to believe that monsters had any basis in history or reality.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Cropped section of Perseus and Andromeda in landscape, from the imperial villa at Boscotrecase, dated last decade of the 1st century BCE, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the MET).
Sources:
- Lucian, Selected Dialogues, translated by C. D. N. Costa. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World Classics), 2005, 2006, 2009.
- The Library of History, by Diodorus Siculus, edited by Giles Laurén (Sophron Editor, 2014).
