Born c.120 CE. See generally OCD(4) s.v. Lucian (by G. Anderson), and for full accounts J.A. Hall, Lucian's Satire (New York: Arno 1981) 1-63; C.P. Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian (Cambridge: Harvard 1986) 6-23, 167-169. The present entry, hostile to him, draws on later Christian polemic.
[1] In Syria: Barrington Atlas map 67 grid H1
[2] Lucian himself characterizes his first profession as rhetoric (Bis accusatus; Apologia 15), which apparently included at least some forensic oratory (e.g., Bis accusatus 32; Piscator 25). The young rhetorician, a Syrian by birth, might well have practiced in Antioch, but the testimony of his corpus only mentions Macedonia and Gaul.
[3] Perhaps this recalls De morte Peregrini 2, where Lucian quips that he was almost mutilated by the Cynics, just as Actaeon by his hounds.
[4] Lucian wrote a life of the philosopher Peregrinus Proteus, in which he portrays him as a charlatan and describes his self-immolation by fire at the Olympic Games of A.D. 165. In an important passage in that work (12-13), Lucian describes how Peregrinus converted to Christianity while in Palestine, became a leader in the church community, and was imprisoned by the Roman authorities. Lucian then satirizes both the reactions of the Christians to Peregrinus' incarceration and Christian belief and practice generally. After his lifetime, pagans and Christians alike considered Lucian a sharp but earnest critic of religion. Lactantius noted that his satire "spared neither gods nor men" (Institutiones divinae 1.9), while Eunapius (Lives of the Sophists 454 [p.4 Giangrande]) and Photius (Bibliotheca 128 [v.II p.102 Henry]) stressed the seriousness of his mockery. The extensive scholia by Arethas, archbishop of Caesarea during the early 10th century, echo the Suda's disgust over the De morte Peregrini (pp.216-220 Rabe). On this Byzantine polemic, which is sustained by Alexander of Nicaea and Basil of Adada, see B. Baldwin, Studies in Lucian (Toronto: Hakkert 1973) 100-102.