Lucian

In the Dialogues of the Courtesans, Lucian puts the lives of sex workers on public display for his audiences by looking at different problems that stem from the treatment of bodies as commodities of variable value in a fickle market.

The contemporary spread of dangerous fake news raises questions about the human inclination to believe in the truthfulness of invented stories, but also about the rhetorical strategies used to make this news credible. The same questions are posed by Lucian in his Philopseudeis, which I read as a metaliterary satire on literary mystifications.

Lucian’s Dial. meret. 5 describes a hetaira’s (Leaina’s) sexual encounter with two women, Demonassa and Megilla. During the encounter Megilla removes a wig and declares himself a man by the name of Megillos. Leaina and Megillos then discuss what it means to be a man.

In both Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and [Lucian]’s Onos, the narrator, transformed into a donkey, travels with a group of mendicant priests (ostensibly galli) who worship the Syrian goddess (Met. 8.24-9.10; Onos 35-41). Though the episodes are closely similar in plot, I argue that the two narrators see the galli differently, demonstrating the diversity in ancient attitudes toward this elusive group.