In “True History,” Lucian warns his readers that he “shall be a more honest liar than [his] predecessors” by telling the reader frankly that he has “no intention whatever of telling the truth” (pg. 4). The story begins with adventurers sailing west into the Atlantic Ocean, only to be blown to the Moon in a storm. There, they reside with Endymion who currently wars with Phaethon on the Sun as both parties seek to colonize Lucifer, the Morning Star, using bridges made from spiders’ webs. The two armies employ hybrid creatures, with the description of these bizarre animals taking up much of Lucian’s description. After the war’s conclusion, Lucian’s party returns to the Earth, where they travel to several outlandish islands, including one made of cheese. On a separate island, Lucian and his group meet various famous Greeks, like Epicurus, “the life and soul of the party” (pg. 42), Aesop, “much in demand for his talents as a raconteur” (pg. 42), and others, though the Sceptics were not present as they couldn’t decide if the island was real and Plato had gone to live in his Republic. On another island, “those who had written Untrue Histories,” such as Ctesias of Cnidos and Herodotus, find themselves in eternal torment (pg. 50). The story, in its greatest lie, ends with Lucian’s unfulfilled promise to tell his readers what happened to the party on a continent on the other side of the world.

In “Lucius or The Ass,” commonly ascribed to Lucian, the main character, Lucias, finds himself transformed into an ass through an accident while seeking to witness magic firsthand. The story closely follows Apuleius’s The Golden Ass, though in the end he transforms himself back into a human by eating a bouquet of roses at the circus. The punchline comes when he returns to the woman he fell in love with during his experimentation with magic, only to find his advances rebuffed as she was more impressed with his endowment as a donkey.

In his translation, Paul Turner worked to maintain the humor of Lucian, updating puns as necessary so that the effect would not be lost on contemporary readers. This Indiana University Press edition also includes gorgeous illustrations from Hellmuth Weissenborn. ( )