SOURCE: "Lucian and His Satiric Romances: The True History and Lucias or Ass" in Essays on the Greek Romances, Kennikat Press, 1965, pp. 144-85.

In the following excerpt from a work originally published in 1943, Haight discusses Lucian's style and use of parody in his True History.

… Gildersleeve was probably right in calling the True History "a comic sequel to a brilliant essay entitled 'How to write History.'"²⁹ The traditional manuscript order which places the True History after How History Should Be Written seems so aptly prompted by Lucianic irony. For this romance in two books is not history at all and has nothing of Lucian's primary requirement for history, that it should be true! It is a work of pure imagination, one of the earliest accounts of fictitious voyages and as such is part of the great tradition from the Odyssey to Gulliver's Travels.³⁰ Lucian's preface explains both...