SOURCE: "Six Gods and Men" in Studies in Lucian, A. M. Hakkert, Ltd., 1973, pp. 97-118.

In the following excerpt, Baldwin discusses Lucian's connection to religious developments and social unrest during his lifetime.

…Apart from Christians and Jews, Lucian took stock of the major religious phenomena of his age. The Dialogues of the Gods clearly can have their literary antecedents traced back beyond Plato and Xenophanes to Homer. These, and the Menippus pieces, make obvious mock of the anthropomorphic approach to religion. The theme was not new; and not exhausted.²⁴ The Dialogues of the Dead were a handy vehicle for timely jests on hero-worship and deification; the second century was poor in neither. The technology of religion is passed under review in the De Luctu and De Sacrificiis. Astrology and the Syrian Goddess are granted mock encomia in counterfeit Ionic.²⁵ Imported gods are examined in the Iudicium Deorum; the...