Lucian of Samosata in the Two Hesperias. An essay in Literary and Cultural Translation (PDF)

Chapter XIV Lucian as Authority on Style (p. 243)

For the Byzantines, Lucian had been considered a model of that clear, forceful and balanced prose that had gone by the name of "Attic."1 He figured in the Byzantine canon of prose stylists even though many of his late Greek imitators preferred rhetorical expansion.

Lucian`s Nco-Latin imitators also eschewed his concise but less rolling prose, a result of the millenial discrepancy between the Greek and Roman ideals of the grand style (Debora Shuger, "Christian Grand Style").

The Quattrocento Humanists were well practiced in the Ciceronian esthetic of expressing passion through copia and expansive periodicity, but not in the alternate tradition of Greek prose with its ideal of brevity and clarity.

Plato`s periods, for example, or Herodotus`, with their short clauses and frequent halts (Denniston, Greek Prose, 61), and Thucydides` compressed prose were perhaps the most important Greek models of brevity. Nor did the early Humanists cultivate the brief, concise Latin stylists either.

Aside from a few early Taciteans, such as Machiavelli, the imitation of a Silver Age style did not become generalized until the second half of the sixteenth-century, and then would be the object of a lively polemic.

Despite clearly different esthetic ideals, many Golden Age authors, like the Quattrocento Humanists and the Byzantines, admired Lucian`s concise eloquence, and mentioned his works both as a model of style and for the author`s precepts on writing in works such as De Historia Conscribenda (Bowcn, Words, 14).

Spanish writers also quote from Lucian`s specifically "linguistic" satires such as Lexiphanes to criticize misuse of language. Though their comments are often general and reveal no first-hand knowledge of Lucian`s actual style, Golden Age writers do not hesitate to enlist the Syrian as a prose authority in a number of literary polemics.

Vives, for example, admires Lucian`s style. He

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