The First Troll | Lucian and the Birth of Religious Satire

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Don't miss this one. I know it's tempting when it's someone that you probably don't know about and they have some ancient title like Lucian of Samsada, but trust me, this is a man worth learning about. I was going to do a video on Voltater and I thought, you know what, hold on. Before we get into this realm of satire, let's start at the beginning, the original religious satist, and that's Lucian. a man in the 2n century CE, notable for his wit and his public speaking skill, cozied up to the elites at the time and in disbelief eventually at their ability to believe nonsense and worse the harm that it led to the corruption. He could no longer walk around where there were temples on every street corner filled with gold while the common people starved. He couldn't sit back as prophets played tricks on people, healings and miracles for money. He found disgusting that martyrdom was cited as a virtue. And he said, "This is not holy. This is hilarious." And so he exposed it. Satire is what happens when reason meets ridicule. Satire is a weapon, an amazing tool. And I want to talk about that with you today. I want to share four works from Lucian that feel like they could have been written yesterday. Again, I want to remove you from the idea of the old ancient boring things. No, they're as relevant now as they ever were. And I think your mind will be truly blown at how relatable this all is. And so, we're going to talk about satire and why it's important and what it is. And then I want to talk about Lucian and who he was and how he came to be the man that he became. We'll talk about those four works and then we'll end with his legacy about what he did, why it matters, why it still matters, and what we can learn from it. So, let's dig in here. One of my favorite quotes about satire is that sometimes the truth needs to wear a mask to be heard. And we've seen this in every era. When religion or some other kind of authority gets too powerful, too pompous, too untouchable, there comes someone who refuses to bow. Many of those people have been fighters and many of those people have been philosophers.

[00:02:16]But today we talk about the ones who laugh. That's what satire does. It holds up a mirror. It pricks at the ego of dogma. It's how truth sneaks past the gatekeepers when done well. And this is one critique I have of olution that we'll talk about at the end. It typically punches up not down and it truly does have a long history of changing the world. Aristophanes mocking the war candid by Voltater critiquing organized religion and nationalism during the enlightenment helping to lay the intellectual groundwork for revolution. Jonathan Swift was known as a masterful satist, specifically his modest proposal that turned British policy in Ireland into a cannibal joke, forcing people to confront this cruel indifference. Charlie Chaplain's the great dictator ridiculed Hitler when very few others would. And of course, there's modern satire. We can see it in such simple things like late night TV hosts. But Lucian, he was doing this 1,800 years ago, writing in Greek to mock the gods, expose fake prophets, and tear down the sacred with a smirk. So, let's get into this a bit more. Who was Lucian? I like to give as many quotes as possible. This one is paraphrased from Lucian, but it's I learned how to lie by listening to the prophets and the priests. Lucian is born in 125 CE in Seamada, which is a city on the banks of the Euphrates. It's in the Roman province of Syria, which is now modern-day Turkey. Growing up there at that time would have meant a very serious mix of influences. Still, the Greco Roman imperialism mixed with local Syrian customs and even the Eastern mystery religions, most likely from a non- elite background, seemingly the son of a sculptor or artisan. And it's that outsider status that probably helped his skepticism at least toward power and tradition. So he lives during this time that we call the second sophistic a period of Roman history when the Greek rhetorical style was coming back in a religion in the empire was pluralistic and often performative. temples to every god, oracles on every street corner, and a booming trade in religious relics, which would make its own fascinating episode, as well as in miracle workers.

[00:04:31]Of course, within that environment, superstition flourished, even among and sometimes especially among the educated and two major class systems here. And this is why he hinted a little bit at was he punching up or punching down?

[00:04:44]Mainly punching up for sure, though he mocked the everyday believer. but specifically to the educated. He saw how can you have all this knowledge, all this power, all this information, all this history and still be so gullible.

[00:04:58]But they, just like the common folk, were drawn to these mystery cults, promising secret and special knowledge andor power and eternal life. Some things we just seemingly cannot grow out of. But one way or another, we know that he gets formalized training in rhetoric, public speaking, and argumentation. He likely studied in Antioch or even Athens, learning the tools of persuasion that he would later turn against the very persuaders themselves. And he began his adult life as a public speaker, a professional intellectual for hire. He traveled all over and saw so much during this time. and he almost reached the very top a tier, the elite of this kind of group, though again seemingly always had kind of this outside status. But eventually he grew disillusioned with the pretentiousness of it all. This wasn't real philosophy to him. This was all performative. It was no different than the corruption of religion.

[00:05:57]Essentially making a living by being smarter or more capable of tricking others. So instead he turned to writing.

[00:06:05]He wrote novels, dialogues, parodies, and philosophical satires. He turned it inside out. He took the very tools used to uphold belief and used them to unravel it. And his style matters. It's biting, but it's playful. He's not trying to destroy religion violently, but to expose it with laughter. It just seems like he had seen too many lies, too much reverence given to the absurd.

[00:06:32]If you read him, it becomes clear he's one of those people that just wants to live in reality and for others to do the same. And he wasn't buying in to the great facade. But let's move on to our next section here where I want to talk about his four most famous works. And I'll have these linked in the description below. And to kick it off, let me give you my favorite quote from Lucian. The gods have been very generous with me. I don't believe in them and they haven't punished me yet. That's the kind of wit I'm talking about. I am envious of people who can so simply and so eloquently make a wonderful point.

[00:07:07]So, we kind of have to reframe our thinking before we get into these works.

[00:07:10]He's not debating religion in the streets. He's not arguing it out with philosophers via syllogisms. Not that there's anything wrong with either of those, but his style is just, isn't this crazy? And again, kind of just putting it closer in front of your face for you to examine and see the ridiculousness.

[00:07:29]His first work that we'll talk about is the passing of Peraginus. This is one of the earliest surviving critiques of Christianity from a non-Christian source. And in it, Lucian tells a story of Peragrinus Proteius, a wandering philosopher who pretends to convert to Christianity to gain power and influence. Remember when I said that it all feels so exceptionally modern? How many grifters do we see do this same thing today? But anyways, it's just so on point. According to Lucian, these Christians welcomed Peragrinus with open arms. They gave him money. They called him a saint and they celebrated him for his suffering, for his imprisonment. A quote from this particular work, "These poor devils have it firmly set in their heads that they are immortal and will live forever if they just believe in that crucified sophist and live according to his laws." He's mocking and continues to go on to mock how eager Christians are to create martyrs, suggesting that suffering, not virtue, was their true currency of faith.

[00:08:32]Perinus eventually stages his own fiery death, self- emilation at the Olympic Games as some final act of public spectacle. This is echoing the kind of showmanship that Lucian saw in early Christian martyrdom stories. To summarize quickly the main points that this work really tries to hone in on, the Christian glorification of suffering, the cult-like behavior of early converts, the gullibility in spiritual leaders, and the self-serving theatrics of martyrdom. Let's move on to another work of his. Next, we have Alexander, the false prophet. This is Lucian's investigative expose, possibly the ancient world's greatest takeown of a religious con artist. Alexander of Abonichius founded a cult around Glon, a snake god he claimed was a divine oracle. Lucian goes on to describe how Alexander faked divine births, planted questions in his audience, and even used ventriloquism and puppet snakes to speak on behalf of their god. Lucian himself pretends to join this cult in order to document it from the inside. Again, I love this. This is where I referred to him punching down because he's around these average everyday people that don't have the same level of education that are more susceptible to falling for this. They are the believers in this cult. And he's mocking them for their blind devotion and magical thinking. But he was mainly mocking the leaders of this. In fact, a quote here. You'd be amazed how little wisdom people require to become prophets. This cult grew rich and powerful even gaining political influence in Rome. So the main points here are the ease at which charlatans can create a religion or a cult as well as the economy of belief. Fake oracles generating real money, the power through illusion, what people are willing to believe, the spectacle of the divine over reality or substance. Perhaps the saddest truth that is pointed out here is that people don't want truth. They want comfort and they want magic. But we'll move on to his third work here.

[00:10:42]Dialogues of the gods, dialogues of the dead. These are short comedic sketches, for lack of a better term, that utilize the Greek pantheon of gods, as well as some dead philosophers. It's a strange combination in the ancient world of a sitcom and a roast. In Dialogues of the gods, Lucian demotes all of the Greek gods into unlikable everyday people.

[00:11:08]Zeus is a womanizer and a terrible husband. Hera is jealous and nags.

[00:11:13]Hermes is busy running errands like a delivery boy, and Heastius is bitter because he's mocked for his limp. He just portrays them accurately, showing how ridiculous they are when taken at face value. They're simple. All they're trying to do is remove that air of importance that we so naturally place on anything we consider to be divine. In Dialogues of the dead, he's bringing back philosophers, but also these tyrants and these kings into the afterlife only to mock their now regrets and expose the emptiness of their reputation. Even Socrates and Plato are questioned here. And I love this because as important as it is to critique and show the invalidity of gods that aren't real, that don't exist, it's equally important to show the hypocrisy and the error of man. Man is all that there is.

[00:12:06]Man is what created the gods. So going after both of them shows that there is no separation between them. So the main points to be done here are to deconstruct the concept of divine perfection by showcasing divine pettiness, undermine the seriousness of mythology. We all think of Greek and Roman mythology like this now. Even the Netflix series that came out a few months ago, Chaos, was amazing, by the way, and it does just this, showing these gods living like people with all of their stupid problems and pettiness and egos. But it's because 1,800 years ago, people were daring to reduce these gods that were very much believed in by the way to mere imperfect and even ridiculous mortals. And these works weren't just funny. I mean, they were devastating to the prestige of religion in a world that at that time was still ruled by temples and tradition. Last, we'll cover his greatest work. what is at least typically accredited to him as his greatest work, true history. It starts with Lucian telling the reader tongue and cheek, "I shall say what is not true, but I will try to be entertaining. A ship caught in a whirlwind travels to the moon where a war is being fought over colonization rights to Venus. Illusion and his crew are swallowed by a great sea monster and they live in its stomach. or the one where there's a river of wine, talking trees, flying islands, and fantastical beasts. But this isn't all just for fun.

[00:13:39]He's mocking the absurd claims of earlier writers, the authors of these sacred travel tales who claimed divine encounters in far-off places. This one may seem a bit sillier than the first three critiques, but I think personally one of the things that he's getting at here is we always hear of the great things happening elsewhere because truly impossible and divine things can't happen in front of us. They can of course by way of illusion, trickery, psychological impact, etc. This kind of trope has been going on for a very long time. He's targeting these mythological epics. Even the concept of heaven or other divine realms, he turns into cartoonish fantasy worlds. And again, this is what I love about Lucian. He doesn't tell you don't believe. He shows you what belief looks like. If you want an endorsement to go and read true history, think of it as a mashup between the Odyssey, Goliver's travels, and the book of Revelation. I hope that you're seeing that Lucian didn't just ridicule bad religion. He was also ridiculing the impulse to believe which we all have. We all want to believe in some conspiracy theory or we all want to believe that magic is real. That's why Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter sell so well.

[00:14:57]Critical thinking isn't fun. Logic and rationale are not entertaining. But moving on, and we'll kind of just put all of the rest of my thoughts here into this conclusion. Satire works. It still works. It's always worked. Lucian himself says that ridicule is a powerful weapon that it cuts deeper than a sword.

[00:15:18]And everything that he targeted back then still threatens us today. religious manipulation, prosperity gospels, miracle claims, fake prophets, martyrdom narratives, exploitation through belief, whether it's your finances or your loyalty, whether it's religion or ideology, Lucian is a blueprint for the modern satist, there's no doubt that he inspired some of the later giants like Voltater or Mark Twain. He showed that humor can be this philosophical scalpel, cutting away little by little at the nonsense of it all. He fought with ridicule, not rage, which is a great reminder for all of us. I recognize the power and the beauty in it. This is the legacy of Lucian. This is the power of satire. And just like he called out kings and philosophers that had wonderful reputations, he recognized that we're all people and all people are flawed. So, let me even the playing field for your view on Lucian really quick to end. He had a bit of an elitist tone. He definitely ridiculed believers a lot more than he showed empathy for why they believed. You could make an argument, though I'd have a rebuttal, that he was just a cynic, that there was no reform. And I think there's some validity to that. But I think first people have to realize there's a problem before anyone is willing to start on a new solution. But Lucian wasn't here to fix the world. He never claimed to be.

[00:16:45]He was here to help people think. Also, he didn't have a goal of reaching the masses. And I don't know that he should have, but again, you could talk about the limited accessibility of him. He was writing for that educated elite, not the common person. You mix that with his mocking of the common person for their simple belief, and I think you could draw some problematic lines. But where would change happen? It's funny because if you're talking about, well, what was he doing to help? If you don't get the people at the top at that time who had access, who could read, who were the public speakers, if you weren't reaching them, you had no influence at all. If you wanted something to spread, it needed to start there. I'd like to think that Lucian saw that and aimed at that for that reason, but who knows? I would like to point out that he didn't storm temples or lead bloody revolts. He simply laughed and made others wonder why they weren't laughing, too. I wanted to personally thank our top tiers of support. Alone in the inferno tier is Lori. Thank you so much for your incredibly generous giving. Then really keeping the channel going in the blaze tiers is Deox, Dark Side of Delight Productions, James Gder, Lynn WD, and Noel Divergent. Our flame tier is now up to 10 very kind supporters, and we have even more in our ember tier listed in the description of each video.