The Implications of the influence of Thucydides on Lucian's Vera Historia

This article considers the attitude that Lucian of Samosata appears to have taken to the classical historian Thucydides in the 2nd century AD, some 6 centuries after Thucydides himself wrote. It takes as its premise the opinion in a recent commentary of Lucian’s True Histories that the influence from Thucydides was nothing more than ‘background noise’ and had nothing deeper to tell us about the reception of classical literature in the Imperial period. The article shows that the treatment of Thucydides works overtly reflects Lucian’s broader opinion of ‘classic’ historians compared with those of his own times seen in other works.