The spoken word, or the Prestige of Orality, in Lucian

Abstract

In the bookish world of the Empire, the rules of orality not only remain intact, but oral speech outranks all other forms of self-presentation and affirmation among the elite pepaideumenoi. Lucian of Samosata, despite not being a conventional Sophist, demonstrates in his works that the prestige of orality in all of its forms—incorporation of oral tales, linguistic propriety in speaking, and performance—confers upon public speech the loftiness necessary to be worthy of its tradition. My purpose in this paper is to demonstrate how all of these forms manifest themselves in Lucian’s work.