A True Story
Also known as: A True Story, True Histories, Verae Historiae, Alethes Historiai
A satirical voyage narrative that parodies myth, travelogues, and historiography, following Lucian and companions through impossible realms—from a lunar war to the belly of a giant whale and the Isle of the Blessed.
Description
Lucian’s True History is a deadpan parody of marvelous voyages and authoritative history-writing. Claiming to tell the "truth" while reporting manifest impossibilities, the narrator is swept to the Moon, conscripted into a war between solar and lunar kings, journeys through aerial seas, and is swallowed by a colossal whale whose innards harbor nations and forests. He later sails rivers of wine and milk, visits the Isle of the Blessed to converse with Homer and the heroes, witnesses punishments of the wicked, and promises further books. The work lampoons credulous mythography and boasts of discovery, targeting earlier paradoxography and fanciful historians while anticipating later science-fictional travel tales.
Historiography
Surviving in Byzantine manuscript tradition within the Lucianic corpus, the text stands out for its systematic parody of historiographical truth-claims and paradoxography. Ancient reception was modest, but early modern and modern readers recognized it as a proto–science-fiction narrative. It influenced or prefigured later voyage satires and lunar fictions in European literature. Modern editions draw on a handful of medieval witnesses and standardize the two-book division.
Date Notes
Usually placed in the Antonine period (c. 160–180 CE) within the Second Sophistic.
Major Characters
- Lucian
- Endymion
- Phaethon
Myths
- Voyage to the Moon
- War of the Moon and Sun
- The Island Inside the Giant Whale
- Isle of the Blessed and the Wicked
- Return Voyage through Fantastic Realms
Facts
- The title is deliberately ironic: it narrates impossibilities while professing truth-telling.
- Lucian satirizes authors of paradoxography and mendacious historians by exaggerating their marvels.
- The narrative includes one of antiquity’s earliest sustained lunar voyages and interplanetary war.
- A giant whale episode hosts an entire ecosystem and human communities within its belly.
- The Isle of the Blessed features conversations with Homer and famous Greek heroes.
- Rhadamanthus appears as judge, assigning punishments to the wicked in a neighboring realm.
- The work is in two books and ends with a promise of a sequel that never appears.
- It became a touchstone for later European voyage satires and early science fiction.