Lucian was born at Samosata, a city in the ancient kingdom of Commagene (present-day Turkey) some time around 125 AD. Trained as a sculptor, he later became a rhetorician, pleading legal cases in the courts. But Lucian's cynical turn of mind and biting wit made him popular with the region's intelligentsia and he was soon performing set-pieces in public. So successful was he, his skills brought both fame and fortune, and allowed him to travel extensively, through Greece and Italy and even as far as Gaul. In 'The Syrian Goddess' Lucian does more than merely entertain an audience. His essay on the worship of the goddess Atargatis (= Astarte) at Hierapolis ('Holy City') in northern Syria, gives an eye-witness account of a whole swathe of (to our eyes) outlandish pagan ceremonies: ritual prostitution, phallic worship, priestly self-castration, and human sacrifice are all recorded with meticulous care. 'The Syrian Goddess' remains one of the most important sources for 'oriental' religions under the Roman Empire, and is a classic read for all those interested in paganism and the cult of the Great Goddess.

With the exception of a very small number of statements, of which the truth is by no means certain, all that we know of Lucian is derived from his own writings. And any reader who prefers to have his facts at first rather than at second hand can consequently get them by reading certain of his pieces, and making the natural deductions from them. Lucian lived from about 125 to about 200 A.D., under the Roman Emperors Antoninus Pius, M. Aurelius and Lucius Verus, Commodus, and perhaps Pertinax. He was a Syrian, born at Samosata on the Euphrates, of parents to whom it was of importance that he should earn his living without spending much time or money on education. His maternal uncle being a statuary, he was apprenticed to him, having shown an aptitude for modelling in the wax that he surreptitiously scraped from his school writing-tablets. The apprenticeship lasted one day. It is clear that he was impulsive all through life; and when his uncle corrected him with a stick for breaking a piece of marble, he ran off home, disposed already to think he had had enough of statuary. His mother took his part, and he made up his mind by the aid of a vision that came to him the same night. He was allowed to follow his bent and go to Ionia. Great Ionian cities like Smyrna and Ephesus were full of admired sophists or teachers of rhetoric. But it is unlikely that Lucian's means would have enabled him to become the pupil of these. He probably acquired his skill to a great extent by the laborious method, which he ironically deprecates in The Rhetorician's Vade mecum, of studying exhaustively the old Attic orators, poets, and historians.