Fiction and history in Lucian

Lucian of Samosata (2nd century AD) devoted two books to history and historians: one a serious textbook entitled How to write history; the other, a parody of a long and extraordinary journey, True Stories. This article focuses on the criticism that, above and beyond parody and fantasy, characterizes True Stories, targeting at once the poets, historians and philosophers of the past owing to the many "prodigious and fantastical" things they wrote. By examining the four paragraphs that make up the prologue of this work and clarify Lucian's thought and position, we aim to show that the author uses this unusual story to reflect on the different narrative forms, historical and poetic, and redefine, especially, the status of discourse about the past.