Author: Lucianus, Xenophon, Abbe Gail

Publisher: Brocas, Nyon, Colas, LeJay / Paris

Publication year: MDCCLXXXVI (1786)

Illustrations: - 

Pages: 176 (48+48+52+28)

Book’s size: 16.5 x 9.5 x 1.5 cm

Binding: Leather

Text: Greek

Condition: Acceptable/Good  some wear on spine where rubbed/discolored parts, gilded ornaments fading and from which pieces are missing, worn binding where boards are not firmly attached to spine but not detached either, stains, cracks/scratches, rubbed/discolored/splotchy parts, bent/rubbed corners lacking parts & cracks near spine, few inner binding issues not of importance, book does not open perfectly, foxing due to ageing, some leaves more-foxed-than-the-average, few creases on inner pages, piece of paper missing from few leaves' margin not affecting text, tears on few leaves' margin, last blank leaf missing.

Postage costs for a traceable shipping method (worldwide): $16.

Jean-Baptiste Gail (1755–1829) was a French Hellenist scholar, member of the Institut de France (French Institute). Gail was born in Paris on July 4, 1755. In 1791 he was appointed deputy, and in 1792 titular professor at the Collège de France. During the French Revolution, he maintained his professional duties, taking no part in politics, although he managed to ingratiate himself with those in authority. In 1815 he was appointed by King Louis XVIII of France to the post of keeper of Greek manuscripts in the royal library over the heads of the candidates proposed by the other conservators, an appointment which made him many enemies. Gail believed there was an organized conspiracy to belittle his learning and professional success, and there was a feud between him and his literary opponents, the most distinguished of whom was PL Courier. Without being a great Greek scholar, Gail was a hard worker, devoted to his favourite studies, and effectively rescued Greek from the neglect into which it had fallen during the revolutionary period. The list of Gail's published works filled 500 quarto pages of the introduction to his edition of Xenophon. The most notable of these is his edition of Theocritus (1828). He also wrote a number of elementary educational works, based on the principles of the school of Port-Royal. His communications to the Académie des Inscriptions being coldly received and seldom accorded the honour of print, he inserted them in a vast compilation in 24 volumes, which he called Le Philologue, containing a mass of ill-digested notes on Greek grammar, geography, archaeology, and various authors. A list of his works will be found in JM Quérard, La France littéraire (1829), including the contents of the volumes of Le Philologue. Gail married singer and composer Sophie Gail and was the father of classicist Jean François Gail. Jean-Baptiste died in Paris on February 5, 1829.

Lucian of Samosata (c. 125 – after 180) was a Hellenized Syrian satirist, rhetorician and pamphleteer who is best known for his characteristic tongue-in-cheek style, with which he frequently ridiculed superstition, religious practices, and belief in the paranormal. Although his native language was probably Syriac, all of his extant works are written entirely in ancient Greek (mostly in the Attic Greek dialect popular during the Second Sophistic period). Everything that is known about Lucian's life comes from his own writings, which are often difficult to interpret because of his extensive use of sarcasm. According to his oration The Dream, he was the son of a lower middle class family from the city of Samosata along the banks of the Euphrates in the remote Roman province of Syria. As a young man, he was apprenticed to his uncle to become a sculptor, but, after a failed attempt at sculpting, he ran away to pursue an education in Ionia. He may have become a travelling lecturer and visited universities throughout the Roman Empire. After acquiring fame and wealth through his teaching, Lucian finally settled down in Athens for a decade, during which he wrote most of his extant works. In his fifties, he may have been appointed as a highly paid government official in Egypt, after which point he disappears from the historical record. Lucian's works were wildly popular in antiquity, and more than eighty writings attributed to him have survived to the present day, a considerably higher quantity than for most other classical writers. His most famous work is A True Story, a tongue-in-cheek satire against authors who tell incredible tales, which is regarded by some as the earliest known work of science fiction. Lucian invented the genre of comic dialogue, a parody of the traditional Socratic dialogue. His dialogue Lover of Lies makes fun of people who believe in the supernatural and contains the oldest known version of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice". Lucian wrote numerous satires making fun of traditional stories about the gods including The Dialogues of the Gods, Icaromenippus, Zeus Rants, Zeus Catechized, and The Parliament of the Gods. His Dialogues of the Dead focuses on the Cynic philosophers Diogenes and Menippus. Philosophies for Sale and The Carousal, or The Lapiths make fun of various philosophical schools, and The Fisherman or the Dead Come to Life is a defense of this mockery. Lucian often ridiculed public figures, such as the Cynic philosopher Peregrinus Proteus in his letter The Passing of Peregrinus and the fraudulent oracle Alexander of Abonoteichus in his treatise Alexander the False Prophet. Lucian's treatise On the Syrian Goddess satirizes cultural distinctions between Greeks and Syrians and is the main source of information about the cult of Atargatis. Lucian had an enormous, wide-ranging impact on Western literature. Works inspired by his writings include Thomas More's Utopia, the works of François Rabelais, William Shakespeare's Timon of Athens and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

Xenophon of Athens (c. 430–354 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher, historian, soldier, mercenary, and student of Socrates. As a historian, Xenophon is known for recording the history of his contemporary time, the late-5th and early-4th centuries BC, in such works as the Hellenica, about the final seven years and the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), a thematic continuation of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. As one of the Ten Thousand (Greek mercenaries), he also participated in Cyrus the Younger's failed campaign to claim the Persian throne from his brother Artaxerxes II of Persia and recounted the events in Anabasis, his most notable history. Like Plato (427–347 BC), Xenophon is an authority on Socrates, about whom he wrote several books of dialogues (the Memorabilia) and an Apology of Socrates to the Jury, which recounts the philosopher's trial in 399 BC. Despite being born an Athenian citizen, Xenophon was also associated with Sparta, the traditional enemy of Athens. His pro-oligarchicpolitics, military service under Spartan generals, in the Persian campaign and elsewhere, and his friendship with King Agesilaus IIendeared Xenophon to the Spartans. Some of his works have a pro–Spartan bias, especially the royal biography Agesilaus and the Constitution of the Spartans. Xenophon's works span several genres and are written in plain-language Attic Greek, for which reason they serve as translation exercises for contemporary students of the Ancient Greek language. In the Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laërtius observed that, as a writer, Xenophon of Athens was known as the “Attic Muse”, for the sweetness of his diction (2.6).