ABSTRACT
As a reader of Lucian, Theodore Prodromos was not the Jonathan Swift or Voltaire but rather the Giacomo Leopardi of the middle Byzantine period – mutatis mutandis, of course. In the Operette Morali, the Italian poet and philologist entered the philosophical laboratory of the dialogue in order to experiment with subjects central to his thinking. Leopardi (1798-1837) embraced Enlightenment thought and radical materialism as the only true philosophical foundation; yet he recognised the dolefulness of this conclusion and was painfully aware of the ironic fact that the hedonist is less likely than anyone else to attain happiness in this universe, precisely because of his demystified self-awareness as a vanishingly small part of an infinite continuum of matter and vacuum. Thus, Leopardi appreciated the revivifying power of illusions as a means to temporarily re-enchant the disenchanted world of materialism, without ever escaping it for good. In Lucian, he found an attitude of ironic resignation in the face of this reality, and a fictional instrument to ponder and even enjoy, however fleetingly, man’s suffering at the hands of nature.1
