ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on Lucian’s expansive corpus to show how his satire synthesizes the various themes of this book but also provides an ironic distance from them. Not only do these satirical writings turn their distorting lens on various contexts for frankness within imperial-era society as well as on the classical models that influenced later Greeks, but they also call attention to satirical frankness itself. These self-referential discussions of parrhēsia set up a competition between the author and other cultural authorities (especially philosophers) over the legitimate inheritance of the great Greek legacy of frankness. And yet, the satirist himself does not seem fully to live up to the ideal of frank speaking, the very failure he identifies as widespread in the contemporary world. Ultimately, he raises questions not just about the applicability of the model to his own time but also about its validity altogether.
