Mytologi

Lucian (c. 120-190 CE), apprentice sculptor then travelling rhetorician, settled in Athens and developed an original brand of satire. Notable for the Attic purity and elegance of his Greek and for literary versatility, he is famous chiefly for the lively, cynical wit of the dialogues in which he satirizes human folly, superstition, and hypocrisy.

On the shrouded corpse hung a tablet of green topaz with the inscription: ''I am Shaddad the Great. I conquered a thousand cities; a thousand white elephants were collected for me; I lived for a thousand years and my kingdom covered both east and west, but when death came to me nothing of all that I had gathered was of any avail. You who see me take heed: for Time is not to be trusted.'' Dating from at least a millennium ago, these are the earliest known Arabic short stories, surviving in a single, ragged manuscript in a library in Istanbul. Some found their way into The Arabian Nights but most have never been read in English before. Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange has monsters, lost princes, jewels beyond price, a princess turned into a gazelle, sword-wielding statues and shocking reversals of fortune.