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Samosata

   Also found in: Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.21 sec.
Samosata (səmŏs`ətə), ancient city of N Syria, on the Euphrates. It was founded c.150 B.C. as the capital of the Commagene kingdom. Taken by the Romans in A.D. 72, it was of some importance in later Roman times. The Arabs took it in the 7th cent. Lucian was born there.

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Lucian of Samosata (about 170 CE) writes about a sky journey to the Isle of the Blessed: "Now and then one could also hear very clearly different sounds--not noisy, but such as would come from a banquet when a few people are playing the flute or the cithara" (Verae Historiae II, 5, 108).
Bishop Arethas and other Byzantines regarded him as the Anti-Christ; he was included in the first edition of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1557); on September 3, 1766, he was the protagonist villain in a musical drama called 'Lucian of Samosata the Hapless Atheist' presented by the Jesuit School at Regenshurg; Lord Macaulay dubbed him 'The Voltaire of Antiquity'.
Two second-century classical texts captivated Renaissance readers, writers, and artists: the Greek Lucius, or the Ass, formerly attributed to Lucian of Samosata but now held to be of uncertain authorship, and the Roman Apuleius' Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass.
 
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