Satire and the polis in Lucian’s Timon or The Misanthrope

This chapter argues that Lucian’s dialogue Timon is best understood as responding to and critiquing polis politics in the Imperial period. Through a number of thinly veiled references to contemporary honorific culture, and in particular to the controversial super-benefactor Herodes Atticus, Lucian makes clear that the target of his satire is not Roman rule itself, but rather the behaviour of the citizens within the Greek cities who were the greatest winners from Roman rule. These individuals had become wealthy and influential through participating in Roman hegemony and now felt that the duties and obligations which membership of a polis imposed on its citizens no longer applied to them, thus threatening the very fabric of polis life. This breaking of the social contract was an abiding concern for polis society, and indeed Lucian makes extensive intertextual use of Classical works addressing precisely this question. The Timon thus not only illustrates the continuing vitality of polis politics in the Imperial period, but also the extent to which the political values which poleis continued to foster were themselves a central part of Greek cultural identity in the Imperial period.