Editing Lucian (section)

===Biographical sources===
Lucian is not mentioned in any contemporary texts or inscriptions written by others{{sfn|Richter|2017|page=328}} and he is not included in [[Philostratus]]'s ''Lives of the Sophists''.{{sfn|Richter|2017|page=328}} As a result of this, everything that is known about Lucian comes exclusively from his own writings.{{snf|Casson|1962|pages=xiii–3}}{{sfn|Marsh|1998|page=1}}{{sfn|Richter|2017|page=328}} A variety of characters with names very similar to Lucian, including "Lukinos", "Lukianos", "Lucius", and "The Syrian" appear throughout Lucian's writings.{{sfn|Richter|2017|page=328}} These have been frequently interpreted by scholars and biographers as "masks", "alter-egos", or "mouthpieces" of the author.{{sfn|Richter|2017|page=328}} Daniel S. Richter criticizes the frequent tendency to interpret such "Lucian-like figures" as self-inserts by the author{{sfn|Richter|2017|page=328}} and argues that they are, in fact, merely fictional characters Lucian uses to "think with" when satirizing conventional distinctions between Greeks and Syrians.{{sfn|Richter|2017|page=328}} He suggests that they are primarily a literary [[Trope (literature)|trope]] used by Lucian to deflect accusations that he as the Syrian author "has somehow outraged the purity of Greek idiom or genre" through his invention of the comic dialogue.{{sfn|Richter|2017|page=329}} British classicist [[Donald Russell (classicist)|Donald Russell]] states, "A good deal of what Lucian says about himself is no more to be trusted than the voyage to the moon that he recounts so persuasively in the first person in ''True Stories''"{{sfn|Russell|1986|page=671}} and warns that "it is foolish to treat [the information he gives about himself in his writings] as autobiography."{{sfn|Russell|1986|page=671}}