Lucian was born at Samosata on the Euphrates, in the kingdom of Commagene, learned Greek rhetoric, and became the most celebrated satirist of the second century, lecturing widely and later holding a post in Roman Egypt.
In The Passing of Peregrinus, written soon after 165, he mocks a Cynic who spent a period among the Christians of Palestine. In passing he describes Christians who worship ‘that crucified sophist’, share their goods, despise death and are easily exploited. It is an outsider’s sketch, hostile but well informed.
