Friendship and Otherness in Lucian's >Toxaris

In Lucian’s Toxaris, the characters’ speeches play a performative role as they become their deeds of friendship. Between irony and (self-)othering, past and present, the dialogue negotiates a mixed form of identity by affirming a Hellenocentric position and deconstructing an Athenocentric per-spective on Greek culture. Eventually, both aspects converge, as the characters’ ability to make speeches on friendship displays their mastery of Greekness. This book, itself a hybrid of commentary and...