The Humed Serpent

Lucian, miracles, enlightenment, and empire

Bibliographic Data

ID12936403
AuthorsMartin Devecka (University of California, Santa Cruz, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume14
Issue4
Pages515-532
Publication date2022-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueClassical Receptions Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1759-5134 • E-ISSN: 1759-5142
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/crj/clac018
OpenAlexW4306254178
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited24

In his essay ‘Of Miracles’, published separately and as the final chapter of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume enlists Lucian’s Alexander, or the False Prophet as evidence for his claim that miracle narratives first take root among gullible rural populations before spreading to cultured city-dwelling elites. This essay reads Lucian’s Alexander and On the Death of Peregrinus against the Humean grain to suggest that miracle stories emerge as a consequence of the forms of commerce and circulation enabled by empires. In light of this, I recharacterize Hume’s geography of gullibility as an aspirational but unsustainable ideal engendered by the emergence of an eighteenth-century ‘Republic of Letters’

Ancient history · Art · Empire · Enlightenment · EPIC · Epistemology · Ideal (ethics · Literature · Miracle · Narrative · Paideia · Serpent (symbolism · Theology · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical Architecture and Urbanism · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Classics · History · Philosophy

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