Sui Dialogi Meretricii di Luciano

This article aims at analysing Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans from a perspective that enhances Luciano’s literary program- me. The interpretation here proposed is to consider these Dialogues a dramatic and lively representation of Lucian’s new creation, that is the creation of a mixed genre born from the union of Comedy and Dialogue. This conclusion is supported by an intertextual reading based on other works of Lucian, especially the de mercede conductis. The experimental character of the Dialogues of the Courtesans also invites the reader to con- sider these dialogues as a single text where some of the possible narrative variants of the encounter between the two literary genres are produced.