structural:expansion
Treatises and letters

Lucian's treatise Alexander the False Prophet describes the rise of Alexander of Abonoteichus, a charlatan who claimed to be the prophet of the serpent-god Glycon. Though the account is satirical in tone, it seems to be a largely accurate report of the Glycon cult and many of Lucian's statements about the cult have been confirmed through archaeological evidence, including coins, statues, and inscriptions. Lucian describes his own meeting with Alexander in which he posed as a friendly philosopher, but, when Alexander invited him to kiss his hand, Lucian bit it instead. Lucian reports that, aside from himself, the only others who dared challenge Alexander's reputation as a true prophet were the Epicureans (whom he lauds as heroes) and the Christians.

Lucian's treatise On the Syrian Goddess is a detailed description of the cult of the Syrian goddess Atargatis at Hierapolis (now Manbij). It is written in a faux-Ionic Greek and imitates the ethnographic methodology of the Greek historian Herodotus, which Lucian elsewhere derides as faulty. For generations, many scholars doubted the authenticity of On the Syrian Goddess because it seemed too genuinely reverent to have really been written by Lucian. More recently, scholars have come to recognize the book as satirical and have restored its Lucianic authorship.

In the treatise, Lucian satirizes the arbitrary cultural distinctions between "Greeks" and "Assyrians" by emphasizing the manner in which Syrians have adopted Greek customs and thereby effectively become "Greeks" themselves. The anonymous narrator of the treatise initially seems to be a Greek Sophist, but, as the treatise progresses, he reveals himself to actually be a native Syrian. Scholars dispute whether the treatise is an accurate description of Syrian cultural practices because very little is known about Hierapolis other than what is recorded in On the Syrian Goddess itself. Coins minted in the late fourth century BC, municipal decrees from Seleucid rulers, and a late Hellenistic relief carving have confirmed Lucian's statement that the city's original name was Manbog and that the city was closely associated with the cults of Atargatis and Hadad. A Jewish rabbi later listed the temple at Hierapolis as one of the five most important pagan temples in the Near East.

Macrobii ("Long-Livers") is an essay about famous philosophers who lived for many years. It describes how long each of them lived, and gives an account of each of their deaths. In his treatises Teacher of Rhetoric and On Salaried Posts, Lucian criticizes the teachings of master rhetoricians. His treatise On Dancing is a major source of information about Greco-Roman dance. In it, he describes dance as an act of mimesis ("imitation") and rationalizes the myth of Proteus as being nothing more than an account of a highly skilled Egyptian dancer. He also wrote about visual arts in Portraits and On Behalf of Portraits. Lucian's biography of the philosopher Demonax eulogizes him as a great philosopher and portrays him as a hero of parrhesia ("boldness of speech"). In his treatise, How to Write History, Lucian criticizes the historical methodology used by writers such as Herodotus and Ctesias, who wrote vivid and self-indulgent descriptions of events they had never actually seen. Instead, Lucian argues that the historian never embellish his stories and should place his commitment to accuracy above his desire to entertain his audience. He also argues the historian should remain absolutely impartial and tell the events as they really happened, even if they are likely to cause disapproval. Lucian names Thucydides as a specific example of a historian who models these virtues.

In his satirical letter Passing of Peregrinus (Περὶ τῆς Περεγρίνου Τελευτῆς), Lucian describes the death of the controversial Cynic philosopher Peregrinus Proteus, who had publicly immolated himself on a pyre at the Olympic Games of AD 165. The letter is historically significant because it preserves one of the earliest pagan evaluations of Christianity. In the letter, one of Lucian's characters delivers a speech ridiculing Christians for their perceived credulity and ignorance, but he also affords them some level of respect on account of their morality.

In the letter Against the Ignorant Book Collector, Lucian ridicules the common practice whereby Near Easterners collect massive libraries of Greek texts for the sake of appearing "cultured", but without actually reading any of them.