ets. The latter are quite right
in throwing in a little mythology: it has a very pleasing effect, and
is just the thing to secure the attention of their hearers. On the
other hand, the Athenians and the Thebans and the rest are only trying
to add to the luster of their respective cities. Take away the
legendary treasures of Greece, and you condemn the whole race of
ciceroni to starvation: sightseers do not want the truth; they would
not take it at a gift. However, I surrender to your ridicule any one
who has no such motive, and yet rejoices in lies.

_Tychiades._ Very well: now I have just been with the great Eucrates,
who treated me to a whole string of old wives' tales. I came away in
the middle of it; he was too much for me altogether; Furies could not
have driven me out more effectually than his marvel-working tongue.

_Philocles._ What, Eucrates, of all credible witnesses? That venerably
bearded sexagenarian, with his philosophic leanings? I could never
have believed that he would lend his countenance to other people's
lies, much less that he was capable of such things himself.

_Tychiades._ My dear sir, you should have heard the stuff he told me;
the way in which he vouched for the truth of it all too, solemnly
staking the lives of his children on his veracity! I stared at him in
amazement, not knowing what to make of it: one moment I thought he
must be out of his mind; the next I concluded he had been a humbug all
along, an ape in a lion's skin. Oh, it was monstrous....

"When I was a young man," said he, "I passed some time in Egypt, my
father having sent me to that country for my education. I took it into
my head to sail up the Nile to Coptus, and thence pay a visit to the
statue of Memnon,[127] and hear the curious sound that proceeds from
it at sunrise. In this respect, I was more fortunate than most people,
who hear nothing but an indistinct voice: Memnon actually opened his
lips, and delivered me an oracle in seven hexameters; it is foreign to
my present purpose, or I would quote you the very lines."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 125: From "The Liar." Translated by H. W. and F. G. Fowler.]

[Footnote 126: Ctesias who died after 398 B.C., and wrote a history
of Persia in twenty-four books and a treatise on India. Parts only of
both are now extant.]

[Footnote 127: A legendary king of Ethiopia, who was slain at Troy by
Achilles--a fable, says Rawlinson, which is "one of those in which it
is difficult to det