Excerpt from Lucian, Vol. 4 of 8: With an English Translation Taking us back to the early sixth century, Lucian lets na listen to a conversation about Greek athletics between Solon, the Athenian lawgiver, and that legendary figure, the Scythian Anacharsis, who came to Greece in the quest of wisdom just as Solon himself had gone to Egypt and Lycurgus of Sparta to Crete. K. G. Jacob, who tried to make out that Lucian was an ardent reformer, laid great stress on this dialogue as a tract designed to restore the importance of athletics in Greek educa tion by recalling how much they meant in the good old days But Lucian, who in any case was no laudator tcmporis acti, says nothing of any significance elsewhere to indicate either that he thought athletics especially in need of reform or that he felt any particular interest in them; and if the Anacharsz's had been written for any such purpose, surely it would have ended with the conversion of the Scythian to the standpoint of the Greek. Let us say rather that Lucian, who was especially interested in Anacharsis and Solon, as we see from his Scythian, wished, perhaps for the edification of an Athenian audience, to present them in conversation, and shrewdly picks athletics for their theme as that feature of Greek civilization which would be most striking and least intel ligible to the foreigner, the child of N ature.' About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.