Athletes and those who pay attention to bodily training do not bestow
all their care on securing a vigorous
condition or on active exercise. They
give some of it to the question of
seasonable relaxation; in fact, they conceive this
to be a very important part of their training. In
just the same way I believe it to be fitting for
those engaged with literature to relax their minds
after a prolonged reading of the more weighty
authors, and render them more vigorous for subsequent labor. 
And this period of relaxation.
would be more profitable for such persons if they
should spend it over works which do not merely
furnish pastime by their wit and charm, but which
exhibit also some clever train of thought. This
is the ideal I propose to myself for the following
pages. For the novelty of the idea and the charm
of the subject will not be their only attraction,
nor yet the persuasive, consistent way in which
I set forth lies of all sorts, but the fact that each
of the events I record is a parody of some of the
poets and historians and philosophers of antiquity, who wrote such wonderful and fabulous histories.



 



I would even insert their names if they
were not going to disclose themselves to your
own mind as you read. 
Ktesias, the Knidian, son of Ktesiochos, wrote
an account of the countries of the Indians and
their manners and customs, which he never saw
himself or heard of from any one else. And Iambulus, too, wrote an astonishing account of things
in the Atlantic Ocean. It is patent to all that he
drew on his imagination, but he carried out his
design pleasantly enough. Many other writers,
too, have chosen the same subjects and written
on them, assuming to give an account of their
own wanderings and journeys, and the size of
the beasts they saw, and the savagery of the people and their strange ways of life. The founder
of the sect, the teacher of all this tomfoolery, was
Homer's Odysseus, who talked to Alkinous and
his people about the servitude of the winds; and
one-eyed people who eat raw flesh and live barbarously; yes, and of creatures with a plurality
of heads, and of transformations wrought on his
companions by drugs. Any amount of such marvels he described to the Phaeacians, as if they
were greenhorns.

 
Now, when I fell in with all these works, I did
not greatly blame the men for their lying, because
I saw at once that this was the habit of those
even who promise to write philosophy. But the


 


one thing that filled me with wonder at them was
that they believed their falsifications undetected.
Accordingly, I too, since my vanity made me
eager to leave something for posterity, was not
going to be the only one without a share in the
story-teller's license, and as I had nothing true to
relate for I have had no experiences worth telling-I turned myself to lying far more consistently than the others. For the one true statement I shall make is this: that everything I say
will be a lie. In this way I think I should even
escape the arraignment of others, since I admit
myself that there is not a true word in what I say.
Well, then, my book deals with things I neither
saw nor lived through myself, nor learned from
others things, moreover, which absolutely do not
exist, nor could possibly. Wherefore my readers
must put no manner of trust in them.

 
I once made a voyage, setting forth from the
Pillars of Hercules into the Western Ocean, with
a following wind. The cause of my journey and
my object in making it were the restless curiosity
of my mind, a yearning for novelties, and a desire
to learn what is the boundary of the ocean, and
what sort of people dwell on the other side. To
this end I stored a ship with a great quantity of
provisions, put plenty of water, too, aboard, secured fifty of my comrades who were of my way
of thinking, laid in, moreover, a good stock of


 



weapons, furnished myself with an excellent ship's
master at high wages, and had the vessel—she
was a light-built, fast-sailing craft — put in repair
as though for a long, hard voyage.