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.