Can you tell me, Philocles, what in the world it is
that makes many men so fond of lying that they
delight in telling preposterous tales themselves and
listen with especial attention to those who spin yarns
of that sort?
 PHILOCLES 
There are many reasons, Tychiades, which constrain
men occasionally to tell falsehoods with an eye to
the usefulness of it.
 TYCHIADES 
That has nothing to do with the case, as the phrase
is, for I did not ask about men who lie for advantage.
They are pardonable—yes, even praiseworthy, some
of them, who have deceived national enemies or for
safety’s sake have used this kind of expedient in
extremities, as Odysseus often did in seeking to win
his own life and the return of his comrades. An echo of Odyssey1, 5. No,
my dear sir, I am speaking of those men who put
sheer useless lying far ahead of truth, liking the
thing and whiling away their time at it without any
valid excuse. I want to know about these men, to
what end they do this.


 

 PHILOCLES 
Have you really noted any such men anywhere in
whom this passion for lying is ingrained ?
 TYCHIADES 
Yes, there are many such men.
 PHILOCLES 
What other reason, then, than folly may they be
said to have for telling untruths, since they choose
the worst course instead of the best? —
 TYCHIADES 
That too has nothing to do with the case, Philocles,
for I could show you many men otherwise sensible
and remarkable for their intelligence who have somehow become infected with this plague and are lovers
of lying, so that it irks me when such men, excellent
in every way, yet delight in deceiving themselves
and their associates. Those of olden time should be
known to you before I mention them— Herodotus,
and Ctesias of Cnidus, and before them the poets,
including Homer himself—men of renown, who made
use of the written lie, so that they not only deceived
those who listened to them then, but transmitted the
falsehood from generation to generation even down
to us, conserved in the choicest of diction and rhythm.
For my part it. often occurs to me to blush for them
when they tell of the castration of Uranus, and the
fetters of Prometheus, and the revolt of the Giants,
and the whole sorry show in Hades, and how Zeus
turned into a bull or a swan on account of a loveaffair, and how some woman changed into a bird or a

 

bear; yes, andof Pegasi, Chimaerae, Gorgons, Cyclopes,
and so forth—very strange and wonderful fables, fit
to enthrall the souls of children who still dread
Mormo and Lamia.
 

Yet as far as the poets are concerned, perhaps the
case is not so bad; but is it not ridiculous that even
cities and whole peoples tell lies unanimously and
officially ? The Cretans exhibit the tomb of Zeus and
are not ashamed of it, and the Athenians assert that
Erichthonius sprang from the earth and that the first
men came up out of the soil of Attica like vegetables ;
but at that their story is much more dignified than
that of the Thebans, who relate that ““Sown Men”
grew up from serpents’ teeth. If any man, however,
does not think that these silly stories are true, but
sanely puts them to the proof and holds that only a
Coroebus or a Margites Coroebus is known as a typical fool only from this passage, and the scholion upon it, which attributes to him a story told elsewhere of Margites, the hero of the dost mockepic ascribed to Homer. can believe either that
Triptolemus drove through the air behind winged
serpents, or that Pan came from Arcadia to Marathon
to take a hand in the battle, or that Oreithyia was
carried off by Boreas, they consider that man a sacrilegious fool for doubting facts so evident and genuine ;
to such an extent does falsehood prevail.

 PHILOCLES 
Well, as far as the poets are concerned, Tychiades,
and the cities too, they may properly be pardoned.
The poets flavour their writings with the delectability
that the fable yields, a most seductive thing, which
they need above all else for the benefit of their
readers ; and the Athenians, Thebans and others, if


 

any there be, make their countries more impressive
by such means. In fact, if these fabulous tales
should be taken away from Greece, there would be
nothing to prevent the guides there from starving to
death, as the foreigners would not care to hear the
truth, even gratis! On the other hand, those who
have no such motive and yet delight in lying may
properly be thought utterly ridiculous.

 TYCHIADES 
You are quite right in what you say. For example,
I come to you from Eucrates the magnificent, having
listened to a great lot of incredible yarns; to put it
more accurately, I took myself off in the midst of
the conversation because I could not stand the
exaggeration of the thing: they drove me out as if
they had been the Furies by telling quantities of
extraordinary miracles.
 PHILOCLES 
But, Tychiades, Eucrates is a trustworthy person,
and nobody could ever believe that he, with such a
long beard, a man of sixty, and a great devotee of
philosophy too, would abide even to hear someone
else tell a lie in his presence, let alone venturing to
do anything of that sort himself.
 TYCHIADES 
Why, my dear fellow, you do not know what sort
of statements he made, and how he confirmed them,
and how he actually swore to most of them, taking
oath upon his children, so that as I gazed at him all
sorts of ideas came into my head, now that he was
insane and out of his right mind, now that he was
only a fraud, after all, and I had failed, in all these

 

years, to notice that his lion’s skin covered a silly
ape; so extravagant were the stories that he told.
 PHILOCLES 
What were they, Tychiades, in the name of Hestia? The oath amounts to “In the name of friendship.” 
I should like to know what sort of quackery he has
been screening behind that great beard.