ANACHARSIS 
That is precisely the most pitiable part of it, Solon,
if they undergo this treatment not before just a few
but in the presence of so many spectators and witnesses of the brutality, who no doubt felicitate them
on seeing them streaming with blood or getting
strangled by their opponents; for these are the
extreme felicities that go with their victory! With
us Scythians, Solon, if anyone strikes a citizen, or
assaults him and throws him down, or tears his
clothing, the elders impose severe penalties upon
him, even if the offence takes place before just a
few witnesses, not to speak of such great assemblies
as that at the Isthmus and that at Olympia which
you describe. I assure you, I cannot help pitying
the contestants for what they go through, and
I am absolutely amazed at the spectators, the
prominent men who come, you say, from all sides
to the games, if they neglect their urgent business
and fritter their time away in such matters. I cannot
yet conceive what pleasure it is to them to see
men struck, pummelled, dashed on the ground, and
crushed by one another.


 SOLON 
If it were the time, Anacharsis, for the Olympic
or the Isthmian or the Panathenaic games, what

 

takes place there would itself have taught you that
we had not spent our energy on all this in vain.
Just by talking about the delightfulness of the doings
there, one cannot convince you of it as thoroughly
as if you yourself, sitting in the midst of the spectators,
were to see manly perfection, physical beauty,
wonderful condition, mighty skill, irresistible
strength, daring, rivalry, indomitable resolution, and
inexpressible ardour for victory. I am very sure that
you would never have stopped praising and cheering
and clapping.

 ANACHARSIS 
No doubt, Solon; and laughing and gibing, into
the bargain; for I see that all these things which
you have enumerated—the perfection, the condition,
the beauty, the daring—are being wasted for you
without any great object in view, since your
country is not in peril nor your farm-lands being
ravaged, nor your friends and kinsmen insolently
carried off. So the competitors are all the more
ridiculous if they are the flower of the country, as
you say, and yet endure so much for nothing, making
themselves miserable and defiling their beautiful,
great bodies with sand and black eyes to get
possession of an apple and an olive-branch when
they have won! You see, I like to keep mentioning
the prizes, which are so fine! But tell me, do all
the contestants get them ?
 SOLON 
Not by any means; only one among them all, the
victor.

 

 ANACHARSIS 
Then do so many undergo hardships upon the
uncertain and precarious chance of winning, Solon,
knowing too that there will surely be but one
winner and very many losers, who, poor fellows, will
have received blows and in some cases even wounds
for nothing?

 SOLON 
It seems, Anacharsis, that you have never yet
done any thinking about the proper way to direct a
state; otherwise you would not disparage the best
of institutions. If ever you make it your object to
find out how a state is to be organized in the best
way possible, and how its citizens are to reach the
highest degree of excellence, you will then praise
these exercises and the rivalry which we display in
regard to them, and you will know that they have .
much that is useful intermingled with the hardships,
even if you now think our energy is spent on them
for nothing.
 ANACHARSIS 
T assure you, Solon, I had no other object in coming
to your country from Scythia, over such a vast
stretch of land and across the wide and tempestuous
Euxine, than to learn the laws of the Greeks, to
observe your institutions, and to acquaint myself
with the best form of polity. Thatis why I selected
you in particular out ofall the Athenians for my friend
and host, in deference to your reputation, for I used
to hear that you were a maker of laws, an inventor of
excellent institutions, an introducer of advantageous
practices, and in a word, the fashioner of a polity. So


 

do be quick about teaching me and making a disciple
of me. For my part I would gladly sit beside you
without meat or drink as long as you could endure
to talk, and listen to you with avidity while you
described government and laws.

 SOLON 
To describe everything, my friend, in brief compass
is not an easy task, but if you take it up a little at
a time, you will find out in detail all the opinions
we hold about the gods and about parents, marriage,
and everything else. And I shall now tell you what
we think about our young men, and how we deal
with them from the time when they begin to know
good from bad, to be physically mature, and to bear
hardships, in order that you may learn why we prescribe these exercises for them and compel them to
train their bodies. It is not simply on account of
the contests, in order that they may be able to take
the prizes—very few out of the entire number have
the capacity for that—but because we seek a certain
greater good from it for the entire state and for the
young men themselves. There is another competition
which is open to all good citizens in common, and
a wreath that is not made of pine or olive or parsley,
but contains in itself all human felicity,—that is to
say, freedom for each individual singly and for
the state in general, wealth, glory, enjoyment of
ancestral feast-days, safety for one’s family, and in
short, the fairest blessings that one could pray to
receive from the gods. All these things are interwoven in the wreath that I speak of and accrue from
the contest to which these exercises and hardships
lead.