The Runaways (6-10)

ZEUS I know I said a great deal at the time, including all this. But go on and tell me what followed, how they received you when you flew down for the first time and what has befallen you now at their hands.

ZEUS You mean the gymnosophists.[*] Anyhow, I am told, among other things about them, that they ascend a very lofty pyre and endure cremation without any change in their outward appearance or their sitting position.[*] But that is nothing much. Just now, for example, at Olympia I saw the same sort of thing done, and very likely you too were there at the time when the old man was burned.

But to resume—after the Brahmans I went direct to Ethiopia, and then down to Egypt; and after associating with their priests and prophets and instructing them in religion, I departed for Babylon, to initiate Chaldeans and Magi; then from there to Scythia, and then to Thrace, where I conversed with Eumolpus and Orpheus, whom I sent in advance to Greece, one of them, Eumolpus, to give them the mysteries, as he had learned all about religion from me, and the other to win them over by the witchery of his music. Then I followed at once on their heels.

Just at first, on my arrival, the Greeks neither welcomed me very warmly nor shut the door in m face outright. But gradually, as I associated wit them, I attached to myself seven companions and pupils from among them all; then another from Samos, another from Ephesus, and one more from Abdera—only a few in all.[*]

After them, the Sophist tribe somehow or other fastened themselves to my skirts. They were neither profoundly interested in my teaching nor