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.

 

 PHILOSOPHY 
When I sped off, father, I did not head for the
Greeks straightway, but as it seemed to me the more
difficult part of my task to educate and instruct the
foreigners, I decided to do that first; the Greek world
I let be, as possible to subject very easily and likely
(I thought so, anyhow) to take the bridle and submit
to the harness very soon. Making for the Indians
to begin with, the most numerous population in the
world, I had na difficulty about persuading them to
come down off their elephants and associate with
me. Consequently, a whole tribe, the Brahmans,
who border upon the Nechraei and the Oxydracae, The Nechraei are not mentioned elsewhere, unless, as Fritzsche suggests, they are the Nereae of Pliny (Nat. Hist., VI, 76). The Oxydracae made themselves famous by their resolute opposition to the invasion of Alexander; they lived in the Punjab. 
are all enlisted under my command and not only live
in accordance with my tenets, honoured by all their
neighbours, but die a marvellous kind of death.
 ZEUS 
You mean the gymnosophists. A generic name given by the Greeks to the holy men of India who lived naked. 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. Apparently a correction of Peregrinus, where (p. 30) the position is spoken of as “lying.” 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.




 

 PHILOSOPHY 
I did not even go to Olympia, father, for fear of
those detestable fellows whom I spoke of, since I
saw many of them taking their way there in order to
upbraid the assembled pilgrims and fill the back room
of the temple with the noise of their howling. The word is chosen because specially appropriate to Cynic “dogs.” 
Consequently, I did not see how he died.

 
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. The seven were the Seven Sages, who as listed by Plato in the Protagoras (343 a) were Thales of Miletus, Pittacus of Mytilene, Bias of Priene, Solon of Athens, Cleobulus of Lindos, Myson of Chenae, and Chilon of Sparta; but Periander of Corinth was often included instead of Myson. The three whom Philosophy acquired later were Pythagoras of Samos,. Heraclitus of Ephesus, and Democritus of Abdera. 

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




 

altogether at variance, but like the Hippocentaur
breed, something composite and mixed, astray in the
interspace between quackery and philosophy, neither
completely addicted to ignorance nor yet able to keep
me envisioned with an intent gaze; being purblind,
as it were, through their dim-sightedness they merely
glimpsed at times an indistinct, dim presentment or
shadow of me, yet thought they had discerned everything with accuracy. So there flared up among them
that useless and superfluous “wisdom” of theirs,
in their own opinion invincible—those clever, baffling,
absurd replies and perplexing, mazy queries.