The Scythian or Consul (3)

My reason for mentioning the story was this: Toxaris was still alive when Anacharsis, who had recently put in at Piraeus, went up to Athens. A stranger and a foreigner he experienced considerable confusion of mind, for everything was strange and there were the many sounds which frightened him;

he did not know what to do with himself; he saw that people who saw him laughed at his dress; he met no one who spoke his language, and altogether he was already sorry he had made the trip. He decided just to see Athens and then immediately to retrace his steps and embark for the voyage back to the Bosporus, from where his journey home to Scythia would be quite short. While Anacharsis was in this frame of mind a good angel appeared to him when he was already in the Ceramicus, in fact it was Toxaris. Toxaris had been first attracted by the familiar cut of his Scythian dress and then was bound to recognise Anacharsis himself quite easily as he was of very noble stock and one of the leading men of Scythia. But Anacharsis had no means of recognising Toxaris as a fellow-countryman, with his Greek garb, his shaven chin, his lack of belt or sword, his fluency of speech—one of the real Attic aborigines; so much had time changed him.