Soli. A city on the coast of Cilicia, proverbial for the bad Greek spoken there.
Solon. A famous Athenian legislator, 594 B.C. Said to have visited Croesus of Lydia.
Sophist. At Athens this word denoted in particular a paid teacher of grammar, rhetoric, politics, mathematics, &c. Lucian sometimes uses it also for 'philosopher,' and perhaps sometimes in the modern sense of a quibbler.
Sophroniscus. Father of Socrates.
Spartans. Among the means adopted to train the youths in fortitude were competitive scourgings at the altar of Artemis Orthia, which must be endured without sign of distress.
Stesichŏrus. Lyric poet of Himera, 612 B.C. Lost his sight after lampooning Helen, and only recovered it by composing a retractation, 'palinode.'
Stheneboea. Another name for Antea; see Bellerophon.
Stoics. School of philosophy, so called from the Stoa Poecile, or Painted Porch, at Athens, in which Zeno their founder taught. Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, were the first three heads, starting 310 B.C. Stoicism was a great influence among the Romans, as with the emperor M. Aurelius. Its aim was purely practical, to make man independent of his surroundings. The 'wise man,' who formed his views on pure reason, would recognize that virtue or duty was the only end, and that pleasure and pain, wealth, power, and everything else that did not depend on his own choice, were 'things indifferent.' He would ultimately attain to 'apathy,' and be completely unmoved by the ordinary objects of desire or aversion, being, in whatever external condition, the 'only king,' the 'only happy.' They paid great attention to logic, much reasoning being necessary to establish these paradoxes, whence their reputation for verbal quibbles, and their elaborate technical terms for the relations between sensation and the mental processes. Later Stoics relaxed the severity of the 'indifference' doctrine by dividing indifferentia into praeposita and rejecta; e.g. health was to be preferred to sickness, though virtue was consistent with either. This would open the door to the preference of wealth, and account for Lucian's sneer at Stoic usurers. The Stoic physics was a materialistic pantheism.
Stratonīce. See Antiochus.
Styx. 'Loathing,' one of the infernal rivers. The oath by it was the only one that could bind the Immortals.