Philocles. What, Eucrates, of all credible witnesses? That venerably bearded sexagenarian, with his philosophic leanings? I could never have believed that he would lend his countenance to other people's lies, much less that he was capable of such things himself.
Tychiades. My dear sir, you should have heard the stuff he told me; the way in which he vouched for the truth of it all too, solemnly staking the lives of his children on his veracity! I stared at him in amazement, not knowing what to make of it: one moment I thought he must be out of his mind; the next I concluded he had been a humbug all along, an ape in a lion's skin. Oh, it was monstrous....
"When I was a young man," said he, "I passed some time in Egypt, my father having sent me to that country for my education. I took it into my head to sail up the Nile to Coptus, and thence pay a visit to the statue of Memnon,[127] and hear the curious sound that proceeds from it at sunrise. In this respect, I was more fortunate than most people, who hear nothing but an indistinct voice: Memnon actually opened his lips, and delivered me an oracle in seven hexameters; it is foreign to my present purpose, or I would quote you the very lines."
FOOTNOTES:
[125] From "The Liar." Translated by H. W. and F. G. Fowler.
[126] Ctesias who died after 398 b.c., and wrote a history of Persia in twenty-four books and a treatise on India. Parts only of both are now extant.
[127] A legendary king of Ethiopia, who was slain at Troy by Achilles—a fable, says Rawlinson, which is "one of those in which it is difficult to determine any germs of truth." His name was given by the Greeks to one of the Colossi at Thebes in Egypt, from which, when touched by the rays of the rising sun, there was said to proceed a strange sound.