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160 leader and first introducer of this extravagant style is that Ulysses of Homer's, telling his stories at the court of Alcinöus, about the imprisonment of the winds, and the one-eyed Cyclops, and the man-eaters, and suchlike savage tribes; and about creatures with many heads, and the transformation of his comrades by magic potions, and all the rest of it, with which he astonished the simple Phæacians. When I read all these, I do not blame the writers so much for their lies, because I find the custom common even with those who pretend to be philosophers. All I wonder at is, that they should ever have supposed that people would not find out that they were telling what was not true. Wherefore, being myself incited (by an absurd vanity, I admit) to leave some legacy to posterity, that I may not be the only man without my share in this open field of story-telling, and haying nothing true to tell (for I never met with any very memorable adventures), I have turned my thoughts to lying; in much more excusable fashion, however, than the others. For I shall certainly speak the truth on one point,—when I tell you that I lie; and so it seems to me I ought to escape censure from the public, since I freely confess there is not a word of truth in my story. I am going to write, then, about things which I never saw, adventures I never went through, or heard from any one else; things, moreover, which never were, nor ever can be. So my readers must on no account believe them."

The adventures of the voyagers "from the Pillars of Hercules into the Western Ocean" are indeed of the most extravagant kind. They have all the wild im-