Nigrinus

Lucian of Samosata

Lucian, Vol. 1. Harmon, A. M., editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1913.

“After communing with myself in this vein and pulling myself out of bowshot as Zeus did Hector in Homer,

  1. From out the slaughter, blood, and battle-din,
Iliad 11, 163. I decided to be a stay-at-home in future. Choosing thereby a sort of life which seems to most people womanish and spiritless, I converse with Plato, Philosophy and Truth, and seating myself, as it were, high up in a theatre full of untold thousands, I look down on what takes place, which is of a quality sometimes to afford amusement and laughter, sometimes to prove a man’s true steadfastness.