Book 1
3
Ktesias, the Knidian, son of Ktesiochos, wrote an account of the countries of the Indians and their manners and customs, which he never saw himself or heard of from any one else. And Iambulus, too, wrote an astonishing account of things in the Atlantic Ocean. It is patent to all that he drew on his imagination, but he carried out his design pleasantly enough. Many other writers, too, have chosen the same subjects and written on them, assuming to give an account of their own wanderings and journeys, and the size of the beasts they saw, and the savagery of the people and their strange ways of life. The founder of the sect, the teacher of all this tomfoolery, was Homer's Odysseus, who talked to Alkinous and his people about the servitude of the winds; and one-eyed people who eat raw flesh and live barbarously; yes, and of creatures with a plurality of heads, and of transformations wrought on his companions by drugs. Any amount of such marvels he described to the Phaeacians, as if they were greenhorns.
