XXI

AFTER this there was general conversation and  some serious discussion among the philosophers, in the course of which Iarchas explained that his own soul had once been in the body of another man who was a king, and that in that state he had performed this and that exploit; while Apollonius told them that he had once been the pilot of a ship in Egypt, and had accomplished all sorts of exploits which he enumerated to them. Then they put questions to each other, and received answers, which in the name of wisdom have scant title to be recorded at all. Thus we learn that Apollonius asked if they had any golden water among them. What a clever and marvellous question! And he also asked about men who live underground, and about others called pigmies, and shadow-footed men, and he asked if they had among them a four-footed animal called a martichora, which has a head like that of a man, but rivals a lion in size, while from its tail projects hairs like thorns a cubit long, which it is accustomed to shoot out like arrows at those who hunt it. Such then were the questions which Apollonius put to the sages, and Iarchas instructed him about the pigmies, and told him that they were indeed people dwelling underground, but spent their lives on the other side of the river Ganges ; but as to the other things which he asked about, Iarchas said that they never had existed at all.