reading Lucian's Anacharsis. You can find it here
http://lucianofsamosata.info/Anacharsis.html. Wanted not to start a debate, but share the great reading.
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4
An. Wherever you look, every one busy - rising on his toes, jumping up and kicking the air, or something.
5
Now I want to know what is the good of it all. To me it looks more like madness than anything else. It will not be very easy to convince me that people who behave like this are not wrong in their heads.
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7
But would you mind giving a name to all this? What are we to say they are doing?
So. The place is called a gymnasium...
36
...(So) It is the thought of having to strip before such a crowd that makes them take pains with their condition; they do not want to be a shameful spectacle, so each does his best to deserve success. And the prizes, as I said before, are not small things — to be applauded by the spectators, to be the mark of all eyes and fingers as the best of one’s contemporaries. Accordingly, numbers of spectators, not too old for training, depart with a passion thus engendered for toil some excellence. Ah, Anacharsis, if the love of fair fame were to be wiped out of our lives, whatgood would remain? Who would care to do a glorious deed?
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