time of
Lucian, and it is no wonder he should take every opportunity of
laughing at it, as nothing can be more opposite to true genius, wit,
and humour, than such pedantry.

{50} Milo, the Crotonian wrestler, is reported to have been a man of
most wonderful bodily strength, concerning which a number of lies
are told, for which the reader, if he pleases, may consult his
dictionary. He lost his life, we are informed, by trying to rend
with his hands an old oak, which wedged him in, and pressed him to
death; the poet says--
"--he met his end,
Wedged in that timber which he strove to rend."

Titornus was a rival of Milo's, and, according to AElian, who is not
always to be credited, rolled a large stone with ease, which Milo
with all his force could not stir. Conon was some slim Macaroni of
that age, remarkable only for his debility, as was Leotrophides
also, of crazy memory, recorded by Aristophanes, in his comedy
called The Birds.

{51} The Broughtons of antiquity; men, we may suppose, renowned in
their time for teaching the young nobility of Greece to bruise one
another secundum artem.

{53a} See Diodorus Siculus, lib. vii., and Plutarch.

{53b} Concerning some of these facts, even recent as they were then
with regard to us, historians are divided. Thucydides and Plutarch
tell the story one way, Diodorus and Justin another. Well might our
author, therefore, find fault with their uncertainty.

{55a} Lucian alludes, it is supposed, to Ctesias, the physician to
Artaxerxes, whose history is stuffed with encomiums on his royal
patron. See Plutarch's "Artaxerxes."

{55b} The Campus Nisaeus, a large plain in Media, near the Caspian
mountains, was famous for breeding the finest horses, which were
allotted to the use of kings only; or, according to Xenophon, those
favourites on whom the sovereign thought proper to bestow them. See
the "Cyropaed.," book viii.

{56} This fine picture of a good historian has been copied by Tully,
Strabo, Polybius, and other writers; it is a standard of perfection,
however, which few writers, ancient or modern, have been able to
reach. Thuanus has prefixed to his history these lines of Lucian;
but whether he, or any other historian, hath answered in every point
to the description here given, is, I believe, yet undetermined.

{57a} The saying is attributed to Aristophanes, though I cannot find
it there. It is observable that this proverbial kind