Anacharsis
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Anacharsis (Template:IPAc-en; Template:Lang-el) was a Scythian philosopher who travelled from his homeland on the northern shores of the Black Sea to Athens in the early 6th century BC and made a great impression as a forthright, outspoken "barbarian", apparently a forerunner of the Cynics, though none of his works have survived.
Revival in the 18th century
In 1788 Jean Jacques Barthelemy (1716–95), a highly esteemed classical scholar and Jesuit, published The Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece, about a young Scythian descended from Anacharsis. The 4-volume work was an imaginary travel journal, one of the first historical novels, which Klemperer called "the encyclopedia of the new cult of the antique" in the late 18th century. It had an impact on the growth of philhellenism in France at the time. The book went through many editions, was reprinted in the United States and translated into German and other languages. It later inspired European sympathy for the Greek struggle for independence and spawned sequels and imitations through the 19th century.
Quote
- "He marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were skillful in a thing vie in competition; those who have no skill, judge" —Diogenes Laertius, of Anacharsis.
