elephants cannot disengage their legs or in any way extricate themselves
from the scaly bonds of the tenacious dragons. They are forced to seek
revenge from the fall of their own bulk and to crush their captors by
the mass of their own bodies.

“There are amongst them various kinds of inhabitants. I will rather
speak of the marvellous things of men than of those of nature.

“There is among them a race who know nothing but to tend cattle, hence
they are called neatherds; there are races clever in trafficking with
merchandise, and others stout in fight, whether with arrows, or hand to
hand with swords.

“There is also among them a pre-eminent race called Gymnosophists.

“These I exceedingly admire, for they are men skilled not in propagating
the vine, nor in grafting trees, nor in tilling the ground. They know
not how to cultivate the fields, nor to wash gold, or to break horses,
or to shear or feed sheep or goats.

“What is it, then, they know? One thing instead of all these. They
_cultivate wisdom_, both the aged professors and the young students.
Nothing do I so much admire in them as that they hate torpor of mind and
sloth.”

This does not look as if the Indians had been unknown or unappreciated
in the second century A.D.

Apuleius is not alone in his respect for the Brahmins. Many of the Greek
writers speak of them under the names of Brahmins or Gymnosophists, but