Anacharsis was a Scythian philosopher. He traveled in the early 6th century BC. From his hometown on the north coast of the Black Sea to Athens and left a great impression as a candid and outspoken barbarian as a non-Greek speaker. He very well could have been a forerunner of Cynicism, partly because of His strong but playful Parrhesia. Anacharsis, the son of Scythian chief Gnurus, was half Greek and from a mixed Hellenic culture, apparently from the region of the Cimmerian Bosporus. He left his hometown to travel for knowledge and arrived at Athens around 589 BC. Anacharsis had cultivated the talent as an outsider to see irrationality in familiar things. For example, Plutarch remarks that he "expressed his wonder at the fact that in Greece wise men spoke and fools decided" . His conversation was curious and candid, and Solon and the Athenians considered him a wise man and a philosopher. His rough and free discourse became proverbial among Athenians as 'Scythian discourse'. Anacharsis was the first foreigner (Metic) to receive the privilege of citizenship in Athens. He is considered one of the Seven Sages of Greece by some ancient writers and is said to have been initiated initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries of the Great Goddess, a privilege denied to those who were not fluent in Greek. He recommended moderation in all, saying that the vine has three clusters of grapes: the first, pleasure; the second, drunkenness; the third, disgust. In this way, he became a kind of Athenian emblem 'Restrain your tongues, your appetites, your passions' . 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. It influenced the growth of French philhellenism at the time. It later evoked European sympathy for the Greek Struggle for Independence and other events in 19th century. (Credit: Anacharsis , Wiki)
Saka and Scythians
