Lucian’s early life is pictured in a brief speech called _The Dream_. This was probably delivered in his native Syria on his return after his European lecture-tour which made him famous as a Sophist. In a whimsical mixture of fact and fancy he describes his choice of a career. As a young lad when he had just finished school, Lucian was apprenticed to his mother’s brother, a sculptor, to learn to be “a good stone-cutter, mason and sculptor.” On his first day he struck a slab of marble so hard that he shattered it. Whereat his uncle gave him such a violent beating that he ran home to his mother for comfort. That night he had a vision. Two women were struggling to get possession of him. They were vastly different in appearance and in the appeals they made to him, for they were Sculpture and Education. Sculpture, unkempt, speaking haltingly and like a barbarian, told Lucian that if he came to her, he would live well, have strong shoulders, would never go abroad, but would gain such fame as surrounded Phidias, Polyclitus, Myron, Praxiteles. Education in her turn assured him that even if he became a famous sculptor, he would be only a mechanic, living by his hands; she herself has much more to offer him. “If you follow my advice, first of all I shall show you many works of men of old, tell you their wondrous deeds and words, and make you conversant with almost all knowledge, and I shall ornament your soul, which concerns you most, with many noble adornments—temperance, justice, piety, kindliness, reasonableness, understanding, steadfastness, love of all that is beautiful, ardour towards all that is sublime; for these are the truly flawless jewels of the soul. Nothing that came to pass of old will escape you, and nothing that must now come to pass; nay, you will even foresee the future with me. In a word, I shall speedily teach you everything that there is, whether it pertains to the gods or to man.”[295] Moreover, he will dress with distinction, will speak with eloquence. Finally he may became as famous as Demosthenes or Aeschines. He must recall that Socrates left sculpture for philosophy. Lucian on hearing these two appeals gave himself to Education, who then took him in a car with winged horses and from the air showed him the cities and peoples of the world. After this vision she clothed him suitably and returned him to his home. Lucian says he has told this dream “in order that those who are young may take the better direction and cleave to education, above all if poverty is making any one of them faint-hearted.”[296] Now although this choice of Lucian is based on the choice of Hercules[297] and although facts are clothed in fantasy, the picture of Lucian’s early apprenticeship may well be true, for the boy’s delight in modelling little figures of wax seems to forecast Lucian’s life-long interest in sculpture and other art forms.