Lucian in composing his _Toxaris_ probably had in hand a Greek romance with a Scythian background, containing certain historical and ethnographical material. This he worked over making his story represent what his public then knew or could know of the Scythians and their neighbors. The discovery of the papyrus fragments of the Calligone novel confirms this thesis.[362] The type of the _Toxaris_ story and the papyrus story is the same. Both were love romances, though in each the erotic motif is subordinated to adventure. The interest of the age in the unfamiliar, the strange is manifested in the selection of Scythia for the background. Lucian’s narrative is intensely exciting as well as picturesque and although it is only a miniature story it gives us an idea of another love romance of a wild type with a king’s head cut off for vengeance, a bride kidnapped on horseback and an army raised on the ox-hide. The whole _Toxaris_ indeed, as Croiset remarked,[363] with its ten anecdotes furnishes rich examples of Lucian’s art of narration. VIII _A COMPARISON OF THE GREEK ROMANCES AND APULEIUS’_ METAMORPHOSES Apuleius, the author of the greatest ancient novel extant, might, if he had chosen, written his book in Greek instead of Latin. Though he was born in North Africa (at Madaura) he was educated in Athens as well as Roman Carthage and Rome, indeed was completely bi-lingual. The letter from his wife produced as evidence in his trial for having won her affections by magic was in Greek. And private correspondence demonstrates fluency in the language even more than does the fact of his translation of a work by Plato and his Latin style richly colored by Greek syntax and vocabulary.