Dioxippus' Loquacious Foreword to an Eldritch Tome Which is Almost Certainly a Manual of Quickness of Action or Something Quite Similar, but Probably Just That

   A writing from Dioxippus, who found, restored, rebound, and never used this tome.
   
   That humanity must be overcome shall be the subject of this brief discourse. Overcome? asks the fretful
   commoner. Nay, wipe from thy brow thy sweat, stout shepherd! Not by the feeble shades of Hades, not by
   the older races that live on our borders, and not by ancient races forgotten to time, shall our mortal
   shackles be sundered, but by man himself. Yes, man, man alone must progress beyond himself, just as he
   has progressed beyond the dumb animals, who go about on four hideous legs naked in their skins and cannot 
   contrive torchlit ceremonies or hurl spears or in many cases sing. Man alone goes beyond, and indeed must 
   continue to do so. 
   
   In spite of what the wise have said I still my old opinion keep: not from the races of gold in the happy
   reign of Kronos have we devolved. Rather have we purified and refined ourselves from those wicked days 
   when a devourer of his own heirs stalked the earth, and no doubt shall continue to do so, in a similar 
   vein. Let scream the error of atavism who will. Man advances, climbing up the rocky faces of Ossa and 
   perhaps Pelion. 
   
   Surely this is an admirable goal! Innumerable sages have stressed its importance, and this theme has 
   drawn honey from the lips of many a rhetorician. To say nothing of the poets, whose tongues ever dip into 
   the pot of praises of man's beauty, his skill, his wit. Does not Homer, in the Cypria, say: Then did 
   wrathful Agamemnon strain to pierce the Trojan's breastplate, strain beyond the human seeming? Is not a 
   beautiful youth called divine, or compared to Apollo? Is not the striving to imitate the gods a certain 
   and straight ultramontane path beyond the limits of our bodies and minds? 
   
   The constant exercises of the flesh are perhaps methods, approved by Lacedemonians, of perfecting the 
   human-but they will only take one so far. Would Achilles have fought and slain so mightily on the fields 
   of Ida had he lacked immortal parentage? What hero is there in whose veins runs not divine ichor? 
   Indicate with your finger the name of one and I will explain to you how he was blessed by the gods, and 
   is therefore if not a direct yet a surrogate descendent of Olympus. Can it be then that helpless we 
   splash as in the ocean dark? Bemoaning our fate as we sink like Leander, unable to swim another stroke 
   beyond ourselves? 
   
   O world cruel and arbitrary! if the caprices and whims of the gods, which fall alike on the worthy and 
   the wicked, be the sole method of achieving our destiny. And yet is it not the case that the Aegis, the 
   slippers winged, the armor of Achilles, blessed devices! though favored by the gods may fall into the 
   hands of those the gods have ignored, as Narcissus ignored the dulcet voice of Echo? Could it not be that 
   humans could through diligence or patience or fortune or fate or skill at arms or feats of strength or 
   puissance or craft or stealth come upon and acquire certain items that might assist them to improve their 
   bodies or minds? 
   
   It could! Those who are merely, say rather strong, may by the application of these devices become very 
   strong; yet those who are already of great strength, at its human maximum, that is to say, like Ajax 
   Major, may find they have become veritable Herculeses! No more for them these human bonds! 
   
   But what, clamors my attentive and salivating audience, are these devices of which I have spoken so 
   freely and eloquently, with an ease and grace that betrays one familiar with them in all their sundry 
   appearances and applications? I will explicate a very few, simply to appease those whose curiosity could 
   not be sated without my words. 
   
   Of one: there are to the north certain barbarous sorcerers or holy men who have contrived, with the help 
   of the gods, plain stones, in a variety of shapes and colors. These are of a wonderful nature! For if 
   they are thrown about the head with a precise flick of the wrist they will fall never to earth but begin 
   an orbit around the happy fellow's pate. And just as the sun, which rings the earth eternally in a 
   circular dance, feeds our Common Mother and gives her warmth and light, so does this wondrous stone feed 
   the head it orbits, granting it superior wisdom or perspicacity, or the body to which said head is 
   appended, bestowing on it increased hardiness, or quickness, or resistance to enervation. Best of all, 
   invisible becomes the stone as it circles like a crow above a battlefield at night, so that none may 
   apprehend its presence save its wearer, who knows it flies still because of its affect upon his poor 
   self! 
   
   Of another: Note that there are certain items of attire crafted by the barbarians to the south, by the 
   shores of the river Ocean, which bestow upon their wearers a superior talent with that part of the body 
   concealed or protected by the vestment. So that gloves may increase the speed or strength of the hands, 
   boots the speed or strength of the feet, etc. Happy he whose closet permits him to select raiments not 
   merely according to the vicissitudes of the weather or the sartorial customs of his beloved homeland but 
   also by dint and virtue of what attribute he needs enhanced today! 
   
   It is well knows that wily Circe or Medea might decant at her leisure a draught which, when quaffed, 
   engenders the biber with superior attributes. And yet the duration of the increase is oft short, 
   rendering this method of overcoming unsatisfactory. Away, witch-women! to your dark abodes slink, there 
   to craft spells for other effects, more profitable to the species! 
   
   A book, perhaps one of many similar volumes, is the last in my pleasant little lecture I will mention. It 
   is, the perspicacious may have perceived, the very tome he hold in his hands, with these word enbound 
   commonly with it. In a library in Elysius I discovered it, along with an explanatory note much briefer 
   and less felicitous than this one, which I have removed and discarded as unsatisfactory and only 
   moderately enlightening. Behold the feature of the book! That he who reads and studies it from cover to 
   cover, the firstmentioned cover being the front one, the nextmentioned the back, finds instructions for a 
   series of arcane postures and exercises, which, coupled with a regiment of massage and the creation of 
   certain poultices and medicaments, explanations and recipes for which are included, will enhance his 
   celerity and power of nimbleness! Should he then proceed to follow these instructions, never deviating 
   from their abjurations so much as the width of the letter iota, which remains the slimmest of all the 
   letters Palamedes crafted, he will indeed find himself quicker and sprier than ever before in his life. 
   
   But the volume is not a mere instruction book. It is possessed of a powerful dweomer, such that, after 
   one man reads it through, in the aforementioned order of covers, it disappears from the hand of its 
   reader and altogether the ken of men-to resurface elsewhere or later who can tell? The instructions 
   contained herein remain locked in the mind of the fortunate reader for several months, but they cannot be 
   inscribed or communicated, even by the basic act of speech, to another. He must work the prescriptions in 
   secret, and alone. And should he delay in his regiment more than a month or two the memory from his mind 
   will fade and he will be as ignorant as one who had never read the book, or a barbarian whose rude tongue 
   clamors the ears and who rough hands excel at neither hurling the discus or in sculpting in marble the 
   sleek curve of a boy's thigh. Therefore let the reader be warned not to begin reading in earnest the body 
   of the text proper unless he has at his disposal several weeks or months during which to train, lest he 
   forget what he learned and become as ignorant as the aforementioned barbarian. 
   
   I myself will not read the book nor perform its various directions or importunations, for I am of a 
   bookish turn and need not the skill it would grant. Also, I couldn't make out any of the words. Let 
   rather a javelin thrower, a lyrist, a Cretan bull-dancer come across this tome tucked and nestled away, 
   like a fledgling beneath his mother's wing, cozy and safe and without a smidgen of unhappiness or care, 
   as the sunlight shafts of spring soar across the sky and illuminate every down of fuzz upon its beak, 
   which protrudes from the wing ever so slightly, and use its craft to better himself. Let his action bring 
   us one step closer to the divine.