(to his assistants) Set the benches in order, and get the place ready for visitors; and you, range the lives in order and usher them in, but tidy them up first so that they may make a good appearance and attract a crowd. You, Hermes, make a proclamation, and, by the grace of heaven, summon the buyers to the sale-room forthwith. We are going to announce for sale philosophic lives of every description and varied principles, and if any one is not able to lay down his money on the nail he can pay up next year if he gives security.
A crowd is gathering, so we must not waste time nor keep them waiting.
Then let us proceed to sell.
Which of them shall we put up first?
This one with the long hair, the Ionian, for he seems to be a reverend person.
Let the Pythagorean there show his points to the company.
Announce him, pray.
I offer the noblest life, the most reverend. Who will buy? Who wishes to be more
He is not bad to look at, but just what does he know?
Arithmetic, astronomy, magic, geometry, music, jugglery. A finished fortune-teller is before you.
May one question him?
With all my heart.
What country are you of?
Samos.
Where were you educated?
In Egypt, among the sages there.
Well, then, if I buy you what will you teach me?
I will not teach you anything. I will remind you.
How will you remind me?
By first making your soul clean, and washing off the filth that is on it.
Now, suppose me already purified, what is your method of reminding?
The first step is a long, speechless silence; you must not say a word for five whole years.
You ought to teach mutes, my friend. But I am a talker with no desire to become a graven image. All the same, what comes after the silence and the five-year term?
Practise in music and geometry.
That is a nice statement ! If I am to become a philosopher I must first learn to play the harp!
In addition to these, counting.
I can count now.
How do you do it?
One, two, three, four.
Look, now; what you deem four is really ten, and a perfect triangle, and what we swear by.
Hear me swear a mighty oath: by Four, I never heard diviner or more holy words.
And after that, stranger, you will have knowledge concerning earth and air and water and fire-the mass of each, and what form it has, and what motion by consequence.
Then has fire form, or air, or water?
Very clear forms, for the formless and shapeless is immovable; and besides these things you will know that God is number and mind and harmony.
This is startling!
Beyond what I have already said, you will know that you yourself, who seem to be a unit, are one person in appearance and another in reality.
What do you say? Am I somebody
else and not this person now talking to you?
Now you are he, but formerly you appeared in another body and with another name; and in time you will change again into another.
You mean this: that I shall be immortal, changing into one form after another? But that is enough on this subject.
What are your habits of life?
I touch no sort of animal food, but anything else except beans.
What is the reason of that? Perhaps you dislike beans?
Not at all, but they are sacred and of a marvellous nature. But, what is more important, it is the custom of the Athenians to vote for officers with beans.
All your remarks are lofty and priestlike. But take off your clothes and let me see you stripped. Good heavens, his thigh is golden! He seems to be a god, not a mortal. I will buy him, by all means. How much do you ask for him?
Two hundred dollars.
I will take him at the price.
Make a note of the buyer's name and country.
He is an Italian, I should think, from Croton or Tarentum, or somewhere in Magna Graecia. But he is not the sole purchaser; almost three hundred clubbed together with him.
Let them take him off. Put up another.
What do you say to that dirty one from Pontos?
By all means.
Come here, you with the wallet slung from your shoulder, and the bare arms. Walk round the room. I offer a manly life, a noble and generous life, a free life! Who buys?
What do you say, salesman? You offer a free man for sale?
I do.
Then are you not afraid he will sue you for kidnapping, and bring you before the criminal court?
He does not mind being sold at all, for he believes he is free in all circumstances.
What use could one put such a dirty, ill-conditioned fellow to, unless you set him to digging or carrying water?
Those are not his only uses. If you make a hall-porter of him you will find you can rely on him better than on your dogs; in fact, he has even the name of a dog.
Where does he come from and what discipline does he profess?
Ask the man himself; that is the better way.
I am afraid of him, with his sullen, dark
Don't be afraid; he is tame.
In the first place, my friend, where are you from?
Everywhere.
What do you mean?
You see before you a citizen of the world.
And who is your model?
Herakles.
Then why don't you wear the lion-skin, too? You are like him as far as the club goes.
This is my lion-skin, my threadbare coat. Like him, I make war on pleasures; not under orders, but of my own will, deliberately choosing to purify life.
A noble choice! But just what are we to understand that you know? What art are you master of?
I am the liberator of mankind and the physician of their passions; but, above all, I wish to be the prophet of truth and free speech.
Come, prophet, if I buy you, what training will you put me through?
First, I will take you in hand and strip
you of your luxury, locking you up with poverty
What do you mean by that feeling no pain when one is flogged? I have not got the covering of a turtle or a lobster on my shoulders!
You will admire that little saying of Euripides, with a word or two altered.
What one?
Your heart will suffer, but your tongue will feel no pain.
But the most necessary qualities are these: you must be reckless and daring,
and abuse all alike, kings and subjects. By this
means you will be noticed and thought manly.
Let your speech be uncouth, your voice discordant and strongly resembling a dog's. Wear a
strenuous face, and choose a gait in keeping with
5
Be off with you! Your ways are foul and unnatural.
But the easiest, at least, sirrah, and handy for every one to pursue; for they will not ask education of you, or oratory, or nonsense. No; this road is a short cut to fame; for even if you are a private citizen, a tanner, or a fishmonger, or a carpenter, or a cabinet-maker, nothing prevents your being a wonder if only you are shameless and bold, and have acquired the art of skilful abuse.
I do not want your services in that line, but you might perhaps be convenient as a sailor or a gardener-particularly if the vendor is willing to sell you for not more than five cents.
Take him; we shall be glad to get rid of him. He is a nuisance, yelling and abusing everybody generally with his foul tongue.
Call another, the Cyrenaic, the one in the
purple robe with the garland on his head.
Come now, attention, all! This article is expensive, and only for the rich. This is a life of sweetness, a thrice-blessed life! Who wants luxury? Who will buy the daintiest thing going?
Step forward, you, and tell me what you happen to know. I will buy you if you are useful.
Do not annoy him, my good fellow, or ask him questions. He is drunk and cannot answer you, for his tongue is thick, as you perceive.
And who in his senses would buy such an abandoned, dissipated slave? How he reeks of perfumes, and how reeling and uncertain his gait is! But tell me yourself, Hermes, if need be, what his points are, and what his pursuits.
Primarily he is a clever man to live with you, able to drink with you, and just the man to go with a flute-girl on the revels of an amorous and spendthrift master. Moreover, he is a connoisseur of made dishes, a most experienced cook, and a complete professor of the art of pleasant living. In fact, he was educated at Athens, and also served various despots in Sicily, and is highly esteemed by them. This is the substance of his principles: to despise everything, make use of everything, and gather pleasure from every source.
You had better cast your eye on some
It looks, Zeus, as though this one would be left on your hands.
Set him aside and put up another. These two, for choice, the laugher from Abdera and the weeper from Ephesus, for I should like to sell the two together.
Let them come down into full view. I offer the noblest lives; we announce the sagest of all!
Heavens, what a contrast! The one never stops laughing, and the other seems to be in grief for somebody. He is consumed with weeping. What is the matter, fellow? Why are you laughing?
What a question! Because all your doings and you yourselves strike me as so funny!
What? You are laughing at us all, and don't take our doings seriously?
Even so, for there is nothing serious in them. They are all empty, a whirl of atoms, the infinite.
By no means; it is you that are really empty and infinitesimal. What impudence! Will you not stop laughing?
But what are you weeping for, my good fellow?
Because, friend, I deem human life a lamentable thing, worthy of tears, so soon passeth it all away. Therefore, I pity you and bewail your lot. The present does not strike me as important, and what is to come hereafter is unmixed woe-I mean the final conflagration and the catastrophe of the universe. These are the things I lament. Nothing is steadfast, but all things are somehow pressed together into an olla-podrïda and the same thing is a joyless joy, a knowing without knowledge, a great littleness, drifting up and down and changing at the caprice of the playful Aeon.
What may the Aeon be?
A child at play, moving the chessmen, changing them by hazard.
What, then, are men?
Mortal gods.
And what are the gods?
Immortal men.
Are you talking in riddles, fellow, or setting me conundrums? You make your meaning as dim, actually, as Apollo does.
Because I am at no pains about you.
Very well; neither will any but a lunatic
buy you.
I bid each of you go to the devil from his youth up, whether he purchase or purchase not.
His affliction is not much removed from melancholia. For my part, I am not going to buy either of them.
These two are left on our hands.
Put up another!
That Athenian there, the chatterbox?
By all means.
Come here, you! We offer a good, sensible life. Who buys the most holy?
Tell me, just what do you happen to know?
I am a lover and wise in the science of love.
Then how in the world could I buy you? For what I want is a tutor for my pretty boy.
Well, who could be a better man than I to associate with the fair? It is beautiful souls that I love, not bodies.
Indeed, I swear it to you by the dog and the plane-tree.
Heavens, what strange gods!
What's that you say? Don't you
think the dog is a god? Perhaps you have not
noticed how great Anoubis is in Egypt, and
Seirios in the heavens, and Kerberos among the
dead.
You are right, it was my mistake. But what is your manner of life?
I live by myself in a sort of state that I fashioned with a foreign form of government, and I enact my own laws.
I should like to hear one of your principles.
Well, this is the most important: my decision about women. No woman is assigned to one man alone, but to every one who wishes her in marriage. Have you, then, abrogated the laws about marriage?
What!
Dear me, yes, and all such petty formalities. Beauty shall be the reward of the bravest-those who have accomplished some brilliant feat of daring.
A fine reward! And what is the substance of your philosophy?
The ideas and the types of existing things; for, indeed, everything that you see-the earth and all upon it, the sky, the sea-all these things have invisible images outside the universe.
Where are they?
Nowhere; for if they were anywhere they could not be.
I don't see these types you speak of.
Naturally; for your soul's eye is blind.
Then you will do to buy, for you are wise and have good eyes. Come, Hermes, how much will you charge me for him?
Two thousand dollars.
I take him at the price. However, I will pay you later.
What is your name?
Dion of Syracuse.
Take him, with my best wishes. Next I call you, the Epicurean. Who will buy this one? He is the pupil of that laugher and of the drunkard whom I offered a little while ago. But he has made one step in advance of them, inasmuch as he has less regard for holy things. For the rest, he is pleasant and the friend of good living.
What's the price?
Forty dollars.
Here you are. But tell me what sort of food he likes.
He lives on sweet things like honey, and particularly figs.
That is easy enough. I will buy him penny-loaves of fig-cake.
Call up another-that scowling fellow
with the shaved head from the Porch.
Very well. At all events, a great crowd of those who have come to the sale seem to be waiting for him. I offer for sale virtue herself, the most perfect of lives. Who wishes to know everything, alone of all men?
What do you mean?
This man alone is wise, he alone is beautiful, he alone is just, manly, a king, an orator, a millionaire, a legislator, and everything else.
Then, friend, is he alone a cook, and a tanner, by Jove! and a carpenter, and everything of that sort?
Apparently.