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.
Come, my friend, and tell me, your purchaser, what sort of person you are, and, to begin with, whether it is not an affliction to you to be sold and in slavery.
Not at all; for those things are not under our control, and what is not under our control is therefore indifferent.
I don't understand just what you mean.
What, do you not understand that in such matters some things are preferred and some again rejected?
I don't understand even yet.
Naturally, for you are not accustomed to our terminology, nor have you the perceptive imagination. But the virtuous man, he
who has mastered logical theory, knows not only
In the name of wisdom, kindly take the trouble to tell me this, too: what accidents and secondary accidents are. I am indescribably impressed by the roll of the words.
No trouble at all. If a lame man, stumbling with that lame foot itself against a stone gets unexpectedly hurt, this man's lameness is evidently a primary accident to which he adds a secondary accident in the way of the wound.
What else, now, do you claim to know?
How clever!
The meshes of argument wherewith I trip up my interlocutors and block their passage and reduce them to silence by actually muzzling them. The name of this faculty is the famous syllogism.
By Herkules, it is an irresistible, mighty weapon, from your description.
I will give you a specimen. Have you a child?
Certainly.
If a crocodile should manage to
snatch it, finding it wandering too near the river,
and if, then, he should promise to restore it if you
could tell him truly whether he had determined
That is a difficult question, for I do not see which answer would be the more likely to get the child back. But do you, in Heaven's name, answer for me, and save my child before he eats him.
Never fear, I will teach you other things still more surprising.
What sort of things?
The Reaper, the Master, and, above all, the Elektra, and the Veiled.
What do you mean by the "Veiled," or the "Elektra ?"
Elektra is that famous person, the daughter of Agamemnon, who at the same moment knows a thing and does not know it; for when Orestes stands beside her, still incognito, she knows, indeed, that Orestes is her brother, but that this is Orestes she does not know. And I will tell you about the "Veiled," too, a most extraordinary figure. Answer me, do you know your father?
Yes.
Well, then, if I present some veiled person to you and ask whether you know him, what would you say?
That I do not, of course.
And yet this very person was your
Not at all, for if I unveil him I shall know the truth. However, what is the object of your philosophy? What do you do when you have reached the pinnacle of virtue?
I shall then be occupied with the first things in the order of nature-riches, I mean, and health, and such like things. But before that one must needs toil much, sharpening his sight on books in fine print, taking notes, and filling himself with solecisms aand uncouth phrases. Most important of all, it is not permitted to become a sage until you have drunk hellebore three times in succession.
This is all very noble in you and extremely manly. But what are we to say when a man, who has already drunk the hellebore and arrived at virtue, turns money - lender at fifty per cent., for I see this belongs to your principles too?
By all means. The sage is the only
man fit to lend money; for since ratiocination
is his peculiar function, and calculating ratios and
per cents. seems to be the next thing to ratiocinating, it follows from these premises that the
special business of the good man alone is to get
not only simple interest like other people, but
compound. For you know there are two sorts of
interest, one sort coming first, and the other second,
And must we say the same of the fees you take for imparting your wisdom to young men? Is it clear that the good man alone will make money out of his virtue?
You grasp the idea. It is not on my own account that I take fees, but for the good of the giver himself. For since one party in a transaction must give and the other receive, I train myself to receive and my pupil to give.
It ought to be the other way about. The young man ought to receive, and you, who alone are rich, to give out.
You are chaffing, fellow; but be careful lest I let fly at you with the apodeiktic syllogism.
What are the frightful effects of the weapon?
Embarrassment, silence, confusion of mind.