Diogenes did not complete the complaint against me, Philosophy. He left out, for some reason or other, the greater part of what I said, and everything that was very severe. But I am so far from denying. that I said it all and from appearing with a studied defence that whatever he passed over in silence or I neglected previously to say, I purpose to include now. In that way you can find out whom I put up for sale and abused, calling them pretenders and cheats. And I beg you merely to note throughout whether what I say about them is true. If my speech should prove to contain anything shocking or offensive, it is not I, their critic, but they, I think, whom you would justly blame for it, acting as they do.
As soon as I perceived how many disagreeable
attributes a public speaker must needs acquire, such
as chicanery, lying, impudence, loudness of mouth,
sharpness of elbow, and what all besides, I fled from
all that, as was natural, and set out to attain your
high ideals, Philosophy, expecting to sail, as it
were, out of stormy waters into a peaceful haven
Hardly had I caught a glimpse of “your doctrines
when I conceived admiration for you, as was inevitable,
and for all these men, who are the lawgivers of the
higher life and lend a helping hand to those who
aspire to it by giving advice which is extremely good
and extremely helpful if one does not act contrary to
it or falter, but fixedly regards the principles which
you have established and tries to bring his life into
harmony and agreement with them—a thing, to be
sure, which very few, even of your own disciples, do ! I give Fritzsche’s interpretation of this last clause, though I fear it strains the Greek and is foreign to Lucian’s thought. Another, and I think a better, solution is to excise the clause as an early gloss, reading jas and interpreting it more naturally, “a thing which very few, even in our own time, do.” Compare the late gloss in β: τί ταῦτατοῖς καθ' ἡμᾶς ἔοικε μονάχοις.
When I saw, however, that many were not in love
with Philosophy, but simply coveted the reputation
of the thing, and that although in all the obvious,
commonplace matters which anyone can easily copy
they were very like worthy men (in beard, I mean,
and walk and garb), in their life and actions, however, they contradicted their outward appearance
and reversed your practice and sullied the dignity of
the profession, I became angry. The case seemed
to me to be as if some actor in tragedy who was
soft and womanish should act the part of Achilles
or Theseus, or even Heracles himself, without either
walking or speaking as a hero should, but showing
off airs and graces in a mask of such dignity. Even
Helen or Polyxena would never suffer such a man
to resemble them too closely, let alone Heracles, the
conquering hero, who, in my opinion, would very soon
Just so with me; when I saw you so treated by those others, I could not brook the shame, of their impersonation when they made bold, though but apes, to wear heroic masks, or to copy the ass of Cumae who put on a lion’s skin and claimed to be himself a lion, braying in a very harsh and fearsome way at the ignorant Cumaeans, until at length a foreigner, who had often seen lions and asses, exposed him and chased him away by beating him with sticks.
But what seemed to me most shocking, Philosophy, was this, that if people saw any one of these fellows engaged in any wicked or unseemly or indecent practice, every man of them at once laid the blame upon Philosophy herself, and upon Chrysippus or Plato or Pythagoras or whichever one of you furnished that sinner with a name for himself and a model for his harangues; and from him, because he was leading an evil life, they drew sorry conclusions about you others, who died long ago. For as you were not alive, he could not be compared with you. You were not there, and they all clearly saw him following dreadful and discreditable practices, so that you suffered judgment by default along with him and became involved in the same scandal.