I shall not address you at length, gentlemen of the
jury, for I myself do not need many words.
If Pleasure had used charms or philtres to constrain Dionysius, whom Stoa claims to be her lover,
to desert Stoa and to centre his regard upon her, she
might fairly have been held a sorceress and might
have been found guilty of using undue influence upon
the lovers of others. But suppose a free man in a
free city, unstopped by the laws, hating the tedium
of life with her and thinking that the happiness
which comes, she says, as the consummation of pain
is stuff and nonsense, made his escape from her
thorny, labyrinthine reasonings and ran away to
Pleasure of his own free will, cutting the meshes of
For the Hill of Virtue, see Hesiod, Works and Days, 289 ff., and Simonides, 41.
Who should be considered a better judge than this
man himself, who knew the teachings of Stoa if ever
a man did, and formerly thought that only what was
right was good, but now has learnt that pain is bad,
and so has chosen what he has determined to be the
better? He saw, no doubt, that her set make a
great deal of talk about fortitude and endurance
of pain, but privately pay court to Pleasure; that
they are bold as brass in the lecture-room, but live
under the laws of Pleasure at home; that they
are ashamed, of course, to let themselves be seen
“lowering their pitch” and playing false to their
tenets, but suffer the tortures of Tantalus, poor
fellows, so that wherever they think they will be unobserved and can transgress their laws with safety,
they eagerly glut themselves with pleasure. In fact,
if they should be given the ring of Gyges, so that
they could put it on and be unseen, or the Cap of
Darkness, without a doubt they would bid good-bye
No, no! Let me cross-question him a little.
Put your questions: I will answer them.
Do you consider pain bad?
Yes.
And pleasure good ?
Certainly.
Well, do you know the meaning of “material” and
“immaterial,” of ‘approved” and “disapproved” ? Stoic technical terms: see vol. ii, p. 488. Stoa intends to prove that pleasure and pain are alike “immaterial,” and neither “approved” nor “disapproved,” because they neither help nor hinder the effort to attain Virtue.
Stoa, the jurors say they can’t understand these dissyllabic questions, so be silent ; they are voting.
I should have won if I had put him a question in
the form of the “third indemonstrable.” The five “indemonstrables” of Chrysippus, so called because they are self-evident and require no proof, were all hypothetical or disjunctive syllogisms ; examples are: (1) “if it is day, it is light ; it is light, —> it is day”; (2) “if it is day, it is light ; it is dark, —> it is not day”; (3) “Plato is not both dead and alive; he is dead, —> he is not alive” ; (4) “it is either day or night; it is day, —> it is not night”; (5) “it is either day or night; it is not night, —> it is day.” Cf. Diog. Laert. Vit, Phil. 7, 1, 49; Sext. Emp. adv. Math. 7.
Pleasure, unanimously.
I appeal to Zeus!
Good luck to you! Hermes, call another case.
Virtue v. High-living, im re Aristippus. Let Aristippus appear in person.
I ought to speak first ; I am Virtue, and Aristippus
belongs to me, as his words and his deeds indicate.
HIGH-LIVING
No, indeed ; I ought to speak first; I am High-living, and the man is mine, as you can see from his
garlands, his purple cloak and his perfumes.
Then are they to have come up here for nothing, old as they are, and the hill so high?
It will be enough if they get a third. Go your ways; don’t be angry, you shall serve another day.
It is time for Diogenes of Sinope to appear. Make your complaint, Banking.
I protest, if she does not stop bothering me, Justice, it will not be running away that she will have me up for, but aggravated assault and battery, for I shall mighty soon.take my staff and. .. .
What have we here? Banking has run away, and
he is making after her with his stick raised. The
poor creature is likely to catch it pretty badly! Call
Pyrrho,
Painting is here, Justice, but Pyrrho has not come up at all. It might have been expected that he would do this.
Why, Hermes?
Because he does not believe there is any true standard of judgment.
Then let them bring in a verdict by default against him. Now call the speech-writer, the Syrian. After all, it was only recently that the writs were lodged against him, and there was no pressing need to have tried the cases now. However, since that point has been decided, introduce the suit of Oratory first. Heavens, what a crowd has come together for the hearing!
Naturally, Justice. The case is not stale, but new and unfamiliar, having been entered only yesterday, as you said, and they hope to hear Oratory and Dialogue bringing charges in turn and the Syrian defending himself against both; this has brought crowds to court. But do begin your speech, Oratory.