You must be content, how- “ever, for it would not even be possible for you to get away, now that you are in the paddock. So you take the bit with your eyes shut, and in the beginning you answer his touch readily, as he does not pull hard or spur sharply until you have imperceptibly grown quite used to him.

People on the outside envy you after that, seeing that you live within the pale and enter without let and have become a notable figure in the inner circle. You yourself do not yet see why you seem to them to be fortunate. Nevertheless, you are joyous and delude yourself, and are always thinking that the future will turn out better. But the reverse of what you expected comes about: as the proverb has it, the thing goes Mandrobulus-wise,

"This Mandrobulus once found a treasure in Samos and dedicated to Hera a golden sheep, and in the second year one of silver, and in the third, one of bronze.” Scholia,

Slowly and gradually, therefore, as if you could then distinguish things for the first time in the indistinct light, you begin to realize that those golden hopes were nothing but gilded bubbles, while your labours are burdensome and genuine, inexorable and continuous. “What are they?” perhaps you will ask me: “J. do not see what there is in such posts that is laborious, nor can I imagine what those wearisome and insupportable things are that you spoke of.”

In chapter 13.

First of all, remember never again from that time forward to think yourself free or noble. All that— your pride of race, your freedom, your ancient lineage—you will leave outside the threshold, let me tell you, when you go in after having sold yourself into such service; for Freedom will refuse to enter with you when you go in for purposes so base and humble. So you will be a slave perforce, however distasteful you may find the name, and not the slave of one man but of many; and you will drudge from morn till night: with hanging head, “for shameful hire.”

Either a variation upon Homer (cf. Odyssey19, 341: Iliad 13, 84, 21, 444-5), or a quotation from a lost epic.

Perhaps, however, you think it quite enough to establish your freedom that you are not the son of a Pyrrhias or a Zopyrion, and that you have not been sold in the market like a Bithynian by a loud-voiced auctioneer. But, my excellent friend, when the first of the month arrives and side by side with Pyrrhias and Zopyrion you stretch out your hand like the rest of the servants and take your earnings, whatever they are—that is sale! There was no need of an auctioneer in the case of a man who put himself up at auction and for a long time solicited a master.

Ah, scurvy outcast (that would be my language, above all to a self-styled philosopher), if a wrecker or a pirate had taken you at sea and were offering you for sale, would you not pity yourself for being ill-fated beyond your deserts; or if someone had laid hands upon you and were haling you off, saying that you were a slave, would you not invoke the law and make a great stir and be wrathful and shout ‘“Heavens and Earth!” at the top of your voice? Then just for a few obols, at that age when, even if you were a slave by birth, it would be high time for you to look forward at last to liberty, have you gone and sold yourself, virtue and wisdom included ? Had you no respect, either, for all those wonderful sermons that your noble Plato and Chrysippus and Aristotle have preached in praise of freedom and in censure of servility? Are you not ashamed to undergo comparison with flatterers and loafers and buffoons; to be the only person in all that Roman throng who wears the incongruous cloak of a scholar and talks Latin with a villainous accent; to take part, moreover, in uproarious dinners, packed with human flotsam that is mostly vile? At these dinners you are vulgar in your compliments, and you drink more than is discreet. Then in the morning, roused by a bell, you shake off the sweetest of your sleep and run about town with the pack, up hill and down dale, with yesterday's mud still on your legs. Were you so in want of lupines and herbs of the field, did even the springs of cold water fail you so completely, as to bring you to this pass out of desperation ? No, clearly it was because you did not want water and lupines, but cates and meat and wine with a bouquet that you were caught, hooked like a pike in the very part that hankered for all this—in the gullet—and it served you quite right! You are confronting, therefore, the rewards of this greediness, and with your neck in a collar like a monkey you are a laughing-stock to others, but seem to yourself to be living in luxury because you can eat figs without stint. Liberty and noblesse, with all their kith and kin, have disappeared completely, and not even a memory of them abides.

Indeed, it would be lucky for you if the thing involved only the shame of figuring as a slave _ instead of a free man, and the labour was not like that of an out-and-out servant. But see if what is required of you is any more moderate than what is required of a Dromo ora Tibius! To be sure, the purpose for which he engaged you, saying that he wanted knowledge, matters little to him; for, as the proverb says, “What has a jackass to do with a lyre?” Ah, yes, can’t you see? they are mightily consumed .with longing for the wisdom of Homer or the eloquence of Demosthenes or the sublimity of Plato, when, if their gold and ’ their silver and their worries about them should be taken out of their souls, all that remains is pride and softness and self-indulgence and sensuality and insolence and ill-breeding! Truly, he does not want you for that purpose at all, but as you have a long beard, present a distinguished appearance, are neatly dressed in a Greek mantle, and everybody knows you for a grammarian or a rhetorician or a philosopher, it seems to him the proper thing to have a man of that sort among those who go before him and form his escort; it will make people think him a devoted student of Greek learning and in general a person of taste in literary matters So the chances are, my worthy friend, that instead of your marvellous lectures it is your beard and mantle that you have let for hire.

You must therefore be seen with him always and never be missing; you must get up early to let yourself be noted in attendance, and you must not desert your post. Putting his hand upon your shoulder now and then, he talks nonsense at random, showing those who meet him that even when he takes a walk he is not inattentive to the Muses but makes good use of his leisure during the stroll.

For your own part, poor fellow, now you run at his side, and now you forge about at a foot’s pace, over many ups and downs (the city is like that, you know), until you are sweaty and out of breath, and then, while he is indoors talking to a friend whom he came to see, as you have no place to sit down, you stand up, and for lack of employment read the book with which you armed yourself.

When night overtakes you hungry and thirsty, after a wretched bath you go to your dinner at an unseasonable hour, in the very middle of the night; but you are no longer held in the same esteem and admiration by the company. If anyone arrives who is more of a novelty, for you it is “Get back!” In this way you are pushed off into the most unregarded corner and take your place merely to witness the dishes that are passed, gnawing the bones like a dog if they get as far as you, or regaling yourself with gratification, thanks to your hunger, on the tough mallow leaves with which the other food is garnished, if they should be disdained by those nearer the head of the table.

Moreover, you are not spared other forms of rudeness. You are the only one that does not have an egg. There is no necessity that you should always expect the same treatment as foreigners and strangers: that would be unreasonable! Your bird, too, is not like the others; your neighbour's is fat and plump, and yours is half a tiny chick, or a tough pigeon—out-and-out rudeness and contumely! Often, if there is a shortage when another guest appears of a sudden, the waiter takes up what you have before you and quickly puts it before him, muttering: “You are one of us, you know.” Of course when a side of pork or venison is cut at table, you must by all means have especial favour with the carver or else get a Prometheus-portion, bones hidden in fat. That the platter should stop beside the man above you until he gets tired of stuffing himself, but speed past you so rapidly—what free man could endure it if he had even as much resentment as a deer? And I have not yet mentioned the fact that while the others drink the most delectable and oldest of wines, you alone drink one that is vile and thick, taking good care always to drink out of a gold or silver cup so that the colour may not convict you of being such an unhonoured guest. If only you might have your fill, even of that! But as things are, though you ask for it repeatedly, the page “hath not even the semblance of hearing”!

Iliad23, 430.

You are annoyed, indeed, by many things, a great many, almost everything; most of all when your favour is rivalled by a cinaedus or a dancing-master or an Alexandrian dwarf who recites Ionics.

Anacreontics, Sotadeans, and in general, the “erotic ditties” mentioned below.

If a whispering servant accuse you of being the only one who did not praise the mistress’s page when he danced or played, there is no little risk in the thing. So you must raise your thirsty voice like a stranded frog, taking pains to be conspicuous among the claque and to lead the chorus; and often when the others are silent you must independently let drop a well-considered word of praise that will convey great flattery.

That a man who is famished, yes, and athirst, should be perfumed with myrrh and have a wreath on his head is really rather laughable, for then you are like the gravestone of an ancient corpse that is getting a feast to his memory. They drench the stones with myrrh and crown them with wreaths, and then they themselves enjoy the food and drink that has been prepared !

If the master is of a jealous disposition and has handsome sons or a young wife, and you are not wholly estranged from Aphrodite and the Graces, your situation is not peaceful or your danger to be taken lightly. The king has many ears and eyes, which not only see the truth but always add something more for good measure, so that they may not be considered heavy-lidded. You must therefore keep your head down while you are at table, as at a Persian dinner, for fear that an eunuch may see that you looked at one of the concubines ; for another eunuch, who has had his bow bent this long time, is ready to punish you for eyeing what you should not, driving his arrow through your. cheek just as you are taking a drink.

. Then, after you have left the dinner-party, you get a little bit of sleep, but towards cock-crow you wake up and say: “Oh, how miserable and wretched Iam! To think what I left—the occupations of former days, the comrades, the easy life, the sleep limited only by my inclination, and the strolls in freedom—and what a pit I have impetuously flung myself into! Why, in heaven’s name? What does this splendid salary amount to? Was there no other way in which I could have earned more than this and could have kept my freedom and full independence? As the case stands now, I am pulled about like a lion leashed with a thread, as the saying is, up hill and down dale; and the most pitiful part of it all is that I do not know how to be a success and cannot be a favourite. I am an outsider in such matters and have not the knack of it, especially when I am put in comparison with men who have ‘made an art of the business. Consequently I am unentertaining and not a bit convivial; I cannot even raise a laugh. I am aware, too, that it often actually annoys him to look at me, above all when he wishes to be merrier than his wont, for Iseem to him gloomy. I cannot suit him at all. If I keep to gravity, I seem disagreeable and almost a person to run away from ; and if I smile and make my features as pleasant as I can, he despises me outright and abominates me. The thing makes no better impression than as if one were to play a comedy in a tragic mask! All in all, what other life shall I live for myself, poor fool, after having lived this one for another?”

While you are still debating these matters the bell rings, and you must follow the same routine, go the rounds and stand up; but first you must rub your loins and knees with ointment if you wish to last the struggle out! Then comes a similar dinner, prolonged to the same hour. In your case the diet is in contrast to your former way of living; the sleeplessness, too, and the sweating and the weariness gradually undermine you, giving rise to consumption, pneumonia, indigestion, or that noble complaint, the gout. You stick it out, however, and often you ought to be abed, but this is not permitted. They think illness a pretext, and a way of shirking your duties. The general consequences are that you are always pale and look as if you were going to die any minute.

So it goes in the city. And if you have to go into the country, I say nothing of anything else, but it often rains; you are the last to get there—even in the matter of horses it was your luck to draw that kind !— and you wait about until for lack of accommodation they crowd you in with the cook or the mistress’s hairdresser without giving you even a generous supply of litter for a bed !

I make no bones of telling you a story that I was told by our friend Thesmopolis, the Stoic, of something that happened to him which was very comical, and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the same thing may happen to someone else. He was in the household of a rich and self-indulgent woman who belonged to a distinguished family in the city. Having to go into the country one time, in the first place he underwent, he said, this highly ridiculous experience, that he, a philosopher, was given a favourite to sit by, one of those fellows who have their legs depilated and their beards shaved off ; the mistress held him in high honour, no doubt. He gave the fellow’s name; it was Dovey!

Chelidonion : Little Swallow.

Then too, something else of a similar nature was required of him. The woman sent for him and said: “Thesmopolis, I am asking a great favour of you; please do it for me without making any objections or waiting to be asked repeatedly.” He promised, as was natural, that he would do anything, and she went on: “I ask this of you because I see that you are kind and thoughtful and sympathetic—take my dog Myrrhina (you know her) into your carriage and look after her for me, taking care that she does not want for anything. The poor thing is unwell and is almost ready to have puppies, and these abominable, disobedient servants do not pay much attention even to me on journeys, let alone to her. So do not think that you will be rendering me a trivial service if you take good care of my precious, sweet doggie.” Thesmopolis promised, for she plied him with many entreaties and almost wept. The situation was as funny as could be: a little dog peeping out of his cloak just below his beard, wetting him often, even if Thesmopolis did not add that detail, barking in a squeaky voice (that is the way with Maltese dogs, you know), and licking the philosopher’s beard, especially if any suggestion of yesterday's gravy was in it! The favourite ‘who had sat by him was joking rather wittily one day at the expense of the company in the dining-room, and when in due course his banter reached Thesmopolis, he remarked: “As to Thesmopolis,- I can only say that our Stoic has finally gone to. the dogs!”

i.e. had become a Cynic.

That is the way they make free with their dependants, yes, make game of them, gradually rendering them submissive to their effrontery. I know a sharp- tongued rhetorician who made a speech by request at dinner in a style that was not by any means uncultivated, but very finished and studied. He was applauded, however, because his speech, which was delivered while they were drinking, was timed by flasks of wine instead of measures of water! And he took this venture on, it was said, for two hundred drachmas.

It was not the fashion at ancient banquets for guests to make speeches. In consenting to deliver a selection from his repertory, the rhetorician put himself on a par with a professional entertainer. This was bad enough, but he made things still worse by allowing the company to time his speech with a substitute for a water-clock which they improvised out of a flask of wine.

All this is not so bad, perhaps. But if Divesf himself has a turn for writing poetry or prose and recites his own compositions at dinner, then you must certainly split yourself applauding and flattering him and excogitating new styles of praise. Some of them wish to be admired for their beauty also, and they must hear themselves called an Adonis or a Hyacinthus, although sometimes they have a yard of nose. If you withhold your praise, off you go at once to the quarries of Dionysius because you are jealous and are plotting against your master. They must be philosophers and rhetoricians, too, and if they happen to commit a solecism, precisely on that account their language must seem full of the flavour of Attica and of Hymettus, and it must be the law to speak that way in future.

After all, one could perhaps put up with the conduct of the men. But the women—! That is another thing that the women are keen about—to have men of education living in their households on a salary and following their litters. They count it as one among their other embellishments if it is said that they are cultured and have an interest in philosophy and write songs not much inferior to Sappho’s. To that end, forsooth, they too trail hired rhetoricians and grammarians and philosophers about, and listen to their lectures—when ? it is ludicrous !—either while their toilet is being made and their hair dressed, or at dinner ; at other times they are too busy! And often while the philosopher is delivering a discourse the maid comes up and hands her a note from her lover, so that the lecture on chastity is kept waiting until she has written a reply to the lover and hurries back to hear it.

At last, after a long lapse of time, when the feast of Cronus

The Greek festival that corresponded to the Roman Saturnalia.

As to your pay itself, it is a matter of two obols, or four, at a time, and when you ask for it you are a bore and a nuisance. So, in order to get it you must flatter and wheedle the master and pay court to his steward too, but in another way; and you must not neglect his friend and adviser, either. As what you get is already owing to a clothier or doctor or shoemaker, his gifts are no gifts and profit you nothing.

An allusion to Sophocles, Ajax665 : ἐχθρῶν ἄδωρα δῶρα κοὺκ ὀνήσιμα.

You are greatly envied, however, and perhaps some slanderous story or other gradually gets afoot by stealth and comes to a man who by now is glad to receive charges against you, for he sees that you are used up by your unbroken exertions and pay lame and exhausted court to him, and that the gout is growing upon you. To sum it up, after garnering all that was most profitable in you, after consuming the most fruitful years of your life and the greatest vigour of your body, after reducing you to a thing of _ rags and tatters, he is looking about for a rubbish-heap on which to cast you aside unceremoniously, and for another man to engage who can stand the work. Under the charge that you once made overtures to a page of his, or that, in spite of your age, you are trying to seduce an innocent girl, his wife's maid, or something else of that sort, you leave at night, hiding your face, bundled out neck and crop, destitute of everything and at the end of your tether, taking with you, in addition to the burden of your years, that excellent companion, gout. What you formerly knew you have forgotten in all these years, and you have made your belly bigger than a sack, an insatiable, inexorable curse. Your gullet, too, demands what it is used to, and dislikes to unlearn its lessons.

Nobody else would take you in, now that you have passed your prime and are like an old horse whose hide, even, is not as serviceable as it was. Besides, the scandal of your dismissal, exaggerated by conjecture, makes people think you an adulterer or poisoner or something of the kind. Your accuser is trustworthy even when he holds his tongue, while you are a Greek, and easy-going in your ways and prone to all sorts of wrong-doing. That is what they think of us all, very naturally. For I believe I have detected the reason for that opinion which they have of us. Many who have entered households, to make up for not knowing anything else that was useful, have professed to supply predictions, philtres, lovecharms, and incantations against enemies ; yet they assert they are educated, wrap themselves in the philosopher’s mantle, and wear beards that cannot lightly be sneered at. Naturally, therefore, they entertain the same suspicion about all of us on seeing that men whom they considered excellent are that sort, and above all observing their obsequiousness at dinners and in their other social relations, and their servile attitude toward gain.