Do not be daunted, however, and do not be dismayed at the greatness of your expectations, thinking to undergo untold labours before you achieve them. I shall not conduct you by a rough road, or a steep and sweaty one, so that you will turn back halfway out of weariness. In that case I should be no better than those other guides who use the customary route—long, steep, toilsome, and, as a rule, hopeless. No, my advice has this to commend it, that ascending in the manner of a leisurely stroll through flowery fields and perfect shade in great comfort and luxury by a sloping bridle-path that is very short as well as very pleasant, you will gain the summit without sweating for it, you will bag your game without any effort, yes, by Heaven, you will banquet at your ease, looking down from the height at those who went the other way as they creep painfully upward over sheer and slippery crags, still in the foot-hills of the ascent, rolling off head-first from time to time, and getting many a wound on the sharp rocks—and you, the while, on the top long before them, with a wreath upon your head, will be fortunate beyond compare, for you will have acquired from Rhetoric in an instant, all but in your sleep, every single blessing that there is!

Yes, my promise goes to that extent in its generosity ;

A quotation from Demosthenes, Phil. 1, 44, 15.

but in the name of Friendship

More literally, Friendship’s patron; 7. ¢. Zeus.

do not disbelieve me, when I say that I shall show you that its attainment is at once easy and pleasant. Why should you? Hesiod was given a leaf or two from Helicon, and at once he became a poet instead of a shepherd and sang the pedigrees of gods and heroes under the inspiration of the Muses.

Theogony, 30-34. The Muses plucked a branch of laurel and gave it him as a staff of office (oxjrrpov).

Is it impossible, then, to become a public speaker —something far inferior to the grand style of poetry—in an instant, if one could find out the quickest way?

Just to show you, I should like to tell you the tale of a Sidonian merchant's idea which disbelief made ineffectual and profitless to the man who heard it. Alexander was then ruler of the Persians, having deposed Darius after the battle of Arbela, and postmen had to run to every quarter of the realm carrying Alexander’s orders. The journey from Persia to Egypt was long, since one had to make a detour about the mountains, then to go through Babylonia to Arabia, and then to traverse a wide expanse of desert before reaching Egypt at last, after spending in this way, even if one travelled light, twenty very long days on the road. Well, this annoyed Alexander, because he had heard that the Egyptians were showing signs of disaffection, and he was unable to be expeditious in transmitting his decisions concerning them to his governors. At that juncture the Sidonian merchant said: “I give you my word, King Alexander, to show you a short route from Persia to Egypt. If a man went over these mountains—and he could do it in three days—he is in Egypt in no time!” And it was so! Alexander, however, put no faith in it, but thought that the merchant was a liar.

The Sidonian merchant was exaggerating, but there was truth in his tale. From Persepolis, by crossing the mountains to the head of the Persian Gulf one could pick up a traderoute that led from Alexandria on the Tigris (Charax) to Petra (see Pliny 6, 145), whence one could get to Rhinocolura, and so to Egypt. This would have been much shorter than the normal (Susa, Babylon, Damascus) route, but it might not have been any quicker.

So true is it that amazing promises seem untrustworthy to most people.

But you must not make the same mistake. Experience will convince you that nothing can prevent you from arriving as a public speaker, in a single day, and not a full day at that, by flying across the mountains from Persia to Egypt!

I wish first of all to paint you a picture in words, like Cebes of old, and show you both the roads; for there are two that lead to Lady Rhetoric, of whom you seem to me exceedingly enamoured. So let her be sitting upon a high place, very fair of face and form, holding in her right hand the Horn of Plenty, which runs over with all manner of fruits. Beside her imagine, pray, that you see Wealth standing, all golden and lovely. Let Fame, too, and Power stand by; and let Compliments, resembling tiny Cupids, swarm all about her on the wing in great numbers from every side. If you have ever seen the Nile represented in a painting, lying on the back of a crocodile or a hippopotamus, such as are frequent in his stream, while tiny infants play beside him—the Egyptians call them cubits— the Compliments that surround Rhetoric are like these.

Evidently there were many copies of this picture about, and they were not all exactly alike. The Vatican has a treatment of the theme in sculpture, in which Nile rests upon a sphinx, and has about him sixteen ‘ cubits,” symbolizing the desired yearly rise of his stream.

Now you, her lover, approach, desiring, of course, to get upon the summit with all speed in order to marry her when you get there, and to possess all that she has—the Wealth, the Fame, the Compliments; for by law everything accrues to the husband.

Then when you draw near the mountain, at first you despair of climbing it, and the thing seems to you just as Aornus

A table-mountain captured by Alexander on his way to India, 11 stades high at its lowest point, according to Arrian (Alex. 4, 28). Cunningham identifies it ss Ranigat. Tomaschek considers the Greek name derived from Sanscrit avarana by popular etymology; but compare the Avestan name Upairi-saena (above the eagle).

looked to the Macedonians when they observed that it was precipitous on every side, truly far from easy even for a bird to fly over, calling for a Dionysus or a Heracles if it were ever going to be taken.

That is how it seems to you at first; and then, after a little, you see two roads. To be more exact, one of them is but a path, narrow, briery, and rough, promising great thirstiness and sweat; Hesiod has been beforehand with us and has already described it very carefully, so that I shall not need to do so.

Works and Days, 286-292.

The other, however, is level, flowery, and wellwatered, just as I described it a moment ago, not to detain you by saying the same things over and over when you might even now be a speaker.

But I must add at least this much, that the rough, steep road used not to have many tracks of wayfarers, and whatever tracks there were, were very old. I myself, unlucky dog, got up by that road and did all that hard work without any need; but as the other was level and had no windings at all, I could see from a distance what it was like without having travelled it myself. You see, being still young, I could not discern what was better, but believed that poet

Epicharmus.

to be telling the truth when he said that blessings were engendered of toil.

The thought is expressed in Works and Days, 289: “The immortal gods have put sweat before virtue ;” but Lucian’s wording is closer to the famous line of E icharmus quoted (just after the passage from Hesiod) in Xenophon’s Memorabilia, 2, 1, 20: “’Tis at the price of toil that the gods sell us all their blessings.”

That was not so, however; at all events, I notice that most people are accorded greater returns without any labour, through their felicitous choice of words and ways.

But, to resume—when you reach the starting-point, I am sure that you will be in doubt, and indeed are even now in doubt, which road to follow. I propose, therefore, to tell you how to do now in order to mount to the highest peak with the greatest ease, to be fortunate, to bring off the marriage, and to be accounted wonderful by everyone. It is quite enough that I should have been duped and should have worked hard. For you, let everything grow “without sowing and without ploughing,” as in the time of Cronus.

The quotation is from Odyssey, 9,.109, but there is also an allusion to Hesiod’s description of the time of Cronus, the golden age, when the “‘grain-giving earth bore fruit of itself, in plenty and without stint” (Works and Days, 117-118).