To judge from your book, Hermotimus, and the speed of your walk, you seem to be hurrying to your teacher. You were certainly thinking something over as you went along; you were twitching your lips and muttering quietly, waving your hand this way and that as though you were arranging a speech to yourself, composing one of your crooked problems or thinking out some sophistical question; even when you are walking along you must not take it easy, but be always busy at some serious matter which is likely to help your studies.
Yes, certainly, that is about it, Lycinus; I was going over yesterday’s lecture and what he said to us, running through the points in my mind. We must, I think, never lose an opportunity, for we know the truth of what the Coan Doctor
That is a very wonderful prize, Hermotimus, and I fancy you are near winning it, to judge by the time you spend on your philosophical studies and also the considerable energy you seem to have devoted for so long. If I remember, it must be nigh on twenty years that I have seen you doing nothing but going to the teachers, and usually bent over a book and writing notes on the lectures, always pale and wasted with studying. I suppose even your dreams give you no rest, you are so wrapped up in it. So, when I consider this, I feel that you will not be long in reaching happiness, unless it has been your companion for years and we have missed seeing it.
How can that be, Lycinus? I am just beginning to get a glimpse of my way there. Virtue, says Hesiod,
Works and Days, 289.
Have you not sweated and travelled enough, Hermotimus?
No, I tell you. I couldn’t be other than perfectly happy if I were at the top. At this moment I am still beginning, Lycinus.
But this same Hesiod says that the beginning is half-way there,
Works and Days, 40.
No, not even that yet. That would be a great achievement.
Well, where on the road may we put you?
Still down in the foothills, Lycinus, though lately struggling on. It is slippery and rough and needs a hand to help.
Your teacher can do that: he can let down his own teaching from the top like Zeus’s golden rope in Homer,
Il. viii, 19.
That is just what happens, Lycinus. As far as he is concerned I should have been pulled up long ago and been in their company. But my share still falls short.
Be brave now and keep cheerful. Look to the end of the journey and the happiness up there, especially
Too soon, Lycinus.
Next Olympiad, then?
Too soon again for a training in virtue and the winning of happiness.
After two Olympiads, surely? Or shall we accuse you of excessive sloth, if you cannot succeed even in all that time? You could easily make three journeys from Gibraltar to India and back in that time, even if you did not go straight without breaking your journey, but made excursions occasionally to visit the nations on the way. But this summit where your Virtue lives—how much higher and smoother are we to put it than Aornos which Alexander stormed in a few days?
Nothing like, Lycinus, Your comparison is wrong; it cannot be won or captured in a short time, even if innumerable Alexanders attack it. Many would climb it, if it could. As it is, a fair number make a very strong beginning and travel part of the way,
Goodness, Hermotimus! How small you make us, not even as big as pygmies! Utter groundlings crawling over the earth’s surface. It’s not surprising—your mind is already away up above; and we, the whole trashy lot of us ground-crawlers, will pray to you along with the gods, when you get above the clouds and reach the heights to which you have been hastening for so long.
Oh, may I really get up there, Lycinus! But a great deal remains to be done.
But you have not said how long, to give it a date.
I don’t know myself exactly, Lycinus. Not more than twenty years at a guess. After that I shall surely be on the top.
Good Heavens! As long as that!
Yes, Lycinus; my struggles are for great prizes.
Perhaps so. But those twenty years—has your teacher promised you that length of life? If he has he must be more than a wise man—a prophet, or an oracle-monger, or an expert in Chaldean lore, as well—they say that they know this sort of thing. For, if it is not certain that you will live to reach Virtue, it is quite unreasonable to take all this trouble and wear yourself out night and day, not knowing whether Fate as you near the top will come and pull you down by the foot with your hopes unfulfilled.
Away with you! That, Lycinus, is blasphemy. May I live to enjoy happiness through wisdom for just one day!
Would that repay you for all your labours—just one day?
For me even a moment is enough.
How can you know that up there there is a happiness and the like worth enduring everything to attain? You yourself have not yet been up there, I suppose?
I believe what my teacher says. He is already right at the top and knows very well.
What in Heaven’s name did he say about conditions there? What did he say this happiness there was? Some sort of riches, I suppose, and glory, and pleasures beyond compare?
Hush, friend! These have nothing to do with the life in Virtue.
If not these then, what does he say are the good things which those who complete their training will get?
Wisdom, courage, beauty itself, justice itself, the sure certainty of knowing everything as it really is. Riches and glories and pleasures and bodily things are all stripped off the climber and left down below before he makes his ascent. Think of the story of Heracles when he was burned and deified on Mount Oeta: he threw off the mortal part of him that came from his mother and flew up to heaven, taking the pure and unpolluted divine part with him, the part that the fire had separated off. So philosophy like a fire strips our climbers of all these things that the rest of mankind wrongly admires; they climb to the top and are happy; they never even remember
By Heracles on Oeta, Hermotimus, you tell a brave and happy tale about them! But tell me this: do they ever come down from their hill-top (if that is their wish), to make use of what they have left down here below? Or must they stay there once they are up and live in Virtue’s company, laughing at wealth and glory and pleasures?
That is not all, Lycinus. A man who is perfected in Virtue can never be a slave to anger or fear or lusts; he will not know grief and in short he will not experience feelings of this sort any longer.
Well, if I must speak the truth without fear—but I had better keep quiet, I suppose; it would not be pious to question what wise men do.
Not at all. Please say what you mean.
Look, friend, how afraid I am!
Don’t be afraid, good Lycinus. You are speaking to me alone.
Well, I followed and believed most of what you said, Hermotimus, that they become wise and brave and just and so on; in a way your description held me in a sort of spell. But when you said they despised riches and glory and pleasures and were not angry or grieved, there (we are alone) I came to a stop. I remembered something I saw a certain person doing the other day—shall I name him? Or is it enough to leave him anonymous?
Not at all. Please tell me who he was.
This very teacher of yours—in general he deserves respect and is now quite old.
What was he doing?
You know the stranger from Heraclea who has studied philosophy under him a long time, the one with yellow hair, a quarrelsome fellow?
I know the man you mean. He’s called Dion.
That is the man. Well! it seems he didn’t pay his fee on time, and the other day your teacher in a temper pulled the man’s cloak round his neck and
That fellow has always been a senseless rogue when it comes to paying his debts, Lycinus. My master has never yet treated any of the others to whom he lends money like that and there are many of them. But they pay the interest on time.
And if they don’t, my dear Hermotimus? Does it matter, when he is now already purified by philosophy and no longer needs what he has left behind on Oeta?
Do you think it is for himself that he has made this fuss? No, he has young children and he is concerned lest they spend their lives in want.
He ought, Hermotimus, to lead them too up the path to Virtue, so that they can despise wealth and be happy with him.
I haven’t time, Lycinus, to talk with you about this; I’m in a hurry to hear his lecture, or I may be left completely behind before I know it.
Cheer up, old man! A truce has been proclaimed today. I can save you what still remains of your journey.
What do you mean?
That you won’t find him now, if we can believe the notice; a little board was hanging on the gate with “No Philosophy Lecture Today” on it in large letters. They said that he had dinner yesterday at the house of the great Eucrates, who was throwing a party for his daughter’s birthday. He talked a lot of philosophy during the party and grew cross with Euthydemus the Peripatetic, disputing their usual arguments against the Stoics. The party, they say, stretched out till midnight and the din brought on a wretched headache and made him sweat a good deal. At the same time he had drunk too much, I fancy, in the general toasting and had dined too well for his age; so when he got back home, it was said, he was very sick. He waited only to count carefully and lock up the pieces of meat he had given to the servant who had stood behind him at table, and has been sleeping ever since, having given orders to let no one in. I heard his servant Midas telling this to some of his pupils who were themselves just coming away, quite a crowd.
Who won the argument, Lycinus, my teacher or Euthydemus? Did Midas say anything to this effect?
At first, it seems, they were level, but in the end victory was on the side of you Stoics, and the old man was well in front. At any rate they say that Euthydemus didn’t get away unscathed: he was badly wounded in the head. You see he was pretentious and argumentative and wouldn’t be convinced and didn’t show himself ready to take criticism, so your excellent teacher hit him with a cup as big as Nestor’s
Il. xi, 636.
Well done! That’s just how to treat those who won’t give way to their betters!
Very reasonable, Hermotimus. What possessed Euthydemus to irritate an old man so placid and a master of his temper, who had such a heavy cup in his hand?
But now we have time to spare why don’t you tell a friend how you first took up philosophy? I myself, if it is still possible, could then begin there and join you all on the road. You are my friends and of course won’t shut me out.
I wish you would, Lycinus! You will soon see how much better you will be than the rest of mankind. Children you will think them all, mere children compared with you with your intellect so superior.
Good enough, if after twenty years I could be as you are now.
Don’t worry. I myself was about your age when I began to study philosophy, about forty—as old as you are now I imagine.
Exactly that, Hermotimus. So take and lead me too along the same path—that would be only right. First of all tell me this: do you allow learners to argue if they disagree with something, or is this not allowed to the young?
No, it is not allowed at all. But you, if you like, may ask questions and make criticisms as we go along. You will learn more easily that way.
Good, Hermotimus—by Hermes who gives you your name.
Now tell me, is there one way only to philosophy, the one you Stoics follow? I have heard there are many other schools as well. Is that right?
Very many—the Peripatetics, Epicureans, those who take Plato as their patron, others also, the devotees of Diogenes and Antisthenes, Pythagoreans, and more besides.
True, there are many. Is what they say the same, Hermotimus, or different?
Quite different.
At all events, one of their systems, I suppose, is true? They can’t all be true if they differ.
No, they can’t.
Now be a true friend and tell me this: when you first set out to study philosophy, many doors were open to you; you passed by the others and came to the Stoic door; you deigned to enter through that door on the way to Virtue, thinking it the only true one which revealed the straight path; the rest led into blind alleys. Now what was your reason for this? What at that time made you certain? Please do not think of yourself as you are now, for, half-wise or wise, you can now make better judgments than we who are many. Answer as the layman you then were and I am now.
I don’t see your point, Lycinus.
My question was not very complicated really. There have been many philosophers—Plato, Aristotle, Antisthenes, and your own predecessors, Chrysippus, Zeno, and the rest. Now, what persuaded you to leave the rest alone and choose to base your studies on the particular one you did? Did Apollo send you back from Delphi, like Chaerephon,
It wasn’t like that, Lycinus. I never even asked Apollo about it.
Did you think it not worth consulting the god about, or did you think you could make the better choice on your own without his help?
I did think so.
Well then, please teach me this first, how, right at the beginning, we can distinguish the best, the true philosophy, the one we must choose, leaving aside the others.
I will tell you. I saw that most people took to this one, so I guessed it was the best.
How many more Stoics are there than Epicureans or Platonists or Peripatetics? You obviously took a count of them as in a show of hands.
I didn’t count. I made an estimate.
So you are not prepared to teach me. You are cheating when you tell me you decide such a matter by guesswork and weight of numbers. You’re hiding the truth from me.
It wasn’t just that, Lycinus. I also heard everybody saying that the Epicureans were sensual and lovers of pleasure, that the Peripatetics loved riches and wrangling, and that the Platonists were puffed up and loved glory. But a lot of people said that the Stoics were manly and understood everything and that the man who went this way was the only king, the only rich man, the only wise man, and everything rolled into one.
These were obviously other people’s opinions on the schools. You wouldn’t have simply believed the respective adherents when they praised their own schools.
Certainly not; these were other people’s opinions.
Not their rivals’ opinions, I suppose?
No.
Laymen’s opinions?
Yes.
You see how once again you are cheating me and not telling the truth. You think you are talking with some Margites
But you know, Lycinus, I did rely on myself as well as others. I used to see the Stoics walking with dignity, decently dressed, always thoughtful, manly in looks, most of them close-cropped; there was nothing effeminate, none of that exaggerated indifference which stamps the genuine crazy Cynic.
Did you see them behaving also as I said just now I saw your master behaving, Hermotimus? I mean lending money and making bitter demands to be repaid, quarrelsome and most contentious in conversations and generally showing off as they usually do? Or is this of little importance to you, so long as the dress is decent, the beard long, and the hair close-cropped? Then this is to be our strict rule and law for the future in these matters according to Hermotimus: we are to distinguish the best men by their appearance, their walk, and their hair, and whosoever has not these signs and does not look sulky and meditative is to be spurned and rejected!
You’re surely making fun of me, Hermotimus; you’re trying to see if I can spot the catch.
Why do you say that?
Because, my dear friend, this test of yours from appearances is for statues. They at any rate are much more prepossessing and comely in their dress, if a Phidias or Alcamenes or Myron has made them in the most handsome style. But if these are the surest, critical tests, what would a blind man do if he wanted to take up philosophy? How does he recognise the one who has made the better choice—he can see neither bearing nor gait?
My argument is not addressed to the blind, Lycinus, and I have no interest in them.
But, my good sir, there should be some accepted criterion in matters so important and valuable to everyone. However, if you prefer, let the blind keep clear of philosophy since they cannot see—yet they of all people really should take up philosophy: then they would not be completely overwhelmed by their misfortune. Well then, those who can see: however sharp-sighted they may be, what can they detect of the qualities of the soul from this outer covering?
What I wish to say is this: was it not love of the mind of these men that attracted you to them, and didn’t you expect to be improved in your mental powers?
Most certainly.
Then how could you distinguish the true philosopher from the false by the marks you mentioned? Such things are not usually shown in that way; they are secret and not visible, showing themselves in conversation and discussion and corresponding action, and then only with difficulty and after a long period. You have heard, I suppose, what faults Momus found in Hephaestus; if not I’ll tell you. The story goes that Athena, Poseidon, and Hephaestus were quarrelling over which of them was the best artist. Poseidon modelled a bull, Athena designed a house, while Hephaestus, it seems, put together a man. When
You are joking, Lycinus. I chose with God’s help and I have no regrets.