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.