Such or something like it is the argument they would use. Or one of them perhaps would even put an additional question to me: “Tell me this, Lycinus: suppose an Ethiopian, a man who had never seen other men like us, because he had never been abroad at all, should state and assert in some assembly of the Ethiopians that nowhere in the world were there any men white or yellow or of any other colour than black, would he be believed by them? Or would one of the older Ethiopians say to him: ‘Come now, you are very bold. How do you know this? You have never left us to go anywhere else, and indeed you have never seen what things are like among other peoples?’” I for my part would say that the old man had asked a fair question. Or what do you advise, Hermotimus?

The fellow will certainly go on and say to me something like this: “Let us make a comparison, Lycinus, and posit a man who knows only the Stoic tenets, like this friend of yours, Hermotimus; he has never gone abroad to Plato’s country or stayed with Epicurus or in short with anyone else. Now, if he said that there was nothing in these many lands as beautiful or as true as the tenets and assertions of Stoicism, would you not with good reason think him bold in giving his opinion on all, and that when he knows only one, and has never put one foot outside Ethiopia?” What answer do you think I should give him?

This very true one, of course: that we do learn Stoicism very thoroughly indeed, since we think fit to pursue this branch of philosophy, but we are not unacquainted with what the others say. For our teacher explains all that to us as he goes along, and knocks it down with his own comments.