Nigrinus

A How very lordly and exalted you are since you came back! Really, you don’t deign to notice us any more, you don’t associate with us, and you don’t join in our conversations : you have changed

B Nothing but good fortune, my dear fellow.

A What do you mean ?

B I have come back to you transformed by the wayside into a happy and a blissful man—in the language of the stage, “thrice blessed.”

A Heracles! in so short a time?

B Yes, truly.

A But what is the rest of it? What is it that you are puffed up about? Let us enjoy something more than a mere hint: let us have a chance to get at the facts by hearing the whole story.

B Don’t you think it wonderful, in the name of Zeus, that once a slave, I am now free! « once poor, now rich indeed” ; once witless and befogged, now saner?[*](Apparently a free quotation from some play that is lost. (Kock, adesp. 1419.))

A Why, yes! nothing could be more fmportant. But even yet I don’t clearly understand what you mean.

B Well, I made straight for Rome, wanting to see an oculist; for I was having more and more trouble with my eye.

A I know all that, and hoped you would find an able man.

B As I had resolved to pay my respects to Nigrinus the Platonic philosopher, which I had not done for a long time, I got up early and went to his house, and when I had knocked at the door and the man had announced me, I was asked in. On

Well, he greeted me in very friendly way and asked me how I was getting on. I told him everything, and naturally in my own tum wanted to know how he was getting on, and whether he had made up his mind to take the trip to Greece again. Beginning:-to talk on these topics and to explain his position, my dear fellow, he poured enough ambrosial speech over me to put out of date the famous Sirens [*](Odyss. 12, 39 ; 167.) (if there ever were any) and the nightingales [*](Odyss. 19, 518.) and the lotus of Homer. [*](Odyss. 9, 94. The lotus is mentioned because of its effect. 1t made Odysseus’ shipmates Among the Lotus-eaters fain to stayAnd gather lotus, and forget their homes.) A divine utterance!

For he went on to praise philosophy and the freedom that it gives, and to ridicule the things that are popularly considered blessings— wealth and reputation, dominion and honour, yes and purple and gold—things accounted very desirable by most men, and till then by me also. I took it all in with eager, wide-open soul, and at the moment I couldn’t imagine what had come over me ; I was all confused. Then I felt hurt because he had criticised what was dearest to me—wealth and money and reputation,—and I all but cried over their downfall ;

I went on and on, and so got into the state with which you just reproached me: what he said has made me proud and exalted, and in a word, I take no more notice of trifles. I suppose I have had the same sort of experience with philosophy that the Hindoos are said to have had with wine when they first tasted it. As they are by nature more hot-blooded than we, on taking such strong drink they became uproarious at once, and were crazed by the unwatered beverage twice as much as other people. There you have it! I am going about enraptured and drunk with the wine of his discourse.

A Why, that isn’t drunkenness, it is sobriety and temperance! I should like to hear just what he said, if possible. It is far, very far from right, in my opinion, to be stingy with it, especially if the person who wants to hear is a friend and has the same interests.

B Cheer up, good soul! you spur a willing horse, as Homer says,[*](Iliad 8, 293.) and if you hadn’t got ahead of me, I myself should have begged you to listen to my tale, for I want to have you bear witness before the world that my madness has reason in it. Then, too,

I am in the same case with lovers. In the absence of the objects of their fancy they think over their actions and their words, and by dallying with these beguile their lovesickness into the belief that they have their sweethearts near; in fact, sometimes they even imagine they are chatting with them and are as pleased with what they formerly heard as if it were just being said, and by applying their minds to the memory of the past give themselves no time to be annoyed ‘by the present. So I, too, in the absence of my mistress Philosophy, get no little comfort out of gathering together the words that I then heard and turning them over to myself. In short, I fix my gaze on that man as if he were a lighthouse and I were adrift at sea in the dead of night, fancying him by me whenever I do anything and always hearing him repeat his former words. Sometimes, especially when I put pressure on my soul, his face appears to me and the sound of his voice abides in my ears. Truly, as the comedian says, [*](Eupolis in the Demes, referring to Pericles Kock, 94None better in the world to make a speech !He’d take the floor and give your oratorsA ten-foot start, as a good runner does,And then catch up. Yes, he was fleet, and more—Persuasion used to perch upon his lips,So great his magic; he alone would leaveHis sting implanted in his auditors.) “he left a sting implanted in his hearers!”

A Have done with your long prelude, “you strange fellow ; begin at the beginning and tell me what he said. You irritate me more than a little with your beating about the bush.

B You are right! I must do so. But look here, _ my friend : you’ve seen bad actors in tragedy before now—yes, and in comedy too, I'll swear? I mean the sort that are hissed and ruin pieces and finally get driven off the stage, though their plays are often good and have won a prize.

A I know plenty of the sort. But what of it ?

B I am afraid that, as you follow me, you may think that I present my lines ridiculously, hurrying through some of them regardless of metre, and sometimes even spoiling the very sense by my incapacity ; and that you may gradually be led to condemn the play itself. As far as I am concerned, I don’t care at all; but if the play shares my failure and comes to grief on my account, it will naturally hurt me more than a little.

Please bear it in mind, then, all through the performance that the poet is not accountable to us for faults of this nature, and’ is sitting somewhere far away from the stage, completely unconcerned about what is going on in the theatre, while I am but giving you a chance to test my powers and see what sort of actor I am in point of memory; in other respects my réle is no more important than that of a messenger in tragedy. Therefore, in case I appear. to be saying something rather poor, have the excuse to hand that it was better, and that the poet no doubt-told it differently. As for myself, even if you hiss me off the stage, I shan’t be hurt at all!

A Hermes  what a fine introduction you have made, just like a professor of public speaking! You intend, I am sure, to add that your conversation was short, that you didn’t come prepared to speak, and that it would be better to hear him tell it himself, for really you have only carried in mind what little you could. Weren’t you going to say that? Well, there is no longer any necessity for it on my account ; consider your whole introduction finished as far as I am concerned, for I am ready to cheer and to clap. But if you keep shilly-shallying, I'll bear you a grudge all through the speech and will hiss right, sharply.

B Yes, I should have liked to say all that you mention, and also that I do not intend to quote him without a break and in his own words, in a long speech covering everything, for that would be quite beyond my powers; nor yet to quote him in the first person, for fear of making myself like the actors whom I mentioned in another way. Time and again when they have assumed the role of Agamemnon or Creon or even Heracles himself, costumed in cloth of gold, with fierce eyes and mouths wide agape, they speak in a voice that is small, thin, womanish, and far too poor for Hecuba or Polyxena. Therefore, to avoid being criticised like them for wearing a mask altogether too big for my head and for being a disgrace to my costume, I want to talk to you with my features exposed, so that the hero whose part I am taking may not be brought down with me if I stumble.

A Will the man never stop talking so much stage and tragedy to me?

B Why, yes! I will stop, certainly, and will now turn to my subject. The talk began with praise of Greece and of the men of Athens, because Philosophy and Poverty have ever been their fuster-brothers, and they do not look with pleasure on any man, be he citizen or stranger, who strives to introduce luxury among them, but if ever anyone comes to them in that frame of mind, they gradually correct him and lend a hand in his schooling and convert him to the simple life.

For example, he mentioned a millionaire who came to Athens, a very conspicuous and vulgar person with his crowd of attendants and his gay clothes and jewelry, and expected to be envied by all the Athenians and to be looked up to as a happy man. But they thought the creature unfortunate, and undertook to educate him, not in a harsh way, however, nor yet by directly forbidding him to live as he would in a free city. But when he made himself a nuisance at the athletic clubs and the baths by jostling and crowding passers with his retinue, someone or other would say in a low tone, pretending to be covert, as if he were not directing the remark at the man himself: “He is afraid of being murdered in his tub! Why, profound peace reigns in the baths; there is no need of an army, then!” And the man, who never failed to hear, got a bit of instruction in passing. His gay clothes and his purple gown they stripped from him very neatly by making fun of his flowery colours, saying, “Spring already?” ‘How did that peacock get here f” “Perhaps it’s his mother’s” and the like. His other vulgarities they turned into jest in the same way—

To show that they are not ashamed to confess poverty, he mentioned to me a remark which he said he had heard everybody make with one accord at the Panathenaic games. One of the citizens had been arrested and brought before the director of the games because he was looking on in a coloured cloak. Those who saw it were sorry for him and tried to beg him off, and when the herald proclaimed that he had broken the law by wearing such clothing at the games, they all cried out in one voice, as if by pre-arrangement, to excuse him for being in that dress, because, they said, he had no other. Well, he praised all this, and also the freedom there and the blamelessness of their mode of living, their quiet and leisure; and these advantages they certainly have in plenty. He declared, for instance, that a life like theirs is in harmony with philosophy - and can keep the character pure ; so that a serious man who has been taught to despise wealth and elects to live for what is intrinsically good will find Athens éxactly suited to him.

But a man who loves wealth and is enthralled by gold and measures happiness by purple and power, who has not tasted liberty or tested free speech or contemplated truth, whose constant companions are flattery and servility ; a min who has unreservedly committed his soul to pleasure and has resolved to serve none but her, fond of extravagant fare and fond of wine and

"Such folk,” said he, “should live in Rome, for every street and every square is full of the things they cherish most, [*](A reminiscence of Aratus (Phaenom. 2): ‘ And every human-street and every square is full of the presence of God.”) and they can admit pleasure by every gate—by the eyes, by the ears and nostrils, by the throat and reins, Its everflowing, turbid stream widens every street; it brings in adultery, avarice, perjury and the whole family of the vices, and sweeps the flooded soul bare of self-respect, virtue, and righteousness; and then the ground which they have left a desert, ever parched with thirst, puts forth a rank, wild growth of lusts.” That was the character of the city, he declared, and those all the good things it taught.

“For my part,” said he, “when I first came back from Greece, on getting into the neighbourhood of Rome I stopped and asked myself why I had come here, repeating the well-known words of Homer: [*](Odyss. 11, 93.) ‘Why left you, luckless man, the light of day’—Greece, to wit, and all that happiness and freedom— and came to see’ the hurly-burly here—informers, haughty greetings, dinners, flatterers, murders, legacy-hunting, feigned friendships? And what in the world do you intend to do, since you can neither go away nor do as the Romans do?”

“After communing with myself in this vein and pulling myself out of bowshot as Zeus did Hector in Homer,

1. From out the slaughter, blood, and battle-din,

“Indeed (if it is right to speak in praise of what is bad), don’t suppose that there is any better school for virtue or any truer test of the soul than this city and the life here; it is no small matter to make a stand against so many desires, so many sights and sounds that lay rival hands on a man and pull him in every direction. One must simply imitate Odysseus and sail past them; not, however, with his hands bound (for that would be cowardly) nor with his ears stopped with wax, but with ears open and body free, and in a spirit of genuine contempt.