Vitarum auctio

HERMES What is your name?

BUYER Dion of Syracuse.[*](Chosen for mention, because he was Plato’s pupil.) HERMES He is yours; take him, with good luck to you. Epicurean, I want you now. Who will buy him? He is a pupil of the laugher yonder and of the drunkard, both of whom we put up a short time ago.[*](The Epicureans took over the atomic theory from Democritus and the idea that pleasure is the highest good from the Cyrenaics.) In one way, however, he knows more than they, because he is more impious. Besides, he is agreeable and fond of good eating.

BUYER What is his price?

HERMES Two minas.

BUYER Here you are. But, say! I want to know what food he likes.

HERMES He eats sweets and honey-cakes, and, above all, figs.

BUYER No trouble about that; we shall buy him cakes of pressed figs from Caria.

ZEUS Call another, the one over there with the cropped head, the dismal fellow from the Porch.

HERMES Quite right; at all events it looks as if the men who frequent the public square were waiting for him in great numbers.[*](Lucian means that the Stoic philosophy was in high favour with statesmen, lawyers, and men of affairs generally.) I sell virtue itself, the most perfect of philosophies. Who wants to be the only one to know everything ?

BUYER What do you mean by that?

HERMES That he is the only wise man, the only handsome man, the only just man, brave man, king, orator, rich man, lawgiver, and everything else that there is.[*](Compare Ad summam: sapiens uno minor est Jove, dives,Liber, honoratus, pulcher, rex denique regum,Praecipue sanus,— nisi cum pituita molestast !Horace, Epp. 1, I 106 ff) BUYER Then he is the only cook,—yes and the only tanner or carpenter, and so forth ?

HERMES So it appears.

BUYER Come here, my good fellow, and tell your buyer what you are like, and first of all whether you are not displeased with being sold and living in slavery?

STOIC Not at all, for these things are not in our control, and all that is not in our control is immaterial.

BUYER I don’t understand what you mean by this.

STOIC What, you do not understand that of such things some are “approved,” and some, to the contrary, “disapproved”’ ?[*]( Just as things "in our control” were divided into the good and the bad, so those "not in our control” were divided into the “approved” and the "disapproved,” according as they helped or hindered in the acquirement of virtue.) BUYER Even now I do not understand.

STOIC Of course not, for you are not familiar with our vocabulary and have not the faculty of forming concepts; but a scholar who has mastered the science of logic knows not only this, but what predicaments and bye-predicaments are, and how they differ from each other.[*](The hair-splitting Stoics distinguished four forms of predication according to the case of the (logical) subject and the logical completeness of the predicate : the direct, complete predicate, or σύμβαμα (predicament), i.e. Σωκράτης βαδίζει; the indirect, complete predicate, or παρασύμβαμα (bye-predicament), i.e. Σωκράτει μεταμέλει ; the direct, incomplete predicate, e.g. Σωκράτης φιλεῖ, and the indirect, incomplete predicate, i.e. Σωκράτει μέλει.) BUYER In the name of wisdom, don’t begrudge telling me

at least what predicaments and bye-predicaments are ; for I am somehow impressed by the rhythm of the terms.

STOIC Indeed, I do not begrudge it at all. If a man who is lame dashes his lame foot against a stone and receives an unlooked-for injury, he was already in a predicament, of course, with his lameness, and with his injury he gets into a bye-predicament too.

BUYER Oh, what subtlety! And what else do you claim to know best ?

STOIC The word-snares with which I entangle those who converse with me and stop their mouths and make them hold their peace, putting a very muzzle on them. This power is called the syllogism of wide renown.[*](The Stoics were noted for their attention to logic and in especial to fallacies. Chrysippus wrote a book on syllogisms, mentioned in the Icuromenippus (311).) BUYER Heracles! An invincible and mighty thing, by what you say.

STOIC See for yourself. Have you a child?

BUYER What of it ?

STOIC If a crocodile should seize it on finding it straying beside the river, and then should promise to give it back to you if you told him truly what he intended

to do about giving it back, what would you say he had made up his mind to do?[*](The commentators do not seem to have noticed that Lucian has (intentionally) spoiled the sophism by using the words δέδοικα and ἐγνωκέναι. It is perfectly possible for the father to guess what the crocodile “had made up his mind” to do, and so to get the child back: for an intention need not be executed. The crocodile should ask, ‘* Am I going to (μέλλω) give up the child?” Then, if the father answers “Yes,” he will say ‘ You are wrong,” and eat it: and if the father says “No,” he will reply “You are right; therefore I am not going to give it up.”) BUYER Your question is hard to answer, for I don’t know which alternative I should follow in my reply, in order to get back the child. Come, in Heaven’s name answer it yourself and save the child for me, for fear the beast may get ahead of us and devour it !

STOIC Courage! I'll teach you other things that are more wonderful.

BUYER What are they ?

STOIC The Reaper, the Master,[*](Neither of these are accurately known. The Reaper was based on the fallacious employment of the negative, and proved that a man who was going to reap a field could not possibly reap it. Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school, is said to have paid 200 minas to a logician who taught him seven varieties of this fallacy. The Master consisted of four propositions, of which you could take any three and disprove the fourth.) and above all, the Electra and the Veiled Figure.

BUYER What do you mean by the Veiled Figure and the Electra ?

STOIC The Electra is the famous Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon, who at once knew and did not know the same thing; for when Orestes stood beside her before the recognition she knew that Orestes was

her brother, but did not know that this was Orestes.[*](Here again Lucian does scant justice to the fallacy, which he really gives away by his statement of it. It should run: ‘she at once knew and did not know that Orestes was her brother, for she did not know that this man was her brother; but this man was Orestes.”) As to the Veiled Figure, you shall hear a very wonderful argument. Tell me, do you know your own father ?

BUYER Yes.

STOIC But if I put a veiled figure before you and asked you if you know him, what will you say?

BUYER That I don’t, of course.

STOIC But the veiled figure turns out to be your own father ; so if you don’t know him, you evidently don’t know your own father.

BUYER Not so: I should unveil him and find out the truth! But to go on—what is the purpose of your wisdom, and what shall you do when you reach the summit of virtue ?

STOIC I shall then devote myself to the chief natural goods, I mean wealth, health, and the like.[*](As the Stoics set great store by “living in harmony with nature,” they divided “things which did not matter” into the “acceptable” and the ‘ unacceptable” according as they were in or out of harmony with the natural wants of man. This did not supersede the classification alluded to above, but was convenient because it enabled them to dispose of certain things which were hard to classify on the other basis. For instance, a good complexion is neither “approved” nor "disapproved” as an aid to the acquirement of virtue, but it is in harmony with nature, and therefore “‘ acceptable.” Hence the Stoics were often accused (as they are constantly accused by indirection in this dialogue) of setting up a double standard.) But first I must go through many preparatory toils, whetting my eyesight with closely-written books,

collecting learned comments and stufting myself with solecisms and uncouth words; and to cap all, a man may not become wise until he has taken the hellebore treatment three times running.[*](A hit at Chrysippus. Hellebore was the specific for insanity, and rumour said that Chrysippus had taken the treatment three times (cf. True Story, 2, 18).) BUYER These projects of yours are noble and dreadfully courageous. But tobe a Gnipho and a usurer—for I see that this is one of your traits too—what shall we say of this? That it is the mark of a man who has already taken his hellebore-treatment and is consumuinate in virtue ?

STOIC Yes; at any rate money-lending is especially appropriate to a wise man, for as drawing inferences is a specialty of his, and as money-lending and drawing interest is next-door to drawing inferences, the one, like the other, belongs particularly to the scholar: and not only getting simple interest, like other people, but interest upon interest. For don’t you know that there is a first interest and a second interest, the offspring,[*](A play upon τάκος, which is literally "offspring.”) as it were, of the first? And you surely perceive what logic says: “If he gets the first interest, he will get the second; but he will get the first, ergo he will get the second.”

BUYER Then we are to say the same of the fees that you get for your wisdom from young men, and obviously none but the scholar will get paid for his virtue ?

STOIC Your understanding of the matter is correct. You see, I donot take pay on my own account, but for the sake of the giver himself: for since there are two classes of men, the disbursive and the receptive, I train myself to be receptive and my pupil to be disbursive.

BUYER On the contrary, the young man ought to be receptive and you, who alone are rich, disbursive !

STOIC You are joking, man. Look out that I don’t shoot you with my indemonstrable syllogism.[*](Indemonstrable in the sense that its propositions do not require demonstration, or indeed admit of it.) BUYER What have I to fear from that shaft ?

STOIC Perplexity and aphasia and a sprained intellect.