Vitarum auctio

Zeus (to his assistants) Set the benches in order, and get the place ready for visitors; and you, range the lives in order and usher them in, but tidy them up first so that they may make a good appearance and attract a crowd. You, Hermes, make a proclamation, and, by the grace of heaven, summon the buyers to the sale-room forthwith. We are going to announce for sale philosophic lives of every description and varied principles, and if any one is not able to lay down his money on the nail he can pay up next year if he gives security.

Hermes A crowd is gathering, so we must not waste time nor keep them waiting.

Zeus Then let us proceed to sell.

Hermes Which of them shall we put up first?

Zeus This one with the long hair, the Ionian, for he seems to be a reverend person.

Hermes Let the Pythagorean there show his points to the company.

Zeus Announce him, pray.

Hermes I offer the noblest life, the most reverend. Who will buy? Who wishes to be more

Buyer He is not bad to look at, but just what does he know?

Hermes Arithmetic, astronomy, magic, geometry, music, jugglery. A finished fortune-teller is before you.

Buyer May one question him?

Hermes With all my heart.

Buyer What country are you of?

Pythagoras Samos.

Buyer Where were you educated?

Pythagoras In Egypt, among the sages there.

Buyer Well, then, if I buy you what will you teach me?

Pythagoras I will not teach you anything. I will remind you.

Buyer How will you remind me?

Pythagoras By first making your soul clean, and washing off the filth that is on it.

Buyer Now, suppose me already purified, what is your method of reminding?

Pythagoras The first step is a long, speechless silence; you must not say a word for five whole years.

Buyer You ought to teach mutes, my friend. But I am a talker with no desire to become a graven image. All the same, what comes after the silence and the five-year term?

Pythagoras Practise in music and geometry.

Buyer That is a nice statement ! If I am to become a philosopher I must first learn to play the harp!

Pythagoras In addition to these, counting.

Buyer I can count now.

Pythagoras How do you do it?

Buyer One, two, three, four.

Pythagoras Look, now; what you deem four is really ten, and a perfect triangle, and what we swear by.

Buyer Hear me swear a mighty oath: by Four, I never heard diviner or more holy words.

Pythagoras And after that, stranger, you will have knowledge concerning earth and air and water and fire-the mass of each, and what form it has, and what motion by consequence.

Buyer Then has fire form, or air, or water?

Pythagoras Very clear forms, for the formless and shapeless is immovable; and besides these things you will know that God is number and mind and harmony.

Buyer This is startling!

Pythagoras Beyond what I have already said, you will know that you yourself, who seem to be a unit, are one person in appearance and another in reality.

Buyer What do you say? Am I somebody else and not this person now talking to you?

Pythagoras Now you are he, but formerly you appeared in another body and with another name; and in time you will change again into another.

Buyer You mean this: that I shall be immortal, changing into one form after another? But that is enough on this subject.

What are your habits of life?

Pythagoras I touch no sort of animal food, but anything else except beans.

Buyer What is the reason of that? Perhaps you dislike beans?

Pythagoras Not at all, but they are sacred and of a marvellous nature. But, what is more important, it is the custom of the Athenians to vote for officers with beans.

Buyer All your remarks are lofty and priestlike. But take off your clothes and let me see you stripped. Good heavens, his thigh is golden! He seems to be a god, not a mortal. I will buy him, by all means. How much do you ask for him?

Hermes Two hundred dollars.

Buyer I will take him at the price.

Zeus Make a note of the buyer's name and country.

Hermes He is an Italian, I should think, from Croton or Tarentum, or somewhere in Magna Graecia. But he is not the sole purchaser; almost three hundred clubbed together with him.

Zeus Let them take him off. Put up another.

Hermes What do you say to that dirty one from Pontos?

Zeus By all means.

Hermes Come here, you with the wallet slung from your shoulder, and the bare arms. Walk round the room. I offer a manly life, a noble and generous life, a free life! Who buys?

Buyer What do you say, salesman? You offer a free man for sale?

Hermes I do.

Buyer Then are you not afraid he will sue you for kidnapping, and bring you before the criminal court?

Hermes He does not mind being sold at all, for he believes he is free in all circumstances.

Buyer What use could one put such a dirty, ill-conditioned fellow to, unless you set him to digging or carrying water?

Hermes Those are not his only uses. If you make a hall-porter of him you will find you can rely on him better than on your dogs; in fact, he has even the name of a dog.

Buyer Where does he come from and what discipline does he profess?

Hermes Ask the man himself; that is the better way.

Buyer I am afraid of him, with his sullen, dark

Hermes Don't be afraid; he is tame.

Buyer In the first place, my friend, where are you from?

Diogones Everywhere.

Buyer What do you mean?

Diogones You see before you a citizen of the world.

Buyer And who is your model?

Diogones Herakles.

Buyer Then why don't you wear the lion-skin, too? You are like him as far as the club goes.

Diogones This is my lion-skin, my threadbare coat. Like him, I make war on pleasures; not under orders, but of my own will, deliberately choosing to purify life.

Buyer A noble choice! But just what are we to understand that you know? What art are you master of?

Diogones I am the liberator of mankind and the physician of their passions; but, above all, I wish to be the prophet of truth and free speech.

Buyer Come, prophet, if I buy you, what training will you put me through?

Diogones First, I will take you in hand and strip you of your luxury, locking you up with poverty

Buyer What do you mean by that feeling no pain when one is flogged? I have not got the covering of a turtle or a lobster on my shoulders!

Diogones You will admire that little saying of Euripides, with a word or two altered.

Buyer What one?

Diogones Your heart will suffer, but your tongue will feel no pain.

But the most necessary qualities are these: you must be reckless and daring, and abuse all alike, kings and subjects. By this means you will be noticed and thought manly. Let your speech be uncouth, your voice discordant and strongly resembling a dog's. Wear a strenuous face, and choose a gait in keeping with 5

Buyer Be off with you! Your ways are foul and unnatural.

Diogones But the easiest, at least, sirrah, and handy for every one to pursue; for they will not ask education of you, or oratory, or nonsense. No; this road is a short cut to fame; for even if you are a private citizen, a tanner, or a fishmonger, or a carpenter, or a cabinet-maker, nothing prevents your being a wonder if only you are shameless and bold, and have acquired the art of skilful abuse.

Buyer I do not want your services in that line, but you might perhaps be convenient as a sailor or a gardener-particularly if the vendor is willing to sell you for not more than five cents.

Hermes Take him; we shall be glad to get rid of him. He is a nuisance, yelling and abusing everybody generally with his foul tongue.

Zeus Call another, the Cyrenaic, the one in the purple robe with the garland on his head.

Hermes Come now, attention, all! This article is expensive, and only for the rich. This is a life of sweetness, a thrice-blessed life! Who wants luxury? Who will buy the daintiest thing going?

Buyer Step forward, you, and tell me what you happen to know. I will buy you if you are useful.

Hermes Do not annoy him, my good fellow, or ask him questions. He is drunk and cannot answer you, for his tongue is thick, as you perceive.

Buyer And who in his senses would buy such an abandoned, dissipated slave? How he reeks of perfumes, and how reeling and uncertain his gait is! But tell me yourself, Hermes, if need be, what his points are, and what his pursuits.

Hermes Primarily he is a clever man to live with you, able to drink with you, and just the man to go with a flute-girl on the revels of an amorous and spendthrift master. Moreover, he is a connoisseur of made dishes, a most experienced cook, and a complete professor of the art of pleasant living. In fact, he was educated at Athens, and also served various despots in Sicily, and is highly esteemed by them. This is the substance of his principles: to despise everything, make use of everything, and gather pleasure from every source.

Buyer You had better cast your eye on some

Hermes It looks, Zeus, as though this one would be left on your hands.

Zeus Set him aside and put up another. These two, for choice, the laugher from Abdera and the weeper from Ephesus, for I should like to sell the two together.

Hermes Let them come down into full view. I offer the noblest lives; we announce the sagest of all!

Buyer Heavens, what a contrast! The one never stops laughing, and the other seems to be in grief for somebody. He is consumed with weeping. What is the matter, fellow? Why are you laughing?

Demokritos What a question! Because all your doings and you yourselves strike me as so funny!

Buyer What? You are laughing at us all, and don't take our doings seriously?

Demokritos Even so, for there is nothing serious in them. They are all empty, a whirl of atoms, the infinite.

Buyer By no means; it is you that are really empty and infinitesimal. What impudence! Will you not stop laughing?

But what are you weeping for, my good fellow?

Herakleitos Because, friend, I deem human life a lamentable thing, worthy of tears, so soon passeth it all away. Therefore, I pity you and bewail your lot. The present does not strike me as important, and what is to come hereafter is unmixed woe-I mean the final conflagration and the catastrophe of the universe. These are the things I lament. Nothing is steadfast, but all things are somehow pressed together into an olla-podrïda and the same thing is a joyless joy, a knowing without knowledge, a great littleness, drifting up and down and changing at the caprice of the playful Aeon.

Buyer What may the Aeon be?

Herakleitos A child at play, moving the chessmen, changing them by hazard.

Buyer What, then, are men?

Herakleitos Mortal gods.

Buyer And what are the gods?

Herakleitos Immortal men.

Buyer Are you talking in riddles, fellow, or setting me conundrums? You make your meaning as dim, actually, as Apollo does.

Herakleitos Because I am at no pains about you.

Buyer Very well; neither will any but a lunatic buy you.

Herakleitos I bid each of you go to the devil from his youth up, whether he purchase or purchase not.

Buyer His affliction is not much removed from melancholia. For my part, I am not going to buy either of them.

Hermes These two are left on our hands.

Zeus Put up another!

Hermes That Athenian there, the chatterbox?

Zeus By all means.

Hermes Come here, you! We offer a good, sensible life. Who buys the most holy?

Buyer Tell me, just what do you happen to know?

Sokrates I am a lover and wise in the science of love.

Buyer Then how in the world could I buy you? For what I want is a tutor for my pretty boy.

Sokrates Well, who could be a better man than I to associate with the fair? It is beautiful souls that I love, not bodies.

Indeed, I swear it to you by the dog and the plane-tree.

Buyer Heavens, what strange gods!

Sokrates What's that you say? Don't you think the dog is a god? Perhaps you have not noticed how great Anoubis is in Egypt, and Seirios in the heavens, and Kerberos among the dead.

BuyerYou are right, it was my mistake. But what is your manner of life?

Sokrates I live by myself in a sort of state that I fashioned with a foreign form of government, and I enact my own laws.

Buyer I should like to hear one of your principles.

Sokrates Well, this is the most important: my decision about women. No woman is assigned to one man alone, but to every one who wishes her in marriage. Have you, then, abrogated the laws about marriage?

Buyer What!

Sokrates Dear me, yes, and all such petty formalities. Beauty shall be the reward of the bravest-those who have accomplished some brilliant feat of daring.

Buyer A fine reward! And what is the substance of your philosophy?

Sokrates The ideas and the types of existing things; for, indeed, everything that you see-the earth and all upon it, the sky, the sea-all these things have invisible images outside the universe.

Buyer Where are they?

Sokrates Nowhere; for if they were anywhere they could not be.

Buyer I don't see these types you speak of.

Sokrates Naturally; for your soul's eye is blind.

Buyer Then you will do to buy, for you are wise and have good eyes. Come, Hermes, how much will you charge me for him?

Hermes Two thousand dollars.

Buyer I take him at the price. However, I will pay you later.

Hermes What is your name?

Buyer Dion of Syracuse.

Hermes Take him, with my best wishes. Next I call you, the Epicurean. Who will buy this one? He is the pupil of that laugher and of the drunkard whom I offered a little while ago. But he has made one step in advance of them, inasmuch as he has less regard for holy things. For the rest, he is pleasant and the friend of good living.

Buyer What's the price?

Hermes Forty dollars.

Buyer Here you are. But tell me what sort of food he likes.

Hermes He lives on sweet things like honey, and particularly figs.

Buyer That is easy enough. I will buy him penny-loaves of fig-cake.

Zeus Call up another-that scowling fellow with the shaved head from the Porch.

Hermes Very well. At all events, a great crowd of those who have come to the sale seem to be waiting for him. I offer for sale virtue herself, the most perfect of lives. Who wishes to know everything, alone of all men?

Buyer What do you mean?

Hermes This man alone is wise, he alone is beautiful, he alone is just, manly, a king, an orator, a millionaire, a legislator, and everything else.

Buyer Then, friend, is he alone a cook, and a tanner, by Jove! and a carpenter, and everything of that sort?

Hermes Apparently.