Vitarum auctio

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.

Buyer Come, my friend, and tell me, your purchaser, what sort of person you are, and, to begin with, whether it is not an affliction to you to be sold and in slavery.

Chrysippos Not at all; for those things are not under our control, and what is not under our control is therefore indifferent.

Buyer I don't understand just what you mean.

Chrysippos What, do you not understand that in such matters some things are preferred and some again rejected?

Buyer I don't understand even yet.

Chrysippos Naturally, for you are not accustomed to our terminology, nor have you the perceptive imagination. But the virtuous man, he who has mastered logical theory, knows not only

Buyer In the name of wisdom, kindly take the trouble to tell me this, too: what accidents and secondary accidents are. I am indescribably impressed by the roll of the words.

Chrysippos No trouble at all. If a lame man, stumbling with that lame foot itself against a stone gets unexpectedly hurt, this man's lameness is evidently a primary accident to which he adds a secondary accident in the way of the wound.