Vitarum auctio

Buyer What else, now, do you claim to know?

Buyer How clever!

Chrysippos The meshes of argument wherewith I trip up my interlocutors and block their passage and reduce them to silence by actually muzzling them. The name of this faculty is the famous syllogism.

Buyer By Herkules, it is an irresistible, mighty weapon, from your description.

Chrysippos I will give you a specimen. Have you a child?

Buyer Certainly.

Chrysippos If a crocodile should manage to snatch it, finding it wandering too near the river, and if, then, he should promise to restore it if you could tell him truly whether he had determined

Buyer That is a difficult question, for I do not see which answer would be the more likely to get the child back. But do you, in Heaven's name, answer for me, and save my child before he eats him.

Chrysippos Never fear, I will teach you other things still more surprising.

Buyer What sort of things?

Chrysippos The Reaper, the Master, and, above all, the Elektra, and the Veiled.

Buyer What do you mean by the "Veiled," or the "Elektra ?"

Chrysippos Elektra is that famous person, the daughter of Agamemnon, who at the same moment knows a thing and does not know it; for when Orestes stands beside her, still incognito, she knows, indeed, that Orestes is her brother, but that this is Orestes she does not know. And I will tell you about the "Veiled," too, a most extraordinary figure. Answer me, do you know your father?

Buyer Yes.

Chrysippos Well, then, if I present some veiled person to you and ask whether you know him, what would you say?

Buyer That I do not, of course.

Chrysippos And yet this very person was your

Buyer Not at all, for if I unveil him I shall know the truth. However, what is the object of your philosophy? What do you do when you have reached the pinnacle of virtue?

Chrysippos I shall then be occupied with the first things in the order of nature-riches, I mean, and health, and such like things. But before that one must needs toil much, sharpening his sight on books in fine print, taking notes, and filling himself with solecisms aand uncouth phrases. Most important of all, it is not permitted to become a sage until you have drunk hellebore three times in succession.

Buyer This is all very noble in you and extremely manly. But what are we to say when a man, who has already drunk the hellebore and arrived at virtue, turns money - lender at fifty per cent., for I see this belongs to your principles too?

Chrysippos By all means. The sage is the only man fit to lend money; for since ratiocination is his peculiar function, and calculating ratios and per cents. seems to be the next thing to ratiocinating, it follows from these premises that the special business of the good man alone is to get not only simple interest like other people, but compound. For you know there are two sorts of interest, one sort coming first, and the other second,

Buyer And must we say the same of the fees you take for imparting your wisdom to young men? Is it clear that the good man alone will make money out of his virtue?

Chrysippos You grasp the idea. It is not on my own account that I take fees, but for the good of the giver himself. For since one party in a transaction must give and the other receive, I train myself to receive and my pupil to give.

Buyer It ought to be the other way about. The young man ought to receive, and you, who alone are rich, to give out.

Chrysippos You are chaffing, fellow; but be careful lest I let fly at you with the apodeiktic syllogism.

Buyer What are the frightful effects of the weapon?

Chrysippos Embarrassment, silence, confusion of mind.