Piscator

Lucian of Samosata

Lucian, Vol. 3. Harmon, A. M., editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921.

TRUTH You others go: I do not-need to hear what I have long known all about.

PHILOSOPHY But it would help us, Truth, if you should join in the trial and give us information on each point.

TRUTH Then shall I bring along these two waitingwomen, who are in very close sympathy with me?

PHILOSOPHY Yes, indeed, as many as you wish.

v.3.p.29

TRUTH Come with us, Liberty and Free-speech, so that we may be able to rescue this poor creature, our admirer, who is facing danger for no just reason. You, Investigation, may stay where you are.

FRANKNESS Hold, my lady: let him come too, if anyone is to come. Those whom I shall have to fight to-day are none of your ordinary cattle, but pretentious fellows, hard to argue down, always finding some loophole or other, so that Investigation is necessary.

INVESTIGATION Yes, most necessary: and you had better take Proof along too. :

TRUTH Come, all of you, since you appear to be necessary to the case.

PLATO Do you see that? He is suborning Truth against us, Philosophy.

PHILOSOPHY Then you, Plato and Chrysippus and Aristotle, are afraid that she, Truth, may tell some lie ‘in his behalf?

PLATO It isn’t that, but he is terribly unprincipled and smooth-tongued, so that he will seduce her.

v.3.p.31

PHILOSOPHY Have no fear. No injustice will be done while we have Justice here with us.

Let us go up, then. But tell me, what is your name ?

FRANKNESS Mine? Frankness, son of Truthful, son of Renowned Investigator.

PHILOSOPHY And your country?

FRANKNESS I am a Syrian, Philosophy, from the banks of the Euphrates. But what of that? I know that some of my opponents here are just as foreign-born as I: but in their manners and culture they are not like men of Soli or Cyprus or Babylon or Stageira.[*](Although they were born there: Chrysippus in Soli, Aristotle in Stageira. No philosopher. mentioned: by name in this piece came from Cyprus or from Babylon, and these allusions are not clear. Perhaps Lucian has in mind Zeno of Citium and Poseidonius of Seleucia on the Tigris. ) Yet as far as you are concerned it would make no difference even if a man’s speech were foreign, if only his way of thinking were manifestly right and just.

PHILOSOPHY True: it was a needless question, to be sure. But what is your calling? That at least is worth knowing.

FRANKNESS Iam a bluff-hater, cheat-hater, liar-hater, vanityhater, and hate all that sort of scoundrels, who are very numerous, as you know.

PHILOSOPHY Heracles! You follow a hateful calling !

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FRANKNESS You are right. You see, in fact, how many have come to dislike me and how I am imperilled because I follow it. However, I am very well up in the opposite calling, too: I mean the one with love for a base ; for I am a truth-lover, a beauty-lover, a simplicitylover, and a lover of all else that is kindred to love. But there are very few who deserve to have this calling practised upon them, while those who come under the other and are closer akin to hatefulness number untold thousands. So the chances are that by this time I have lost my skill in the pne calling for lack of practice, but have become very expert in the other.

PHILOSOPHY But that ought not to be so, for if a man can do the one, they say, he can do the other. So do not distinguish the two callings; they are but one, though they seem two.

FRANKNESS You know best as to that, Philosophy. For my part, however, I am so-constituted as to hate rascals and to commend and love honest men.