De mercede

if he sees you, calls you up and asks you a casual question, then, ah! then you sweat profusely, your head swims confusedly, you tremble inopportunely, and the company laughs at you for your embarrassment. Many a time, when you should reply to the question: “Who was the king of the Achaeans,” you say, “They had a thousand ships!” Good men call this modesty, forward men cowardice, and unkind men lack of breeding. So, having found the beginning of friendly relations very unstable footing, you go away doomed by your own verdict to great despair.

When “many a sleepless night you have pillowed” and have lived through “many a blood-stained day,”[*](Iliad9, 325. ) not for the sake of Helen or of Priam’s Trojan citadel, but the five obols that you hope for, and when you have secured the backing of a tragedy god,[*](Some person, as opportune and powerful as a deus ex machina, to press your suit. ) there follows an examination to see if you are learned in the arts. For the rich man that way of

passing time is not unpleasant, since he is praised and felicitated, but you feel that you have then before you the struggle for your life and for your entire existence, for the thought of course steals into your mind that no one else would receive you if you were rejected by his predecessor and considered unacceptable. So you cannot help being infinitely distracted then; for you are jealous of your rivals (let us suppose that there are others competing with you for the same object); you think that everything you yourself have said has been inadequate, you fear, you hope, you watch his face with straining eyes; if he scouts anything you say, you are in distress, but if he smiles as he listens, you rejoice and become hopeful.

No doubt there are many who side against you and favour others in your stead, and each of them stealthily shoots at you, so to speak, from ambush. Then too imagine a man with a long beard and grey hair undergoing examination to see if he knows anything worth while, and some thinking that he does, others that he does not!

Then a period intervenes, and your whole past life is pried into. If a fellow-countryman. out of jealousy or a neighbour offended for some insignificant reason says, when questioned, that you are a follower of women or boys, there they have it ! the witness speaks by the book of Zeus; but if all with one accord commend you, they are considered questionable, dubious, and suborned. You must have great good fortune, then, and no opposition at all; for that is the only way in which you can win.

Well, suppose you have been fortunate in everything beyond your fondest hopes. The master himself has commended your discussions, and those of

his friends whom he holds in the highest esteem and trusts most implicitly in such matters have not advised him against you. Besides, his wife is willing, and neither his attorney nor his steward objects, nor has anyone criticized your past; everything is propitious and from every point of view the omens are good.