Fugitivi

What characterises us is very easily attainable, as you know, and open to imitation—I mean what meets the eye. It does not require much ceremony to don a short cloak, sling on a wallet, carry a staff in one’s hand, and shout—say rather, bray, or howl, and slang everyone. Assurance of not suffering for it was bound to be afforded them by the usual respect for the cloth. Freedom is in prospect, against the will of their master, who, even if he should care to assert possession by force, would get beaten with the staff. Bread, too, is no longer scanty or, as before, limited to bannocks of barley ; and what goes with it is not salt fish or thyme but meat of all sorts and wine of the sweetest, and money from whomsoever they will; for they collect tribute, going from house to house, or, as they themselves express it, they “shear the sheep”; and they expect many to give, either out of respect for their cloth or for fear of their abusive language.

Moreover, they discerned, I assume, the further advantage that they would be on an equal footing with true philosophers, and that there would be nobody who could pass judgment and draw distinctions in such matters, if only the externals were similar. For, to begin with, they do not even

Consequently, every city is filled with such upstarts, particularly with those who enter the names of Diogenes, Antisthenes, and Crates as their patrons and enlist in the army ofthe dog. Those fellows have not in any way imitated the good that there is in the nature of dogs, as, for instance, guarding property, keeping at home, loving their masters, or remembering kindnesses, but their barking, gluttony, thievishness, excessive interest in females, truckling, fawning upon people who give them things, and hanging about tables—all this they have copied with painful accuracy.

You shall see what will happen presently. All the men in the workshops will spring to their feet and leave their trades deserted when they see that by toiling and moiling from morning till night, doubled over their tasks, they merely eke out a bare existence from such wage-earning, while idle frauds live in unlimited plenty, asking for things in a lordly way, getting them without effort, acting indignant if they do not, and bestowing no praise even if they do. It seems to them that this is ‘life in the age of Cronus,’ and really that sheer honey is distilling into their mouths from the sky!

The thing would not be so dreadful if they offended against us only by being what they are. But although outwardly and in public they appear very