Toxaris vel amicitia

Lucian of Samosata

Selections from Lucian. Smith, Emily James, translators. New York; Harper Brothers, 1892.

Far from being ashamed of his marriage, he seems to take pride in it, showing that he despises bodily charms or blemishes and wealth and public opinion, but regards only his friend Menekrates, who, he thinks, is none the worse in respect of friendship because of the condemnation of the Six Hundred. However, Fortune herself has rewarded his deeds in this way this ugly woman bore him a most beautiful child, and the other day his father took him up and carried him into the senate, garlanded

p.206
with the suppliant's twigs and wrapped in black garments to make him the more pathetic, to plead for his grandfather. And when the baby laughed aloud at the senators and clapped his hands, they warmed to the child and reversed the decision against Menekrates; and at present he is enfranchised again, thanks to the advocate he employed with the senate. This, then, is what the man from Marseilles said Zenothemis had done for his friend, a noble action, as you see, and such as few Scythians would do, who are said to be particular in choosing the most beautiful women even for their harems.

We have the fifth case still to consider, and I should not like to name another man and pass over Demetrios of Sounion. This Demetrios sailed to Egypt in company with Antiphilos of Alopeke. They were friends from childhood, being of the same age, and they lived together as students in Egypt, Demetrios pursuing the Cynic system under that famous sophist from Rhodes, and Antiphilos studying medicine. It came to pass after a while that Demetrios went into the interior to see the Pyramids and the Memnon, for he had heard of the Pyramids that, in spite of their height, they throw no shadow, and of the Memnon that it cries out at the rising of the sun. Being desirous, then, of seeing the Pyramids and

p.207
hearing the Memnon, he sailed up the Nile, leaving Antiphilos, who dreaded the journey and the heat, behind. When Demetrios had been gone six months,