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

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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

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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,

Antiphilos got into a scrape that called for some very good friend. A slave of his, Syros by name and a Syrian by nation, joined himself to a gang of temple-robbers, and, entering the temple of Anoubis in their company, stole from the god two golden goblets, a caduceus-this also of gold some dog-headed gods in silver, and other booty of the sort, which was all stored with Syros. They were caught selling some article and imprisoned, and when they were stretched on the wheel they straightway confessed the whole. Being led forth, they came to Antiphilos's house and brought out the booty, which was lodged under a bed in a dark corner. Both Syros and his master were immediately bound, Antiphilos being seized in the middle of his professor's lecture. Nobody rescued him, but even those who had been his companions turned away from the man who was said to have robbed Anoubis, and they counted it an impiety in themselves if they had ever drunk or feasted with him. His other slaves, two in number, cleared everything out of the house, and ran off.

The unhappy Antiphilos had accordingly been in durance a long time, with the reputation of

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being the most abandoned malefactor in the prison, and the Egyptian jailer, a superstitious man, considered that he was pleasing and avenging the god by bearing heavily on Antiphilos. If he ever defended himself, declaring that he had never done anything of the sort, he was thought utterly shameless, and hated the more. Presently he fell ill and suffered a great deal, naturally, for he slept on the ground, and at night he could not stretch out his legs because they were in the stocks. For by day the collar and a handcuff on the left-hand were enough, but at night they must needs bind him completely. Moreover, the illstench of the place, the stifling atmosphere created by so many prisoners confined in the same room, cramped for space and hardly breathing, the clang of iron, the scarcity of sleep-all these things were oppressive and unendurable to a man who was unused to them, and had had no experience of such a squalid life.