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Timolaus, the wish is with you. We shall expect better things from your judgement and experience.

Timolaus See if you can find anything questionable or reprehensible in what I propose. As to treasure-heaps and bushels of coin, I will have none of them; nor monarchy, with the wars and terrors it involves. You rightly censured such things, precarious as they are, exposed to endless machinations, and bringing with them more vexation than pleasure.

No; my wish is that Hermes should appear and present me with certain rings, possessed of certain powers. One should ensure its wearer continual health and strength, invulnerability, insensibility to pain. Another, like that of Gyges, should make me invisible, A third should give me the strength to pick up with ease a

There remains yet one, the most precious of them all; for with it on my finger I am the desire of every woman and boy, ay, of whole nations; not one escapes me; I am in all hearts, on all tongues. Women will hang themselves for the vehemence of their passion, boys will go mad. Happy will those few be reckoned on whom I cast a glance; and those whom I scorn will pine away for grief. Hyacinth, Hylas, Phaon, will sink into insignificance beside me.

And all this I hold on no brief tenure; the limitations of human life are not for me. I shall live a thousand years, ever renewing my youth, and casting off the slough of old age every time I get to seventeen.—With these rings I shall lack nothing. All that is another’s is mine: for can I not open his doors, put his guards to sleep, and walk in unperceived? Instead of sending to India or to the Hyperboreans for their curiosities, their treasures, their wines or their delicacies, I can fly thither myself, and take my fill of all. The phoenix of India, the griffin, that winged monster, are sights unknown to others: I shall see them. I alone shall know the sources of the Nile, the lands that are uninhabited, the Antipodes, if such there be, dwelling on the other side of the earth. Nay, I may learn the nature of the stars, the moon, the sun itself; for fire cannot harm me. And think of the joy of announcing the Olympian victor’s name in Babylon, on the day of the contest! or of having one’s breakfast in Syria, and one’s dinner in Italy! Had I an enemy, I could be even with him, thanks to my invisibility, by cracking his skull with a rock; my friends, on the other hand, I might subsidize with showers of gold as they lay asleep. Have we