Reader

"Where shall I make a beginning,” my friend, “and where make an end of relating”Cf. Odyssey9, 14. all that must be done and suffered by those who take salaried posts and are put on trial in the friendship of our wealthy men—if the name of friendship may be applied to that sort of slavery on their part? Iam familiar with much, I may say most, of their experiences, not because I myself have ever tried anything of that kind, for it never became a necessity for me to try it, and, ye gods! I pray it never may; but many of those who have blundered into this existence have talked to me freely, some, who were still in their misery, bewailing the many bitter sufferings which they were then undergoing, and others, who had broken jail, as it were, recalling not without pleasure those they had undergone; in fact they joyed in recounting what they had escaped from. These latter were the more trustworthy because they had gone through all the degrees of the ritual, so to speak, and had been initiated into everything from beginning to end. So it was not without interest and attention that I listened to them while they spun yarns about their shipwreck and unlooked-for deliverance, just like the men with shaven heads who gather in crowds at the temples and tell of third waves, tempests, headlands, strandings, masts carried away, rudders broken, and to cap it all, how the T win Brethren appeared (they are peculiar to this sort of rhodomontade), or how some other deus ex machina sat on the masthead or stood at the helm and steered the ship to a soft beach where she might break up gradually and slowly and they themselves get ashore safely by the grace and favour of the god. Those men, to be sure, invent the greater part of their tragical histories to meet their temporary need, in order that they may receive alms from a greater number of people by seeming not only unfortunate but dear to the gods;

but when the others told of household tempests and third waves—yes, by Zeus, fifth and tenth waves, if one may say so—and how they first sailed in, with the sea apparently calm, and how many troubles they endured through the whole voyage by reason of thirst or sea-sickness or inundations of brine, and finally how they stove their unlucky lugger on a submerged ledge or a sheer pinnacle and swam ashore, poor fellows, in a wretched plight, naked and in want of every necessity—in these adventures and their account of them it seemed to me that they concealed the greater part out of shame, and voluntarily forgot it. For my part I shall not hesitate to tell you everything, my dear Timocles, not only their stories but whatever else I find by logical inference to be characteristic of such household positions; for I think I detected long ago that you are entertaining designs

upon that life. I detected it first one time when our conversation turned to that theme, and then someone of the company praised this kind of wage-earning, saying that men were thrice happy when, besides having the noblest of the Romans for their friends, eating expensive dinners without paying any scot, living in a handsome establishment, and travelling in all comfort and luxury, behind a span of white horses, perhaps, with their noses in the air,That this is the meaning of éurriaCovres, and not “lolling at ease,” is clear from Book-Collector 21 and Downward Journey 16. they could also get no inconsiderable amount of pay for the friendship which they enjoyed and the kindly treatment which they received; really everything grew without sowing and ploughing for such as they. When you heard all that and more of the same nature, I saw how you gaped at it and held your mouth very wide open for the bait. In order, then, that as far as I am concerned I may be free from blame in future and you may not be able to say that when I saw you swallowing up that great hook along with the bait I did not hold you back or pull it away before it got into your throat or give you forewarning, but waited until I saw you dragged along by it and forcibly haled away when at last it was pulled and had set itself firmly, and then, when it was no use, stood and wept—in order that you may not say this, which would be a very sound plea if you should say it, and impossible for me to controvert on the ground that I had done no wrong by not warning you in advance—listen to everything at the outset; examine the net itself and the impermeability of the pounds beforehand, from the outside at your leisure, not from the inside after you are in the fyke; take in your hands the bend of the hook and the barb of its point, and the tines of the harpoon; puff out your cheek and try them on it, and if they do not prove very keen and unescapable and painful in one’s wounds, pulling hard and gripping irresistibly, then write me down a coward who goes hungry for that reason, and, exhorting yourself to be bold, attack your prey if you will, swallowing the bait whole like a gull!

The whole story will be told for your sake, no doubt, in the main, but it will concern not only students of philosophy like yourself, and those who have chosen one of: the more strenuous vocations in life, but also grammarians, rhetoricians, musicians, and ina word all who think fit to enter families and serve for hire as educators. Since the experiences of all are for the most part common and similar, it is clear that the treatment accorded the philosophers, so far from being preferential, is more contumelious for being the same, if it is thought that what is good enough for the others is good enough for them, and they are not handled with any greater respect by their paymasters. Moreover, the blame for whatever the discussion itself brings out in its advance ought to be given primarily to the men themselves who do such things and secondarily to those who put up with them. I am not to blame, unless there is something censurable in truth and frankness. As to those who make up the rest of the mob, such as athletic instructors and parasites, ignorant, pettyminded, naturally abject fellows, it is not worth while to try to turn them away from such household positions, for they would not heed, nor indeed is it proper to blame them for not leaving their paymasters, however much they may be insulted by them, for they are adapted to this kind of occupation and not too good for it. Besides, they would not have anything else to which they might turn in order to keep themselves busy, but if they should be deprived ot this, they would be without a trade at once and out of work and superfluous. So they themselves cannot suffer any wrong nor their employers be thought insulting for using a pot, as the saying goes, for a pot’s use. They enter households in the first instance to encounter this insolence, and it is their trade to bear and tolerate it. But in the case of the educated men whom I mentioned before, it is worth while to be indignant and to put forth every effort to bring them back and redeem them to freedom.

It seems to me that I should do well to examine in advance the motives for which some men go into this sort of life and show that they are not at all urgent or necessary. In that way their defence and the primary object of their voluntary slavery would be done away with in advance. Most of them plead their poverty and their lack of necessities, and think that in this way they have set up an adequate screen for their desertion to this life. They consider that it quite suffices them if they say that they act pardonably in seeking to escape poverty, the bitterest thing in life. Then Theognis comes to hand, and time and again we hear: “All men held in subjection to Poverty,” ἄνδρ᾽ ἀγαθὸν πενίη πάντων δάμνησι μάλιστα, καὶ γήρως πολιοῦ, Κύρνε, καὶ ἠπιάλου, ἣν δὴ χρὴ φεύγοντα καὶ ἐς βαθυκήτεα πόντον ῥιπτεῖν καὶ πετρέων, Κύρνε, κατ᾽ ἠλιβάτων. καὶ γὰρ ἀνὴρ πενίῃ δεδμημένος οὔτε τι εἰπεῖν οὐθ᾽ ἕρξαι δύναται, γλῶσσα δέ οἱ δέδεται. Theognis 173 ff. and all the other alarming statements about poverty that the most spiritless of the poets have put forth. If I saw that they truly found any refuge from poverty in such household positions, I should not quibble with them in behalf of excessive liberty; but when they receive what resembles “the diet of invalids,” as our splendid orator once said,Demosthenes3, 33. how can one avoid thinking that even in this particular they are ill advised, inasmuch as their condition in life always remains the same? They are always poor, they must continue to receive, there is nothing put by, no surplus to save: on the contrary, what is given, even if it is given, even if payment is received in full, is all spent to the last copper and without satisfying their need. It would have been better not to excogitate any such measures, which keep poverty going by simply giving first aid against it, but such as will do away with it altogether—yes, and to that end perhaps even .to plunge into the deep-bosomed sea if one must, Theognis, and down precipitous cliffs, as you ~ say. But if a man who is always poor and needy and on an allowance thinks that thereby he has escaped poverty, I do not know how one can avoid thinking that such a man deludes himself.

Others say that poverty in itself would not frighten or cow them.if they could get their daily bread by working like the rest, but as things are, since their bodies have been debilitated by old age or by illnesses, they have resorted to this form of wage-earning, which is the easiest. Come, then, let us see if what they say is true and they secure their gifts easily, without working much, or any more than the rest. It would indeed be a godsend to get money readily without toiling and moiling. As a matter of fact, the thing cannot even be put into adequate words. They toil and moil so much in their household positions that they need better health there and need health more than anything else for that occupation, since there are a thousand things every day that fret the body and wear it down to the lowest depths of despair. We shall speak of these at the proper time, when we recount their other hardships. For — the present it is enough to indicate that those who allege this reason for selling themselves are not telling the truth either.

One motive remains, which is exceedingly genuine but not mentioned at all by them, namely, that they plunge into these households for the sake of pleasure and on account of their many extravagant expectations, dazzled by the wealth of gold and silver, enraptured over the dinners and the other forms of indulgence, and assured that they will immediately drink gold in copious draughts, and that nobody will stop their mouths. That is what seduces them and makes them slaves instead of freemen—not lack of necessaries, as they alleged, but desire for unnecessaries and envy of that abundance and luxury. Therefore, like unsuccessful and unhappy lovers, they fall into the hands of shrewd, experienced minions who treat them superciliously, taking good care that they shall always love them, but not permitting them ta enjoy the objects of their affection even to the extent of a meagre kiss; for they know that success will involve the dissolution of love. So they hold that under lock and key and guard it jealously, but otherwise they keep their lover always hopeful, since they fear that despair may wean him from his overmastering desire, and that he may grow out of love for them. They smile upon him, then, and make promises, and are always on the point of being good to him, and generous, and lavish with their attentions. Then before they know it, they both are old, the one has passed the season for loving, the other for yielding to love. Consequently they have done nothing in all their life except to hope.

Now to put up with everything on account of desire for pleasure is perhaps not altogether blameworthy, even excusable, if a man likes pleasure and makes it his aim above all else to partake of it. Yet perhaps it is shameful and ignoble for him to sell himself on that account; for the pleasure of freedom is far sweeter. Nevertheless, let us grant that he would be excusable in a measure, if he obtained it. But to put up with many unpleasantnesses just on account of the hope of pleasure is ridiculous in my opinion and senseless, particularly when men see that the discomforts are definite and patent in advance and inevitable, while the pleasure that is hoped for, whatever it is, has never yet come in all the past, and what is more, is not even likely to come in the future, if one should figure the matter out on the basis of hard fact. The companions: of Odysseus neglected all else because they were eating the lotus and found it sweet, and they contemned what was honourable because they contrasted it with their immediate pleasure; therefore it was not entirely unreasonable of them to forget honour while their souls dwelt upon that sweetness. But for a man in hunger to stand beside another who eats his fill of lotus without giving him any, and to be chained

to the spot, forgetful of all that is honourable and right, by the mere hope that he himself may get a taste some day—Heracles! how ridiculous and in very truth deserving of a proper Homeric thrashing!

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Well, the motives which attract them to these household positions, which cause them to put themselves eagerly into the power of the rich to treat as they will, are these or as near as may be to these, unless one should think it worth while to mention also those men who are impelled by the mere name of associating with men of noble family and high social position. There are people who think that even this confers distinction and exalts them above the masses, just as in my own case, were it even the Great King, merely to associate with him and to be seen associating with him without getting any real benefit out of the association would not be acceptable to me.

So much for their object. Let us now consider between ourselves what they put up with before they are received and gain their end, and what they endure when they are fairly in the thing, and to cap the climax, what the outcome of the drama proves to be. For surely it cannot be said that even if all this is unworthy, at least it is easy to get and will not call for much trouble; that you need only wish, and then the whole thing is accomplished for you without any effort. No, it calls for much running hither and thither, and for continual camping on doorsteps; you must get up early and wait about; meanwhile you are elbowed, you are kept locked out, you are sometimes thought impudent and annoying, you are subordinate to a door-man with a vile Syrian accent and to a Libyan master of ceremonies, and you tip them for remembering your name. Moreover you must provide yourself with clothing beyond the means at your command, to correspond with the dignity of the man whom you are cultivating, and choose whatever colours he likes in order that you may not be out of harmony or in discord when he looks at you, and you must follow him zealously, or rather, lead the way, shoved on by the servants and filling out a guard of honour, as it were. But your man does not even look at you for many days on end. And if ever you have a rare stroke of luck—

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.

You have won, then, lucky man, and have gained the Olympic crown—nay, you have taken Babylon or stormed the citadel of Sardis; you shall have the horn of Plenty and fill your pails with pigeon’s milk. It is indeed fitting that in return for all your labours you should have the very greatest of blessings, in order that your crown may not be mere leaves; that your salary should be set at a considerable figure and paid you when you need it, without ado; that in other ways you should be honoured beyond ordinary folk; that you should get respite from your former exertions and muddiness and running about and loss of sleep, and that in accordance with your prayer you should “sleep with your legs stretched out,”

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doing only what you were engaged for at the outset and what you are paid for. That ought to be the way of it, Timocles, and there would be no great harm in stooping and bearing the yoke if it were light and comfortable and, best of all, gilded' But the case is very different—yes, totally different. There are thousands of things insupportable to a free man that take place even after one has entered the household. Consider for yourself, as you hear a list of them, whether anyone could put up with them who is even to the slightest degree cultured.

I shall begin, if you like, with the first dinner which will be given you, no doubt, as a formal prelude to your future intimacy. Very soon, then, someone calls, bringing an invitation to the dinner, a servant not unfamiliar with the world, whom you must first propitiate by slipping at least five drachmas into his hand casually so as not to appear awkward. He puts on airs and murmurs: “Tut, tut! I take money from you?” ane: “Heracles! I hope it may never come to that!"; but in the end he is prevailed upon and goes away with a broad grin at your expense. Providing yourself with clean clothing and dressing yourself as neatly as you can, you pay your visit to the bath and go, afraid of getting there before the rest, for that would be gauche, just as to come last would be ill-mannered. So you wait until the middle moment of the right time, and then go in. He receives you with much distinction, and someone takes you in charge and gives you a place at table a little above the rich man, with perhaps two of his old friends.

As though you had entered the mansion of Zeus, you admire everything and are amazed at all that is done, for everything is strange and unfamiliar to you. The servants stare at you, and everybody in the company keeps an eye on you to see what you are going to do. Even the rich man himself is not without concern on this score; he has previously directed some of the servants to watch whether you often gaze from afar at his sons or his wife. The attendants of your fellow-guests, seeing that you are impressed, crack jokes about your unfamiliarity with what is doing and conjecture

that you have never before dined anywhere because your napkin is new.

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As is natural, then, you inevitably break out in a cold sweat for perplexity; you do not dare to ask for something to drink when you are thirsty for fear of being thought a toper, and you do not know which of the dishes that have been put before you in great variety, made to be eaten in a definite order, you should put out your hand to get first, or which second; so you will be obliged to cast stealthy glances at your neighbour, copy him, and find out the proper sequence of the dinner.

In general, you are in a chaotic state and your soul is full of agitation, for you are lost in amazement at everything that goes on. Now you call Dives lucky for his gold and his ivory and all his luxury, and now you pity yourself for imagining that you are alive when you are really nothing at all. Sometimes, too, it comes into your head that you are going to lead an enviable life, since you will revel in all that and share in it equally; you expect to enjoy perpetual Bacchic revels. Perhaps, too, pretty boys waiting upon you and faintly smiling at you paint the picture of your future life in more attractive colours, so that you are forever quoting that line of Homer:

Small blame to the fighters of Troy and the brightgreaved men of AchaeaSaid of Helen by the Trojan elders. They continue,; That for a woman like this they long have endured tribulations. Iliad 3, 157

Iliad3, 156

that they endure great toil and suffering for such happiness as this. Then come the toasts, and, calling for a large bowl,

he drinks your health, addressing you as “the professor” or whatever it may be. You take the bowl, but because of inexperience you do not know that you should say something in reply, and you get a bad name for boorishness.

Moreover, that toast has made many of his old friends jealous of you, some of whom you had previously offended when the places at table were assigned because you, who had only just come, were given precedence over men who for years had drained the dregs of servitude. So at once they begin to talk about you after this fashion: “That was still left for us in addition to our other afflictions, to play second fiddle to men who have just come into the household, and it is only these Greeks who have the freedom of the city of Rome. And yet, why is it that they are preferred to us? Isn't it true that they think they confer a tremendous benefit by turning wretched phrases?”’ Another says: “Why, didn’t you see how much he drank, and how he gathered in what was set before him and devoured it? The fellow has no manners, and is starved to the limit; even in his dreams he never had his fill of white bread, not to speak of guinea fowl] or pheasants, of which he has hardly left us the bones:”’ A third observes: “You silly asses, in less than five days you will see him here in the midst of us making these same complaints. Just now, like a new pair of shoes, he is receiving acertain amount of consideration and attention, but when he has been used again and again and is smeared with mud, he will be thrown under the bed in a wretched state, covered with vermin like the rest of us.” Well, as I say, they go on about you indefinitely in that vein, and perhaps even then some of them are getting ready for a campaign of slander.

Anyhow, that whole dinner-party is yours, and most of the conversation is about you. For your own part, as you have drunk more than enough subtle, insidious wine because you ‘were not used to it, you have been uneasy for a long time and are in a bad way: yet it is not good form to leave early and not safe to stay where you are. So, as the drinking is prolonged and subject after subject is discussed and entertainment after entertainment is brought in (for he wants to show you all his wealth!), you undergo great punishment; you cannot see what takes place, and if this or that lad who is held in very great esteem sings or plays, you cannot hear; you applaud perforce while you pray that an earthquake may tumble the whole establishment into a heap or that a great fire may be reported, so that the party may break up at last.

So goes, then, my friend, that first and sweetest of dinners, which to me at least is no sweeter than thyme and white salt eaten in freedom, when I like and as much as I like. To spare you the tale of the flatulency that follows and the sickness during the night, early in the morning you two will be obliged to come to terms with one another about your stipend, how much you are to receive and at what time of year. So with two or three of his friends present, he summons you, bids you to be seated, and opens the conversation: ‘ You have already seen what our establishment is like, and that there is not a bit of pomp and circumstance in it, but everything is unostentatious, prosaic, and ordiriary. You must feel that we shall have everything in common; for it would be ridiculous if I trusted you with what is most important, my own soul or that of my children”—suppose he has children who need instruction—‘“and did not consider you equally free to command everything else. But there should be some stipulation. I recognise, to be sure, that you are temperate and independent by nature, and am aware that you did not join our household through hope of pay but on account of the other things, the friendliness that we shall show you and the esteem which you will have from everyone. Nevertheless, let there be some stipulation. Say yourself what you wish, bearing in mind, my dear fellow, what we shall probably give you on the annual feast-days. We shall not forget such matters, either, even though we do not now reckon them in, and there are many such occasions in the year, as you know. So, if you take all that into consideration, you will of course charge us with a more moderate stipend. Besides, it would well become you men of education to be superior to money.”

By saying this and putting you all in a flutter with expectations, he has made you submissive to him. You formerly dreamed of thousands and millions and whole farms and tenements, and you are somewhat conscious of his meanness; nevertheless, you welcome his promise with dog-like joy, and think his “We shall have everything in common”’ reliable and truthful, not knowing that this sort of thing

“Wetteth the lips, to be sure, but the palate it leaveth unwetted.

Iliad22, 495.

In the end, out of modesty, you leave it to him. He

himself refuses to say, but tells one of the friends who are present to intervene in the business and name a sum that would be neither burdensome to ~ him, with many other expenses more urgent than this, nor paltry to the recipient. The friend, a sprightly old man, habituated to flattery from his boyhood, says: ‘* You cannot say, sir, that you are not the luckiest man in the whole city. In the first place you have been accorded a privilege which many who covet it greatly would hardly be able to obtain from Fortune; I mean in being honoured with his company, sharing his hospitality, and being received into the first household in the Roman Empire. This is better.than the talents of Croesus and the wealth of Midas, if you know how to be temperate. Perceiving that many distinguished men, even if they had to pay for it, would like, simply for the name of the thing, to associate with this gentleman and be seen about* him in the guise of companions and friends, I cannot sufficiently congratulate you on your good luck, since you are actually to receive pay for such felicity. I think, then, that unless you are very prodigal, ~ about so and so much is enough”—and he names a very scanty sum, in striking contrast to those expectations of yours.

You must be content, how- “ever, for it would not even be possible for you to get away, now that you are in the paddock. So you take the bit with your eyes shut, and in the beginning you answer his touch readily, as he does not pull hard or spur sharply until you have imperceptibly grown quite used to him. People on the outside envy you after that, seeing that you live within the pale and enter without let and have become a notable figure in the inner circle. You yourself do not yet see why you seem to them to be fortunate. Nevertheless, you are joyous and delude yourself, and are always thinking that the future will turn out better. But the reverse of what you expected comes about: as the proverb has it, the thing goes Mandrobulus-wise,"This Mandrobulus once found a treasure in Samos and dedicated to Hera a golden sheep, and in the second year one of silver, and in the third, one of bronze.” Scholia, diminishing every day, almost, and dropping back.

Slowly and gradually, therefore, as if you could then distinguish things for the first time in the indistinct light, you begin to realize that those golden hopes were nothing but gilded bubbles, while your labours are burdensome and genuine, inexorable and continuous. “What are they?” perhaps you will ask me: “J. do not see what there is in such posts that is laborious, nor can I imagine what those wearisome and insupportable things are that you spoke of.”

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Listen, then, my worthy friend, and do not simply try to find out whether there is any weariness im the thing, but give its baseness and humility and general slavishness more than incidental consideration in the hearing.

First of all, remember never again from that time forward to think yourself free or noble. All that— your pride of race, your freedom, your ancient lineage—you will leave outside the threshold, let me tell you, when you go in after having sold yourself into such service; for Freedom will refuse to enter with you when you go in for purposes so base and humble. So you will be a slave perforce, however distasteful you may find the name, and not the slave of one man but of many; and you will drudge from morn till night: with hanging head, “for shameful hire.”Either a variation upon Homer (cf. Odyssey19, 341: Iliad 13, 84, 21, 444-5), or a quotation from a lost epic. Since you were not brought up in the company of Slavery from your boyhood but made her acquaintance late and are getting your schooling from her at an advanced age, you will not be very successful or highly valuable to your master, — The memory of your freedom, stealing over you, plays the mischief with you, sometimes causing you to be skittish, and for that reason to come off badly in slavery. Perhaps, however, you think it quite enough to establish your freedom that you are not the son of a Pyrrhias or a Zopyrion, and that you have not been sold in the market like a Bithynian by a loud-voiced auctioneer. But, my excellent friend, when the first of the month arrives and side by side with Pyrrhias and Zopyrion you stretch out your hand like the rest of the servants and take your earnings, whatever they are—that is sale! There was no need of an auctioneer in the case of a man who put himself up at auction and for a long time solicited a master. Ah, scurvy outcast (that would be my language, above all to a self-styled philosopher), if a wrecker or a pirate had taken you at sea and were offering you for sale, would you not pity yourself for being ill-fated beyond your deserts; or if someone had laid hands upon you and were haling you off, saying that you were a slave, would you not invoke the law and make a great stir and be wrathful and shout ‘“Heavens and Earth!” at the top of your voice? Then just for a few obols, at that age when, even if you were a slave by birth, it would be high time for you to look forward at last to liberty, have you gone and sold yourself, virtue and wisdom included? Had you no respect, either, for all those wonderful sermons that your noble Plato and Chrysippus and Aristotle have preached in praise of freedom and in censure of servility? Are you not ashamed to undergo comparison with flatterers and loafers and buffoons; to be the only person in all that Roman throng who wears the incongruous cloak of a scholar and talks Latin with a villainous accent; to take part, moreover, in uproarious dinners, packed with human flotsam that is mostly vile? At these dinners you are vulgar in your compliments, and you drink more than is discreet. Then in the morning, roused by a bell, you shake off the sweetest of your sleep and run about town with the pack, up hill and down dale, with yesterday's mud still on your legs. Were you so in want of lupines and herbs of the field, did even the springs of cold water fail you so completely, as to bring you to this pass out of desperation? No, clearly it was because you did not want water and lupines, but cates and meat and wine with a bouquet that you were caught, hooked like a pike in the very part that hankered for all this—in the gullet—and it served you quite right! You are confronting, therefore, the rewards of this greediness, and with your neck in a collar like a monkey you are a laughing-stock to others, but seem to yourself to be living in luxury because you can eat figs without stint. Liberty and noblesse, with all their kith and kin, have disappeared completely, and not even a memory of them abides.

Indeed, it would be lucky for you if the thing involved only the shame of figuring as a slave _ instead of a free man, and the labour was not like that of an out-and-out servant. But see if what is required of you is any more moderate than what is required of a Dromo ora Tibius! To be sure, the purpose for which he engaged you, saying that he wanted knowledge, matters little to him; for, as the proverb says, “What has a jackass to do with a lyre?” Ah, yes, can’t you see? they are mightily consumed .with longing for the wisdom of Homer or the eloquence of Demosthenes or the sublimity of Plato, when, if their gold and ’ their silver and their worries about them should be taken out of their souls, all that remains is pride and softness and self-indulgence and sensuality and insolence and ill-breeding! Truly, he does not want you for that purpose at all, but as you have a long beard, present a distinguished appearance, are neatly dressed in a Greek mantle, and everybody knows you for a grammarian or a rhetorician or a philosopher, it seems to him the proper thing to have a man of that sort among those who go before him and form his escort; it will make people think him a devoted student of Greek learning and in general a person of taste in literary matters So the chances are, my worthy friend, that instead of your marvellous lectures it is your beard and mantle that you have let for hire.

You must therefore be seen with him always and never be missing; you must get up early to let yourself be noted in attendance, and you must not desert your post. Putting his hand upon your shoulder now and then, he talks nonsense at random, showing those who meet him that even when he takes a walk he is not inattentive to the Muses but makes good use of his leisure during the stroll.

For your own part, poor fellow, now you run at his side, and now you forge about at a foot’s pace, over many ups and downs (the city is like that, you know), until you are sweaty and out of breath, and then, while he is indoors talking to a friend whom he came to see, as you have no place to sit down, you stand up, and for lack of employment read the book with which you armed yourself. When night overtakes you hungry and thirsty, after a wretched bath you go to your dinner at an unseasonable hour, in the very middle of the night; but you are no longer held in the same esteem and admiration by the company. If anyone arrives who is more of a novelty, for you it is “Get back!” In this way you are pushed off into the most unregarded corner and take your place merely to witness the dishes that are passed, gnawing the bones like a dog if they get as far as you, or regaling yourself with gratification, thanks to your hunger, on the tough mallow leaves with which the other food is garnished, if they should be disdained by those nearer the head of the table. Moreover, you are not spared other forms of rudeness. You are the only one that does not have an egg. There is no necessity that you should always expect the same treatment as foreigners and strangers: that would be unreasonable! Your bird, too, is not like the others; your neighbour's is fat and plump, and yours is half a tiny chick, or a tough pigeon—out-and-out rudeness and contumely! Often, if there is a shortage when another guest appears of a sudden, the waiter takes up what you have before you and quickly puts it before him, muttering: “You are one of us, you know.” Of course when a side of pork or venison is cut at table, you must by all means have especial favour with the carver or else get a Prometheus-portion, bones hidden in fat. That the platter should stop beside the man above you until he gets tired of stuffing himself, but speed past you so rapidly—what free man could endure it if he had even as much resentment as a deer? And I have not yet mentioned the fact that while the others drink the most delectable and oldest of wines, you alone drink one that is vile and thick, taking good care always to drink out of a gold or silver cup so that the colour may not convict you of being such an unhonoured guest. If only you might have your fill, even of that! But as things are, though you ask for it repeatedly, the page “hath not even the semblance of hearing”!Iliad23, 430.

You are annoyed, indeed, by many things, a great many, almost everything; most of all when your favour is rivalled by a cinaedus or a dancing-master or an Alexandrian dwarf who recites Ionics.

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, How could you be on a par, though, with those who render these services to passion and carry notes about in their clothing? So, couched in a far corner of the dining-room and shrinking out of sight for shame, you groan, naturally, and commiserate yourself and carp at Fortune for not besprinkling you with at least a few drops of the amenities. You would be glad, I think, to become a composer of

erotic ditties, or at all events to be able to sing them properly when somebody else had composed them: for you see where precedence and favour go! You would put up with it if you had to act the part of a magician or a soothsayer, one of those fellows who promise legacies amounting to many thousands, governorships, and tremendous riches; you see that they too get on well in their friendships and are highly valued. So you would be glad to adopt one of those réles in order not to be entirely despicable and useless; but even in them, worse luck, you are not convincing. Therefore you must needs be humble and suffer in silence, with stifled groans and amid neglect.

If a whispering servant accuse you of being the only one who did not praise the mistress’s page when he danced or played, there is no little risk in the thing. So you must raise your thirsty voice like a stranded frog, taking pains to be conspicuous among the claque and to lead the chorus; and often when the others are silent you must independently let drop a well-considered word of praise that will convey great flattery. That a man who is famished, yes, and athirst, should be perfumed with myrrh and have a wreath on his head is really rather laughable, for then you are like the gravestone of an ancient corpse that is getting a feast to his memory. They drench the stones with myrrh and crown them with wreaths, and then they themselves enjoy the food and drink that has been prepared!

If the master is of a jealous disposition and has handsome sons or a young wife, and you are not wholly estranged from Aphrodite and the Graces, your situation is not peaceful or your danger to be taken lightly. The king has many ears and eyes, which not only see the truth but always add something more for good measure, so that they may not be considered heavy-lidded. You must therefore keep your head down while you are at table, as at a Persian dinner, for fear that an eunuch may see that you looked at one of the concubines; for another eunuch, who has had his bow bent this long time, is ready to punish you for eyeing what you should not, driving his arrow through your. cheek just as you are taking a drink.

. Then, after you have left the dinner-party, you get a little bit of sleep, but towards cock-crow you wake up and say: “Oh, how miserable and wretched Iam! To think what I left—the occupations of former days, the comrades, the easy life, the sleep limited only by my inclination, and the strolls in freedom—and what a pit I have impetuously flung myself into! Why, in heaven’s name? What does this splendid salary amount to? Was there no other way in which I could have earned more than this and could have kept my freedom and full independence? As the case stands now, I am pulled about like a lion leashed with a thread, as the saying is, up hill and down dale; and the most pitiful part of it all is that I do not know how to be a success and cannot be a favourite. I am an outsider in such matters and have not the knack of it, especially when I am put in comparison with men who have ‘made an art of the business. Consequently I am unentertaining and not a bit convivial; I cannot even raise a laugh. I am aware, too, that it often actually annoys him to look at me, above all when he wishes to be merrier than his wont, for Iseem to him gloomy. I cannot suit him at all. If I keep to gravity, I seem disagreeable and almost a person to run away from; and if I smile and make my features as pleasant as I can, he despises me outright and abominates me. The thing makes no better impression than as if one were to play a comedy in a tragic mask! All in all, what other life shall I live for myself, poor fool, after having lived this one for another?”

While you are still debating these matters the bell rings, and you must follow the same routine, go the rounds and stand up; but first you must rub your loins and knees with ointment if you wish to last the struggle out! Then comes a similar dinner, prolonged to the same hour. In your case the diet is in contrast to your former way of living; the sleeplessness, too, and the sweating and the weariness gradually undermine you, giving rise to consumption, pneumonia, indigestion, or that noble complaint, the gout. You stick it out, however, and often you ought to be abed, but this is not permitted. They think illness a pretext, and a way of shirking your duties. The general consequences are that you are always pale and look as if you were going to die any minute.

So it goes in the city. And if you have to go into the country, I say nothing of anything else, but it often rains; you are the last to get there—even in the matter of horses it was your luck to draw that kind!— and you wait about until for lack of accommodation they crowd you in with the cook or the mistress’s hairdresser without giving you even a generous supply of litter for a bed!

I make no bones of telling you a story that I was told by our friend Thesmopolis, the Stoic, of something that happened to him which was very comical, and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the same thing may happen to someone else. He was in the household of a rich and self-indulgent woman who belonged to a distinguished family in the city. Having to go into the country one time, in the first place he underwent, he said, this highly ridiculous experience, that he, a philosopher, was given a favourite to sit by, one of those fellows who have their legs depilated and their beards shaved off; the mistress held him in high honour, no doubt. He gave the fellow’s name; it was Dovey!

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_ Now what a thing that was, to begin with, for a stern‘old man with a grey beard (you know what a long, venerable beard Thesmopolis used to have) to sit beside a fellow with rouged cheeks, underlined eyelids, an unsteady glance, and a skinny neck—no dove, by Zeus, but a plucked vulture! Indeed, had it not been for repeated entreaties, he would have worn a hair-net on his head. In other ways too Thesmopolis suffered numerous annoyances from him all the way, for he hummed and whistled and no doubt would even have danced in the carriage if Thesmopolis had not held him in check.

Then too, something else of a similar nature was required of him. The woman sent for him and said: “Thesmopolis, I am asking a great favour of you;

please do it for me without making any objections or waiting to be asked repeatedly.” He promised, as was natural, that he would do anything, and she went on: “I ask this of you because I see that you are kind and thoughtful and sympathetic—take my dog Myrrhina (you know her) into your carriage and look after her for me, taking care that she does not want for anything. The poor thing is unwell and is almost ready to have puppies, and these abominable, disobedient servants do not pay much attention even to me on journeys, let alone to her. So do not think that you will be rendering me a trivial service if you take good care of my precious, sweet doggie.” Thesmopolis promised, for she plied him with many entreaties and almost wept. The situation was as funny as could be: a little dog peeping out of his cloak just below his beard, wetting him often, even if Thesmopolis did not add that detail, barking in a squeaky voice (that is the way with Maltese dogs, you know), and licking the philosopher’s beard, especially if any suggestion of yesterday's gravy was in it! The favourite ‘who had sat by him was joking rather wittily one day at the expense of the company in the dining-room, and when in due course his banter reached Thesmopolis, he remarked: “As to Thesmopolis,- I can only say that our Stoic has finally gone to. the dogs!”

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I was told, too, that the doggie actually had her puppies in the cloak of Thesmopolis.

That is the way they make free with their dependants, yes, make game of them, gradually rendering them submissive to their effrontery. I know a sharp- tongued rhetorician who made a speech by request at dinner in a style that was not by any means uncultivated, but very finished and studied. He was applauded, however, because his speech, which was delivered while they were drinking, was timed by flasks of wine instead of measures of water! And he took this venture on, it was said, for two hundred drachmas.It was not the fashion at ancient banquets for guests to make speeches. In consenting to deliver a selection from his repertory, the rhetorician put himself on a par with a professional entertainer. This was bad enough, but he made things still worse by allowing the company to time his speech with a substitute for a water-clock which they improvised out of a flask of wine. All this is not so bad, perhaps. But if Divesf himself has a turn for writing poetry or prose and recites his own compositions at dinner, then you must certainly split yourself applauding and flattering him and excogitating new styles of praise. Some of them wish to be admired for their beauty also, and they must hear themselves called an Adonis or a Hyacinthus, although sometimes they have a yard of nose. If you withhold your praise, off you go at once to the quarries of Dionysius because you are jealous and are plotting against your master. They must be philosophers and rhetoricians, too, and if they happen to commit a solecism, precisely on that account their language must seem full of the flavour of Attica and of Hymettus, and it must be the law to speak that way in future.

After all, one could perhaps put up with the conduct of the men. But the women—! That is another thing that the women are keen about—to have men of education living in their households on a salary and following their litters. They count it as one among their other embellishments if it is said that they are cultured and have an interest in philosophy and write songs not much inferior to Sappho’s. To that end, forsooth, they too trail hired rhetoricians and grammarians and philosophers about, and listen to their lectures—when? it is ludicrous!—either while their toilet is being made and their hair dressed, or at dinner; at other times they are too busy! And often while the philosopher is delivering a discourse the maid comes up and hands her a note from her lover, so that the lecture on chastity is kept waiting until she has written a reply to the lover and hurries back to hear it.

At last, after a long lapse of time, when the feast of Cronus

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or the Panathenaic festival comes, you are sent a beggarly scarf or a flimsy undergarment. Then by all means there must be a long and impressive procession. The first man, who has overheard his master still discussing the matter, immediately runs and tells you in advance, and goes away with a generous fee for his announcement, paid in advance. In the morning a baker’s dozen of them come bringing it, and each one tells you: “I talked about it a great deal!” “I jogged his memory!” “It was left to me, and I chose the finest one!’ So all of them depart with a tip, and even grumble that you did not give more.

As to your pay itself, it is a matter of two obols, or four, at a time, and when you ask for it you are a bore and a nuisance. So, in order to get it you

must flatter and wheedle the master and pay court to his steward too, but in another way; and you must not neglect his friend and adviser, either. As what you get is already owing to a clothier or doctor or shoemaker, his gifts are no gifts and profit you nothing.

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You are greatly envied, however, and perhaps some slanderous story or other gradually gets afoot by stealth and comes to a man who by now is glad to receive charges against you, for he sees that you are used up by your unbroken exertions and pay lame and exhausted court to him, and that the gout is growing upon you. To sum it up, after garnering all that was most profitable in you, after consuming the most fruitful years of your life and the greatest vigour of your body, after reducing you to a thing of _ rags and tatters, he is looking about for a rubbish-heap on which to cast you aside unceremoniously, and for another man to engage who can stand the work. Under the charge that you once made overtures to a page of his, or that, in spite of your age, you are trying to seduce an innocent girl, his wife's maid, or something else of that sort, you leave at night, hiding your face, bundled out neck and crop, destitute of everything and at the end of your tether, taking with you, in addition to the burden of your years, that excellent companion, gout. What you formerly knew you have forgotten in all these years, and you have made your belly bigger than a sack, an insatiable, inexorable curse. Your gullet, too, demands what it is used to, and dislikes to unlearn its lessons.

Nobody else would take you in, now that you have passed your prime and are like an old horse whose hide, even, is not as serviceable as it was. Besides, the scandal of your dismissal, exaggerated by conjecture, makes people think you an adulterer or poisoner or something of the kind. Your accuser is trustworthy even when he holds his tongue, while you are a Greek, and easy-going in your ways and prone to all sorts of wrong-doing. That is what they think of us all, very naturally. For I believe I have detected the reason for that opinion which they have of us. Many who have entered households, to make up for not knowing anything else that was useful, have professed to supply predictions, philtres, lovecharms, and incantations against enemies; yet they assert they are educated, wrap themselves in the philosopher’s mantle, and wear beards that cannot lightly be sneered at. Naturally, therefore, they entertain the same suspicion about all of us on seeing that men whom they considered excellent are that sort, and above all observing their obsequiousness at dinners and in their other social relations, and their servile attitude toward gain.

Having shaken them off, they hate them, very naturally, and endeavour in every way to destroy them outright if possible; for they expect them to betray the many hidden mysteries of their make-up, inasmuch as they are thoroughly acquainted with everything and have looked upon them unveiled. That sticks in their throat, because they are all exactly like the finest of papyrus rolls, of which the knobs are of gold and the slip-cover of purple, but the content is either Thyestes feasting on his children or Oedipus married to his mother, or Tereus debauching two sisters at once. They too are splendid and universally admired, but inside, underneath their purple, they hide a deal of tragedy; in fact if you unroll any one of them, you will find an ample drama by an Euripides or a Sophocles, while on the outside there is a gaudy purple laticlave and a golden bulla. Conscious of all this, they hate and plot against any renegade who, having become thoroughly familiar with them, is likely to expose the plot and tell it broadcast.

I desire, nevertheless, in imitation of Cebes,Reputed author of the Tabula, a description of an maginary allegorical painting representing human life. to paint you a picture of this career that we have discussed, so that you may look at it and determine. whether you should enter it. I should gladly have requisitioned an Apelles, or Parrhasius, or Aetion, or Euphranor to paint it, but since it is impossible nowadays to find anyone so excellent and so thoroughly master of his craft, I shall show you the picture as best I can in unembellished prose. Imagine painted a lofty, golden gateway, not down on the level ground but above the earth on a hill; the slope is long and steep and slippery, so that many a time those who hoped soon to be at the summit have ‘broken their necks by a slip of the foot. Within, let Wealth himself be sitting, all golden, seemingly, very beautiful and fascinating; and let his lover, afler ascending with great toil, draw near the door and gaze spellbound at the gold. Let Hope, herself tair of face and gaily dressed, take him in charge and conduct him within, tremendously impressed by his entrance. Then let Hope keep always in advance of him, and let other women, Deceit and Servitude, receive him successively and pass him on to Toil, who, after breaking the wretch with hard labour, shall at length deliver him, now sickly and faded, to Old Age. Last of all, let Insolence lay hold of him and drag him along to Despair; let Hope then fly away and vanish, and instead of the golden portal by which he entered, let him be ejected by some remote and secret postern, naked, paunchy, pale, and old, screening his nakedness with his left hand and throttling himself with his right; and on the way out, let him be met by Repentance, weeping to no avail and helping to make an end of the poor man. “Let that be the conclusion of the painting. The rest, my dear Timocles, is up to you; examine all the details with care and make up your mind whether it suits you to enter the pictured career by these doors and be thrown out so disgracefully by that one opposite. Whatever you do, remember the words of the philosopher: “God is not at fault; the fault is his who maketh the choice.”Plato Republic 10, 617.