Hermotimus

Lucian of Samosata

Hermotimus

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LYCINUSTo judge from your book, Hermotimus, and the speed of your walk, you seem to be hurrying to your teacher. You were certainly thinking something over as you went along; you were twitching your lips and muttering quietly, waving your hand this way and that as though you were arranging a speech to yourself, composing one of your crooked problems or thinking out some sophistical question; even when you are walking along you must not take it easy, but be always busy at some serious matter which is likely to help your studies. HERMOTIMUSYes, certainly, that is about it, Lycinus; I was going over yesterday’s lecture and what he said to us, running through the points in my mind. We must, I think, never lose an opportunity, for we know the truth of what the Coan Doctor Hippocrates. said: “Life is short, but Art is long.” He was speaking of medicine of course, which is easier to learn; philosophy is unattainable even over a long period, unless you are very much awake all the time and keep a stern glaring eye on her. The venture is for no mere trifle—whether to perish miserably in the vulgar rabble of the common herd or to find happiness through philosophy.

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LYCINUSThat is a very wonderful prize, Hermotimus, and I fancy you are near winning it, to judge by the time you spend on your philosophical studies and also the considerable energy you seem to have devoted for so long. If I remember, it must be nigh on twenty years that I have seen you doing nothing but going to the teachers, and usually bent over a book and writing notes on the lectures, always pale and wasted with studying. I suppose even your dreams give you no rest, you are so wrapped up in it. So, when I consider this, I feel that you will not be long in reaching happiness, unless it has been your companion for years and we have missed seeing it. HERMOTIMUSHow can that be, Lycinus? I am just beginning to get a glimpse of my way there. Virtue, says Hesiod, Hesiod, Works and Days, 289. lives far away, and the path to her is long and steep and rough, with plenty of sweat for travellers. LYCINUSHave you not sweated and travelled enough, Hermotimus? HERMOTIMUSNo, I tell you. I couldn’t be other than perfectly happy if I were at the top. At this moment I am still beginning, Lycinus.

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LYCINUSBut this same Hesiod says that the beginning is half-way there, Hesiod, Works and Days, 40. so that we should not wrong you if we said that you were half-way up. HERMOTIMUSNo, not even that yet. That would be a great achievement. LYCINUSWell, where on the road may we put you? HERMOTIMUSStill down in the foothills, Lycinus, though lately struggling on. It is slippery and rough and needs a hand to help. LYCINUSYour teacher can do that: he can let down his own teaching from the top like Zeus’s golden rope in Homer, Homer, Il. viii, 19. and clearly pull and lift you up to himself and Virtue. He made the climb long ago. HERMOTIMUSThat is just what happens, Lycinus. As far as he is concerned I should have been pulled up long ago and been in their company. But my share still falls short.

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LYCINUSBe brave now and keep cheerful. Look to the end of the journey and the happiness up there, especially since he is as keen as you are. But when does he suggest you may hope to come up? Did he suggest next year to reach the top—after the other Mysteries, say, or the Panathenaea? HERMOTIMUSToo soon, Lycinus. LYCINUSNext Olympiad, then? HERMOTIMUSToo soon again for a training in virtue and the winning of happiness. LYCINUSAfter two Olympiads, surely? Or shall we accuse you of excessive sloth, if you cannot succeed even in all that time? You could easily make three journeys from Gibraltar to India and back in that time, even if you did not go straight without breaking your journey, but made excursions occasionally to visit the nations on the way. But this summit where your Virtue lives—how much higher and smoother are we to put it than Aornos which Alexander stormed in a few days?

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HERMOTIMUSNothing like, Lycinus, Your comparison is wrong; it cannot be won or captured in a short time, even if innumerable Alexanders attack it. Many would climb it, if it could. As it is, a fair number make a very strong beginning and travel part of the way, some very little, some more; but when they get halfway and meet plenty of difficulties and snags, they lose heart and turn back, gasping for breath and dripping with sweat; the hardships are too much for them. But only as many as endure to the end arrive at the top, and from then on are happy having a wonderful time for the rest of their life, from their heights seeing the rest of mankind as ants. LYCINUSGoodness, Hermotimus! How small you make us, not even as big as pygmies! Utter groundlings crawling over the earth’s surface. It’s not surprising—your mind is already away up above; and we, the whole trashy lot of us ground-crawlers, will pray to you along with the gods, when you get above the clouds and reach the heights to which you have been hastening for so long. HERMOTIMUSOh, may I really get up there, Lycinus! But a great deal remains to be done.

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LYCINUSBut you have not said how long, to give it a date. HERMOTIMUSI don’t know myself exactly, Lycinus. Not more than twenty years at a guess. After that I shall surely be on the top. LYCINUSGood Heavens! As long as that! HERMOTIMUSYes, Lycinus; my struggles are for great prizes. LYCINUSPerhaps so. But those twenty years—has your teacher promised you that length of life? If he has he must be more than a wise man—a prophet, or an oracle-monger, or an expert in Chaldean lore, as well—they say that they know this sort of thing. For, if it is not certain that you will live to reach Virtue, it is quite unreasonable to take all this trouble and wear yourself out night and day, not knowing whether Fate as you near the top will come and pull you down by the foot with your hopes unfulfilled. HERMOTIMUSAway with you! That, Lycinus, is blasphemy. May I live to enjoy happiness through wisdom for just one day! LYCINUSWould that repay you for all your labours—just one day? HERMOTIMUSFor me even a moment is enough.

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LYCINUSHow can you know that up there there is a happiness and the like worth enduring everything to attain? You yourself have not yet been up there, I suppose? HERMOTIMUSI believe what my teacher says. He is already right at the top and knows very well. LYCINUSWhat in Heaven’s name did he say about conditions there? What did he say this happiness there was? Some sort of riches, I suppose, and glory, and pleasures beyond compare? HERMOTIMUSHush, friend! These have nothing to do with the life in Virtue. LYCINUSIf not these then, what does he say are the good things which those who complete their training will get? HERMOTIMUSWisdom, courage, beauty itself, justice itself, the sure certainty of knowing everything as it really is. Riches and glories and pleasures and bodily things are all stripped off the climber and left down below before he makes his ascent. Think of the story of Heracles when he was burned and deified on Mount Oeta: he threw off the mortal part of him that came from his mother and flew up to heaven, taking the pure and unpolluted divine part with him, the part that the fire had separated off. So philosophy like a fire strips our climbers of all these things that the rest of mankind wrongly admires; they climb to the top and are happy; they never even remember wealth and glory and pleasures any more, and they laugh at those who believe them to be real.

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LYCINUSBy Heracles on Oeta, Hermotimus, you tell a brave and happy tale about them! But tell me this: do they ever come down from their hill-top (if that is their wish), to make use of what they have left down here below? Or must they stay there once they are up and live in Virtue’s company, laughing at wealth and glory and pleasures? HERMOTIMUSThat is not all, Lycinus. A man who is perfected in Virtue can never be a slave to anger or fear or lusts; he will not know grief and in short he will not experience feelings of this sort any longer. LYCINUSWell, if I must speak the truth without fear—but I had better keep quiet, I suppose; it would not be pious to question what wise men do. HERMOTIMUSNot at all. Please say what you mean. LYCINUSLook, friend, how afraid I am! HERMOTIMUSDon’t be afraid, good Lycinus. You are speaking to me alone.

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LYCINUSWell, I followed and believed most of what you said, Hermotimus, that they become wise and brave and just and so on; in a way your description held me in a sort of spell. But when you said they despised riches and glory and pleasures and were not angry or grieved, there (we are alone) I came to a stop. I remembered something I saw a certain person doing the other day—shall I name him? Or is it enough to leave him anonymous? HERMOTIMUSNot at all. Please tell me who he was. LYCINUSThis very teacher of yours—in general he deserves respect and is now quite old. HERMOTIMUSWhat was he doing? LYCINUSYou know the stranger from Heraclea who has studied philosophy under him a long time, the one with yellow hair, a quarrelsome fellow? HERMOTIMUSI know the man you mean. He’s called Dion. LYCINUSThat is the man. Well! it seems he didn’t pay his fee on time, and the other day your teacher in a temper pulled the man’s cloak round his neck and shouted and dragged him off to the magistrate. If some friends of the young fellow had not come between them and pulled him from his grasp, the old man would certainly have taken hold of him and bitten his nose off, he was so angry.

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HERMOTIMUSThat fellow has always been a senseless rogue when it comes to paying his debts, Lycinus. My master has never yet treated any of the others to whom he lends money like that and there are many of them. But they pay the interest on time. LYCINUSAnd if they don’t, my dear Hermotimus? Does it matter, when he is now already purified by philosophy and no longer needs what he has left behind on Oeta? HERMOTIMUSDo you think it is for himself that he has made this fuss? No, he has young children and he is concerned lest they spend their lives in want. LYCINUSHe ought, Hermotimus, to lead them too up the path to Virtue, so that they can despise wealth and be happy with him.

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HERMOTIMUSI haven’t time, Lycinus, to talk with you about this; I’m in a hurry to hear his lecture, or I may be left completely behind before I know it. LYCINUSCheer up, old man! A truce has been proclaimed today. I can save you what still remains of your journey. HERMOTIMUSWhat do you mean? LYCINUSThat you won’t find him now, if we can believe the notice; a little board was hanging on the gate with “No Philosophy Lecture Today” on it in large letters. They said that he had dinner yesterday at the house of the great Eucrates, who was throwing a party for his daughter’s birthday. He talked a lot of philosophy during the party and grew cross with Euthydemus the Peripatetic, disputing their usual arguments against the Stoics. The party, they say, stretched out till midnight and the din brought on a wretched headache and made him sweat a good deal. At the same time he had drunk too much, I fancy, in the general toasting and had dined too well for his age; so when he got back home, it was said, he was very sick. He waited only to count carefully and lock up the pieces of meat he had given to the servant who had stood behind him at table, and has been sleeping ever since, having given orders to let no one in. I heard his servant Midas telling this to some of his pupils who were themselves just coming away, quite a crowd.

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HERMOTIMUSWho won the argument, Lycinus, my teacher or Euthydemus? Did Midas say anything to this effect? LYCINUSAt first, it seems, they were level, but in the end victory was on the side of you Stoics, and the old man was well in front. At any rate they say that Euthydemus didn’t get away unscathed: he was badly wounded in the head. You see he was pretentious and argumentative and wouldn’t be convinced and didn’t show himself ready to take criticism, so your excellent teacher hit him with a cup as big as Nestor’s For Nestor’s cup, see Homer, Il. xi, 636. which he had in his hand (he was lying quite near him), and so he won. HERMOTIMUSWell done! That’s just how to treat those who won’t give way to their betters! LYCINUSVery reasonable, Hermotimus. What possessed Euthydemus to irritate an old man so placid and a master of his temper, who had such a heavy cup in his hand?

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But now we have time to spare why don’t you tell a friend how you first took up philosophy? I myself, if it is still possible, could then begin there and join you all on the road. You are my friends and of course won’t shut me out. HERMOTIMUSI wish you would, Lycinus! You will soon see how much better you will be than the rest of mankind. Children you will think them all, mere children compared with you with your intellect so superior. LYCINUSGood enough, if after twenty years I could be as you are now. HERMOTIMUSDon’t worry. I myself was about your age when I began to study philosophy, about forty—as old as you are now I imagine. LYCINUSExactly that, Hermotimus. So take and lead me too along the same path—that would be only right. First of all tell me this: do you allow learners to argue if they disagree with something, or is this not allowed to the young? HERMOTIMUSNo, it is not allowed at all. But you, if you like, may ask questions and make criticisms as we go along. You will learn more easily that way. LYCINUSGood, Hermotimus—by Hermes who gives you your name.

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Now tell me, is there one way only to philosophy, the one you Stoics follow? I have heard there are many other schools as well. Is that right? HERMOTIMUSVery many—the Peripatetics, Epicureans, those who take Plato as their patron, others also, the devotees of Diogenes and Antisthenes, Pythagoreans, and more besides. LYCINUSTrue, there are many. Is what they say the same, Hermotimus, or different? HERMOTIMUSQuite different. LYCINUSAt all events, one of their systems, I suppose, is true? They can’t all be true if they differ. HERMOTIMUSNo, they can’t.

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LYCINUSNow be a true friend and tell me this: when you first set out to study philosophy, many doors were open to you; you passed by the others and came to the Stoic door; you deigned to enter through that door on the way to Virtue, thinking it the only true one which revealed the straight path; the rest led into blind alleys. Now what was your reason for this? What at that time made you certain? Please do not think of yourself as you are now, for, half-wise or wise, you can now make better judgments than we who are many. Answer as the layman you then were and I am now. HERMOTIMUSI don’t see your point, Lycinus. LYCINUSMy question was not very complicated really. There have been many philosophers—Plato, Aristotle, Antisthenes, and your own predecessors, Chrysippus, Zeno, and the rest. Now, what persuaded you to leave the rest alone and choose to base your studies on the particular one you did? Did Apollo send you back from Delphi, like Chaerephon, Chaerephon asked the oracle who was the wisest mortal and he was directed to Socrates. with his word that the Stoic school was best of all and you should go there? He has a habit of sending different people to different philosophies; he knows the one that suits each person best, I suppose. HERMOTIMUSIt wasn’t like that, Lycinus. I never even asked Apollo about it. LYCINUSDid you think it not worth consulting the god about, or did you think you could make the better choice on your own without his help? HERMOTIMUSI did think so.

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LYCINUSWell then, please teach me this first, how, right at the beginning, we can distinguish the best, the true philosophy, the one we must choose, leaving aside the others. HERMOTIMUSI will tell you. I saw that most people took to this one, so I guessed it was the best. LYCINUSHow many more Stoics are there than Epicureans or Platonists or Peripatetics? You obviously took a count of them as in a show of hands. HERMOTIMUSI didn’t count. I made an estimate. LYCINUSSo you are not prepared to teach me. You are cheating when you tell me you decide such a matter by guesswork and weight of numbers. You’re hiding the truth from me. HERMOTIMUSIt wasn’t just that, Lycinus. I also heard everybody saying that the Epicureans were sensual and lovers of pleasure, that the Peripatetics loved riches and wrangling, and that the Platonists were puffed up and loved glory. But a lot of people said that the Stoics were manly and understood everything and that the man who went this way was the only king, the only rich man, the only wise man, and everything rolled into one.

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LYCINUSThese were obviously other people’s opinions on the schools. You wouldn’t have simply believed the respective adherents when they praised their own schools. HERMOTIMUSCertainly not; these were other people’s opinions. LYCINUSNot their rivals’ opinions, I suppose? HERMOTIMUSNo. LYCINUSLaymen’s opinions? HERMOTIMUSYes. LYCINUSYou see how once again you are cheating me and not telling the truth. You think you are talking with some Margites A proverbial fool, the hero of a comic epic attributed to Homer. who is ready to believe that Hermotimus, an intelligent man forty years of age, on philosophy and philosophers believed the opinions of laymen and made his choice of the better creed accordingly. I refuse to believe you when you say things like that.

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HERMOTIMUSBut you know, Lycinus, I did rely on myself as well as others. I used to see the Stoics walking with dignity, decently dressed, always thoughtful, manly in looks, most of them close-cropped; there was nothing effeminate, none of that exaggerated indifference which stamps the genuine crazy Cynic. They seemed in a state of moderation and everyone says that is best. LYCINUSDid you see them behaving also as I said just now I saw your master behaving, Hermotimus? I mean lending money and making bitter demands to be repaid, quarrelsome and most contentious in conversations and generally showing off as they usually do? Or is this of little importance to you, so long as the dress is decent, the beard long, and the hair close-cropped? Then this is to be our strict rule and law for the future in these matters according to Hermotimus: we are to distinguish the best men by their appearance, their walk, and their hair, and whosoever has not these signs and does not look sulky and meditative is to be spurned and rejected!

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You’re surely making fun of me, Hermotimus; you’re trying to see if I can spot the catch. HERMOTIMUSWhy do you say that? LYCINUSBecause, my dear friend, this test of yours from appearances is for statues. They at any rate are much more prepossessing and comely in their dress, if a Phidias or Alcamenes or Myron has made them in the most handsome style. But if these are the surest, critical tests, what would a blind man do if he wanted to take up philosophy? How does he recognise the one who has made the better choice—he can see neither bearing nor gait? HERMOTIMUSMy argument is not addressed to the blind, Lycinus, and I have no interest in them. LYCINUSBut, my good sir, there should be some accepted criterion in matters so important and valuable to everyone. However, if you prefer, let the blind keep clear of philosophy since they cannot see—yet they of all people really should take up philosophy: then they would not be completely overwhelmed by their misfortune. Well then, those who can see: however sharp-sighted they may be, what can they detect of the qualities of the soul from this outer covering?

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What I wish to say is this: was it not love of the mind of these men that attracted you to them, and didn’t you expect to be improved in your mental powers? HERMOTIMUSMost certainly. LYCINUSThen how could you distinguish the true philosopher from the false by the marks you mentioned? Such things are not usually shown in that way; they are secret and not visible, showing themselves in conversation and discussion and corresponding action, and then only with difficulty and after a long period. You have heard, I suppose, what faults Momus found in Hephaestus; if not I’ll tell you. The story goes that Athena, Poseidon, and Hephaestus were quarrelling over which of them was the best artist. Poseidon modelled a bull, Athena designed a house, while Hephaestus, it seems, put together a man. When they came to Momus, whom they had appointed judge, he examined the work of each. What faults he found in the other two we need not say, but his criticism of the man and his reproof of the craftsman, Hephaestus, was this: he had not made windows in his chest which could be opened to let everyone see his desires and thoughts and if he were lying or telling the truth. Momus, of course, being shortsighted, held such notions about men, but you have better sight than Lynceus and, it seems, see through the chest to what is inside, and everything is revealed to you, and you know not only what each man wants and thinks, but also who is better or worse. HERMOTIMUSYou are joking, Lycinus. I chose with God’s help and I have no regrets.

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I at any rate am satisfied. LYCINUSBut will you not tell me too, my friend? Or will you leave me rotting among the vulgar rabble? HERMOTIMUSNothing I say pleases you. LYCINUSNot so, my good sir; you refuse to say anything to please me. So, since you are deliberately keeping me in the dark and you grudge me the chance of becoming as good a philosopher as you are, I shall try as well as I can to find out for myself the true test for these matters and the safest choice to make. Now please listen to me. HERMOTIMUSI am willing, Lycinus. Perhaps you will say something important. LYCINUSThen give me your attention and don’t mock me if my investigation is altogether that of a layman; it can’t be helped when you will not explain more precisely although you know better.

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Virtue then seems to me like a city whose inhabitants are happy (as your teacher, who has come from there, wherever it may be, would say), outstanding in their wisdom, all of them brave, just, prudent, almost gods. All those things that you find here—robbery, violence, cheating—they say you would find none of them ventured in that city; no, they live together in peace and harmony naturally enough; for what, I suppose, in other cities produces strife and discord, plot and counter-plot, is entirely absent. They do not any longer look on gold, pleasures, or glory as things to quarrel about—they drove them from the city long ago, thinking them unnecessary to their common life. So they live a calm and perfectly happy life with good government, equality, freedom, and the other blessings.

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HERMOTIMUSWell then, Lycinus, isn’t it right for everyone to long for citizenship of a city like that, and neither to think of the toils of the journey nor give up because of the time it takes, if once they get there they too are going to be enrolled as citizens and share in the city’s life? LYCINUSYes, indeed, Hermotimus, this we must strive for above everything, and all else we must ignore. If our native country here lays claim to us, we must take scant notice, and if any children or parents we may have cling to us weeping, we shall not give way. No, first and foremost we shall urge them to follow the same road. If they will not, or cannot, we must shake them off and make straight for that all-happy city, throwing off our very cloak should they hold on to it to drag us back as we hurry there—for there is no fear of being shut out, even if you come there naked.

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On another occasion before this I have heard an old man telling how things were there and urging me to follow him to the city; he would guide me himself and enrol me on my arrival, make me a fellow-tribesman and let me share his clan, so that I might be happy with all the others. “But I would not listen”

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at that time through folly and youth (it was about fifteen years ago); perhaps by now I should have been in the very suburbs, even by the gates. He told me much about the city, if I remember, and in particular this, that all the inhabitants

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were aliens and foreigners, not one was a native; there were even many barbarians among the citizens, as well as slaves, cripples, dwarfs, and paupers—in a word anyone who wanted to take part in the city; for property, apparel, height, good looks, family, brilliant ancestry, were not required by law for enrolment; on the contrary, they gave no place in their customs to them; no, intelligence, a desire for what is good, industry, perseverance, a refusal to give in or be weakened by the many hardships encountered on the way, were enough for a man to become a citizen; whoever showed these qualities and kept on going all the way to the city was a citizen there and then equal to them all; inferior or superior, noble or common, bond or free, simply did not exist and were not mentioned in the city.

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HERMOTIMUSYou see then, Lycinus, that my labour is not in vain or for trifles, if I desire to be myself a citizen of a city so fair and happy. LYCINUSYes, Hermotimus, and I myself am in love with the same things and there is nothing I would pray for more. If the city had been near at hand and visible to everyone, you can be sure that long since, without a moment’s hesitation, I myself should have entered in and been a citizen this long time, but, since, as you say, you and the poet Hesiod, it has been built at a very great distance, we must look for the path that leads there and the best guide to follow. Don’t you agree that we must do this? HERMOTIMUSHow else could one go there? LYCINUSWell, as regards making promises and saying that they know, there are plenty of would-be guides. Many are standing ready, each one saying he is a native of that city. But no one and the same road is to be seen. There are many different ones not at all like each other: one seems to lead to the west, another to the east, another to the north, a fourth straight towards the south; one goes through meadows and gardens and shady spots—a well-watered, pleasant road with nothing to block the way or make hard-going; another is rocky and rough, promising much sun and thirst and exhaustion. Nevertheless all these roads are said to lead to the city, although there is but one city, while they have their ends in the opposite parts of the globe.

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All my difficulty lies here. For, whichever of them I approach, a man who stands at the beginning of each path at the entrance, a very trustworthy person, stretches out his hand, and urges me to go off along his road, and each one of them says that he alone knows the direct route and that the others are astray, since they have neither gone there themselves nor followed others able to lead them. If I go to his neighbour, he makes similar promises about his own road and vilifies the others. The man next to him acts similarly, and so do they all in turn. The number of roads, then, and the differences between them, and especially the way the guides over-strain themselves, each sect praising its own, worries me immoderately and makes me uncertain. I don’t know which way to turn or which one to follow to reach the city.

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HERMOTIMUSI will free you from your uncertainty. Trust those who have made the journey before, Lycinus, and you cannot go wrong. LYCINUSWhom do you mean? Which road did they go? Which of the guides did they follow? The same uncertainty appears to us in another guise shifting from events to persons. HERMOTIMUSWhat do you mean? LYCINUSThat the man who took Plato’s path and had him for travelling-companion will obviously praise Plato’s route, and so with Epicurus’s and the rest and you with yours. What about it, Hermotimus? Is that not so? HERMOTIMUSOf course. LYCINUSThen you have not freed me from my uncertainty. I am just as much in the dark which of the travellers to trust. For I see that each of them and the guide himself have tried only one way, and he praises that one and says that it alone leads to the city. But I cannot know whether he is speaking the truth. That he has reached some destination and has seen some city or other, I will perhaps grant him. But whether he has seen the one he should have seen (that in which you and I want to live) or whether, when he should have gone to Corinth, he has arrived at Babylon and thinks he has seen Corinth, I still do not know—certainly not everyone who has seen a city has seen Corinth, if Corinth is not the only city. What particularly makes me uncertain is this—my knowing that only one road can possibly be the right one. Only one road is the Corinth road, and the other roads lead anywhere except to Corinth, unless a man is so much out of his wits as to think that both the road to the Hyperboreans and the road to India lead to Corinth. HERMOTIMUSHow could that be, Lycinus? Different roads lead to different places.

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LYCINUS

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Well then, my dear Hermotimus, no little deliberation is needed when we choose roads and guides, and we shall not act according to the saying and go off wherever our feet take us; in that way we shall be going off on the road to Babylon or Bactra instead of the road to Corinth without realising it. It is by no means sound to trust to fortune and hope we shall perhaps take the best road, if we start out on

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one or the other without enquiry. It is possible for even that to happen, and perhaps at some period of time’s long history it has already happened; but in a matter of such importance I think we ought not to run such a reckless risk or confine hope entirely within narrow bounds, ready as the proverb says to sail the Aegean or Ionian seas on a mat; then we should have no right to accuse fortune, if with her arrows and spears she did not altogether hit the one thing that is true among the many that are not. Even Homer’s archer did not succeed in that—when he should have shot the dove he cut the string; Teucer I think it was.

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No, there was much more reason to expect one of the many others to be wounded and fall foul of the arrow than that particular one out of them all. The risk is not slight, if in ignorance we rush into one of the by-ways instead of the straight route in the hope that fortune will make a better choice on our behalf—I think you see that. For still to turn round and come back again in safety is no easy matter once a man casts off his mooring lines and surrenders himself to the wind; he must be tossed about on the sea, usually sick and frightened and with a bad head from the swell, whereas he ought in the first place, before he sailed out, to have climbed up to some look-out and seen whether the wind was fair and favourable for those who wanted to sail over to Corinth, and indeed he ought to have selected the very best navigator and a sound ship able to withstand such a heavy sea.

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HERMOTIMUSThat is the better way, Lycinus, by far. Yet I know that if you made a round tour of them all you would find no others who were better pilots or more experienced navigators than the Stoics; and, if you want to reach Corinth some day, you will follow them, treading the tracks of Chrysippus and Zeno. No other way is possible. LYCINUSDo you see, Hermotimus, how universal is that assertion you have made? Plato’s fellow-traveller, Epicurus’s follower, and the rest of them, would say the same, every one of them, that I could not go to Corinth without his company. So I must either believe them all alike (which is ridiculous) or disbelieve them all alike. The latter is by far the safest course until we discover the true one.

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Come now, suppose that I, just as I am, still ignorant which of them all has the truth, should choose your way, putting my trust in you, a friend, but one who knows only the way of the Stoics and has travelled by this road alone; then suppose one of the gods brought Plato, Pythagoras, Aristotle, and the rest, back to life, and they stood round me and put questions to me, or even, by Zeus, brought me into court and sued me each and every one of them for maltreatment, saying: “My good Lycinus, what was the matter with you? Who persuaded you to give Chrysippus and Zeno preference over us, who are older by far than they? They were born only yesterday, or the day before, and you have given us no chance to speak, and you have put nothing of what we say to the test.” Supposing they said this, how could I answer them? Or will it be enough if I say that I was persuaded by Hermotimus, a friend of mine? Their answer I know would be: “We, Lycinus, do not know this Hermotimus, whoever he is, and he does not know us either. So you had no right to condemn us all and give a judgment in default against us through relying on a man who is acquainted with only one way in philosophy, and even that perhaps not fully. Lawgivers, Lycinus, do not instruct judges to adopt this procedure, or to give one party a hearing and not allow the other to speak on its own behalf what it thinks is to its own advantage. No, they say that both sides must be given an equal hearing, so that by comparing the opposing arguments they may be assisted in discovering the true and the false, and if they do not adopt this procedure the law allows an appeal to another court.”

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Such or something like it is the argument they would use. Or one of them perhaps would even put an additional question to me: “Tell me this, Lycinus: suppose an Ethiopian, a man who had never seen other men like us, because he had never been abroad at all, should state and assert in some assembly of the Ethiopians that nowhere in the world were there any men white or yellow or of any other colour than black, would he be believed by them? Or would one of the older Ethiopians say to him: ‘Come now, you are very bold. How do you know this? You have never left us to go anywhere else, and indeed you have never seen what things are like among other peoples?’” I for my part would say that the old man had asked a fair question. Or what do you advise, Hermotimus? HERMOTIMUSI agree. His rebuke seems to me very just. LYCINUSTo me as well, Hermotimus. But I do not know that you will similarly agree with what follows. To me this too seems to be very just. HERMOTIMUSWhat?

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LYCINUSThe fellow will certainly go on and say to me something like this: “Let us make a comparison, Lycinus, and posit a man who knows only the Stoic tenets, like this friend of yours, Hermotimus; he has never gone abroad to Plato’s country or stayed with Epicurus or in short with anyone else. Now, if he said that there was nothing in these many lands as beautiful or as true as the tenets and assertions of Stoicism, would you not with good reason think him bold in giving his opinion on all, and that when he knows only one, and has never put one foot outside Ethiopia?” What answer do you think I should give him? HERMOTIMUSThis very true one, of course: that we do learn Stoicism very thoroughly indeed, since we think fit to pursue this branch of philosophy, but we are not unacquainted with what the others say. For our teacher explains all that to us as he goes along, and knocks it down with his own comments.

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LYCINUS

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Well, do you suppose that at this point the adherents of Plato and Pythagoras and Epicurus and the rest will keep quiet, and not laugh out loud and say to me: “What is your friend Hermotimus doing, Lycinus? He thinks it right to believe what our opponents say about us, and supposes our views to be whatever they say they are, although they either are ignorant of the truth or conceal it. So, if he sees some athlete training before his match, kicking into the air, or punching at empty space as though he were striking his opponent, he will, if he is referee, straightway proclaim him as unbeatable, will he? Or will he consider these romps easy and devoid of risk when he has no antagonist, and adjudge him the winner only when he has overcome and beaten his opponent in the flesh and the latter gives in, and not otherwise? So do not let Hermotimus suppose from the shadow-boxing his teachers practise against us in our absence that they are strong or that our tenets are such as can be easily overthrown. For such a fabrication would be like the houses which children make: they have built them weak in structure and knock them over at once; or again indeed like men practising archery who make bundles of twigs, then fix them up on a pole which they set up at no great distance in front of them, and taking aim let fly. If ever they score a hit and pierce the twigs, they at once give a shout as though they have done something great, because their shaft has gone right through their collection of sticks. But this is not what the Persians do nor the Scythian archers. No, in the first place they themselves are usually on moving horses when they shoot, and

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secondly, they think that the targets should be moving too, not stationary and waiting for the impact of the shafts, but running about as fast as possible. They generally use wild animals as their targets, and some of them hit birds. If ever they want to test the impact of the shot on the target, they set up a hard-wood board or a raw-hide shield to pierce, and in that way they gain confidence that their arrows can even penetrate armour. So tell Hermotimus from us, Lycinus, that his teachers are setting up collections of sticks to shoot at and then saying that they have bested armed men; and that they are sparring with painted dummies which look like us, and when, as is natural, they have had the better of them they think they have the better of us. To them each of us would quote the words of Achilles about Hector:

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‘My helmet’s front they do not see.’” Homer, Il. xvi, 70.

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This is what they all say, each in his turn, Plato, I fancy, would add one of those stories from Sicily (he knows most of them): Gelo of Syracuse is said to have had bad breath and to have been for a long time ignorant of the fact as no one dared to criticise a tyrant, until a certain foreign woman with whom he had to do dared to tell him how it was. He went to his wife in a rage because she had not told him, although she of all people knew of the bad odour. She begged him to pardon her, for, never having had experience of another man or having been at close quarters with one, she supposed that the mouths of all men had breath like that. “So, Hermotimus,” Plato might say, “since he mixes only with Stoics, naturally does not know what other people’s mouths are like.” Chrysippus could say the same or go even further, if I were to leave him unexamined and go over to Platonism, relying on one of those who had conversed with Plato alone. In short, then, I say that, as long as it is uncertain which creed of philosophy is true, choose none. For choice of one would be misconduct towards the others.

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HERMOTIMUSIn Hestia’s name, Lycinus, let us leave Plato and Aristotle and Epicurus and the others undisturbed, for I am no match for them. Let us, you and me, enquire into it by ourselves, whether the pursuit of philosophy is as I say it is. As for Ethiopians and Gelo’s wife, why did you have to call her from Syracuse into the discussion? LYCINUSWhy, let them take themselves off, if they seem to you to be superfluous to the discussion. You do the talking now. You look as though you are going to say something wonderful. HERMOTIMUSIt seems to me quite possible, Lycinus, by thorough study of the Stoic doctrines alone, to know the truth from them, even if one does not pursue those of the others and make a thorough study of them in detail. Look at it this way: if someone tells you merely that two twos make the number four, will you have to go about questioning all the other mathematicians to see if there may not perhaps be one of them who makes it five or seven? Or would you know at once that this man is speaking the truth? LYCINUSAt once, Hermotimus. HERMOTIMUSWhy then does it seem to you to be impossible for a man when he meets only Stoics who speak the truth to believe them and have no further need of the others in his knowledge that four could never be five, even if thousands of Platos and Pythagorases say so?

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LYCINUSThat is not to the point at all, Hermotimus. You are comparing what is admitted to what is in dispute, although they differ enormously. Or what would you say? Have you met anyone who says that by putting together two twos he makes the number seven or eleven? HERMOTIMUSNot But anyone would be mad who said the answer was not four. LYCINUSWell then, have you ever met (and by the Graces try to be truthful) any Stoic and Epicurean who did not differ about principles and ends? HERMOTIMUSIn no way. LYCINUSMake sure then that you are not somehow cheating me, my good sir, and that though I am your friend. For, while we are enquiring who has the truth in philosophy, you have prematurely seized on the answer and taken it and assigned it to the Stoics, when you say that they are the ones who make twice two equal four, although it is not clear that this is so. For the Epicureans and the Platonists would say that they get this result, while you Stoics call it five or seven. Or do you not think that this is what they are doing when you think that only the beautiful is good, while the Epicureans say it is pleasure? And when you say that all things are corporeal, while Plato thinks that there is an incorporeal element in what exists? No, as I said, you very arrogantly lay hold of the bone of contention as being the undisputed property of the Stoics, and give it to them to possess; and yet, when the others are asserting rival claims and saying that it is theirs, then, I think, there is every need for a judgment. If it becomes quite clear then that it is the privilege of the Stoics alone to think that twice two are four, it is time for the rest to be quiet. But as long as they contest this very claim, we must give a hearing to all alike, or realise that we shall be thought to be giving a biased judgment.

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HERMOTIMUSIt seems to me, Lycinus, that you do not understand what I mean. LYCINUSThen you must speak more clearly, if your argument is to be different from what I say. HERMOTIMUSYou will learn at once what I mean. Let us suppose that two persons have entered the Asclepieum or the sanctuary of Dionysus, and that subsequently one of the sacred chalices is missing. It will without doubt be necessary to search both of them to find out which one of the two has the chalice in his clothing. LYCINUSVery true. HERMOTIMUSOne of them surely has it. LYCINUSOf course, if it has disappeared. HERMOTIMUSAnd if you discover it on the first, you will not strip the other. It will be quite clear that he has not got it. LYCINUSQuite clear. HERMOTIMUSAnd if we were not to find it in the first one’s clothing, the second man surely has it, and there is in this case too no need of a search. LYCINUSYes, he has it. HERMOTIMUSSo too in our case. Suppose we find the chalice already in the hands of the Stoics, we shall not bother to search the others, since we have what we have been looking for for a long time. Why should we trouble further?

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LYCINUSThere is no reason, if you really find it and once having found it you can know that that is what was missing, or if you can with certainty recognise the sacred object. But in this case, my friend, those first of all who go into the temple are not two, so that one of the two must have the loot, but very many; and secondly just what the missing object is is not clear—whether it is a chalice or a cup or a garland. All the priests give different accounts of it and do not agree even about the very stuff it is made of: some say it is of copper, others of silver, others of gold, yet others of tin. So you must strip all the visitors, if you want to find the missing article. For, if you find a golden chalice straightway on the first, you must nevertheless strip the others as well. HERMOTIMUSWhy, Lycinus? LYCINUSBecause it is not clear that it was a chalice that was missing. And even if this be admitted by everyone, then they do not all agree that the chalice is golden. And if it is well known that a gold cup is missing, and you find a gold cup on the first man, you would not even so refrain from searching the rest—it would not be clear I suppose whether that was the one belonging to the god. Or do you not think that there are many chalices made of gold? HERMOTIMUSYes, of course. LYCINUSYou will have to go to everyone in your search, put together all that you find on each, and guess which one is likely to be the property of the god.

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For this is where your great difficulty lies: each of those whom you will strip has surely something—one a cup, another a chalice, another a garland, and each of these may be of bronze, gold, or silver. And it is still not clear whether that which each man has is the holy object. So you have every reason to hesitate about whom to accuse of temple-robbery. In this case, even if all had similar objects, even so it would be uncertain who had stolen the property of the god—for these articles may be private property too. The sole reason for our ignorance, I suppose, is that the missing chalice has no inscription (assuming that it is a chalice), since if it had been inscribed with the name of the god or the person who had made the dedication we should have had less difficulty, and when we had found the inscribed chalice we should stop stripping and troubling the others. I think, Hermotimus, that you have often watched athletic contests? HERMOTIMUSYou think rightly. Many a time, in many places. LYCINUSNow, have you ever sat near the judges themselves? HERMOTIMUSYes, indeed. Recently at Olympia I sat to the left of the National Judges. Euandridas of Elis reserved me a seat among his fellow-citizens, for I wanted to see everything that happened among the judges from near at hand. LYCINUSWell, do you know this too—how they draw lots for the pairs in the wrestling or the pancratium? HERMOTIMUSYes, I know. LYCINUSThen, since you have seen it from near at hand, you could give a better account of it than

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HERMOTIMUSIn former times, when Heracles was judge, bay-leaves . . . LYCINUSDon’t tell me about former times, Hermotimus, but what you saw from near at hand. HERMOTIMUSA silver urn dedicated to the god is placed before them. Into this are thrown small lots, the size of beans, with letters on them. Two are marked alpha, two beta, two gamma, and so on in the same way, if there are more competitors, two lots always having the same letter. Each of the competitors comes up, offers a prayer to Zeus, puts his hand into the urn, and picks up one of the lots. After him another does the same. A policeman stands by each one and holds his hand, not letting him read what the letter is which he has drawn. When all now have their own, the chief police officer, I think it is, or one of the National Judges themselves (I don’t remember now) goes round the competitors, who are standing in a circle, and inspects their lots. In this way he matches one who has alpha to the one who has drawn the other alpha for the wrestling or the pancratium. Similarly he matches the two betas, and the others with the same letter in the same way. This is what he does if the contestants are even in number—eight or four or twelve, for instance—but if they are odd—five or seven or nine—he throws in with the rest a lot marked with an odd letter which has no duplicate. Whoever draws this is given a bye and stands out until the rest have competed, for he has no corresponding letter. This is no small boon to the competitor—the opportunity to come fresh against tired opponents.

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LYCINUSStop there. This is just what I wanted. Now, suppose they are nine in number and they have all drawn and are holding their lots. You go round (I want to make you a National Judge instead of a spectator) and inspect the letters. I fancy you will not learn in advance who has been given a bye, unless you go to every one of them and pair them. HERMOTIMUSWhat do you mean by this, Lycinus? LYCINUSIt is impossible immediately to find that letter which gives you the bye, or perhaps you could find the letter, but you will certainly not know if it is that one, for there is no prior declaration of kappa or mu or iota as the letter which chooses the bye. When you find alpha, you look for the competitor who has the other alpha, and, when you find him, you have already paired them. Then again, when you come on beta, you look for the other beta, the counterpart of the one you have found, and so with all of them, until you are left with the competitor who has the only letter that has no counterpart.

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HERMOTIMUSWhat if you come on this one first or second, what will you do? LYCINUSIt is not what I shall do. You are the National Judge, and I want to know what you will do. Will you say at once that this man is given a bye, or will you have to go round them all, to see whether there is somewhere a corresponding letter? If you did not look at the lots of everyone, you would not discover who had the bye. HERMOTIMUSOh, I should know quite easily, Lycinus. In the case of nine competitors, if I find epsilon first or second, I know that the one holding this lot is the one who has the bye. LYCINUSHow, Hermotimus? HERMOTIMUSIn this way: two have alpha, and similarly two have beta. Of the remaining four, two have surely drawn gamma and two delta, and four letters have already been used up for eight competitors. So it is clear that only the next letter, epsilon, could be odd, and he who has drawn this one gets the bye. LYCINUSShall I praise you for your intelligence, or would you like me to explain the different view I have of the matter? HERMOTIMUSCertainly. But I fail to see what reasonable answer you can give to such an argument.

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LYCINUSYou have spoken as if the letters are definitely written in order—I mean alpha first, beta second, and so on through the alphabet, until the number of competitors is completed at one of them. I grant that this is so at Olympia. But suppose we choose five letters completely at random—chi, sigma, zeta, kappa, and theta—and we write four of these twice on eight lots, but the zeta only on the ninth, which is going to show us the bye. What will you do if you find the zeta first? How can you pick out the competitor who holds it as the man for the bye, without going to all the others and finding no letter to correspond to it? You cannot, as you were just now, be sure from the alphabetical order. HERMOTIMUSWhat you ask is difficult to answer.

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LYCINUSCome now, look at the same question in another way. Suppose we wrote no letters on the lots, but signs and symbols, such as the many that the Egyptians use instead of letters—dog- and lion-headed men. What then? No, let us not use them, queer creatures that they are. No, let us write down simple, uniform symbols with as good a likeness as we can: human beings on two lots, two horses for another two, two cocks and two dogs, and for the ninth let the picture be a lion. Now, if at the beginning we find this lot with the picture of a lion, how will you be able to say that this is the one that gives the bye, unless you go to them all and compare whether another also has a lion? HERMOTIMUSI can give you no answer, Lycinus.

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LYCINUS

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Of course not; there is no plausible answer. So, if we wish to find either the man who has the sacred chalice or the bye or the man who will best lead us to that city of Corinth, we shall of necessity go to everyone and make our research, trying them carefully, and stripping and comparing. And it will be only with difficulty that we shall find the truth by this means, and if anyone is likely to give me trustworthy advice on which philosophy to pursue, only that man who knows what they all say will be he; the rest will fall short, and I would not put my trust in them, as long as they are unacquainted with even one philosophy—that one might be the best. If someone were to produce a handsome man and say that he was the most handsome of all men, we should certainly not believe him, unless we knew that he had seen all men. This man may well be handsome, but whether the most handsome of all he could not know, since he has not seen them all. And we are looking, not just for something beautiful, but for the most beautiful; and if we do not find it, we shall not think that we have made any progress. For we are not going to be content with any chance beauty. No, we are looking for the supreme beauty, and of that there can only be one.

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HERMOTIMUSTrue. LYCINUSWell then, can you name me a man who has tried every path in philosophy, who knows what Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Chrysippus, Epicurus, and the rest, say, and, finally, has chosen one path out of them all, has proved it genuine, and has learnt by experience that it alone leads straight to happiness? If we found such a person we should stop worrying. HERMOTIMUSIt would not be easy to discover such a person.

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LYCINUSThen what shall we do, Hermotimus? I do not think that we ought to give up because we have no such guide at the moment. Is it not the best and safest plan for everyone at the beginning to make his own way through every system and examine carefully the doctrines of each? HERMOTIMUSThat seems to follow. But we must watch lest we meet this stumbling-block in what you said a little before. When we have once committed ourselves and spread the sail, it is not easy to return. How can we travel all the paths, if we are to be held fast in the first, as you say? LYCINUSI will tell you. We will copy that stratagem of Theseus and take a thread from Ariadne in the play, and then enter every labyrinth. So, by winding it up we shall have no difficulty in getting out. HERMOTIMUSThen who will be our Ariadne? And where shall we get our thread? LYCINUSNever fear, my friend. I think I have discovered what to hold on to, if we are to get out. HERMOTIMUSWell, what? LYCINUSI will tell you—it is not mine, it comes from one of the sages: “Keep sober, and remember to disbelieve.” Epicharmus, frag. 250 Kaibel. For, if we are not prepared to believe everything we hear, but rather to act like judges and let the next man have his say, perhaps we may escape the labyrinths with ease. HERMOTIMUSGood, let us do this.

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LYCINUSWell then, which path should we travel first? Or will this make no difference? Let us begin anywhere—with Pythagoras, for instance. If we do this, how long do we suppose we shall spend in learning all the doctrines of Pythagoras? Please do not leave out those five years of silence. Including the five years I suppose thirty years will be enough, or certainly a minimum of twenty. HERMOTIMUSLet us assume so. LYCINUSFollowing that, we must obviously give the same number to Plato, and not less to Aristotle. HERMOTIMUSNo, not less. LYCINUSFor Chrysippus, I shall not ask you how many. I know from what I have heard you say that forty will hardly suffice. HERMOTIMUSJust so. LYCINUSThen Epicurus in his turn, and the rest. You can realise that I do not put these figures too high, when you consider the number of Stoics, Epicureans, and Platonists, who are octogenarians but who admit, each and every one, that they do not know all the teachings of their own sect, so as to have a thorough knowledge of its doctrines. If they did not admit it, then Chrysippus and Aristotle and Plato would, and even more would Socrates, a man not one whit their inferior: he used to shout out to the whole world not only that he did not know everything, but that he knew absolutely nothing, or only this one thing—that he did not know. Let us count them up from the beginning: we gave twenty to Pythagoras, the same to Plato, and to all the others the same. What would the total be if we assume only ten philosophical sects? HERMOTIMUSMore than two hundred years, Lycinus. LYCINUSShall we take off a quarter, and make a hundred and fifty years enough, or a whole half?

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HERMOTIMUSYou would know better than I see this: few would get through them all even on this reckoning, if they began right from the day they were born. LYCINUSIf that is the case, Hermotimus, what can we do? Must we go back on what we have already agreed—that no one can choose the best out of so many without trying them all? We agreed that to choose without putting to the test was to seek the truth more by divination than by judgment. Is that not what we said? HERMOTIMUSYes. LYCINUSThen there is every necessity for us to live all that time, if we are going first to make a good choice when we have made trial of them all, then to practise philosophy after we have made our choice, and finally to be happy after we have practised our philosophy. Until we do this we shall be dancing in the dark, as they say, and whatever we happen to stumble on, and whatever comes first into our hands, we shall assume to be what we are after because of our ignorance of the truth. In any case even if by some good fortune we happen to fall over the truth, we shall not be able to know for sure if it is what we are after. There are many things much alike, each claiming to be the real truth.

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HERMOTIMUSI feel, Lycinus, that what you say is reasonable, but—and I shall be honest—you annoy me a great deal by this detailed examination and your unnecessary precision. It may be that it has done me no good in leaving home today and then meeting you. I was already near the fulfilment of my hopes, but you have thrown me into difficulties with your demonstration that the search for truth is impossible since it needs all those years. LYCINUSSurely it would be much fairer, my friend, to blame your father, Menecrates, and your mother, whatever her name was (I do not know) or before them our human natures for having made you (unlike Tithonus) of few years and short life, and for decreeing a hundred years as the longest life for man All I did was with your help to consider and discover the conclusions of the argument.

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HERMOTIMUSThat is not so. You always lord it over us. I don’t know what makes you hate philosophy and mock philosophers. LYCINUSWhat truth is, Hermotimus, you wise men can say better than I—you and your master I mean. For myself I know thus much: truth is not all pleasant to listen to; in estimation it is far outfamed by falsehood. Falsehood presents a fairer face, and is therefore more pleasant, while truth knows no deceit and speaks with freedom to men, and for this they take offence. Look at us: you now take offence with me for discovering the truth of these matters with your help and showing that what you and I are in love with is not easy at all. Suppose you had happened to be in love with a statue and, thinking it to be human, hoped to win it, and suppose I saw it was stone or bronze and told you out of friendship that your love was impossible, you would in that case too think that I was an enemy, because I had not let you be deceived when you hoped for what was monstrous and beyond your reach.

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HERMOTIMUSThen this is what you say, Lycinus, that we must not study philosophy, but give ourselves up to idleness and live out our lives as laymen? LYCINUSWhen have you heard me say that? What I say is not that we must not study philosophy, but that since we must, and as there are many paths to philosophy and each one claims that it leads to virtue, and the true one is not clear, we must be careful in our choice. But with so many before us we saw it was impossible to choose the best unless we were to visit and test every path. Then the trial was seen to be somewhat lengthy. Now what do you think? I will ask you again—will you follow the first guide you light on and join him in his study while he takes you for a lucky gift from heaven?

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HERMOTIMUSWhat answer could I give you now, when you say that no one can judge for himself, unless he lives as long as a phoenix and goes the full round testing all the philosophers, and when you do not see fit to trust those who have made the test before you or the many who give their praise and their testimony? LYCINUSWho are these many who know and have tested them all? If any such person really exists, one is quite enough for me, and there will be no need of many. But if you mean those who do not know, the number of them will in no way induce me to trust them, as long as they make declarations about all the systems when they know nothing or only one. HERMOTIMUSYou alone have seen the truth, all the others who study philosophy are fools. LYCINUSYou wrong me, Hermotimus, when you say that I somehow put myself before other people or in general rank myself in some way with those who know. You do not remember what I said. I did not maintain that I knew the truth more than other people. No, I admitted that like all men I was ignorant of it.

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HERMOTIMUS

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Well, Lycinus, the obligation to go round them all, making trial of what they say, and the superiority of this method of choosing are perhaps reasonable, but it is quite ridiculous to spend so many years on each test, as if it were not possible to get a thorough knowledge of the whole from a scrutiny of a small part. This sort of thing seems to me to be quite easy, needing little time. At least, they say that some sculptor (Phidias, I think) saw only the claw of a lion and from it estimated the size of the whole animal on the assumption that it was modelled on the same scale as the claw. You too, if you were shown only the hand of a man, the rest of the body being hidden, would, I suppose, know at once that the hidden figure was a human being, even though you did not see the whole body. So in a fraction of a day it is easy to acquire a good knowledge of the essential points of all the systems, and this precise enquiry which calls for lengthy research is quite unnecessary for choosing that which is preferable. No, you can make a judgment from samples.

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LYCINUS

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Goodness, Hermotimus, how sure you sound when you affirm that you can know the whole from the parts! And yet I remember hearing just the opposite, that if you know the whole you know the part as well, while if you know only the part, it does not follow now that you know the whole. Tell me this: would Phidias when he saw the lion’s claw ever have known that it belonged to a lion, if he had never seen a whole lion? If you saw a human hand, could you have said that it belonged to a man if you had not previously known or seen a man? Why do you not answer? Am I to give the only possible answer for you, that you could not have said it? It looks as though Phidias has retired unsuccessful and has modelled his lion in vain; clearly he is saying what has nothing to do with Dionysus!

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1

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Or what comparison is there? Both Phidias and you yourself had no other means of recognising the parts than your knowledge of the whole—I mean the whole man

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and lion; and in a philosophy (the Stoic, for instance) how can you by knowing a part see the rest as well? How can you prove the rest beautiful? You see, you do not know the whole of which they are parts.

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As to your contention that it is easy in a small part of a day to hear the essentials of all philosophies (I suppose you mean their principles and ends, their views of the gods and the soul, who say that everything is corporeal, who assert that immaterial things also exist, the fact that some identify “pleasure,” others “the beautiful “with goodness and happiness, and so on), after a hearing of this sort it is easy and no trouble to state the facts; but to know which is the one that is telling the truth will surely require not part of a day but many days. If not, why on earth have they all written books by the hundreds and thousands on these very subjects, to prove the truth, I suppose, of these very parts, those few parts, which you think easy and soon learnt? Here too, I fancy, you will have need of a prophet to help you choose the best, unless you spend time on accurate selection and make a personal and detailed study of all and everything. It would certainly be a short cut with no complications or delays if you sent for a prophet, listened to the essentials of them all, and sacrificed for each one: the god will save you a great deal of trouble if he reveals in the victim’s liver the choice you must make..

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I will, if you like, suggest another, less troublesome way, without this slaughter of victims or sacrifice to anybody or calling in one of these expensive priests: put some tablets into a pitcher with the name of each of the philosophers on them, and tell a boy—a young lad with both parents living—to go to the pitcher and pick out whichever tablet he first touches with his hand; then all you have to do is to study the philosophy of the one whose lot he has picked.

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HERMOTIMUSThis is mere burlesque and not like you. Now you tell me: have you ever bought wine yourself? LYCINUSOf course, many a time. HERMOTIMUSThen did you go round all the wine-merchants of the city in turn, tasting and comparing and judging the wines? LYCINUSNot at all. HERMOTIMUSI think that you must take away the first wine you come to that is good and satisfactory. LYCINUSCertainly. HERMOTIMUSCould you have said from that brief tasting what was the quality of the whole? LYCINUSYes. HERMOTIMUSIf you had approached the wine-merchants and said: “I wish to buy half a pint of wine; each of you give me, please, the whole jar to drink, so that when I have drained it all I may learn who has the better wine and who is to receive my custom”—if you had said this, do you not think that they would have laughed at you, and if you troubled them further, you might have had a jug of water poured on you? LYCINUSI do think so, and I should deserve it. HERMOTIMUSApply the same consideration to philosophy. Why drain a butt when the tasting of a little can indicate the quality of the whole?

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LYCINUSHow slippery you are, Hermotimus! And how you glide through my fingers! But you have helped us: you thought you had got away, but you have fallen into the same net. HERMOTIMUSWhat do you mean? LYCINUSYou take an object which is quite self-evident and which is known to everyone, wine, and you compare to it things that are unlike and the object of universal dispute, they are so uncertain. I certainly cannot say how in your view philosophy and wine are comparable, except perhaps at this one point that philosophers sell their lessons as wine-merchants their wines—most of them adulterating and cheating and giving false measure. Now let us examine your logic. You say that all the wine in a butt is the same, the whole measure; that is certainly not unreasonable. Now if you care to draw ever so little of it and take a taste, you say you would know at once the quality of the whole butt; this too follows and I would not deny it. Look at what comes next: do philosophy and these who, like your teacher, study philosophy say the same things to you on the same topics every day, or different things on different days? It is quite clear, my friend, that there are many different topics; you would not have stayed with him twenty years like an Odysseus in your wanderings and journeying, if he had said the same things all the time, but you would have been satisfied with one hearing.

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HERMOTIMUSOf course. LYCINUSThen how could you have known the whole from just the first taste? There were not the same, but always new things being said on new subjects, unlike wine, which is always the same. So, my friend, unless you drink the whole butt, your tipsiness has been to no purpose; god seems to me to have hidden the good of philosophy right down at the bottom beneath the very lees. You will have to drain it all to the end or you will never find that divine drink for which I think you have long thirsted. But you imagine it to be such that, if you were but to taste and draw just a drop, you would at once become all-wise, as, they say, the prophetess at Delphi becomes inspired as soon as she drinks of the sacred spring and gives her answers to those who consult the oracle. But it seems it is not so: you had drunk over half the butt, and you said that you were still at the beginning.

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Perhaps philosophy is more like this: still keep your butt and your dealer, but no wine; rather take an assortment of cereals—wheat on top, then beans, then barley, and, beneath the barley, lentils, then chickpeas, and other kinds of seeds as well. You come in wishing to buy some of the cereals. He has taken out a pinch of the wheat from where the wheat was and has given you a sample in your hand to examine. Now could you say by looking at that sample whether the peas were pure, the lentils tender, and the beans not completely empty? HERMOTIMUSNot at all. LYCINUSThen neither could you learn the nature of all philosophy from the first thing someone says. For it is not really one substance like the wine to which you compare it, claiming that it is like the sample. No, we have seen that there is variation in it, for which a cursory examination will not do. If you buy bad wine you risk a couple of pence, but to rot in the common herd oneself, as you said in the beginning, is very serious. Besides, to insist on drinking the whole butt in order to buy half a pint is to cause loss to the wine-merchant with your unbelieving tasting. But in philosophy there would be no such loss. No, however much you drink, the butt is just as full and the wine-merchant will not suffer loss. For, in the words of the proverb, the more you draw the fuller it becomes. The case is the reverse of the butt of the Danaïdes that would not hold what was put into it but let it run away at once. Take some away from philosophy, however, and what is left increases.

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But I want to tell you another, similar thing, about sampling philosophy, and do not think that I am being blasphemous about it if I say that it is like a deadly poison—hemlock, for example, or aconite, or some other such. Not even they, deadly though they are, will kill, if you scrape off a tiny piece with the tip of your nail and taste that. No, if the quantity, method of consumption, and mixture are wrong, you can take it and not die. You claimed, however, that the tiniest piece was quite enough to give you a complete knowledge of what the whole was like.

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HERMOTIMUSGranted, Lycinus. What next? Must we live a hundred years and have all that trouble? Is there no other way of studying philosophy? LYCINUSNo, Hermotimus. Nor need we complain if what you said at first is true: that life is short and art is long. And now I don’t understand why you are distressed if you cannot become a Chrysippus or a Plato or a Pythagoras today before sunset. HERMOTIMUSYou hedge me round, Lycinus, and drive me into a corner, although I have done you no harm. Clearly you are doing this from spite, because I have made progress in my studies while you have neglected yourself—at your age too. LYCINUSDo you know what? Take no notice of my ravings, but leave me to my silly chatter, and you go on your way as you are and finish what you decided to do in the first place. HERMOTIMUSYou are so compulsive that you do not let me make any choice unless I try them all. LYCINUSWell, you may be sure that I shall never say anything else. When you call me compulsive you seem to me to be blaming the innocent, as the poet says; Homer, Il., 11, 654. for I myself, as long as no other argument comes to your aid to release you from the compulsion, am at present a helpless captive. But look, the argument is going to bring much greater pressure to bear on you, but perhaps you will ignore that and blame me. HERMOTIMUSHow? I should be surprised if it had anything left to say.

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LYCINUSIt says that to inspect and to investigate everything is not sufficient to give you the power to choose the best. No, the most important thing is still lacking. HERMOTIMUSWhat is that? LYCINUSMy dear sir, a critical, examining faculty, a quick wit, and a keen and impartial intellect. You must have this to make a judgment on matters of this kind, or you will have looked at everything in vain. The argument says that not a little time is to be allowed in a matter like this and everything put before you; you are not to rush ahead, but go slowly and make frequent inspections before you choose, having no regard for the age of each speaker, nor for his dress, nor for his reputation for wisdom. No, you must imitate the court of the Areopagus, which sits in judgment at night in the dark, so that it has no regard for who is speaking, but only for what is said. Then it is that you will be able to make a sound choice and practise philosophy. HERMOTIMUSYou mean after death. From what you have said no man would live long enough to study everything and observe accurately every detail, and then, after observation, judge, and, after judging, choose, and after choosing practise philosophy; for this is the only way, you say, in which the truth could be discovered.

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LYCINUSI hesitate to tell you, Hermotimus, that even this is not enough. No, I think we deceived ourselves when we thought we had found safety: we have found no safety at all. We are like fishermen who often when they have let down their nets feel something heavy, and so haul in expecting a huge catch of fish; then when they are tired with their pulling they see a stone or a jar packed with sand. I am afraid we have hauled up something like that. HERMOTIMUSI don’t know what these nets of yours mean: you have certainly caught me in them. LYCINUSThen try to get out. If anybody knows how to swim, you do—thanks to god’s help. Now, even if we go round all the sects making our tests, and eventually complete our enquiry, I don’t think it will even yet be certain whether any one of them has what we are looking for, or whether all alike are ignorant of it. HERMOTIMUSWhat do you mean? Not one of them? LYCINUSIt is debatable. Do you think it impossible that all are wrong, and that the truth may be something different, something which none of them has yet found?

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HERMOTIMUSHow could that be possible? LYCINUSIn this way. Suppose our true number to be twenty. Now let someone take twenty beans in his hand, and then close it and ask any ten people how many beans he has in his hand. Suppose one man guesses seven, another five, another thirty, some other ten or fifteen, in short every one differently; nevertheless it is possible for someone by some chance to guess the truth, isn’t it? HERMOTIMUSYes. LYCINUSYet it is not at all impossible for everyone to guess different numbers and for all these numbers to be wrong and untrue, and for not one of them to say that the man has twenty beans. Do you agree? HERMOTIMUSIt is not impossible. LYCINUSIn the same way, then, all those who study philosophy are trying to find out what happiness is, and each one says it is something different—pleasure, beauty, and all the other things they say about it. Very likely one of these things is happiness, but it is not unlikely that it is something quite different from every one of them. We seem to have gone in the wrong direction, hastening to the end before we have found the beginning. We should first, I think, have ascertained that the truth has been discovered, and that one or other of the philosophers really has knowledge of it. Then the next step would be to find out whom to believe. HERMOTIMUSThis is what you are saying, then, Lycinus, that even if we go through all philosophy, we shall not even then really be able to discover the truth. LYCINUSDon’t ask me, my good sir. Again, ask the argument. Perhaps it would answer you that we cannot as yet discover the truth, as long as it is uncertain whether truth is one of the things they say it is.

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HERMOTIMUSFrom what you say we shall never find it or be philosophers. We shall have to give up philosophy and live a layman’s life. At least it follows from what you say that philosophy for a human being is impossible and unattainable. For you say that whoever is going to practise philosophy must first choose the best philosophy, and the choice would be correct in your view only if the truest were chosen after going through the whole field. Then you calculated the number of years required for each and went beyond all bounds, stretching it to cover several generations, so that the search for truth exceeded any man’s lifetime. Finally you show that even this is not beyond doubt when you say it is not certain whether any of the old philosophers found the truth or not. LYCINUSCould you, Hermotimus, guarantee on oath that they have found it? HERMOTIMUSNo, I could not. LYCINUSYet how many other things have I purposely omitted which call for long examination!

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HERMOTIMUSWhat sort of things? LYCINUSDon’t you hear some of the Stoics or Epicureans or Platonists say that, while some of them know all the doctrines, others do not, although in other respects they are quite reliable? HERMOTIMUSTrue enough. LYCINUSThen do you not think it a very laborious business to separate and differentiate those who know from those who do not know but say they know? HERMOTIMUSVery. LYCINUSThen if you are going to know the best Stoic you must go and make trial of most of them if not all, and take the best as your teacher, first training yourself and acquiring the power of criticism in such matters, to prevent your preferring inadvertently an inferior one. Just think how much time it needs! I left this out on purpose not to annoy you, and yet in matters of this sort I think it is the one most important requirement in such matters—I mean where there is uncertainty and doubt. And this is the only sure and firm hope you have for truth and its discovery. There is no hope whatsoever apart from the ability to judge and separate the false from the true, and like assayers of silver to distinguish the sound and genuine metal from the counterfeit. Were you to come to your examination of the doctrines with some such power and skill, all would be well; if not, you can be sure that nothing will save you from being dragged by the nose by them all or from following a leafy branch in front of you as sheep do; you will be like water spilt on a table, running whithersoever someone pulls you by the tip of his finger, or indeed like a reed growing on a river bank, bending to every breath of wind, however slight the breeze that blows and shakes it.

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So find a competent teacher to give you instruction in demonstration and the art of distinguishing matters in dispute, and you will certainly find an end to your difficulties. At once the best will be clear to you, truth and falsehood will be proved under the scrutiny of this art of demonstration, and you will make a sound choice, and having made your judgment you will practise philosophy, and you will have won your thrice-desired happiness and live with her, possessing all good things in one package. HERMOTIMUSWell done, Lycinus! What you say is far better and full of great hopes. We must look for a man, it seems, who will make us able to judge and to distinguish and able in the highest degree to prove a case. What follows will be easy now and no trouble, and it will not need much time. Now I am indeed grateful to you for finding this excellent short-cut for us. LYCINUSNo, you certainly have no reason to be grateful to me yet. I have discovered and told you nothing to bring you nearer to your hope. In fact we are much farther away than we were before, and as the proverb has it “a deal of toil and we’re where we were.” HERMOTIMUSWhat do you mean? This seems to me a hurtful and pessimistic statement.

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Because, my good friend, even if we find someone who professes knowledge of the art of demonstration and the ability to teach it to another, we shall not, I fancy, believe him at once, but look for someone else who can determine if the first man is speaking the truth. And even if we find this one, we are still not clear whether our arbiter knows how to distinguish the man whose judgment is correct or not, and for him too I fancy we shall need another arbiter. For how could we ourselves know how to choose the one able to judge best? Do you see how this goes on to infinity and cannot stop and be arrested? For you will see that all the proofs you can find are disputable and have no certainty. Most of them try to compel our belief on a basis of assumptions equally open to dispute, while the rest tack the most obscure and quite unrelated speculations on to self-evident truths and then say that the latter prove the former, as if a man thought to prove the existence of gods because we see their altars. So, Hermotimus, we seem to have run round in a circle and come back to our starting-point and the self-same difficulty.

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HERMOTIMUSLook at what you have done to me, Lycinus. You have shown my treasure to be nothing more than ashes, and all these years and heavy toil are lost in all likelihood. LYCINUSWell, Hermotimus, you will not be nearly so hurt if you remember that you are not the only one left outside the hoped-for blessings. No, all those who study philosophy are, as it were, wrangling over the shadow of an ass. Who could go through all that process I described? Even you yourself say that it is impossible. And now you seem to me to be acting like a man who wept and blamed fortune because he could not go up to heaven or dive deep into the sea off Sicily and come up at Cyprus, or fly like a bird from Greece to India in one day. His disappointment was due, I fancy, to expectations following a dream on some such subject or an invention of his imagination without prior enquiry whether his wishes could be fulfilled and were humanly possible. You too, my friend, have had many wonderful dreams, and the argument has poked you in the ribs and made you jump up out of your sleep. Then while your eyes are scarcely open you are angry with it, and you cannot easily shake off sleep for delight in what you have seen. Those who fabricate an unreal blessedness for themselves have just the same experience, surrounded by wealth, digging up treasure, kings, heaven-blest for some other reason—all this the goddess Wishing easily manages, great in her gifts and never saying “no,” whether you want to fly, to be as big as a Colossus, to discover whole mountains of gold; and if a slave interrupts their reverie with a question on day-to-day necessities—with what he is to buy bread, what he is to say to the landlord who has been waiting ever so long with a demand for the rent—they are so angry with him for taking all those good things away with his troublesome questions that they come near to biting off his nose.

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But, my dear friend, do not feel like that towards me, if I, a friend, did not let you spend all your life in a dream, albeit a sweet one, digging up treasure, flying, inventing extravagant visions, and hoping for what was beyond reach, or if again I tell you to get up and carry out your daily tasks and adopt a course that will keep your mind in future on the trivalities of the common life. For what you have recently been working at and planning is no different from Hippocentaurs and Chimaeras and Gorgons and all the other images that belong to dreams and to poets and painters with their artistic licence—fancies that have never existed and can never exist. Nevertheless the vast majority of mankind believe them and they are enchanted when they see or hear things of this sort, because they are strange and monstrous.

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You too have heard from some storyteller of a woman of surpassing beauty, beyond the Graces themselves or Heavenly Aphrodite; and, although you had not first asked whether he was telling the truth and whether this woman existed anywhere in the world, you fell in love with her at once, as they say Medea fell in love with Jason from a dream. But what above all brought you to this love—and has brought all who are in love with the same vision as you—was, I should guess, this: when he had told you about the woman and his first sketch had won your belief, he proceeded to fill in the details. You looked at nothing else, and so, when once you had let him get the first grip, he dragged you all by the nose and led you to the beloved by what he said was a straight path. The rest, I fancy, was easy: not one of you turned back to the entrance and enquired whether it was the true one and whether he had made a mistake and should not have entered; no, you followed in the steps of those who had made the journey before you, like sheep following their leader, although you should have considered at the entrance right at the beginning whether you ought to enter in there.

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You will see better what I mean if you consider this analogy: suppose one of these daring poets were to say that there was once a man with three heads and six hands, and suppose that you facilely accepted this without asking if it were possible, just believing, he would at once follow it up by filling in the details appropriately—six eyes, six ears, three voices coming from three mouths, each taking food, and thirty fingers, unlike us with our ten on two hands; and, if he had to go to war, three hands held three shields—light, oblong, or round—, and three brandished axe, spear, and sword. Who would disbelieve these details now—details which are consistent with the first outline? It was there that you ought to have seen whether it was credible or acceptable thus. Once you admit the premises the rest comes flooding in; you will never stay its course, and disbelief is difficult now, for what follows is consistent in the way it follows the agreed premises. This has happened to you all. Because of your love and enthusiasm you made no enquiry into the conditions at each entrance. You go forward led by the consistency of what came after, not considering that things may be consistent and false. Suppose for instance you were to believe someone who said that twice five is seven and did not count for yourself, he will clearly go on to say that four times five is certainly fourteen, and so on, as long as he likes. This is what that marvellous geometry does—in the beginning it presents certain monstrous postulates and demands that we consent to them though they cannot exist—for instance points without parts, lines without breadth, and so on—and on these rotten foundations it erects its structure and claims to demonstrate truths, in spite of the fact that it starts from a false beginning.

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Draw the comparison: you philosophers grant the premises of the various systems and then believe everything that follows, supposing that the consistency you find, false though it is, is a proof of its essential truth. Then some of you die in your hopes before they perceive the truth and condemn their deceivers, while others, even if they see too late that they have been deceived, are old men already, and hesitate to turn back out of shame, for fear that in their old age they have to acknowledge that they did not know that they were playing children’s games; so they stick to it out of shame, and praise their lot and turn as many as they can into the same course so that they may not be the only ones who are swindled, but that a multitude of others in the same state as themselves may be a consolation to them. They realise moreover this, that if they speak the truth they will no longer be revered above the many as now, nor receive the same honour. No, they would not be ready to speak the truth, knowing as they do the heights from which they will fall to the state of ordinary mortals. You will certainly find very few brave enough to admit that they have been deceived and to turn away others from a similar attempt. If, then, you meet such a one, call him a lover of truth, honest, and just, and, if you like, a philosopher; for to him alone I would not begrudge the name. As for the rest, either they have no knowledge of the truth, though they think they have, or they know it and hide it from cowardice and shame and the wish to be highly honoured.

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However, in Athena’s name let us forget all that I have said and let it drop, let it pass into oblivion like all history before Euclid’s archonship.

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Let us assume that this philosophy of the Stoics and no other is right, and see whether it is attainable and possible, or if those who desire it labour in vain. For I hear that it makes wonderful promises of the happiness in store for those who attain its height, for they alone will take and possess every true good. You may know the answer to the next question better

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than I—have you ever met a Stoic, one of the top men, of a type that feels no pain, one who is not dragged down by pleasure, who is never angry, but rises above envy, despises wealth, and is perfectly happy? Our canon and measure of the virtuous life must be like that—for if he fall short in the least thing he is imperfect, even if he has more of everything—and if he is not like that, he is not yet happy.

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HERMOTIMUSI have never seen such a man. LYCINUSGood for you, Hermotimus! You do not tell deliberate lies. Then what have you in view as a philosopher, when you see neither your teacher nor his teacher nor his predecessor even back to the tenth generation truly wise and therefore happy? For it would not be right for you to say that it is enough if you come near to happiness—that is of no use: a man standing by the door is as much outside the threshold and in the open as one a long way off, the difference being that the former will be more annoyed because he has a near view of what he cannot have. Then just to get near happiness (this I will grant you) you take all that trouble, wearing yourself out, and so much of your life has slipped away in torpor and weariness, slumped in sleeplessness; and you will labour on, as you say, for at least another twenty years, so that when you are eighty (have you a guarantee of living so long?) you may be one of those who are not yet happy—unless you think that you alone will reach and grasp in your pursuit that which very many good and far swifter men have pursued before you and failed to catch.

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Well, catch it then, if you wish: grasp and hold all of it; but in the first place I do not see what good could ever be supposed to compensate for all these efforts. Then what time will you have left to enjoy it, old man as you will be, too far gone for pleasure, and with one foot in the grave, as they say? Unless, my noble friend, you are putting in training for a future life, so that you can live it better when you get there, knowing how to live like a man preparing and training himself for a better dinner for such a long time that before he knows it he is dead of hunger.

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Moreover, you have never realised, I suppose, that virtue lies in action, in acting justly and wisely and bravely. While all of you (by “you” I mean the philosophers at the top) neglect these things, and are studying how to find and compose your wretched texts and syllogisms and problems. You spend most of your lives on this, and whoever wins in this race is your Conquering Hero. That, I fancy, is why you admire this teacher of yours, the old man, because he reduces his pupils to perplexity and knows how to question and quibble and cheat and throw into inextricable confusion. So you just throw away the fruit—which has to do with works—and busy yourselves with the husk, in your discussions throwing the leaves over each other. Isn’t that what you all do, Hermotimus, from dawn till dusk? HERMOTIMUSYes, just that. LYCINUSThen wouldn’t it be right to say that you forget the substance and hunt the shadow, or ignore the crawling serpent and hunt the slough? Yes, and that you are like a man pouring water into a mortar and braying it with an iron pestle who thinks that he is doing essential and productive work, not knowing that although you bray your arms off, as they say, water is still water?

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Now here let me ask you if, leaving aside his talk, you would care to be like your teacher. Would you care to be so irritable, so mean, so quarrelsome, yes, and so fond of pleasure, even if people don’t think it? Why don’t you speak, Hermotimus? Shall I tell you what I heard the other day from a very old man who spoke in defence of some philosophy or other? Quite a number of young men keep him company to learn his wisdom, and he was in a temper as he demanded payment from one of his pupils, saying that it was overdue and that the day had gone by: the debt ought to have been paid sixteen days before on the last day of the month, according to the agreement.

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During this show of temper, the young man’s uncle came up to him. He was a countryman—a mere layman to you philosophers. “Good heavens! Stop saying you’ve been cheated of a fortune because

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we bought some pretty talk from you and haven’t paid you the balance yet. In any case you still have what you sold to us: your capital of knowledge is not reduced. And what about my hopes in sending the young man to you in the first place? You’ve made him no better—he carried off my neighbour Echecrates’ daughter, a virgin, and raped her. He only just missed a summons for assault, but I paid a talent to Echecrates, who is a poor man, in recompense for his crime. The other day he thrashed his mother because she caught him carrying off the wine jar under his coat—his contribution, I suppose, to the wine-feast. As for passion and anger and shamelessness and recklessness and lying, he was far better last year than he is now. Yet I would have liked him to be helped by you in this sort of thing, rather than have all that knowledge which every day at dinner he parades at us, though we’ve no need of it: how a crocodile carried off a young lad, and promised to give him back if his father answered some question or other; or how when it’s day it can’t be night. Sometimes our fine gentleman even makes horns grow out of our heads, he twists our words so.

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We laugh at all this, especially when he stops up his ears and does his practice and says over to himself his ‘states’ and “conditions’ and ‘comprehensions’ and ‘images,’ and a string of other names like these. We hear him say that God is not in heaven but pervades everything—sticks and stones and beasts right down to the meanest. And when his mother asks him why he talks such nonsense, he laughs at

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her and says: ‘If I learn this “nonsense” properly, there will be nothing to stop me being the only rich man, the only king, and the rest slaves and scum compared with me.’”

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This is what the man said. Now hear the philosopher’s reply, Hermotimus, the answer of experience: “If he had not come to me, don’t you think he would have done much worse, and even perhaps have faced the public executioner? As it is, philosophy and his regard for philosophy have put a bit in his mouth, and so he is more moderate and still tolerable. For it brings some shame on him if he shows himself unworthy of that dress and name, things which accompany him and serve as a tutor. So I deserve my pay from you, if not for any improvement I have made, at any rate for what out of respect for philosophy he has not done. Nurses too say as much, that little children must go to school: if they are still too young to learn anything good, at any rate they will be out of mischief while they are there. No, in general I think I have done what I had to do. Come tomorrow and bring along anyone you like who knows our teaching, and you will see how he asks questions and gives answers, how much he has learnt and how many books he has read already on axioms, syllogisms, comprehensions, properties, and all sorts of things. If he has beaten his mother or carried off girls, what is that to me?

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You didn’t make me his chaperon.” This was the defence of philosophy that the old man gave. Would you too agree, Hermotimus, that it is enough that we study philosophy in order to keep out of mischief? Or was it with other hopes that we thought it worth while to study philosophy in the first place, not so that in our goings and comings we should present a fairer face than the layman? Why do you not answer this as well? HERMOTIMUSOnly because I could almost weep. Your argument is true, and I’m driven to this: I’m in anguish at the time I’ve wasted like a fool, and at all the money I’ve paid for my labours, too. I was drunk and now I am sober and am seeing just what it was that I loved and what I have gone through for it.

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Why tears, honest friend? There’s a deal of sense, I think, in that fable of Aesop’s where a man sits on the shore by the water’s edge to count the waves. When he fails he is hurt and takes it badly, until the Fox comes up to him and says: “Why are you worrying about those that have gone, my noble sir? Let them go and begin your count from here.” And so with you; since that is your view, you will do better in the future to make up your mind to join in the common life. Share in the city life of everyday, and give up your hopes of the strange and puffed-up. You will not be ashamed, if you are wise, to learn afresh in your old age and make a change for the better.

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In all that I have said, my dear friend, do not think that I have directed my argument against the Stoa, or that I have some special hatred for the Stoics. No, it applied to all alike. I should have said the same to you if you had chosen the school of Plato or Aristotle and condemned the rest without a trial. As it is, you have given pride of place to the Stoics, and so the argument has seemed to be directed against the Stoa, although it had no particular grudge against it.

86

HERMOTIMUS

86

You are right. I am going away to do just that—to make a change—of dress as well. You will soon see me without this big, shaggy beard. I shall not punish my daily life, but all will be liberty and freedom. Perhaps I shall even put on purple, to show everybody that I’ve no part in that nonsense now. Could I but spew out all that I have heard from them! I can tell you that I would not flinch from drinking hellebore, for the opposite reason to Chrysippus—to remember their doctrines no more. So it is no small favour that I owe you, Lycinus: you came and pulled me out when I was being carried away by a rough, turbid torrent, giving myself to it and going with the stream. You were a “God from the machine,” as in the play. I think I might well shave my head like free men who are saved from shipwreck, to give thanks for salvation today now that I have had so heavy a mist shaken off my eyes. If in the future I ever meet a philosopher while I am walking on the road, even by chance, I will turn round and get out of his way as if he were a mad dog.

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