Reader

ZEUS (To an attendant.) You arrange the benches and make the place ready for the men that are coming. (To another avrenpant.) You bring on the philosophies and put them in line; but first groom them up, so that they will look well and will attract as many as possible. (Zo nErmeEs.) You, Hermes, be crier and call them together. HERMES Under the blessing of Heaven, let the buyers now appear at the sales-room. We shall put up for sale philosophies of every type and all manner of creeds; and if anyone is unable to pay cash, he is to name a surety and pay next year.

ZEUS Many are gathering, so we must avoid wasting time and delaying them. Let us begin the sale, then. HERMES Which do you want us to bring on first? ZEUS This fellow with the long hair, the Ionian, for he seems to be someone of distinction. HERMES You Pythagorean, come forward and let yourself be looked over by the company. ZEUS Hawk him now. HERMES The noblest of philosophies for sale, the most distinguished; who'll buy? Who wants to be more than man? Who wants to apprehend the music of the spheres and to be born again? BUYER For looks, he is not bad, but what does he know best? HERMES Arithmetic, astronomy, charlatanry, geometry, music and quackery; you see in him a first-class soothsayer. BUYER May I question him? HERMES Yes, and good luck to you!

BUYER Where are you from? PYTHAGOREAN From Samos.The birthplace of Pythagoras. Hence the “‘ Pythagorean philosophy” talks Ionic Greek. BUYER Where were you educated? PYTHAGOREAN In Egypt, with the sages there. BUYER Come now, if I buy you, what will you teach me? PYTHAGOREAN I shall teach thee nothing, but make thee remember.Before centering upon its round of transmigrations, the soul was all-wise; learning is merely remembering. Socrates expounds this theory in Plato’s Jeno. BUYER How will you make me remember? PYTHAGOREAN First by making thy soul pure and purging off the filth upon it. BUYER Well, imagine that my purification is complete, what will be your method of making me remember? PYTHAGOREAN In the first place, long silence and speechlessness, and for five entire years no word of talk. BUYER My good man, you had better teach the son of Croesus!?One of the sons of Crocsus was mute: Herod. 1. 34, 85. I want to be talkative, not a graven image. However, what comes after the silence and the five years? PYTHAGOREAN Thou shalt be practised in music and geometry. BUYER That is delightful; I am to become a fiddler before being wise!

PYTHAGOREAN Then, in addition to this, in counting. BUYER I know how to count now. PYTHAGOREAN How dost thou count? BUYER One, two, three, four— PYTHAGOREAN Lo! what thou thinkest four is ten, and a perfect triangle, and our oath.Four is ten, because it contains three, two and one, and 1 2 3 4 10. The perfect triangle is BUYER Well, by your greatest oath, by Four, I never heard diviner doctrines or more esoteric. PYTHAGOREAN Thereafter, my friend, thou shalt learn of earth and air and water and fire, what their flux is, and what form they have and how they move. BUYER Why, has fire form, or air, or water? PYTHAGOREAN Yea, very notably, for without shape and form there can be no motion. And in addition thou shalt learn that God is number and mind and harmony. BUYER What you say is wonderful.

PYTHAGOREAN And beside all that I have said, thou shalt learn that thou, who thinkest thyself a single individual, art one person in semblance and another in reality. BUYER What’s that? I am another and not this man who now talks to you! PYTHAGOREAN Now thou art he, but erstwhile thou didst manifest thyself in another body and under another name, and in time thou shalt again migrate into another person. BUYER You mean that I shall be immortal, changing into many forms? But enough of this.

BUYER How do you stand in the matter of diet? PYTHAGOREAN I eat nothing at all that hath life, but all else save beans. BUYER Why so? Do you dislike beans? PYTHAGOREAN Nay, but they are holy, and wonderful is their nature. First, they are nought but seed of man, and if thou open a bean while it is still green, thou wilt see that it resembleth in structure the member of a man; and again, if thou cook it and set it in the light of the moon for a fixed number of nights, thou wilt make blood. But more than this, the Athenians are wont to choose their magistrates with beans.The offices were filled by lot, and beans were used for lots. This appears to be Lucian’s own contribution to the Pythagorean mysticism, but the other particulars are not very remote from the actual teachings of the Neo-Pythagoreans, Cf. Porphyr. Vit. Pythag., 44. BUYER You have explained everything duly and sacerdotally. Come, strip, for I want to see you unclothed. Heracles! His thigh is of gold! He seems to be a god and not a mortal, so I shall certainly buy him. (Yo Hermes.) What price do you sell him for? HERMES Ten minas. BUYER I'll take him at that figure. ZEUS Write down the buyer’s name and where he comes from. HERMES He appears to be an Italian, Zeus, one of those who live in the neighbourhood of Croton and Tarentum and the Greek settlements in that quarter of the world. But there is more than one buyer; about three hundred have bought him in shares.A reference to the brotherhood founded by Pythagoras in Magna Grecia, which wielded great political power until it was extirpated in a general revolt about fifty years after the death of Pythagoras. ZEUS Let them take him away; let us bring on another.

HERMES Do you want the dirty one over yonder, from the Black Sea?Diogenes, chief of the Cynics, came from Sinope. ZEUS By all means. HERMES You there with the wallet slung about you, you with the sleeveless shirt, come and walk about the room. I offer for sale a manly philosophy, a noble philosophy, a free philosophy; who'll buy? BUYER Crier, what’s that you say? Are you selling someone who is free? HERMES That I am. BUYER Then aren’t you afraid he may have the law on you for kidnapping or even summon you to the Areopagus? HERMES He doesn’t mind being sold, for he thinks that he is free anyhow. BUYER What use could a man make of him, filthy as he is, and in such a wretched condition? However, he might be made a shoveller or a drawer of water. HERMES Not only that, but if you make him doorkeeper, you will find him far more trusty than a dog. In tact, he is even called a dog.The name of the sect in Greek means doggish. BUYER Where is he from, and what creed does he profess? HERMES Ask the man himself; it is better to do so. BUYER I am afraid of his sullen, hang-dog look; he may bark at me if I go near him, or even bite me, by Zeus! Don’t you see how he has his cudgel poised and his brows bent, and scowls in a threatening, angry way? HERMES Don’t be afraid; he is gentle.

BUYER First of all, my friend, where are you from? CYNIC Everywhere. BUYER What do you mean? CYNIC You see in me a citizen of the world. BUYER Whom do you take for your pattern? CYNIC Heracles. BUYER Then why don’t you wear a lion’s skin? For as to the cudgel, you are like him in that. CYNIC This short cloak is my lion-skin; and I am a soldier like him, fighting against pleasures, no conscript but a volunteer, purposing to make life clean. BUYER A fine purpose! But what do you know best, and what is your business? CYNIC I am a liberator of men and a physician to their ills; in short I desire to be an interpreter of truth and free speech.

BUVER Very good, interpreter! But if IT buy you, what course of training will you give me? CYNIC First, after taking you in charge, stripping you of your luxury and shackling you to want, I will puta short cloak on you. Next I will compel you to undergo pains and hardships, sleeping on the ground, drinking nothing but water and filling yourself with any food that comes your way. As for your money, in case you have any, if you follow my advice you will throw it into the sea forthwith. You will take no thought for marriage or children or native land: all that will be sheer nonsense to you, and you will leave the house of your fathers and make your home in atomb or a deserted tower or even a jar.As did Diogenes; for his “tub” was really a jar. Your wallet will be full of lupines, and of papyrus rolls written on both sides. Leading this life you will say that you are happier than the Great King; and if anyone flogs you or twists you on the rack, you will think that there is nothing painful in it. BUYER What do you mean by not feeling pain when I am flogged? I am not enclosed in the carapace of a turtle or a crab! CYNIC You will put in practice the saying of Euripides, slightly revised. BUYER What saying? CYNIC Your mind will suffer, but your tongue will not.Hippol. 612: ἡ γλῶσσ᾽ ὀμώμοχ᾽, ἡ δὲ φρὴν ἀνώμοτος. (My tongue took oath; my mind has taken none).

CYNIC

The traits that you should possess in particular are these: you should be impudent and bold, and should abuse all and each, both kings and commoners, for thus they will admire you and think you manly. Let your language be barbarous, your voice discordant and just like the barking of a dog: let your expression be set, and your gait consistent with your expression. In a word, let everything about you be bestial and savage. Put off modesty, decency and moderation, and wipe away blushes from your face completely. Frequent the most crowded place, and in those very places desire to be solitary and uncommunicative, greeting nor friend nor stranger; for to do so is abdication of the empire.

1

Do boldly in full view of all what another would not do in secret; choose the most ridiculous ways of satisfying your lust; and at the last, if you like, eat a raw devilfish or squid, and die.

2

That is the bliss we vouchsafe you.

BUYER Get out with you! The life you talk of is abominable and inhuman. CYNIC But at all events it is easy, man, and no trouble for all to follow; for you will not need education and doctrine and drivel, but this road is a short cut to fame. Even if you are an unlettered man,—a tanner or a fish-man or a carpenter or a money-changer— there will be nothing to hinder you from being wondered at, if only you have impudence and _ boldness and learn how to abuse people properly. BUYER I do not want you for any such purpose, but you might do at a pinch for a boatman or a gardener, and only then if my friend here is willing to sell you for two obols at the outside. HERMES He’s yours: take him. We shall be glad to get rid of him because he is annoying and loud-mouthed and insults and abuses everybody without exception.

ZEUS Call another; the Cyrenaic in the purple cloak, with the wreath on his head.The Cyrenaic school, which made pleasure the highest good, was founded by Aristippus, who furnished a detail or two to this caricature. HERMES Come now, attend, everyone! Here we have high-priced wares, wanting a rich buyer. Here you are with the sweetest philosophy, the thrice-happy philosophy! Who hankers for high living? Who'll buy the height of luxury? BUYER Come here and tell me what you know; I will buy you if you are of any use. HERMES Don’t bother him, please, sir, and don’t question him, for he is drunk, and so can’t answer you because his tongue falters, as you observe. BUYER Who that is in his senses would buy so corrupt and lawless a slave? How he reeks of myrrh, and how he staggers and reels in his gait! But you yourself, Hermes, might tell me what traits he has and what his object in life is. HERMES In general, he is accommodating to live with, satisfactory to drink with, and handy to accompany an amorous and profligate master when he riots about town with a flute-girl, Moreover, he is a connoisseur in pastries and a highly expert cook: in short, a Professor of Luxury. He was educated in Athens, and entered service in Sicily, at the court of the tyrants, with whom he enjoyed high favour. The sum and substance of his creed is to despise everything, make use of everything and cull pleasure from every source. BUYER You had better look about for someone else, among these rich and wealthy people; for I can’t afford to buy a jolly life. HERMES It looks as if this fellow would be left on our hands, Zeus.

ZEUS Remove him; bring on another—stay! those two, the one from Abdera who laughs and the one from Ephesus who cries, for I want to sell them together.The Schools of Democritus of Abdera, the propounder of the atomic theory, and of Heraclitus of Ephesus, who originated the doctrine of the flux; he held that fire is the first principle, and its manifestations continually change, so that nothing isstable. Both representatives talk Ionic Greck. HERMES Come down among us, you two. I sell the two best philosophies; we offer the two that are sagest of all. BUYER Zeus! What a contrast! One of thei never stops laughing, and the other is apparently mourning a death, as he weeps incessantly. What is the matter, man? Why are you laughing? DEMOCRITEAN Dost thou need to ask? Because to me it seemeth that all your affairs are laughable, and yourselves as well. BUYER What, are you laughing at us all, and do you think nothing of our affairs? DEMOCRITEAN Even so; for there is nothing serious in them, but everything is a hollow mockery, drift of atoms, infinitude. BUYER No indeed, but you yourself are a hollow mockery in very truth and an infinite ass.

BUYER Oh, what effrontery! Will you never stop laughing? (Zo the other.) But you, why do youcry? For I think it is much more becoming to talk with you. HERACLITEAN Because I consider, O stranger, that the affairs of man are woeful and tearful, and there is naught in them that is not foredoomed; therefore I pity and grieve for men. And their present woes I do not consider great, but those to come in future will be wholly bitter; I speak of the great conflagrations and the collapse of the universe. It is for this that I grieve, and because nothing is fixed, but all things are in a manner stirred up into porridge, and joy and joylessness, wisdom and unwisdom, great and small are all but the same, circling about, up and down, and interchanging in the game of Eternity. BUYER And what is Eternity? HERACLITEAN A child playing a game, moving counters, in discord, in concord. BUYER What are men? HERACLITEAN Mortal gods. BUYER And the Gods? HERACLITEAN Immortal men. BUYER Are you telling riddles, man, or making conundrums? You are just like Apollo, for you say nothing plainly.Heraclitus was nicknamed ὁ σκοτεινός, “the Obscure.” HERACLITEAN Because you matter naught to me. BUYER Then nobody in his sense will buy you. HERACLITEAN I bid ye go weep, one and all, buy you or buy you not. BUYER This fellow’s trouble is not far removed from insanity. However, I for my part will not buy either of them. HERMES They are left unsold also. ZEUS Put up another.

HERMES Do you want the Athenian over there, who has so much to say?Both Socrates and Plato contribute to the picture of the typical Academic. Consequently some editors, misled by the manuscripts (see introductory note) ascribe the part of Academic to Socrates, some to Plato, and some divide it between the two. ZEUS By all means. HERMES Come here, sir. We are putting up a righteous and intelligent philosophy. Who'll buy the height of sanctity? BUYER Tell me what you know best? ACADEMIC I am a lover, and wise in matters of love. BUYER How am I to buy you, then? What I wanted was a tutor for my son, who is handsome. ACADEMIC But who would be more suitable than I to associate with a handsome lad? It is not the body I love, it is the soul that I hold beautiful. As a matter of fact, even if they lie beneath the same cloak with me, they will tell you that I have done them no wrong.See Plato’s Symposium, particularly 216 p-219 D. BUYER I can’t believe what you say, that you, though a lover, take no interest in anything beyond the soul, even when you have the opportunity, lying beneath the same cloak.

ACADEMIC But I swear to you by the dog and the plane-tree that this is so. BUYER Heracles! What curious gods! ACADEMIC What is that you say? Don’t you think the dog is a god? Don’t you know about Anubis in Egypt, how great he is, and about Sirius in the sky and Cerberus in the world below?

BUYER Quite right; I was entirely mistaken. But what is your manner of life? ACADEMIC I dwell in a city that I created for myself, using an imported constitution and enacting statutes of my own.The allusion is to Plato’s Republic. BUYER I should like to hear one of your enactments. ACADEMIC Let me tell you the most important one, the view that I hold about wives; it is that none of thei shall belong solely to any one man, but that everyone who so desires may share the rights of the husband. BUYER You mean by this that you have abolished the laws against adultery? ACADEMIC Yes, and in a word, all this pettiness about such matters. BUYER What is your attitude as to pretty boys? ACADEMIC Their kisses shall be a guerdon for the bravest after they have done some splendid, reckless deed.

BUYER My word, what generosity! And what is the gist of your wisdom? ACADEMIC My “ideas”; I mean the patterns of existing things: for of everything that you behold, the earth, with all that is upon it, the sky, the sea, invisible images exist outside the universe. BUYER Where do they exist? ACADEMIC Nowhere; for if they were anywhere, they would not be.As space cannot be predicated of anything outside the univerge, it cannot be predicated of the Platonic Ideas. To do so would be to make them phenomena instead of realities, for nothing in the universe is real. BUYER I do not see these patterns that you speak of. ACADEMIC Of course not, for the eye of your soul is blind; but I see images of everything,—an invisible “you,” another “me,” and in a word, two of everything. BUYER Then I must buy you for your wisdom and your sharp sight. (Zo Hermes.) Come, let’s see what price you will make me for him? HERMES Give me two talents. BUYER He is sold to me at the price you mention, But I will pay the money later on.

HERMES What is your name? BUYER Dion of Syracuse.Chosen for mention, because he was Plato’s pupil. HERMES He is yours; take him, with good luck to you. Epicurean, I want you now. Who will buy him? He is a pupil of the laugher yonder and of the drunkard, both of whom we put up a short time ago.The Epicureans took over the atomic theory from Democritus and the idea that pleasure is the highest good from the Cyrenaics. In one way, however, he knows more than they, because he is more impious. Besides, he is agreeable and fond of good eating. BUYER What is his price? HERMES Two minas. BUYER Here you are. But, say! I want to know what food he likes. HERMES He eats sweets and honey-cakes, and, above all, figs. BUYER No trouble about that; we shall buy him cakes of pressed figs from Caria.

ZEUS Call another, the one over there with the cropped head, the dismal fellow from the Porch. HERMES Quite right; at all events it looks as if the men who frequent the public square were waiting for him in great numbers.Lucian means that the Stoic philosophy was in high favour with statesmen, lawyers, and men of affairs generally. I sell virtue itself, the most perfect of philosophies. Who wants to be the only one to know everything? BUYER What do you mean by that? HERMES That he is the only wise man, the only handsome man, the only just man, brave man, king, orator, rich man, lawgiver, and everything else that there is.Compare Ad summam: sapiens uno minor est Jove, dives, Liber, honoratus, pulcher, rex denique regum, Praecipue sanus,— nisi cum pituita molestast! Horace, Epp. 1, I 106 ff BUYER Then he is the only cook,—yes and the only tanner or carpenter, and so forth? HERMES So it appears.

BUYER Come here, my good fellow, and tell your buyer what you are like, and first of all whether you are not displeased with being sold and living in slavery? STOIC Not at all, for these things are not in our control, and all that is not in our control is immaterial. BUYER I don’t understand what you mean by this. STOIC What, you do not understand that of such things some are “approved,” and some, to the contrary, “disapproved”’? Just as things "in our control” were divided into the good and the bad, so those "not in our control” were divided into the “approved” and the "disapproved,” according as they helped or hindered in the acquirement of virtue. BUYER Even now I do not understand. STOIC Of course not, for you are not familiar with our vocabulary and have not the faculty of forming concepts; but a scholar who has mastered the science of logic knows not only this, but what predicaments and bye-predicaments are, and how they differ from each other.The hair-splitting Stoics distinguished four forms of predication according to the case of the (logical) subject and the logical completeness of the predicate: the direct, complete predicate, or σύμβαμα (predicament), i.e. Σωκράτης βαδίζει; the indirect, complete predicate, or παρασύμβαμα (bye-predicament), i.e. Σωκράτει μεταμέλει; the direct, incomplete predicate, e.g. Σωκράτης φιλεῖ, and the indirect, incomplete predicate, i.e. Σωκράτει μέλει. BUYER In the name of wisdom, don’t begrudge telling me at least what predicaments and bye-predicaments are; for I am somehow impressed by the rhythm of the terms. STOIC Indeed, I do not begrudge it at all. If a man who is lame dashes his lame foot against a stone and receives an unlooked-for injury, he was already in a predicament, of course, with his lameness, and with his injury he gets into a bye-predicament too.

BUYER Oh, what subtlety! And what else do you claim to know best? STOIC The word-snares with which I entangle those who converse with me and stop their mouths and make them hold their peace, putting a very muzzle on them. This power is called the syllogism of wide renown.The Stoics were noted for their attention to logic and in especial to fallacies. Chrysippus wrote a book on syllogisms, mentioned in the Icuromenippus (311). BUYER Heracles! An invincible and mighty thing, by what you say. STOIC See for yourself. Have you a child? BUYER What of it? STOIC If a crocodile should seize it on finding it straying beside the river, and then should promise to give it back to you if you told him truly what he intended to do about giving it back, what would you say he had made up his mind to do?The commentators do not seem to have noticed that Lucian has (intentionally) spoiled the sophism by using the words δέδοικα and ἐγνωκέναι. It is perfectly possible for the father to guess what the crocodile “had made up his mind” to do, and so to get the child back: for an intention need not be executed. The crocodile should ask, ‘* Am I going to (μέλλω) give up the child?” Then, if the father answers “Yes,” he will say ‘ You are wrong,” and eat it: and if the father says “No,” he will reply “You are right; therefore I am not going to give it up.” BUYER Your question is hard to answer, for I don’t know which alternative I should follow in my reply, in order to get back the child. Come, in Heaven’s name answer it yourself and save the child for me, for fear the beast may get ahead of us and devour it! STOIC Courage! I'll teach you other things that are more wonderful. BUYER What are they? STOIC The Reaper, the Master,Neither of these are accurately known. The Reaper was based on the fallacious employment of the negative, and proved that a man who was going to reap a field could not possibly reap it. Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school, is said to have paid 200 minas to a logician who taught him seven varieties of this fallacy. The Master consisted of four propositions, of which you could take any three and disprove the fourth. and above all, the Electra and the Veiled Figure. BUYER What do you mean by the Veiled Figure and the Electra? STOIC The Electra is the famous Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon, who at once knew and did not know the same thing; for when Orestes stood beside her before the recognition she knew that Orestes was her brother, but did not know that this was Orestes.Here again Lucian does scant justice to the fallacy, which he really gives away by his statement of it. It should run: ‘she at once knew and did not know that Orestes was her brother, for she did not know that this man was her brother; but this man was Orestes.” As to the Veiled Figure, you shall hear a very wonderful argument. Tell me, do you know your own father? BUYER Yes. STOIC But if I put a veiled figure before you and asked you if you know him, what will you say? BUYER That I don’t, of course.

STOIC But the veiled figure turns out to be your own father; so if you don’t know him, you evidently don’t know your own father. BUYER Not so: I should unveil him and find out the truth! But to go on—what is the purpose of your wisdom, and what shall you do when you reach the summit of virtue? STOIC I shall then devote myself to the chief natural goods, I mean wealth, health, and the like.As the Stoics set great store by “living in harmony with nature,” they divided “things which did not matter” into the “acceptable” and the ‘ unacceptable” according as they were in or out of harmony with the natural wants of man. This did not supersede the classification alluded to above, but was convenient because it enabled them to dispose of certain things which were hard to classify on the other basis. For instance, a good complexion is neither “approved” nor "disapproved” as an aid to the acquirement of virtue, but it is in harmony with nature, and therefore “‘ acceptable.” Hence the Stoics were often accused (as they are constantly accused by indirection in this dialogue) of setting up a double standard. But first I must go through many preparatory toils, whetting my eyesight with closely-written books, collecting learned comments and stufting myself with solecisms and uncouth words; and to cap all, a man may not become wise until he has taken the hellebore treatment three times running.A hit at Chrysippus. Hellebore was the specific for insanity, and rumour said that Chrysippus had taken the treatment three times (cf. True Story, 2, 18). BUYER These projects of yours are noble and dreadfully courageous. But tobe a Gnipho and a usurer—for I see that this is one of your traits too—what shall we say of this? That it is the mark of a man who has already taken his hellebore-treatment and is consumuinate in virtue? STOIC Yes; at any rate money-lending is especially appropriate to a wise man, for as drawing inferences is a specialty of his, and as money-lending and drawing interest is next-door to drawing inferences, the one, like the other, belongs particularly to the scholar: and not only getting simple interest, like other people, but interest upon interest. For don’t you know that there is a first interest and a second interest, the offspring,A play upon τάκος, which is literally "offspring.” as it were, of the first? And you surely perceive what logic says: “If he gets the first interest, he will get the second; but he will get the first, ergo he will get the second.”

BUYER Then we are to say the same of the fees that you get for your wisdom from young men, and obviously none but the scholar will get paid for his virtue? STOIC Your understanding of the matter is correct. You see, I donot take pay on my own account, but for the sake of the giver himself: for since there are two classes of men, the disbursive and the receptive, I train myself to be receptive and my pupil to be disbursive. BUYER On the contrary, the young man ought to be receptive and you, who alone are rich, disbursive! STOIC You are joking, man. Look out that I don’t shoot you with my indemonstrable syllogism.Indemonstrable in the sense that its propositions do not require demonstration, or indeed admit of it. BUYER What have I to fear from that shaft? STOIC Perplexity and aphasia and a sprained intellect.

STOIC But the great thing is that if I wish I can turn you into a stone forthwith. BUYER How will you turn me into a stone? You are not a Perseus, I think, my dear fellow. STOIC In this way. Isa stone a substance? BUYER Yes. STOIC And how about this—is not an animal a substance? BUYER Yes. STOIC And you are an animal? BUYER So it appears, anyhow. STOIC Then you are a substance, and therefore a stone! BUYER Don’t say that! Distribute my middle, for Heaven’s sake, and make me a man again. STOIC That is not difficult. Be a man once more!—Tell me, is every substance an animal? BUYER No. STOIC Well, is a stone an animal? BUYER No. STOIC You are a substance? BUYER Yes. STOIC But even if you are a substance, you are an animal. BUYER Yes. STOIC Then you are not a stone, being an animal. BUYER Thank you kindly; my legs were already as cold and solid as Niobe’s. Iwill buy you. (Zo uunmes.) How much have I to pay for him? HERMES Twelve minas. BUYER Here you are. HERMES Are you the sole purchaser? BUYER No, indeed; there are all these men whom you see. HERMES Yes, there are many of them, heavy-shouldered fellows, fit associates for the Reaper.

ZEUS Don’t delay; call another, the Peripatetic. HERMES (To renivatetic.) I say, you who are handsome, you who are rich! (Yo the buyers.) Come now, buy the height of intelligence, the one who knows absolutely everything! BUYER What is he like! HERMES Moderate, gentlemanly, adaptable in his way of living, and, what is more, he is double. BUYER What do you mean? HERMES Viewed from the outside, he seems to be one man, and from the inside, another; so if you buy him, be sure to call the one self “exoteric” and the other “esoteric.” BUYER What does he know best? HERMES That goods are threefold, in the soul, in the body, and in things external.Aristotle, Hth. Nicom. A, 8, 1098 b. BUYER He has common sense. How much is he? HERMES Twenty minas. BUYER Your price is high. HERMES Not so, bless you, for he himself appears to have a bit of money, so you can’t be too quick about buying him. Besides, he will tell you at once how long a gnat lives, how far down into the sea the sunlight reaches, and what the soul of an oyster is like. BUYER Heracles, what insight! HERMES What if I should tell you of other information demanding far keener vision, about sperm and conception and the shaping of the embryo in the womb, and how man is a creature that laughs, while asses do not laugh, and neither do they build houses nor sail boats. BUYER This is high and helpful information that you tell of, so I shall buy him for the twenty minas.

HERMES Very well. ZEUS Whom have we left? HERMES This Sceptic is still on our hands. Reddy,Pyrrhias (Reddy) is a slave name, brought in for the sake of the pun on the name of the founder of the Sceptic school, Pyrrho. come here and be put up without delay. The crowd is already drifting away, and there will be but few at his sale. However,—who'll buy this one? BUYER I will. But first tell me, what do you know? SCEPTIC Nothing. BUYER What do you mean by that? SCEPTIC That in my opinion nothing at all exists. BUYER Then do not we exist? SCEPTIC I don’t even know that. BUYER Not even that you yourself exist? SCEPTIC I am far more uncertain about that. BUYER Oh, what a state of doubt? But what are these scales of yours for? SCEPTIC I weigh arguments in them and make them balance one another, and when I see they are precisely alike and equal in weight, then, ah! then I do not know which is the truer. BUYER What else can you do fairly well? SCEPTIC Everything except catch a runaway slave. BUYER Why can’t you do that? SCEPTIC Because, my dear sir, I am unable to apprehend anything.The same joke is cracked by Lucian in the True Story, 2, 18, at the expense of the New Academy. BUYER Of course, for you look to be slow and lazy. But what is the upshot of your wisdom? SCEPTIC Ignorance, and failure of hearing and vision. BUYER Then you mean being both deaf and blind? SCEPTIC Yes, and devoid of judgement and feeling, and, in a word, no better than a worm. BUYER I must buy you for that reason. (Zo uenmes.) How much may I call him worth? HERMES An Attie mina. BUYER Here you are. (Yo scertic.) What have you to say, fellow? Have I bought you? SCEPTIC Doubtful. BUYER No, indeed, I have bought you and paid the price in cash. SCEPTIC I am suspending judgement on that point and thinking it over. BUYER Come now, fellow, walk along behind me as my servant should. SCEPTIC Who knows if what you say is true? BUYER The crier, the mina, and the men present. SCEPTIC Is there anyone here present? BUYER Come, I'll chuck you into the mill and convince you that I am your master, with sorry logic! SCEPTIC Suspend judgement on that point. BUYER No, by Heaven! I have already affirmed my judgement. HERMES (To scertic.) Stop hanging back and go with your buyer. (Zo the company.) We invite you all here to-morrow, for we intend to put up for sale the careers of laymen, workingmen, and tradesmen.