Florida

1. It is generally the custom of religious travellers, when some grove or some holy place is met with along the road, to make a vow, to set down an offering of fruit, and to sit awhile beside it: just so, now that I have entered this most holy city, although I am in great haste, I must first ask leave to speak, must deliver an address, and must check my hurry. For no altar wreathed with flowers, no cavern shaded with foliage, no oak hung with horns, no beech crowned with hides could more justly impose a religious delay upon a traveller — nor could a little hill hallowed with an enclosure, a tree-trunk shaped by the carver's tool, a sod moistened with libations, or a stone anointed with oil. These things, small as they are, and worshipped though they be by but few who make inquiry of them, are yet passed by unheeded by those who do not know them.

2. . . . But my elder, Socrates, did not act so: for when he had caught sight of a comely young man who kept silent for a good while, he said, 'Say something, that I may see you.' Clearly Socrates could not see a man so long as he was silent; for he held that men are to be considered not with the keenness of the eyes but with the gaze of the mind and the contemplation of the soul. In this he did not agree with that soldier of Plautus, who says: 'One eyewitness is worth more than ten who have it by hearsay.' Nay rather, he had turned this verse about for the testing of men: 'One ear-witness is worth more than ten who have it by sight.' For if the judgements of the eyes had more power than those of the mind, then surely we should have to yield the palm of wisdom to the eagle. For we men can discern neither what is set far off nor what is placed close at hand, but we are all in some manner half-blind; and if you reduce a thing to these eyes and this dull, earthbound sight of ours, then most truly did that excellent poet say that a mist, as it were, is spread before our eyes, and that we can see no farther than a stone's throw. But the eagle, when it has raised itself on high to the very clouds and has soared on its wings through all that region where rain falls and snow falls — beyond whose summit there is no place for lightning or for thunderbolt, in what I might call the very floor of the upper air and the topmost roof of the storm — when, I say, the eagle has lifted itself to that height, by a gentle inclination it glides leftward or rightward with all the great mass of its body, turning its sail-spread wings whither it pleases by the slight rudder of its tail; thence, looking down upon all things, it hangs there poised, its outstretched plumes plying their tireless oarage, and with flight for a little while suspended it hovers almost in the selfsame spot, gazing all about and seeking from what quarter it may best hurl itself down from above upon its prey, like a thunderbolt: unforeseen out of heaven, it sees at one glance in the selfsame swoop the cattle in the fields, the wild beasts in the mountains, and men in the cities, and looks to see where it may pierce with its beak, where it may hook with its talons, whether the careless lamb, or the timorous hare, or whatever living creature chance has offered for it to feed on or to tear.

3. Hyagnis, as we have heard by report, was the father and teacher of the flute-player Marsyas. In the still untutored ages of music he, before all others, was skilled in playing — not yet, indeed, with a soul-bending tone, nor yet in a manifold mode, nor yet upon a many-holed flute; for that art was then but newly invented and was only just coming into being. And there is nothing among all things that can be brought to perfection at its very first beginning, but in almost everything the rudiments of hope come before the proof of the thing. Before Hyagnis, then, the most of men knew nothing more than Virgil's shepherd or cowherd — 'on a screeching straw to murder a wretched tune.' And if anyone seemed to have advanced a little further in the art, even he was wont to sound upon a single flute as upon a single trumpet. Hyagnis was the first in his playing to spread apart his hands; the first to give breath to two flutes with one breath; the first, with holes on the left and on the right, with shrill treble and deep bass, to blend a musical harmony. Marsyas, born of him, although in the craft of flute-playing he took after his father, was in all else a Phrygian and a barbarian, with a face like a beast's — grim, shaggy, with unkempt beard, beset with thorns and bristles. He is said — O the impiety! — to have contended with Apollo: foul against fair, rustic against cultivated, brute beast against god. The Muses, with Minerva, stood by as judges, for the sake of pretence — namely, to mock the barbarism of that monster, and no less to punish his stupidity. But Marsyas — and this is the surest proof of folly — not understanding that he was being held up to ridicule, before he began to blow upon his flutes first babbled out in barbarous fashion certain ravings about himself and Apollo, praising himself because he had hair flung back from his brow, a squalid beard, a hairy chest, and was a flute-player by art and needy by fortune; while, on the contrary, he blamed Apollo — absurd to tell — for the opposite excellences: that Apollo had hair unshorn, was charming of cheek, smooth of body, manifold in skill, and rich in fortune. 'Look first,' he said, 'at his hair, with the front locks combed forward and the side locks drawn down, hanging before and dangling: his whole body most graceful, his limbs gleaming, his tongue prophetic — whether in prose you please or in verse, in either his eloquence is equal. What of his garment too, thin in texture, soft to the touch, radiant with purple? What of his lyre, which flashes with gold, is white with ivory, and is dappled with gems? What of his singing, most learned and most charming? All these allurements,' he said, 'are by no means seemly ornaments of virtue, but are suited rather to luxury — so to flaunt before the world the highest beauty of one's body.' The Muses laughed, when they heard charges of this kind, fit to be wished for by the wise Apollo, laid against him; and they left that flute-player, vanquished in the contest, like a two-legged bear with its hide cut off, his bared and mangled flesh exposed. So Marsyas, for his punishment, both sang and fell. But Apollo, indeed, was ashamed of so lowly a victory.

4. There was a certain flute-player, Antigenidas, a honeyed performer of every little note, and likewise a skilled modulator of every mode — whether you wished the simple Aeolian, or the varied Ionian, or the plaintive Lydian, or the solemn Phrygian, or the warlike Dorian. He, then, although he was foremost in flute-playing, used to say that nothing so distressed him, nothing so vexed his soul and his mind, as that the flute-players who play at funerals should be called 'horn-blowers.' But he might bear with an even temper this sharing of names, if he had only watched the mimes: he would notice there that some, in nearly the same purple, preside, while others are beaten; and likewise, if he watched our shows of gladiators: for there too he would see one man preside and another fight to the death; the toga too is got ready both for a vow and for a funeral, and likewise corpses are covered with the cloak, and philosophers are wrapped in it.

5. . . . For it is with a good zeal that you have gathered in the theatre, as men who know that the place does not detract authority from a speech, but that this above all is to be looked to — what you find in the theatre. For if it is a mime, you will laugh; if a rope-dancer, you will fear; if it is a comedy, you will applaud; if a philosopher, you will learn.

6. The Indians, a people thronging with inhabitants and vast in their territories, set far from us toward the east, near the bendings-back of the Ocean and the risings of the sun, beneath the first stars, at the last edge of the earth, beyond the learned Egyptians and the superstitious Jews and the trading Nabataeans and the flowing-robed Arsacids and the crop-poor Ituraeans and the perfume-rich Arabs — of these Indians, then, I do not so much marvel at their heaps of ivory and their harvests of pepper and their wares of cinnamon and their temperings of iron and their mines of silver and their streams of gold; nor that the Ganges, among them, alone the greatest of all rivers, 'ruler of the eastern waters, runs apart into a hundred streams, has a hundred valleys and a hundred mouths, and is joined to the straits of Ocean by a hundredfold channel'; nor that those Indians, set there at the day's birth, yet have upon their bodies the colour of night; nor that among them huge serpents wrestle with monstrous elephants in a struggle of equal peril toward each other's destruction: for with their slippery coils they have gripped and bound them fast, so that, since they cannot free their gait nor in any way snap the scaly fetters of those most clinging serpents, the elephants must needs seek their revenge in the fall of their own mass and crush their captors with the whole weight of their body. There are among them, too, various kinds of cultivators — for I would more gladly discourse of the marvels of men than of nature; — there is among them a kind who know nothing more than to drive oxen, and for that reason the surname of cowherds has been given to them. There are also those cunning at exchanging wares and vigorous at going to battle, whether with arrows from afar or with swords at close quarters. There is besides among them a most distinguished kind, who are called the Gymnosophists. These I most admire, because they are men skilled neither in propagating the vine nor in grafting the tree nor in cleaving the soil: they do not know how to till the field, or to refine gold, or to break a horse, or to subdue a bull, or to shear a sheep or a goat, or to feed them. What then? One thing in place of all these they know: they cultivate wisdom, both the aged masters and the younger disciples. And there is nothing in them that I praise so much as that they hate sloth of soul and idleness. Accordingly, when the table is laid, before the food is set on, all the young men gather from their various places and duties to the meal, and the masters ask each in turn what good thing he has done from the rising of the sun to that hour of the day. Here one relates that he was chosen as arbiter between two parties, and that, the quarrel being healed, goodwill restored, and suspicion cleared away, he made friends again of foes; likewise another, that he obeyed his parents in some command they gave; and another, that he discovered something by his own meditation or learned it by another's demonstration; and so the rest tell of other things. He who has nothing to bring forward why he should breakfast is thrust out of doors, breakfastless, to his work.

7. To that famous Alexander, by far the most surpassing of all kings, on whom from his deeds done and dominions enlarged the surname of 'the Great' was bestowed — that a man who had won a glory all his own might never be named without some word of praise (for he alone, from the founding of the world, so far as the memory of men extends, increased by an unconquerable empire over the globe, was greater than his own fortune; he both challenged its amplest successes as a man of energy, and equalled them as one deserving, and surpassed them as a better; and he alone, illustrious without a rival, is so far beyond all that no one dares even to hope for his valour or to wish for his fortune) — of this Alexander, then, you will weary of admiring his many lofty and renowned exploits, whether ventured in war or provided for in peace, all of which my friend Clemens, the most learned and most charming of poets, has undertaken to set forth in a most beautiful poem; but first among them that famous act of Alexander's, that he would not have his likeness — by which he might be more surely handed down to posterity — commonly debased by many artists, but proclaimed throughout his whole world that no one should rashly counterfeit the king's image in bronze, in colour, or in carving; and indeed he often wrote that Polyclitus alone should cast it in bronze, that Apelles alone should portray it in colours, that Pyrgoteles alone should engrave it in relief; and that if besides these three, most noble in their several arts, any other anywhere should be found to have laid hands upon the most sacred image of the king, he would punish him no otherwise than as a man guilty of sacrilege. By this fear in all men, then, it came about that Alexander alone was everywhere most like to his own images, and that in all his statues and paintings and reliefs there was seen the same vigour of the fiercest warrior, the same genius for the highest dignity, the same form of green youth, the same grace of the upswept brow. Would that an edict of equal force prevailed in philosophy — that no one should rashly counterfeit her image — so that only a few good artists, themselves duly learned, might contemplate the whole study of wisdom in all its kinds, and that the unschooled, the sordid, the unskilled might not imitate philosophers as far as the cloak goes, and might not defile a royal discipline, discovered as much for speaking well as for living well, by speaking ill and living likewise. Yet both of these, to be sure, are very easy. For what is easier than a raving of the tongue and a baseness of manners — the one born of contempt for others, the other of contempt for oneself? For to keep oneself basely is contempt of oneself, and to assail others barbarously is an affront to one's hearers. Or does he not lay the greatest affront upon you, who thinks that you take delight in the abuse of every best man, who supposes that you do not understand evil and vicious words, or, if you do understand them, that you account them good? Who among ragamuffins, porters, and tavern-loungers is so tongueless that, if he wished to take up the cloak, he could not abuse more eloquently than they?

8. . . . For this man owes more to himself than to his rank — although even this rank of his is not shared in common with others; for out of countless men few are senators, out of senators few are noble in birth, and of these few are of consular standing, of those of consular standing few are good, and yet of the good few are learned. But to speak of rank alone: it is not lawful rashly to usurp its insignia in one's dress or in one's footwear.

9. If perchance in this most fair assembly there sits some malignant fellow from among those enviers of mine — since, as in a great city, this sort too is to be found, men who would rather disparage their betters than imitate them, and who, despairing of any likeness to those they envy, court their enmity instead, so that, being obscure under their own name, they may grow known under mine — if then any one of those spiteful men has mingled himself, like some stain, with this most splendid audience, I should wish him for a little while to cast his eyes around this incredible gathering and, having contemplated so great a throng — such as was never before seen in the auditorium of a philosopher in my presence — to reckon with himself how great a peril to the keeping of one's reputation he here incurs who is not accustomed to be despised; since it is a steep and exceedingly difficult thing to satisfy even the modest expectation of a few — especially in my case, to whom both my reputation already won and your kindly presumption concerning me allow nothing to be uttered negligently and off the top of the lungs. For who among you would pardon me a single solecism? Who would forgive even one syllable barbarously pronounced? Who would permit me rashly to babble out unpolished and faulty words, springing up as it were from the lips of madmen? — words which, nevertheless, you readily and, indeed, most deservedly pardon in others. But each single saying of mine you examine keenly, weigh diligently, reduce to the file and the sure line, and compare with the lathe and the very buskin. So great an excuse has lowliness, so great a difficulty has dignity. I acknowledge, then, my difficulty, and I do not beg you to think otherwise. Yet let not some slight and crooked resemblance hold you false in mind, since certain begging-impostors in cloaks, as I have often said, go wandering about. The herald of the proconsul mounts the tribunal himself, and is himself seen there in the toga, and indeed stands or walks for a very long time, or for the most part shouts at the top of his voice; but the proconsul himself speaks rarely, in a moderate voice, and seated, and for the most part reads from a tablet: for the herald's chattering voice is a mere service, whereas the proconsul's tablet is a verdict, which once read can neither be increased by a single letter nor again diminished, but, however it has been recited, so it is entered into the record of the province. I too suffer, in my own studies, something of a like sort, as far as my powers go; for whatever I have brought forth to you is at once taken down and read, and I am not permitted to recall it, nor again to change or amend anything of it. The greater scruple of speaking, therefore, must be observed, and indeed not in one kind of study only. For more works of mine stand in the Camenae than were the labours of Hippias in his handicrafts. What this means, if you give heed, I shall set forth more diligently and more carefully.

And Hippias is of the number of the sophists, foremost of all in the multitude of his arts, second to none in eloquence; his age was that of Socrates, his country Elis; his lineage is unknown, but his glory great, his fortune modest, yet his genius noble, his memory excellent, his studies various, his rivals many. This Hippias once came to Pisa for the Olympic contest, no less to be gazed at for his attire than to be marvelled at for the labour of it. All the things he had with him he had bought none of, but had made with his own hands — both the garments wherein he was clad, and the footwear wherewith he was shod, and the ornaments wherewith he was made conspicuous. He had to wear, next to his body, an inner tunic of finest texture, with a triple thread, of double purple: he had woven it for himself alone at home. He had for a girdle a belt of the kind whose pattern, in the Babylonian manner, was varied with wondrous colours: nor in this work had anyone helped him. He had for a mantle a white cloak, which he had thrown around him above: that cloak too I learn was his own labour. His footgear too, his sandals, he had fitted together for himself; and the golden ring on his left hand, with a most cunningly worked seal, which he displayed — he himself had both rounded the band of that ring and closed its bezel and engraved the gem. Not yet have I recounted all his things. Indeed, it will not weary me to recount what he was not ashamed to display — he who in a great assembly proclaimed that he had made for himself even the oil-flask which he carried, of lentil shape, with rounded compass and somewhat flattened roundness, and beside it a seemly little strigil, with the bowl rightly tapering at the top and the handle bent into a little tube, so that it both rested in the hand by its haft and the sweat ran from it in a little channel. Who, then, would not praise a man so manifoldly skilled in numerous arts, so magnificent in his manifold knowledge, so artful in his expertise of so many implements? Nay, I myself praise Hippias too; but I would rather emulate the fertility of his genius by the manifold instrument of learning than of furniture, and I confess that I am less skilled in the sedentary crafts: I buy my clothing from the weaver's shop, and purchase these slippers from the cobbler's; as for a ring, I neither wear one, nor do I rate the gem and the gold any higher than lead and pebbles; the strigil and the flask and the rest of the bath-utensils I buy at the market. For indeed I do not deny that I do not know how to use the shuttle nor the awl nor the file nor the lathe nor irons of that sort; but in place of these I confess that I prefer to refresh myself with a single reed-pen, fashioning poems of every kind, suited to the rod of comedy, to the lyre, to the slipper, to the buskin; likewise satires and riddles; likewise various histories of events; and besides, orations praised by the eloquent, and dialogues praised by philosophers; and these and other works of the same sort as much in Greek as in Latin, with twin desire, with equal zeal, with a like style. Would that I could indeed offer these to you, most excellent proconsul, not singly and severally but all together and in a heap, and enjoy your praiseworthy testimony for the whole of my Muse! — not, by Hercules, from any poverty of praise, which long since whole and flourishing through all your predecessors has been reserved for you, but because I wish to win the approval of no one more than of him whom I myself, before all others, deservedly approve. For so it is ordained by nature, that him whom you praise you also love, and further, him whom you love you also wish to be praised by him. And I profess myself your admirer, bound to you by no private favour, but by every public one. For I have obtained nothing from you, because I have asked nothing. But philosophy has taught me not only to love a benefit, but even to refuse an injury, and to give more to judgement than to serve my own advantage, and to prefer what is expedient for the common good rather than what is so for myself. Therefore most men love the fruit of your goodness, but I its zeal; and this I set myself to do while I contemplate your moderation in the affairs of the provincials, by which you have brought it about that those who have experienced it ought to love you for the benefit, and those who have not, for the example. For you have both benefited many by your kindness and profited all by your example. For who would not love to learn from you with what moderation it may be brought about . . . ; that gravity of yours is pleasant, your austerity mild, your steadfastness calm, your vigour winning. No proconsul, so far as I know, has the province of Africa more revered, less feared: in no year but yours has shame availed more than fear to check wrongdoing. No other man with equal power has more often done good, more rarely terrified; no one has brought with him a son more like himself in virtue. Therefore no proconsul has stayed longer at Carthage. For even at that time when you were going about the province, while Honorinus remained with us, we felt your absence the less, although we missed you the more; a paternal fairness in the son, an aged prudence in the youth, a consular authority in the legate — in short, he so models and represents all your virtues that, by my faith, the praise won in the youth would be more admirable than that won in you, were it not that you had made it such. Would that we might enjoy it forever! What have we to do with these changes of proconsuls, what with brief years and hastening months? O swift days of good men, O hurried courses of the best governors! Already, Severianus, the whole province longs for you. But Honorinus — both his own honour calls to the praetorship, and the favour of the Caesars shapes for the consulship, and our love for the present keeps him here, and the hope of Carthage pledges him for the future, relying on this one consolation of your example, that he who is sent as legate will quickly return to us as proconsul.

10. . . . 'Sun, who with glowing chariot and with steeds urged on unfoldest the flame with glowing ardour' — and likewise the Moon, disciple of his light, and the five other powers of the wandering stars: the beneficent power of Jupiter, the pleasure-bringing power of Venus, the swift power of Mercury, the baleful power of Saturn, the fiery power of Mars. There are also other powers of the gods, midway, which we may perceive but are not granted to behold, such as that of Love and the rest of that kind, whose form is unseen but whose force is known. Likewise upon the earth, in whatever way the plan of providence required, in one place it raised up the steep summits of mountains, in another it levelled the flat plain of the fields; and likewise everywhere it marked off the flowings of rivers, the green of meadows; likewise it gave flight to birds, gliding to serpents, running to wild beasts, and walking to men.

11. . . . For he suffers what those wretched men suffer who till a barren little plot of inheritance and a stony field, mere crags and thorn-brakes: since there is no fruit in their wastelands, and they see there no other grain, but the unhappy darnel and the barren wild oats hold sway, they, lacking grain of their own, go to steal another's and pluck the flowers of their neighbours — namely, that they may mingle those flowers with their own thistles; in the same way, he who is barren of his own virtue . . .

12. The parrot is a bird of India; in size it is a little less than a dove, but its colour is not that of doves; for it is not milk-white, or grey, or both — yellowish or speckled — but the parrot's colour is green both in the innermost down and in the outermost wing-feathers, save that it is distinguished by its neck alone. For its little neck is girt and crowned with a cinnabar circle, like a golden collar, by an equal sweep of brightness. The hardness of its beak is foremost: when, roused, it casts itself down in the highest flight upon some rock, it catches itself by its beak as by an anchor. But there is the same hardness in its head as in its beak. When it is forced to mimic our speech, its head is struck with an iron key, that it may feel the command of its master: this is the rod for it as it learns. And the young bird learns at once, up to the second year of its age, while its mouth is still pliant, that it may be shaped, while its tongue is tender, that it may be made to vibrate: but caught when old, it is both unteachable and forgetful. Yet for the schooling of human speech the parrot is the more apt that feeds on acorns, and on whose feet, as on a man's, five little toes are counted. For this mark is not common to all parrots, but this is proper to all: that their tongue is broader than in other birds; the more easily, by a wider quill and palate, do they articulate the words of men. And what it has learned it so sings, or rather speaks, in a manner so like to ours, that if you heard the voice, you would think it a man: for if you hear a raven, that is to croak, not to speak. Yet indeed both the raven and the parrot utter nothing else than what they have learned. If you have taught it abuse, it will rail day and night, resounding with curses: this is its song, this it thinks its melody. When it has run through all the curses it has learned, it begins the same ditty again. If you wish it to be without abuse, either its tongue must be cut out, or it must be sent back as soon as possible to its own woods.

13. . . . For philosophy has not granted me a discourse of the kind that nature has lent to certain birds — a brief and seasonal song: to the swallows the morning, to the cicadas the noonday, to the little owls the late hour, to the screech-owls the evening, to the horned owls the night, to the cocks the time before dawn; for these creatures sing among themselves at different times and in different manners, and begin their song accordingly: the cocks with their waking note, the horned owls with a moaning one, the screech-owls with a plaintive, the little owls with a twisted, the cicadas with a shrill, the swallows with a piercing-clear note. But the reason and the discourse of the philosopher is unbroken in its season, venerable to the hearing, useful to the understanding, and in its mode all-singing.

14. . . . These things, and others of the sort, Crates partly heard from Diogenes, and partly suggested to himself; at last he leaps into the forum, casts away his household estate as a burden of dung, more for toil than for use; then, a crowd having gathered, he cries out in a loud voice: 'Crates,' he says, 'sets Crates free!' And from then on, not only alone, but naked and free of all things, as long as he lived, he lived blessedly. And so much was he desired that a noble maiden, scorning younger and richer suitors, of her own accord chose him for herself. And when Crates had bared his back, which was raised with a swelling hump, and had laid down on the ground his wallet with his staff and his cloak, and declared that this was all the furniture he had for the girl, and that this was the form she had seen — therefore she should carefully consider, lest afterwards she should take occasion of complaint; — yet Hipparche accepts the condition. She had long since, she answered, considered the matter enough and been advised enough, and could find nowhere among the nations a husband either richer or fairer; let him therefore lead her where he pleased. The Cynic led her into the portico; and there, in a crowded place, in the clearest daylight, he lay down, and would have possessed the maiden, who was ready with equal constancy, had not Zeno, with the cover of his ragged cloak, defended his master's gaze in secret from the encircling ring of bystanders.

15. Samos is a small island in the Icarian sea — over against Miletus — situated to the west of it, and parted from it by no great stretch of sea: either way a second day, with gentle sailing, sets one in harbour. Its land is slow for corn, fruitless for the plough, more fertile in the olive, and is faulted neither by the vine-dresser nor by the tiller of greens. All its husbandry is in the hoe and the cutting; by the produce of these the island is more profitable than fruitful. For the rest, it is both thronged with inhabitants and famed among its guests. It has a town — by no means equal to its glory, but the half-ruined walls in many places show that it was once great. There is, indeed, the temple of Juno, of old renown; that temple, if I rightly remember the way, is twenty stades — no more — from the town along the favourable shore. There is the goddess's exceedingly rich treasury: a great store of gold and silver in platters, mirrors, cups, and utensils of every kind; great too is the abundance of bronze, of varied workmanship, of most ancient and notable craft: from which there stood before the altar a statue of Bathyllus, dedicated by the tyrant Polycrates, than which I think I have known nothing more finished; some falsely suppose it to be of Pythagoras. It is a youth of beauty worth gazing at, his hair parted with equal division from the brow, drawn back over the cheeks, while behind the hair, somewhat longer, shades the neck that gleams between, down to the bounds of the shoulder-blades; the neck full of sap, the cheeks plump, the jaw rounded, but in the middle of the chin a little dimple, and altogether the bearing of a citharist: gazing at the goddess, he is like one singing, his tunic varied with paintings flung down to his very feet, with a Greek girdle, and a mantle veils both arms as far as the joints of the hands, while the rest hangs in graceful folds; the lyre, fitted with an embossed strap, is held tightly; his hands are tender and somewhat long: the left, with fingers spread apart, works the strings, the right, with the gesture of one playing, brings the plectrum to the lyre, as though ready to strike when the voice in the song has rested awhile; and meanwhile that song he seems, with rounded mouth and lips half-open in the effort, to be distilling. But let this statue be of some youth who, beloved by the tyrant Polycrates, sings an Anacreontic strain for friendship's sake; for it is far from being a statue of the philosopher Pythagoras: he was indeed a Samian by birth, and exceedingly distinguished for beauty, and by far the most learned in playing and in all music, and was of about that age in which Polycrates held Samos; but it was by no means as a philosopher that he was beloved by the tyrant. For just when Polycrates had begun to rule, Pythagoras secretly fled from the island, having lately lost his father Mnesarchus, whom I find to have sought, among the sedentary craftsmen, praise rather than profit in the most skilful engraving of gems. There are those who say that Pythagoras at that time, among the captives of King Cambyses, when he was being carried into Egypt, had for teachers the Persian Magi, and especially Zoroaster, the high priest of every divine mystery, and that afterwards he was ransomed by a certain Gillus, a chief of the Crotonians. But indeed the more current report holds that of his own accord he sought the Egyptian disciplines, and there learned from the priests the incredible powers of their rites, the wondrous turns of numbers, and the most ingenious formulas of geometry; and not satisfied in his soul with these arts, he next visited the Chaldeans, and thence the Brahmans — these are wise men, a people of India — and so visited the Gymnosophists of those Brahmans. The Chaldeans displayed the science of the stars, the fixed circuits of the wandering powers, the various effects of both in the nativities of men, and likewise the remedies of healing, sought out at great cost over land and sky and sea for mortals; the Brahmans, on the other hand, contributed most of his philosophy — what are the teachings of the mind, what the exercises of the body, how many are the parts of the soul, how many the turns of life, what torments or rewards await each of the shades below according to his desert. Moreover, Pherecydes, sprung from the island of Syros, who first dared to write with the binding of verses cast off, in loose speech, in unfettered prose — him too Pythagoras revered as a master, and when he was dissolved by the corruption of an unspeakable disease into the scaliness of a serpent's mange, he reverently buried him. He is said also to have studied natural philosophy with Anaximander of Miletus, and to have followed, for the sake of learning, the famous Cretan Epimenides, the soothsayer and expiator, and likewise Leodamas, the disciple of Creophylus — which Creophylus is recorded to have been the host of the poet Homer and his rival in song. Schooled by so many teachers, having drained throughout the whole world so many and so manifold cups of the disciplines, a man especially of vast genius, and indeed more august than the grasp of a man's mind, the first to name and to found philosophy, taught his disciples nothing before silence, and the first exercise with him for the future sage was to restrain his whole tongue, and the words 'which the poets call winged' — those words, their feathers plucked off, to press within the wall of his white teeth. This, I say, was the first rudiment of wisdom: to learn to meditate, to unlearn to chatter. Yet they did not unaccustom their voice for the whole of their lives, nor did all follow the master tongueless for an equal time, but for the graver men a measured silence of a brief space seemed enough, while the more talkative were punished, as it were, by an exile of the voice for about five years. Further, our Plato, deviating not even a little from this sect, Pythagorizes in most things; and I too — that I might be adopted into his name by my masters — learned both in the Academic meditations: both, when there is need of speech, to speak unwearied, and, when there is need of silence, gladly to be silent. By which moderation I seem to have won from all your predecessors no less the praise of seasonable silence than the testimony of timely speech.

16. Before I begin to render you thanks, foremost men of Africa, for the statue which you honourably requested for me when present and kindly decreed when absent, I wish first to plead my cause before you — why for a good many days I was absent from the sight of the auditorium and betook myself to the Persian waters, those most pleasant places of bathing for the sound and of healing for the sick; for I have so resolved to make all the time of my life approved by you, to whom I have dedicated myself firmly and forever, that I shall do nothing great, nothing even small, but that I shall have you both for witnesses and for judges of it — why, then, I suddenly withdrew myself from this most splendid sight of yours. I shall recount, as a most apt example of this matter — how unforeseen perils suddenly rise up for men — the case of Philemon the comic poet. You who know his genius well enough, learn of his death in a few words. Or do you wish a few words about his genius too?

This Philemon was a poet, a writer of the Middle Comedy, who composed plays for the stage along with Menander, and contended with him — unequal perhaps, but certainly his rival. For indeed he even conquered him many a time — it is shameful to say it. Yet you may find in him much wit, plots wittily turned, recognitions clearly unfolded, characters suited to the matter, sentiments fitting to life, jests not below the comic slipper, serious things not rising to the tragic buskin. Rare in him are seductions, harmless his errors, lawful his loves. Nor for all that does he lack the perjured pander, the ardent lover, the cunning little slave, the deceiving mistress, the restraining wife, the indulgent mother, the chiding uncle, the helpful comrade, the warring soldier; but also gluttonous parasites, niggardly parents, and saucy harlots. With these merits, long famous in the comic art, he was by chance reciting a part of a play which he had lately made, and when now, in the third act — the sort of thing that loves to happen in comedy — he was stirring up the more delightful emotions, a rain rising suddenly (just as lately happened to me when I came to you) compelled the gathering of the auditorium and the begun recitation to be put off; yet, at the demand of various people, he promised to read through the rest without interruption on the following day. On the morrow, therefore, with the greatest zeal a huge throng of men assembled; each placed himself as near as possible over against the platform; a latecomer nodded to his friends, that they might grant him room to sit; those at the outermost edge complained of being crowded out of the wedge of seats; with the whole theatre packed, there was a great press, and they began to grumble among themselves; those who had not been present asked about what had been said before, those who had been present recalled what they had heard, and all, now knowing the earlier part, awaited the sequel. Meanwhile the day went on, and Philemon did not come to the appointment; some murmured at the poet's slowness, more defended him. But when they had sat longer than was fair, and Philemon appeared nowhere, men were sent from among the more ready to summon him, and they found him dead on his own little couch. He had just stiffened, his breath given up, and lay leaning on his bed, like one in thought: still his hand was entwined in the scroll, still his face was pressed upon the open book, but now empty of life, forgetful of the book, and careless of the auditorium. Those who had entered stood awhile, struck by a thing so unlooked-for, by the marvel of a death so beautiful. Then, returning to the people, they reported that the poet Philemon, who was awaited to finish his feigned plot in the theatre, had already at home brought his true play to its close; that he had now bidden human affairs 'farewell and applaud,' but to his own household 'grieve and beat the breast'; that yesterday's rain had foreboded their tears for them; that his comedy had come to the funeral torch sooner than to the nuptial; and that, since so excellent a poet had laid aside the mask of life, they must go straight from his auditorium to his obsequies — that now his bones must be gathered, his poems soon after.

These things, done as I have related, I had learned long ago, but today I have recalled them from my own peril. For, as you doubtless remember, when my recitation was hindered by the rain, I put it off, with your leave, to the near day, and indeed almost after the example of Philemon; for on that same day in the wrestling-school I so violently twisted my ankle that I was within little of breaking the joint clean off the leg. Yet the joint gave way at its place, and from that dislocation there is still a flux. And while I was setting it back with a mighty wrench, I stiffened for a good while, my body bathed in sweat; thereupon a bitter pain of the bowels arose, which was stilled a little before it should at last violently take my life and drive me, in Philemon's fashion, to depart before my death rather than to my couch, to fill out my fate rather than my words, to consummate my soul rather than my story. As soon, then, as at the Persian waters, by their mild temperance and no less by their soothing fomentation, I had recovered the power of walking — not yet, indeed, fit to lean upon it, but as much as seemed enough for one hastening to you — I was coming to render what I had promised, when meanwhile you, by your kindness, not only took away my lameness, but even added swiftness.

Was I not, then, bound to make haste, that for this honour I might render you many thanks, for which I had made no prayer? Not but that the greatness of Carthage deserves even from a philosopher a prayer for honour; but that your benefit might be whole and untouched, if no asking of mine had broken anything from its grace — that is, that it might be in every way unbought. For neither does he who prays buy at a slight price, nor does he who is asked receive a small payment; so much so that you would rather buy all utensils than ask for them. This, I think, is chiefly to be observed in the matter of honour; he who has wrung it out laboriously owes himself a single thanks, that he obtained it; but he who has gained it without the trouble of canvassing owes a double thanks to the givers, both that he did not ask and that he received. A double thanks, therefore, I owe you. Nay rather, a manifold one, which everywhere indeed and always I shall proclaim. But now, for the present, in this book composed by me for this honour, I shall, as is my wont, publicly attest it: for there is a fixed method by which a philosopher ought to give thanks for a statue publicly decreed to him, from which I shall depart a little in the book which the most excellent honour of Aemilianus Strabo demands — a book which I shall hope to be able to compose conveniently; enough that I approve it today among you — for he is so great in his studies that he is more ennobled by his own genius than by his patrician consulship. In what words, then, Aemilianus Strabo — of all men who ever were, or are, or even shall be, most illustrious among the best, best among the most illustrious, most learned among both — in what words at last shall I render and recount thanks for this disposition of yours toward me, by what fitting method shall I celebrate your so honourable kindness, by what requital shall I match with the glory of speech the renown of your deed? I have not yet, by Hercules, found out. But I shall seek diligently and strive, while I am mindful of myself, while this breath rules these limbs. For now, for the present — I shall not deny it — joy drowns out my eloquence, and thought is hindered by pleasure; and the mind, taken up with delight, would rather for the present rejoice than proclaim. What shall I do? I desire to seem grateful, but for very joy I have not yet leisure to give thanks. Let no one — let no one of those gloomier folk — wish to find fault with me in this, that I revere my honour no less than I understand it, that I exult in so great a testimony from a most illustrious and most learned man; for he bore witness to me in the council-hall of the Carthaginians, no less most splendidly than most kindly, a man of consular rank; and he whose mere acquaintance is the highest honour stood by me, in a manner, as my praiser before the foremost men of Africa. For, as I learn, two days ago, a petition being sent in by which he asked a conspicuous place for my statue, he first of all recalled the bonds of friendship between us, honourably begun in our fellowship of studies under the same masters; then afterwards he reviewed all my wishes according to the steps of his own dignity. Now that first benefit, that he remembers himself my fellow-pupil. Behold this second benefit also, that so great a man proclaims that he loves me as an equal. Nay, he also recalled that elsewhere among nations and cities honours of statues and others had been decreed me. What can be added to this proclamation of a man of consular rank? Nay more, he taught, by the argument of his having undertaken the priesthood, that the highest honour of Carthage is mine. Now this is a peculiar benefit, and far excelling all the rest, that a most weighty witness commends me to you even by his own vote. To crown all, he has promised that he will set up a statue to me at Carthage at his own cost — a man to whom all the provinces are glad to set up four-horse and six-horse chariots everywhere among the nations. What, then, remains for the tribunal and summit of my honour, for the crown of my praise? Nay rather, what remains? Aemilianus Strabo, a man of consular rank, soon to be — by the wishes of all — proconsul, gave his verdict concerning my honours in the council-hall of the Carthaginians, and all followed his authority. Does not this seem to you a decree of the senate? What of this, that all the Carthaginians too, who were present in that most holy council-hall, so gladly decreed a place to be set up, that you might know that for this reason they brought forward, as I hope, a second statue to be set in the next session — that, with the veneration, with the reverence of their consular preserved, they might seem not to have rivalled his deed, but to have followed it; that is, that on an unbroken day a public benefit might come to me? For the rest, the excellent magistrates and most benevolent chiefs remembered that what they wished was entrusted to them by you. Should I know this and not proclaim it? I should be ungrateful. Nay, to your whole order also, for your most ample deserts toward me, I give and hold the greatest thanks I can, you who adorned me in that council-hall with the most honourable acclamations — in which council-hall even to be merely named is the highest honour. Therefore, that which was difficult to do and in truth arduous was not thought so: to be acceptable to the people, to please the order, to be approved by the magistrates and chiefs — this — be it said without offence — has now in a manner befallen me. What then remains for the honour of my statue, but the price of the bronze and the service of the craftsman? These have never been wanting to me even in middling cities, much less are they likely to be wanting at Carthage, where the most splendid order is wont rather to judge of even greater matters than to count the cost. But of this I shall speak more fully when you have acted more fully. Nay more, to you also, nobility of the senators, glory of the citizens, dignity of my friends, soon, at the dedication of my statue, with a book also composed, I shall more fully sing my thanks, and shall entrust to that book that it may go through all the provinces and, from this place over the whole world and from this time over all time, everywhere among the nations and forever throughout the years, set forth the praises of your good deed.

17. . . . Let those see to it whose custom it is to thrust themselves even upon idle governors, that by the impatience of their tongue they may seek commendation for their wit, and may boast of an affected show of friendship with you. For both of these are far from me, Scipio Orfitus. For both my poor genius, such as it is, has long been better known to men, according to their grasp of it, than to need any new commendation; and your favour, and that of men like you, I prefer rather than parade, and I am more a desirer of so great a friendship than a boaster of it, since no one can desire save truly, whereas anyone may falsely boast. Moreover, I have so always from my earliest age diligently cultivated the liberal arts, and have so won that reputation for character and studies both in our province and at Rome among your friends — you yourself being a most ample witness — that my friendship ought to be no less sought by you than yours coveted by me. For indeed not readily to grant pardon belongs to one who but rarely seeks the assiduity of him who asks it; and the surest proof of love is to delight in frequent meetings, to be vexed at absences, to celebrate the persevering, to long for the departing — since the presence of him must needs be welcome whose absence pains. For the rest, a voice held back by perpetual silence will be no more of use than nostrils stuffed with a cold, ears barred with filth, eyes overspread with a film. What if the hands be bound with handcuffs, what if the feet be straitened with fetters — shall then the mind, the governor of us, be either loosed in sleep, or sunk in wine, or buried in disease? Surely, as a sword grows bright with use, but rusts with lying idle, so the voice, hidden in the scabbard of silence, is blunted by long-lasting torpor. Disuse breeds sloth in all things, sloth breeds lethargy. Tragic actors, if they do not declaim daily, lose the clearness of their windpipes; therefore by repeated bellowing they clear away their hoarseness. For the rest, the empty labour of exercising the very voice of man is in many ways surpassed by a superfluous effort, since the trumpet is harsher in its blare than the voice of man, the lyre more varied in its harmony, the flute more delightful in its plaint, the pipe more pleasant in its whisper, the war-horn farther-reaching in its signal. I forbear to speak of the untaught sounds of many animals, admirable in their distinct properties: such as the deep lowing of bulls, the shrill howling of wolves, the mournful trumpeting of elephants, the cheerful neighing of horses, and likewise the cries of birds when stirred, and likewise the angry roarings of lions, and the rest of the voices of that kind, fierce and clear, which either hostile rage or kindly pleasure rouses. In place of these the voice given to man by heaven is indeed narrower, but it has greater usefulness for minds than delight for the ears. Wherefore the more ought it to be celebrated by frequent use, and indeed only in an auditorium, with so great a man presiding, in this excellent assembly of many learned, many kindly men; for indeed, even if I were thoroughly skilled at the lyre, I would seek only crowded gatherings of men. In solitude Orpheus sang among the woods, Arion among the dolphins — for, if we trust the tales, Orpheus, forsaken in exile, and Arion, cast headlong from the ship; the one a soother of monstrous beasts, the other a delighter of pitying creatures, both most wretched singers, since not of their own will toward praise, but of necessity toward safety, did they strive. I should admire them the more highly if they had pleased men rather than beasts. These secret places would surely be fitter for birds — for blackbirds and nightingales and swans. And the blackbirds in remote wastes warble the song of their childhood, the nightingales in the African solitude chatter the strain of their youth, the swans by trackless rivers practise the song of their old age. But indeed he who is about to bring forth a song useful to boys and youths and old men, let him sing in the midst of thousands of men, as is this song of mine concerning the virtues of Orfitus — late perhaps, but serious, and no less welcome than useful to the boys and youths and old men of Carthage, whom that most excellent of all proconsuls relieved by his indulgence and, with their longing tempered and their remedy moderated, gave to the boys plenty, to the youths cheer, to the old men security. I fear indeed, Scipio, since I have touched on your praises, lest for the present either your noble modesty or my honest bashfulness should rein me in. But I cannot but touch, out of the very many things which we admire in you most deservedly, out of these very many at least the very fewest. Recall them with me, you citizens saved by him.

18. So great a multitude have you gathered to listen, that I ought rather to congratulate Carthage, that it has so many friends of learning, than to excuse myself, that a philosopher has not refused to discourse. For both the throng has been collected in keeping with the greatness of the city, and the place has been chosen in keeping with the greatness of the throng. Besides, in an auditorium this kind of thing ought to be looked at: not the marble paving, nor the planking of the stage-front, nor the colonnade of the scene, nor yet the loftiness of the roofs, nor the gleam of the panelled ceilings, nor the curve of the seats; nor that here at other times a mime raves, a comic actor chatters, a tragic actor declaims, a rope-dancer risks his neck, a juggler steals, a player gesticulates, and all the other stage-folk display to the people what belongs to each one's art; but, all these set aside, nothing more ought to be looked at than the good sense of those assembled and the discourse of the speaker. Wherefore, as poets are wont here in the selfsame place to set up various cities — as that tragic poet who makes it said in the theatre: 'Bacchus, who dwellest in these august places of Cithaeron'; likewise that comic poet: 'In part a very small piece of ground does Plautus ask of your great and pleasant walls, whither he may transfer Athens without architects' — so let it be permitted me too to set up here no far-off and overseas city, but indeed the council-hall or the library of Carthage itself. Hold it, therefore, accordingly: if I produce things worthy of the council-hall, as though you heard me in the council-hall itself; if learned things be produced, as though they were read in the library. Would that, in keeping with the multitude of my auditory, a copious eloquence were at hand for me, and that I did not most of all fail just here, where I should wish myself most eloquent. But it is a true word indeed which they speak who say that nothing whatever is so prosperously given to man by heaven but that there is mingled with it some difficulty, so that even in every amplest gladness there lies beneath some small complaint, by a certain conjunction of honey and gall: where the udder, there the tumour. This I prove by experience both at other times and even now at the present. For the more I seem to have among you votes of commendation, the more am I, out of too great reverence for you, the more hesitant to speak; and I who among strangers have very often most readily debated, the same now among my own people falter, and — strange to tell — am deterred by the very enticements, and reined in by the spurs, and held back by the very incitements. Or have I not many encouragements at hand among you, in that I am to you neither a stranger to your hearth, nor unseen in my boyhood, nor a foreigner to my masters, nor unknown in my sect, nor unheard in my voice, nor unread or disapproved in my books? For both my country is in the council of Africa, that is, in yours, and my boyhood was passed among you, and my masters were yours, and my sect, though confirmed at Attic Athens, was yet here begun; and my voice, in either tongue, has now been well known to your ears these six years past; nay, my books too are nowhere prized at a dearer praise than that they are approved by your judgement. These so great and so manifold invitations, common to us, allure you to listen no less than they retard me from daring; and I could more easily proclaim your praises elsewhere among the nations than among yourselves: so among one's own people each man's modesty is constrained, but among strangers truth is free. Always and everywhere, indeed, I celebrate you as my parents and first masters, and pay you a recompense — not that which the sophist Protagoras bargained for and did not receive, but that which Thales the wise neither bargained for and yet received. I see what you ask: I shall tell of both.

Protagoras, who was a sophist far and widely learned and, among the chief discoverers of rhetoric, exceedingly eloquent, a fellow-citizen and contemporary of the natural philosopher Democritus — whence his learning was supplied to him — this Protagoras, they say, bargained with his own disciple Euathlus for an exceedingly rich fee on a rash condition: that he should then at last give him that money if he won his first apprentice case before the judges. Therefore Euathlus, after he had learned thoroughly — being otherwise crafty and gifted for cunning — all those wheedlings of the judges, and snares for adversaries, and artifices of speakers, content to know what he had desired, began to be unwilling for what he had bargained, but by cunningly weaving delays to baffle his master, and for a good while neither to plead nor to pay, until Protagoras summoned him before the judges and, having set forth the condition on which he had taken him to teach, propounded a double-edged argument in two directions: 'For whether I win,' he said, 'you will have to pay the fee as one condemned, or whether you win, you will none the less have to pay as one who bargained, since you will have won this first case before the judges. Thus, if you win, you have fallen into the condition; if you lose, into the condemnation.' What more? The reasoning seemed to the judges keen and unanswerable. But indeed Euathlus, as the most perfect disciple of so great an old hand, turned that two-headed argument back. 'For if it is so,' he said, 'in neither way do I owe what you seek. For either I win and am dismissed by the judgement, or I lose and am released by the bargain, by which I do not owe the fee if I am beaten in this first case before the judges. Thus in every way the verdict frees me if I win, the bargain if I lose.' Do not these arguments of the sophists seem to you, turned upon each other in the fashion of thorns which the wind has rolled together, to cling to one another, with equal prickles on either side, with like penetration, with mutual wound? And therefore the fee of Protagoras, so harsh, so thorny, is to be left to the crafty and the greedy: to whom, to be sure, that other fee, which they relate Thales advised, is by far preferable.

Thales of Miletus, easily the chief of those seven men renowned for wisdom — for he was the first discoverer of geometry among the Greeks, and the surest investigator of the nature of things, and the most expert contemplator of the stars — found out the greatest matters with little lines: the circuits of the seasons, the blasts of the winds, the courses of the stars, the resounding marvels of thunder, the slanting paths of the constellations, the yearly returnings of the sun, and likewise the increasings of the moon as it grows, the wanings of it as it ages, and the obstacles when it fails. He too, indeed, already in his declining old age devised a divine reckoning concerning the sun, which I have not only learned but have also confirmed by experiment — by how many times the sun measures with its own magnitude the circle which it traverses. This, lately discovered by him, Thales is said to have taught to Mandrolytus of Priene, who, exceedingly delighted by the new and unlooked-for knowledge, bade him choose what reward he wished to be paid him for so great an instruction. 'It will be reward enough for me,' he said, 'Thales the wise, if, when you have begun to bring forth to any what you have learned from me, you do not claim it for yourself, but proclaim me rather than another as the discoverer of that finding.' A fair reward indeed, and worthy of such a man, and lasting; for both today and ever after that reward shall be paid to Thales by all of us who have truly come to know his heavenly studies.

This reward I pay you, Carthaginians, everywhere among the nations, for the disciplines which in my boyhood I gained among you. For everywhere I bear myself a foster-child of your city; everywhere I celebrate you with praises of every kind; your disciplines I cultivate the more studiously, your wealth I proclaim the more gloriously, your very gods I venerate the more religiously. Now too, therefore, I shall take for myself, before your ears, a most auspicious beginning from the god Aesculapius, who, propitious, protects with his undoubted godhead the citadel of our Carthage. To this god a hymn in Greek and Latin verse, dedicated to him by me, behold, I shall now sing. For I am not unknown to him as a worshipper, nor a recent devotee, nor an ungrateful priest, and I have already venerated him in both prose and verse, so that even now I shall sing his hymn in both tongues, to which I have likewise prefixed a dialogue, in Greek and Latin alike, in which there shall converse Sabidius Severus and Julius Perseus — men deservedly most friendly both to each other and to you and to the public interests, equal in learning and in eloquence and in benevolence, doubtful whether they are quieter in modesty, or readier in industry, or more illustrious in honours; among whom, though there is the greatest concord, yet this is the only rivalry and the only contest on this one point — which of them loves Carthage the more; and both strive with the utmost strength from their very marrow, and neither is vanquished. Their conversation, which I judged both most pleasant for you to hear, fitting for me to compose, and a religious thing to dedicate, I set at the beginning of the book, making one of those who studied with me at Athens inquire of Perseus, in Greek, what I had discoursed the day before in the temple of Aesculapius; and little by little I join Severus to them, to whom for the present I have given the part of the Roman tongue. For Perseus too, although he himself could do it excellently, will yet today speak Attic for you.

19. That famous Asclepiades, among the foremost of physicians — if you except Hippocrates alone, the chief of all the rest — was also the first to discover how to aid the sick with wine, but, of course, by giving it at the right time: of which observation he had a thorough mastery, as one who most diligently noted the disordered or irregular beatings of the pulse. He, then, when he chanced to be returning into the city and coming back from his suburban estate, saw within the city's bounds a great funeral set out, and very many men, in a vast multitude who had come for the obsequies, standing around it, all most mournful and most shabby in their dress. He came nearer, whether that he might learn, after the manner of the human disposition, who it might be, since no one had answered his inquiry, or whether that he himself might detect something in the case by his art. Certainly he brought a destiny to a man who was lying there and all but laid out. Already all the limbs of that wretched man were sprinkled with spices, already his very mouth was anointed with fragrant ointment, already he was embalmed, already the pyre was almost made ready; when, having contemplated him, having most diligently noted certain signs, he handled the man's body again and again, and found in him a hidden life. Straightway he cried out that the man lived: 'far off, then, let them cast the torches, far off let them remove the fires, let them pull down the pyre, let them carry back the funeral feast from the tomb to the table.' Meanwhile a murmur arose; some said the physician was to be believed, some even mocked the medicine. At last, even his kinsmen being unwilling — whether because they themselves now held the inheritance, or because they had as yet no faith in him — Asclepiades hardly and with difficulty obtained a brief reprieve for the dead man, and so, having wrested him from the hands of the undertakers, as it were from the world below, by right of return he carried him home, and straightway revived his breath, straightway by certain medicaments called forth the soul lurking in the hiding-places of the body.

20. There is a famous saying of a wise man over the table: 'The first cup,' he said, 'belongs to thirst, the second to cheer, the third to pleasure, the fourth to madness.' But indeed the cup of the Muses, on the contrary, the more frequent and the purer it is, the nearer it brings one to soundness of soul. The first cup, with the rudiments of the schoolmaster, rouses; the second, with the doctrine of the grammarian, equips; the third, with the eloquence of the rhetorician, arms. Thus far it is drunk by most. But I have drunk other cups too at Athens: the stirring cup of poetry, the limpid cup of geometry, the sweet cup of music, the somewhat austere cup of dialectic, and now indeed the insatiable and nectared cup of universal philosophy. For Empedocles composes poems, Plato dialogues, Socrates hymns, Epicharmus measures, Xenophon histories, Crates satires; your own Apuleius cultivates all these and the nine Muses with equal zeal — with greater will, to be sure, than ability — and so much the more perhaps is he to be praised, because in all good things the endeavour lies in the praise, but the accomplishment in chance; just as, on the contrary, in evil deeds even the crimes only thought of, not yet accomplished, are punished — with a bloody mind, a clean hand. Therefore, just as for punishment it is enough to have meditated what deserves punishment, so for praise it is enough to have attempted what deserves proclaiming. And what greater praise, or surer, than to speak well of Carthage, where you are a whole city of the most learned, among whom the boys learn every discipline, the youths display it, the old men teach it? Carthage, the venerable mistress of our province; Carthage, the heavenly Muse of Africa; Carthage, the Camena of the toga-clad.

21. Sometimes even necessary haste has its honourable delays, and often you would prefer your purpose to be interrupted: for even those who have need of a road accomplished at full speed, so far prefer to hang upon a horse rather than to sit in a carriage, on account of the troubles of the baggage and the weights of the vehicles and the delays of the wheels and the joltings of the ruts — add too the rolling stones and the knotty stumps and the streams of the plains and the slopes of the hills — those, then, who wish to avoid all these hindrances, and choose for themselves a horse to carry them, of lasting strength and lively swiftness, that is, strong to bear and rapid to go, which 'glides over plains and hills with a single pace,' as Lucilius says — yet, when they fly along the road on that horse at full speed, if meanwhile they catch sight of one of the chief men, a noble fellow, well-counselled, well-known, although they are in great haste, yet for the sake of his honour they check their course, slacken their pace, slow their horse, and at once leap down to the ground; the switch which they carry for whipping the horse, that rod, they transfer to the left hand, and so, with the right hand free, they approach and salute him; and if he ask anything at some length, they walk awhile and talk awhile, and in short gladly spend any amount of delay upon the courtesy.

22. That famous Crates, the follower of Diogenes, who, like a household god, was reverenced among the men of his age at Athens: no house was ever closed to him, nor was there any secret of a householder so hidden but that Crates might seasonably break in upon it, the arbiter and judge of all suits and quarrels among kinsmen; and as the poets relate that Hercules of old, by his valour, subdued those monstrous prodigies of men and beasts and cleansed the world, so likewise against wrath and envy and avarice and lust and the other monsters and disgraces of the human soul this philosopher was a very Hercules: he drove all those plagues from men's minds, cleansed households, mastered wickedness, half-naked himself and conspicuous with a club, sprung too from Thebes, whence it is recorded that Hercules came. Therefore, before he became fully Crates, he was numbered among the chief men of Thebes: a choice lineage, a numerous household of servants, a house adorned with an ample vestibule, himself well-clad, well-estated. But afterwards, when he understood that no defence was bequeathed him in his household estate on which he might rely to pass his life, that all things are fluid and unstable, that whatever of riches is under heaven, all of it is nothing at all toward living well . . .

23. Just as a good ship, skilfully made, well compacted within, elegantly painted without, with a movable rudder, firm cables, a tall mast, a notable masthead, gleaming sails — in short, with all its tackle apt for use and seemly to behold — yet this ship, if either the steersman does not guide it or a tempest drives it, how easily, with all those excellent furnishings, has the deep swallowed it or the rocks shattered it! And physicians too, when they have entered to a sick man, that they may visit him, none of them, because they see most beautiful panel-pictures in the house and ceilings overlaid with gold and crowds of boys and youths of surpassing beauty standing in the chamber about the bed, bids the sick man be of good cheer; but, when he has sat down close beside him, he takes the man's hand, handles it, and catches the pulse and the movements of the veins: if he finds there anything disturbed and disordered, he reports to him that he is ill with his disease. That rich man is forbidden food; that day, in his own house, plentiful as it is, he receives no bread, while meanwhile his whole household are merry and feast — and in this matter his condition avails him nothing.