Oration 4

They say that Alexander once met with Diogenes, who was greatly at leisure, while he himself was not at all so. For the one was king of the Macedonians and of many others besides, while the other was an exile from Sinope. And many tell and write of this, admiring and praising Alexander none the less because, though ruler of so many and the most powerful man of that day, he did not disdain the company of a poor man who had understanding and the power to endure.

For all men by nature rejoice to see wisdom honored by the greatest authority and power, so that they not only relate the truth about such matters, but even invent additions, exaggerating, and besides stripping the wise of their other advantages—such as wealth and honors and bodily strength—that the wise may seem to be honored for their understanding alone.

And I will tell how that meeting of theirs probably came about, since we too happen to be at leisure from other affairs.

Now Alexander, as they say, was of all men the most ambitious, and most enamored of glory and of leaving as great a name as possible among all Greeks and barbarians; and he desired to be honored not only by men everywhere, but, if it were somehow possible, by the birds and by the beasts in the mountains.

All others, then, he despised, and thought none worthy to contend with him in this matter—neither the Persian, nor the Scythian, nor the Indian, nor among the Greeks any man or any city.

For he perceived that nearly all were corrupted in their souls by luxury and idleness and gain, and were slaves to pleasure. But hearing about Diogenes—the words he spoke and the deeds he did, and how he bore his exile—he sometimes despised the man's poverty and frugality, being young and reared in royal vanity;

but often he admired and envied him for his courage and endurance, and most of all for his fame, that being such a man he was known and admired by all the Greeks, and that no other could become such as he in ambition;

and that he himself had need of the Macedonian phalanx, the Thessalian cavalry, the Thracians and Paeonians and many others, if he meant to march wherever he wished and obtain what he desired, whereas the other went off alone in perfect safety, not by day only but by night too, wherever he pleased;

and that he himself had need of much gold and silver to accomplish any of his designs, and besides, if he was to keep the Macedonians and the other Greeks obedient, must often court the rulers and the rest of the crowd with words and with gifts,

whereas Diogenes wheedled no man with flattery, but spoke the truth to all, and, though possessing not a single drachma, did as he wished and failed of none of his purposes, and lived alone the life he held to be best and most happy, and would not have exchanged that king's kingship, nor the wealth of the Persians and Medes, for his own poverty.

Stung by these thoughts—that anyone should surpass him while living so easily and free of trouble, and besides be no less renowned, and supposing too, perhaps, that he might gain some benefit from the man's company—he had long desired to behold the man and to consort with him;

and when he had come to Corinth and received the embassies from the Greeks and settled the other affairs of the allies, he told those about him that he wished to have a little leisure, and went off—not to the door of Diogenes; for Diogenes had no door, neither great nor small, nor private house nor hearth, as the prosperous have, but he used the cities for his houses,

and there he passed his time in the public buildings and the temples, which are established for the gods, and held the whole earth to be his hearth, which is indeed the common hearth and nurse of men.

And at the time he happened to be passing his time in the Craneum alone; for he had no disciples nor any such crowd about him, as the sophists and flute-players and the trainers of choruses have. So Alexander approached him as he sat, and greeted him. And Diogenes looked up at him fiercely, like a lion, and bade him stand a little aside; for he happened to be warming himself in the sun.

So Alexander at once admired the man's courage and his composure, that he was not dismayed when Alexander stood over him. For somehow the brave are by nature given to love the brave, while the cowardly regard them with suspicion and hate them as enemies, but welcome and love the base. Whence to the one truth and frank speech are sweetest of all, but to the others flattery and falsehood; and these gladly listen to those who consort with them to gratify, those to those who speak for truth.

So Diogenes, pausing a little, asked him who he was and with what purpose he had come to him—"or," he said, "is it to take something of mine?" "Why," said Alexander, "have you money, and have you anything you might share?" "Much, indeed," he replied, "and worth much—of which I do not know whether you will ever be able to partake. But I do not happen to possess swords or cauldrons or mixing-bowls or couches and tables, such as they say Darius possesses among the Persians."

"What," said Alexander, "do you not know Alexander the king?" "The name, at least," he said, "I hear many speaking, like jackdaws flitting about; but the man himself I do not know;

for I am not acquainted with his mind." "But now," said Alexander, "you shall know his mind too; for I have come for this very thing, both to offer myself for you to study and to look upon you." "But you would find it hard to see me," he said, "as those weak in the eyes find it hard to see the light. Yet tell me this: are you that Alexander whom they call supposititious?" And hearing this, Alexander blushed and grew angry, but restrained himself; and he repented having thought fit to enter into conversation with a man boorish and boastful, as he supposed him to be.

So Diogenes, perceiving that he was disturbed, wished to change his soul about, as boys do the dice. And when Alexander asked, "Whence did it occur to you to call us supposititious?" "Whence," he replied, "I also hear your mother saying these things about you. Or is it not Olympias who said that you are not the son of Philip, but of a serpent, or of Ammon, or of I know not what god or man or beast? And so indeed you would be supposititious."

"Or do you not call those cocks bastards which are born of unlike parents? Or does the difference between a god and a mortal woman not seem to you greater than that between a true-bred cock and a base one? If, then, you were born as they say, you too would be a bastard, like such a cock. And perhaps you will even be the most warlike of all the rest because of this bastardy."

At this Alexander smiled and was pleased as never before, and Diogenes seemed to him not only not boorish, but the most adroit of all and the only one who knew how to gratify. "What then," he said, "does the saying seem to you true or false?" "It is uncertain," he replied;

"for if you are temperate and brave and understand the kingly art of Zeus, nothing prevents you from being a son of Zeus;

since this too they say Homer means, that Zeus is the father, as of the gods, so of men—but not of slaves, nor of any base or ignoble man. But if you are cowardly and soft and unfree, you belong neither to gods nor to good men.

But while to those once called the Sown Men at Thebes there was, they say, a token of their race—a spear, I think, upon the body—and whoever did not have this token did not seem to be one of the Sown Men, do you not think that there is a token in the soul of the offspring of Zeus, by which they will be made manifest to those able to recognize whether they are born of him or not?" So Alexander was greatly pleased with this argument.

After this he asked him, "How might one best be king?" And Diogenes, glaring terribly at him, said, "But it is not possible to be king badly, any more than to be good badly. For the king is the best of men, being most brave and most just and most humane, and unconquered by any toil or any desire.

Or do you think the man unable to drive is a charioteer? Or one without experience of steering a pilot, or one not knowing how to heal a physician? It is not so. As, then, it is not possible to steer save in a pilot's way, so neither to be king save in a kingly way—not even if all the Greeks and barbarians declare it, and attach to him many diadems and scepters and tiaras, as the necklaces are attached to exposed infants, that they may not go unrecognized."

And Alexander, fearing lest he should be shown up as ignorant of the kingly science, said, "And who do you think can hand on this art?

Or where must one go to learn it?" Then Diogenes said, "But you know it, if indeed the saying of Olympias is true and you were born of Zeus; for he is the one who first and chiefly has this science, and shares it with whom he wishes; and whomever he shares it with, all these both are and are called sons of Zeus.

Or do you think it is the sophists who teach men to be kings? But the most of them know not how to be kings—nay, not even how to live.

Do you not know," he said, "that education is twofold: the one a divine education, the other a human one? Now the divine is great and strong and easy; the human is small and weak and full of many dangers and no little deceit; yet it is necessary that this be added to the other, if it is to come about rightly.

And most men call this education—as I think, a kind of child's play—and reckon the man who knows the most letters, Persian and Greek and Syrian and Phoenician, and who has consorted with the most books, to be the wisest and best educated; but again, when they meet with some of these who are wretched and cowardly and money-loving, they say the thing is worth little, and the man too; whereas the other they sometimes call education, sometimes courage and high-mindedness.

And so indeed the men of old called sons of Zeus those who attained the good education and were brave in soul, educated like that Heracles. Whoever, then, having a good nature, possesses that education readily becomes a partaker of this one too, hearing few things and seldom—the very greatest and most authoritative—and he is initiated and keeps them in his soul.

And no one could take any of these things from him—neither circumstance nor any sophist of a man—nay, not even one wishing to burn it out with fire; but even if one should burn the man, as they say Heracles burned himself, his doctrines would remain in his soul, just as, I think, they say the teeth of burned corpses remain, the rest of the body being consumed by the fire.

For he needs not to learn, but only to be reminded; and then at once he both knows and recognizes, as having from the beginning these doctrines in his own mind. And further, if he falls in with a man who, as it were, knows the road, that man easily shows it to him, and having learned he departs at once; but if with an ignorant and boastful sophist, the sophist will wear him out leading him about—now east, now west, now dragging him south—himself knowing nothing, but guessing, and long before led astray himself by such boasters.

For just as ignorant and undisciplined hounds in the hunt, understanding and recognizing nothing of the trail, deceive others by their voice and bearing, as though they knew and saw, and many follow these—the most foolish, that is, following those that bay in vain—

and of these, the voiceless and silent ones are deceived themselves alone, but the most headlong and witless, imitating the first, make an uproar and are eager to deceive others—you would find it the same with the so-called sophists: a great crowd of foolish men sometimes following them; and you will know that a sophist of a man differs in nothing from a licentious eunuch."

And hearing this, Alexander wondered in what respect he compared the sophist to a eunuch, and asked him. "Because," he said, "the most wanton of the eunuchs claim to be men and to be in love with women, and they lie with them and trouble them, but nothing more comes of it, not even if they are with them night and day.

So too among the sophists you will find many growing old in ignorance, wandering in their words far worse than Odysseus, Homer says, on the sea, and he would sooner come to Hades, like that man, than become a good man in speaking and in hearing.

And you, since your nature is such, if you fall in with a man who knows, one day is enough for you to perceive the thing and the art, and you will need no further intricate sophistries or words; but if you do not meet with a teacher—Zeus, or some other such—who quickly and clearly tells you what you must do, you are no better off, not even if you wear away your whole life sleepless and fasting among the ill-starred sophists.

And this I do not now say myself, but Homer before me. Or are you not acquainted with the verses of Homer?" Now Alexander prided himself greatly on knowing the whole of the one poem, the Iliad, and much of the Odyssey too. So in wonder he said, "And where has Homer discoursed on these things?" "There," he said, "where he calls Minos the familiar of Zeus.

Or is not 'to be familiar' to converse? He says, then, that Minos was the companion of Zeus, as though he said his disciple. Do you think, then, that he learned of and conversed with Zeus about other matters than the just and the kingly? Since indeed Minos too is said to have been the most just of all men.

And again, when he calls kings 'nurtured of Zeus' and 'dear to Zeus,' do you think he means by this nurture anything but that teaching and discipleship I spoke of? Or do you think he means that kings are nourished by Zeus, as by a nurse, with milk and wine and food, and not with knowledge and truth?

And likewise that friendship is nothing but to wish and to think the same things—a kind of concord? For so indeed even to men friends seem above all to be of one mind and to differ about nothing.

Whoever, then, is a friend to Zeus and of one mind with him—is it possible that he should desire any unjust thing or devise anything wicked and shameful? This very thing Homer seems to make plain too, when in praise he calls one of the kings 'shepherd of the people.'

For the shepherd's work is nothing but the forethought and preservation and guarding of the sheep. And yet sometimes a single cook drives many sheep, having bought them in order to cut them up—not, by Zeus, to slaughter and flay them. But cookery and shepherding differ as much, well-nigh, as kingship and tyranny.

When, at any rate, Xerxes and Darius drove from up-country, from Susa, a great crowd of Persians and Medes and Sacae and Arabs and Egyptians, hither into Greece to perish, were they doing a kingly or a cook's work, driving a prey to be cut up?"

And Alexander said, "You, it seems, do not think even the Great King to be a king?" And Diogenes, smiling, said, "No more, Alexander, than the little finger." "Shall not I, then," he said, "having put him down, be the Great King?"

"Not for that reason," said Diogenes. "For neither is the boy who wins, when they play—as they themselves say—at being kings, truly a king. The boys, however, know that the victor, called king, is a cobbler's son or a carpenter's, and that he must learn his father's trade; but he runs off to play with others, and then thinks he is most in earnest—sometimes even a slave, leaving his master.

Perhaps, then, you two do some such thing, each of you having boys as fellow contestants—you Macedonians and the other Greeks, he Persians and the others throughout Asia; and as those boys aim at one another with the ball, and he who is struck is beaten, so you now aim at Darius and he at you, and perhaps you will strike and cast him out; for you seem to me the better marksman.

Then those who were before with him will be with you and bow down, and you will be named king of all." So Alexander again was pained and vexed. For he did not even wish to live, unless he were king of Europe and Asia and Libya, and of any island lying in the Ocean.

For he had suffered the opposite of what Homer says the dead Achilles suffered. For Achilles said that he would rather, living, be a serf to a landless man with no great means of livelihood, than rule over all the perished dead; but Alexander, it seems to me, would have chosen to rule even over the third part of the dead, having died, rather than to live all time as a god, only if he were not to be king over the other gods.

And Zeus alone, perhaps, he would not have disdained, because men call him king; whence Diogenes chastised him in every way. So Alexander said, "Diogenes, you seem to me to jest; but if I take Darius, and the king of the Indians besides, nothing shall prevent me from being the greatest of all kings that ever were. For what is left for me, having mastered Babylon and Susa and Ecbatana and the affairs in India?"

And Diogenes, seeing him inflamed by ambition and strained and borne wholly in soul toward that, as the cranes, wherever they set out, stretch themselves out and fly,

said, "But you will have no advantage over anyone, nor will you truly be king, with this mind you have—not even if you leap over the wall at Babylon and so take the city, instead of digging through it from outside and undermining it; and likewise the wall at Susa and at Bactra; not even if, imitating Cyrus, you flow in along the river like a water-snake; not even if you take besides another continent greater than Asia, having swum across the Ocean."

"And what enemy," he said, "is left to me, if I take those I have named?" "The one hardest of all to fight," he replied, "who does not speak Persian or Median in his tongue, as Darius, I think, does, but Macedonian and Greek." And Alexander was troubled and in agony lest he knew of someone in Macedonia or in Greece preparing to make war, and asked,

"Who is this enemy of mine in Greece or Macedonia?" "You," he said, "are ignorant, though you think you know best of all? Then," he said, "will you not name him, but hide him?" "Long since," he replied, "I have been saying it, but you do not listen, that you are most of all your own greatest enemy and foe, so long as you are bad and witless. And this," he said, "is the man whom you are ignorant of as of no other.

For no foolish and wicked man knows himself. For otherwise Apollo would not have laid down this first as hardest for each—to know himself.

Or do you not hold folly to be the greatest and most complete of all diseases and harms to those who have it, and the foolish man himself most harmful to himself? Or do you not agree that the man most harmful to each, and the cause of the most evils, is most hateful and most hostile to him?

At this rage, then, and leap," he said, "and count me the foulest of men, and revile me before all; and, if you please, run me through with your spear; for from me alone of men you will hear the truth, and from no other man could you learn it. For all are worse than I, and less free."

This Diogenes said, counting it as nothing if he should suffer anything, save that he clearly knew there would be nothing; for he knew that Alexander was a slave to glory and would never do amiss concerning it.

He said, then, that Alexander did not even have the kingly token. And Alexander in wonder said, "Did you not just now say that the king has no need of tokens?" "Yes, by Zeus," he replied, "of the external ones, such as tiaras and purple; for of these there is no use. But the token from nature he must have above all things."

"And what is this?" said Alexander. "What belongs," he replied, "to the king even of the bees. Or have you not heard that there is a king among the bees, arising by nature, not having this by birth, as you say, being descended from Heracles?" "What, then," said Alexander, "is this token?"

"Have you not heard from the farmers," he said, "that that bee alone is without a sting, as having no need of any weapon against anyone? For none of the other bees will dispute the kingship with her, nor fight her, while she has this. But you seem to me not only to walk about, but even to sleep, in arms.

Do you not know," he said, "that to bear arms belongs to a man who fears? And one who fears could never become king, any more than a slave." And hearing this, Alexander almost let the spear fall from his hand.

This Diogenes said, urging him to trust in benefaction and in offering himself just, and not in arms. "But you," he said, "carry even in your soul a whetted passion, a sting so harsh and violent.

Will you not cast away these things you now have, and, taking a coarse cloak, serve those better than yourself, instead of going about with a ridiculous diadem? And a little later, perhaps, you will grow a crest and a tiara, like the cocks. Have you not considered the festival of the Sacae, which the Persians hold—where you have now set out to campaign?" And he asked at once, "What kind of festival?"

For he wished to know all the affairs of the Persians. "Taking one of the prisoners under sentence of death," he said, "they seat him on the king's throne, and give him the royal robe, and let him give orders and drink and live in luxury and use the king's concubines those days, and no one prevents him from doing anything he wishes. But after this they strip and scourge and hang him.

Of what, then, do you suppose this is a symbol, and why is it done among the Persians? Is it not because foolish and wicked men often obtain this authority and name, and then, after behaving insolently a while in the most shameful way, perish most quickly?

And so then, when they raise the man up from his bonds, it is likely that the foolish man, inexperienced in the matter, rejoices and counts himself blessed at what is happening, but that the man who knows laments and is unwilling to follow along of his own will, but rather, as he was, to remain in the fetters.

Do not, then, vain man, attempt to be king before you have gained wisdom. Meanwhile," he said, "it is better to give no orders, but only to live alone, wearing a hide." "You," he said, "bid me, sprung from Heracles and leader of the Greeks and king of the Macedonians, take a hide?" "Certainly," he said, "like your ancestor."

"What ancestor?" he said. "Archelaus. Or was not Archelaus a goatherd, and did he not come into Macedonia driving goats? Do you think, then, he did this in purple rather than in a hide?" And Alexander relaxed and laughed and said, "You speak, Diogenes, of the matter of the oracle."

But he, with a sour face, said, "What oracle? I, for my part, know nothing, save that Archelaus was a goatherd. But if you are rid of your vanity and your present concerns, you will be a king—not in word, perhaps, but in deed; and you will master not only all men, but the women too, like Heracles, whom you say is your ancestor."

And he said, "What women? Or is it plain," he said, "that you mean the Amazons?" "But them," he replied, "it was no hard thing to master; another race rather, dreadful and altogether savage. Or have you not heard the Libyan myth?"

And he said he had not heard it. So thereafter Diogenes related it eagerly and with pleasure, wishing to console him, just as nurses, when they have given children blows, console and gratify them by afterward telling them a tale.

"But know well," he said, "that you will not be king until you have propitiated your own guardian spirit, and, having tended him as you ought, have shown him to be commanding and free and kingly—not, as you now are, slavish and unfree and wicked."

At this Alexander, astounded at the man's courage and fearlessness, and supposing him to know something more than the rest, was all eagerness, beseeching him not to grudge in any way, but to tell who his guardian spirit was and how he must propitiate him. For he expected to hear the name of some spirit, and certain sacrifices or purifications which he must perform.

So Diogenes, perceiving him confused and exceedingly buoyed up in soul, kept jesting and dragging him about, in hope that, stirred from his vanity and his love of glory, he might come a little to his senses.

For indeed he perceived him now delighting, now grieving, in the same moment, and his soul to be undecided, like the air in the changing seasons, when from the same cloud it both rains and the sun shines. And he understood too that Alexander despised the manner in which he conversed with him, since he had never heard a man skilled in speaking, but admired the discourses of the sophists as lofty and magnificent.

Wishing, then, to gratify him, and at the same time to show that he was not unable, like a horse easy to teach and obedient, to raise his discourse high whenever he pleased, he speaks to him thus about guardian spirits: that the wicked and good spirits which bring men their calamities and good fortunes are not external to men,

but the proper mind of each, this is the guardian spirit of the man who has it—good the spirit of the prudent and good man, wicked that of the wicked; and likewise free the spirit of the free man, slavish that of the slave, and kingly that of the kingly and high-minded, mean that of the mean and ignoble.

"And that I may not," he said, "by going through each one separately, bring on a great multitude of words, I will speak of the most common and conspicuous spirits, by which, so to speak, all are driven—tyrants and private men and rich and poor, and whole nations and cities." And thereupon, letting out all sail, he continued the rest of his discourse very loftily and fearlessly.

"Many, son of Philip, are the vices and corruptions in all things of wretched men, and nearly as many as it is not possible to recount. For in truth, as the poet says, there is no terror so dreadful to name in word, no suffering, no god-sent calamity, whose burden human nature could not take up.

And since three modes of life prevail, so to speak, into which most men fall—not, by Zeus, having considered and tested them with reason, but driven by irrational impulse and chance—so many must we say are the spirits too, which the great and ignorant throng follow and serve, one this, another that, as a wicked and licentious revel-band follows a wicked and maddened leader.

And of these modes of life I spoke of, the one is the pleasure-loving and luxurious, concerned with bodily pleasures; the second the money-loving and wealth-loving; and the third, more conspicuous than both and more disordered, the ambitious and glory-loving, displaying a more evident and violent disorder and madness, deceiving himself as a lover of something fine.

Come then, just as the clever craftsmen bring their invention and art to bear on everything in short, not only imitating the natures of the gods in human forms, but each of the other things too—sometimes painting rivers like men, and springs in certain womanly forms, and islands and cities and well-nigh everything else, such as Homer even dared to represent Scamander uttering speech beneath its eddy—

and those craftsmen cannot add voices to their images, but give them appropriate forms and tokens from nature, such as the rivers reclining, naked for the most part, letting down a great beard, crowned with tamarisk or reed:

so let us too appear no worse nor meaner in our words than they in their arts, by molding and likening the ways of the threefold spirit of the three modes of life, displaying the contrary and converse skill to the experience and divination of the so-called physiognomists.

For they from the form and shape recognize and declare the character; but let us from the characters and the deeds draw a stamp and shape worthy of them, if perhaps we shall be better able to lay hold of the many and meaner sort;

with a view to displaying the absurdity of these modes of life—it being nothing unseemly nor blameworthy to be seen compared even to poets and handicraftsmen and purifiers, if need be, hastening from every side to furnish images and examples, if somehow we may have strength to turn men away from vice and deceit and wicked desires, and to lead them on to the friendship and love of virtue and of a better life;

or as some are wont to do who deal in rites and purifications, propitiating the wrath of Hecate and declaring they will make a man rid of it, and then, I think, expounding and exhibiting many varied phantoms before the purifications, which they say the goddess sends in her anger.

So be it. Now the money-loving spirit, the lover of gold and silver and land and cattle and tenement-houses and every possession—would he not be molded by a craftsman not mean in art as sullen and clouded to look upon, in a mean and ignoble attitude? Squalid and filthy, loving neither children nor parents nor fatherland, accounting kinship nothing other than money, reckoning the gods nothing more, except in so far as they point him to many great treasures, or to the deaths of certain household-folk and kinsmen, that he may inherit; counting festivals a sheer loss and a vain expense, unlaughing and unsmiling,

regarding all men with suspicion and counting them harmful, and distrusting all, with a rapacious look, ever moving his fingers, reckoning either his own substance or someone else's, but otherwise insensible and ignorant, scoffing at education and letters,

save in so far as they bear on reckonings and contracts; a lover blinder than the wealth which is justly both called and painted blind, raving after all possessions and accounting nothing to be thrown away—not, as they say the magnet draws iron to itself, but drawing bronze and lead too, and if one give him sand or stone—everywhere and in nearly all things accounting having more profitable and better than not having, but most of all out of his wits and strained about the acquisition of silver, because it goes forth most quickly and with least cost, advancing day and night and outstripping, I think, the courses of the moon,

but in no way reckoning the hatred and the loathing and the curses; and besides thinking that the other possessions have a certain adornment and pastime about them, but that in silver he has grasped, in the smallest compass, the power of wealth.

This, then, he pursues and seeks from every side, in no way turning aside whether it comes with shame or with injustice—except in so far as, eyeing the punishments, he is safer than a highwayman, mastered by cowardice; having the soul of a useless dog, snatching at some things, if he hope to escape notice, and gazing greedily at others and abstaining against his will because of the appointed guards.

Let him, then, be short to look upon, slavish, sleepless, never smiling, ever railing at someone and quarreling, most like a brothel-keeper in figure and manner, shameless and stingy, wrapped in a dyed little cloak of one of the courtesans we know, maltreating his own friends and companions—

or rather slaves and servants—and disgracing them in every way, whether he take certain men in a private station or in a king's.

Or is it not possible to see many of the so-called kings hucksters and tax-gatherers and brothel-keepers? But while we say that Dromon and Sarambus justly hear this name—because at Athens they keep taverns and are so called by the Athenians—does Darius the elder not justly hear it, because in Babylon and Susa he kept a tavern, and the Persians even now call him huckster? But this peculiar thing has befallen this spirit beyond the other spirits:

for sometimes it rules and masters the soul, and sometimes it follows the others, because wealth is the ready and unhesitating servant and minister of every desire and zeal.

But I now speak of it as ruling and presiding over the mind of the unhappy man, referring the acquisition of money neither to any pleasure nor to glory, nor gathering it as one who will spend and use it, but keeping his wealth, in truth, never spent and useless, shut away in certain hidden and lightless chambers.

So be it. And the second man and spirit of that man—the one revealing the rites of pleasure and admiring and preferring this goddess, an utterly womanly goddess—is intricate and manifold, insatiable in scents and tastes, and besides, I think, in all sights and all sounds that bring any pleasure, and in all soft and gentle touches of daily hot baths—or rather, even by day—and of anointings that cure no fatigue,

and besides these, in trailings of soft garments and studied recliningss and exact services for each desire and need, dreadfully agog about all these things, but most of all and most uncontrollably about the keen and burning madness of love—of female and of male unions, and of yet more unspeakable and nameless obscenities—borne and led alike to all such things, holding nothing forsworn nor undone.

For we now set down as one this man who has received all such diseases and incontinences of soul, that we may not gather a great swarm of certain adulterous spirits and dainty-loving and wine-loving and a thousand others; but let us simply set down one spirit, the licentious and enslaved by pleasure,

who, if there flow in from somewhere an unfailing supply—royal moneys, or some great private substance—wallows in much and abundant wantonness until old age; but if not, very quickly squandering what is at hand, becomes a poor incontinent and licentious man, left in want and in dreadful longing for his desires.

And further, this spirit has changed some of those mastered by it into a womanish life and figure, as the myths say of those changed from men into birds or beasts, if they happen to be overcome by such pleasure;

and here again a twofold supply has appeared. For the weak and timid spirit of this kind leads men easily to the womanly diseases and other shameful things, to which penalty and reproach attach; but where punishments attend certain pleasures, chastising offenders with death or bonds or the payment of much money, it does not at all urge men toward these.

But the more intense and bolder spirit compels men simply to transgress all things, both human and divine. And the weak and timid one, where it lays this shame upon a man, confesses that it lays hold of no manly thing, but yields the public and political matters to those who have lived better;

but the bold and unflinching one, having endured many insolences and shames, when the potsherd, as they say, has fallen the other way, appears as a general or demagogue, shouting shrill and piercing, like the actors in the dramas, having cast aside meanwhile the womanly robe, and then, snatching up the robe of some soldier or orator, goes about a sycophant and fearful, looking everyone in the face.

Does, then, a manly and august form befit such a spirit, or rather a fluid and soft one? Surely, then, we shall give it the figure proper to it, not the manly and fearful one it often molds itself and puts on;

nay, let it advance, by Zeus, luxurious and reeking of perfume and wine, in a saffron robe, with much disordered laughter, like a drunken man reveling by day in a wanton revel, crowned with stale garlands on his head and about his neck, borne along sidewise, dancing and singing an effeminate and unmusical song.

And let him be led by shameless and licentious women, by certain desires, as they are called, dragging him to one thing after another, repelling none of them nor gainsaying, but following readily and eagerly. And let them, with much clatter of cymbals and flutes, carry him along in his madness with eager haste.

And let him cry out from the midst of the women, shriller and more uncontrolled, white to look upon and delicate, without experience of the open air and of toils, bending his neck, glancing wantonly with moist eyes, ever gazing on his body, but giving no heed to his soul nor to what it commands.

A sculptor or painter compelled to liken this man could make him resemble no one more than the king of the Syrians, living his life indoors among eunuchs and concubines, but altogether unseeing of camp and war and marketplace.

And let Deceit go before this man too—very comely and persuasive, decked with harlot's adornments, smiling and promising a multitude of good things, as though leading him to happiness itself, until she casts him unawares into the pit, into deep and filthy mire, and then lets him wallow there with his garlands and his saffron robe.

Serving such a master and suffering such things, there wander through life all souls that are cowardly and unable for toils, but enslaved to pleasures, pleasure-loving and body-loving—living a shameful and reproachful life not by choice, but borne along to it.

After this, then, the discourse, as in a contest, throbs to bring on a third—the chorus, as it were—the ambitious man, not very eagerly to contend now, though he is by nature contentious about everything and thinks fit to be first; except that the judgment now before him is not about glory or honor, but about much and just dishonor.

Come then, what sort of figure and form shall we mold for the ambitious spirit? Or is it plain that it is winged and wind-borne, according to its character and desire, borne along with the winds—such as the painters conceived and painted the sons of Boreas, light and aloft, running with their father's breezes?

But those, whenever they wished, displayed their power, while meanwhile with the other heroes they sailed in the Argo, voyaging and doing the rest no less than any. But the patron of glory-loving men is ever aloft, never touching earth nor anything lowly, but high and uplifted,

whenever he meets with clear air and calm, or some zephyr blowing gently, ever the more exulting and rising into the very aether; but often hidden in a dark cloud, when some dishonor and blame from the many men befalls—those whom he courts and honors and has made lords of his own happiness.

And for safety's sake he resembles in nature neither eagles nor cranes nor any other winged kind, but rather one might liken him to the violent and unnatural flight of Icarus, who attempted a device Daedalus could not contrive.

And so, out of youth and boastfulness, desiring to be borne higher than the stars, he was preserved for a short while; but when the bonds were loosened and the wax flowed, he gave his name to that sea where he was lost in his fall;

and that man, trusting to wings truly weak and light—I mean honors and praises arising, as it chances, from the many men—is borne precariously and unsteadily, and bears the man who is his emulator and servant, now appearing to many lofty and blessed, then again seeming lowly and wretched both to the others and, first and most, to himself.

But if it does not please anyone to conceive and make him winged, let him liken him to the harsh and violent flight and compulsion of Ixion, by the rush of a wheel moved and borne in a circle. For it would be not unfitting nor far from the wise and clever images, the wheel being compared to glory—running round very easily in its motion and change, and in its revolution compelling the soul to take all manner of figures, more than the potter does the things molded on his wheel.

Such a man, then, ever whirled and borne about, a flatterer of peoples and crowds in assemblies or displays, or of kings or tyrants, in so-called friendships and attendances—who would not pity his nature and his life? I mean not the man who, presiding from the best motive over a great multitude of men, tries by persuasion and reason, with goodwill and justice, to order them and lead them to the better.

Let this spirit too, then, have its end for us, that we may not now, attaching robes and shapes and the other proper things to it, bring in a great and boundless throng of words.

But its character, to comprehend it briefly, would be contentious, witless, vain, near to boastfulness and jealousy and all such harsh and savage passions. For all these must of all necessity attend an ambitious cast of soul, an unsociable

and savage and harsh one; and besides, the man himself must change much and have an unstable mind, as serving and attending to an unstable thing, rejoicing and grieving more often and continually than they say the hunters do; for to them above all, they say, this happens most and most continually, as the quarry appears and is lost:

for whenever good repute and praises befall them, the soul of such a man grows and sprouts and gains a wondrous magnitude, just as at Athens they say the sacred shoot of the olive sprouted and came to perfection in a single day; but again it is quickly contracted and humbled and withers, when some blame or ill repute falls upon it.

And Deceit attends this spirit too, the most persuasive of all. For not, as the deceit of the money-lover and pleasure-lover could promise nothing splendid in word, nor as they led those deceived by them toward august and splendid things, but only proclaimed and attached to them the name of the good—so is this man's deceit; rather, chanting and bewitching, it says that he is a lover of the noble, and that it leads his glory toward some virtue or good fame.

Again, then, here I shall risk falling a second time into the same myth, that of Ixion. For they say that he too, desiring the blessed union with Hera, and consorting with a cloud, dark and misty, begot useless and monstrous offspring, the race of the Centaurs, motley and patched together.

For he who fails of the love of true fame, and then consorts with the desire of glory, in truth has unawares consorted with a cloud instead of the divine and august union. And from such unions or marriages nothing beneficial or useful would be born, but monstrous and senseless things, resembling the Centaurs—the public measures of certain demagogues and the writings of sophists.

For mercenary captains and sophists and demagogues—and I speak distinguishing generals and educators and statesmen from those now mentioned—all these are worthy to be assigned to that spirit and to be counted of its portion and company.

And now I have gone through those driven by each one of the spirits I named; but often two, or all, have obtained the same man, commanding contrary things to one another and threatening, if he does not obey, to involve him in some great penalties—

the pleasure-lover bidding him spend on pleasures, and spare neither gold nor silver nor any other possession; the money-lover and penny-pincher, on the other hand, not allowing it, but holding him back and threatening, if he obeys the other, to destroy him with hunger and thirst and every poverty and want.

Again, the glory-lover counsels and exhorts him to fling away his goods for honor's sake; but the other fights against this too and resists. And indeed the friend of pleasure and the friend of glory can never sing in tune nor say the same thing. For the one despises glory and thinks it nonsense, and often quotes the elegy of Sardanapalus: 'So much I have as I have eaten and outraged, and the delights I have known with love; but the rest, all the prosperous things, are left behind';

and most of all he ever sets death before the eyes, as though the man would no longer be able to share in any of the pleasant things; but the glory-lover leads and drags him away from pleasures, holding over him the reproaches and the revilings.

Not knowing, then, what to do, nor where to turn and hide, he often runs off into the dark, and tries, unobserved, to gratify and serve the other; but it uncovers him and drags him into the open.

And so a soul thus torn and rent asunder, ever in battle and unceasing faction with itself, must come to every misfortune. For just as diseases entwined with one another, often seeming contrary, make the cure hard and impracticable, in the same way, I think, it must come about with the passions of the soul that are mingled and entwined together into one."