Misopogon

To the poet Anacreon many graceful songs were given, for it fell to him by the Fates to live luxuriously; but to Alcaeus, and to Archilochus of Paros, the god did not grant to turn their muse toward mirth and pleasures. For, constrained to toil now in one way and now in another, they used their art for that purpose, lightening for themselves what hardships the deity gave by reviling those who wronged them. But me the law forbids to accuse by name those who do me no wrong, but are minded to be hostile; and the manner of free culture now prevailing takes from me the art of music in song. For it now seems more shameful to practice music than once it seemed to be unjustly rich. Yet I will not on that account refrain from such help as the Muses can give me. I have seen even the barbarians beyond the Rhine singing savage songs composed in language very like the croaking of harsh-voiced birds, and rejoicing in those songs. For it happens, I think, that to inferior musicians their music, though grievous to their audiences, is most delightful to themselves. Considering this myself, I am wont to say to myself what Ismenias said—not from the same disposition, but from a like greatness of spirit, as I persuade myself—that I sing, indeed, for the Muses and for myself.

The song is composed in prose, but it contains many great reproaches—not, by Zeus, against others; how could it, since the law forbids?—but against the poet and writer himself. For no law forbids a man to write of himself either praises or censures. Now praise myself, even if I greatly wished it, I cannot; but censure myself I can in countless ways, and I will begin first with my face.

For upon this face, which nature made not over-beautiful nor comely nor youthful, I have myself, out of perversity and ill temper, added this long beard, punishing it, as it seems, for no other fault than that it was not by nature handsome. For this reason I endure the lice that run about in it as in a thicket. To eat greedily or to drink open-mouthed is not permitted me, for I must take care, I think, lest unawares I swallow the hairs along with my bread. As for being kissed and kissing, I feel no grief at all. And yet the beard, it seems, has this too, like its other troublesomeness, that it does not allow me to press clean lips to smooth—and therefore, I think, sweeter—lips, as one of those who, with Pan and Calliope, composed poems upon Daphnis once said. But you say one ought even to plait ropes from it; and I am ready to provide them, if only you can pull, and the roughness of them does not work cruel havoc on your unworn and tender hands. Let no one suppose that I am vexed at the jest. For I myself give the occasion, having a beard like the goats, when I might, I think, make it smooth and bare, such as the handsome youths have and all women, to whom belongs by nature the power of charming. But you, even in your old age, emulating your own sons and daughters through softness of life and perhaps tenderness of disposition, carefully make yourselves smooth, faintly betraying and displaying the man by the forehead, and not, as we do, by the cheeks. And for me the depth of the beard was not enough; my head too is squalid, and seldom am I shorn or have my nails trimmed, and for the most part my fingers are black from the pen. And if you wish to learn some of the secrets too: my chest is shaggy and hairy like the lions', who are kings among beasts; nor have I ever made it smooth, out of perversity and pettiness, nor any other part of my body, nor made it smooth or soft. I would tell you, if I had a wart like Cicero's; but as it is, I have none. And if you will pardon me, I will tell you something else too.

For it does not suffice me that my body should be such, but a most harsh regimen besides is practiced by me. I shut myself out of the theaters through dullness, nor do I admit the stage within my court except on the New Year's day of the year, through stupidity—bringing and rendering it like some tribute or tax, as a boorish man with little might to a master not gentle. And even then, when I have entered, I am like men performing an expiation. I possess none of these performers, and that too though I am called a great king, who, like a prefect or general, throughout the whole world might rule the mimes and charioteers. Seeing this a little while ago, you now call to mind that bloom of youth, and that understanding and good sense.

This too, perhaps, was burdensome, and a clear proof of a wretched temper; but I am always adding something newer. I hate the horse-races as men in debt hate the marketplace. So I seldom go to them, on the festivals of the gods, nor do I spend the whole day there, as my cousin and my uncle and my half-brother on the father's side were wont to do. And after watching six races in all—and these not as a man who loves the thing, nor yet, by Zeus, as one who does not hate it and turn from it—I gladly take my leave.

But these are outward matters; and yet how small a part have I told of my offenses against you? The inward things—sleepless nights upon a pallet, and food less than enough to satisfy—make my temper bitter and an enemy to a luxurious city. Yet this is not practiced by me on your account; a certain dreadful and senseless deception, taking hold of me from boyhood, persuaded me to make war upon my belly, and I do not allow it to be filled with much food. Hence it has very rarely befallen me to vomit; and I remember suffering it once since I became Caesar, and that from accident, not from surfeit. It is worth recalling a story not in itself very pleasant, but for that very reason especially proper to me.

I happened to be wintering near beloved Lutetia—for so the Celts call the little town of the Parisii. It is a small island lying in the river, and a wall surrounds it entirely on every side, and wooden bridges lead to it from both sides; and seldom does the river fall or rise, but for the most part it is the same in summer and in winter, furnishing water most sweet and pure to one who wishes to look upon it and drink it. For since they dwell on an island, they must draw their water especially from there. The winter too is milder there, whether from the warmth of the ocean—for it is not more than nine hundred furlongs distant, and perhaps a thin breeze from the water is diffused, and salt water seems to be warmer than fresh—whether, then, from this cause, or from some other unknown to me, the fact is this: those who dwell in that place have a warmer winter, and there grows among them a good vine, and some have even contrived to grow fig-trees, sheltering them in winter, as with garments, with wheat-straw and such things as are wont to ward off the harm that comes to the trees from the air. The winter, then, that year proved more severe than usual, and the river carried down, as it were, slabs of marble—you know, no doubt, the white Phrygian stone; the ice-floes were most like this, great and one upon another as they were carried along; and indeed they were about to make a continuous passage and to bridge the stream. As, then, in these conditions it was wilder than was its custom, and my little chamber, where I slept, was in no way warmed—in the way in which most of the dwellings there are wont to be heated, by furnaces beneath the ground, and that too though it was well fitted to receive the warmth from the fire—it happened then too, I think, through my own awkwardness and my inhumanity, first of all, as is likely, toward myself. For I wished to accustom myself to endure the air without need of this help. But as the winter prevailed and grew ever greater, even so I did not permit the servants to heat the chamber, fearing to stir the dampness in the walls, but bade them bring in fire that had burned down and lay aside thoroughly moderate live coals. But these, few as they were, stirred up vast quantities of vapors from the walls, by which I fell asleep. And as my head was filled with them, I was near to being choked; but carried out of doors, and the physicians urging me to throw up the food just taken—which was by Zeus not much—I cast it up and was at once relieved, so that the night became lighter for me and on the next day I could do whatever I wished.

Thus then I, even among the Celts, after the manner of Menander's Bad-tempered Man, set toils for myself with my own hand. But the boorishness of the Celts bore these things more easily; whereas a city prosperous and blessed and populous is, with reason, vexed, in which are many dancers and many flute-players, and mimes more numerous than the citizens, and no respect for the rulers. For to blush befits the unmanly; since for the manly, like you, to revel from dawn and take their pleasure by night, and to show that you despise the laws not by word but by deeds, is fitting. For laws too are fearful because of the rulers; so that whoever has insulted a ruler has, with abundant scorn, trampled the laws. And that you rejoice in these things you make plain in many places, but not least in the marketplaces and theaters—the common people by your clapping and your shouting, but those in office by being better known and named among all from what they have spent upon such festivals, than Solon the Athenian from his meeting with Croesus the king of the Lydians. All of you are handsome and tall and smooth and beardless, young and old alike, emulators of the felicity of the Phaeacians, accepting "changes of raiment and warm baths and beds" in place of holiness.

This boorishness, then, and inhumanity, and awkwardness of yours—did you suppose they would suit these people? So senseless and base to you, O most ignorant and most quarrelsome of all men, is this temperate little soul, so called by the basest of men, which you think you must adorn and embellish with temperance? Wrongly—for, first, what temperance is, in fact, we do not know, but hearing only the name of it we do not see the deed. But if it is such as you now practice—to understand that one must be the servant of the gods and the laws, to deal on equal terms with one's equals, and to bear with mildness one's superiority over them, to take care and provide that the poor be in no way wronged by the rich, and for this to suffer troubles, such as are likely often to befall you—hostilities, angers, revilings; and then to bear even these with self-control, and not to be harsh nor give way to wrath, but to school oneself, so far as may be, and to be temperate; and if one should set this too down as a work of temperance, to abstain from every pleasure that is not too unseemly nor reckoned shameful in public, being persuaded that he cannot be temperate in private and secretly who wishes to be unbridled in public and openly and to delight in the theaters—if, then, temperance is really such a thing, you are ruined yourself, and you ruin us, who cannot endure to hear even the name of servitude, whether toward gods or toward laws; for sweet in all things is freedom.

And how great is the irony! You deny being a master, and you cannot endure to hear it, but are even indignant, so that already you have persuaded most men, who had long been accustomed to it, to remove this name from your rule as invidious, while you compel us to be slaves to magistrates and laws. Yet how much better it were that you should be named master, but in deed leave us to be free—O you who are in names most gentle, but in deeds most bitter! And besides this, you wear us out, compelling the rich to be moderate in the law-courts, and restraining the poor from playing the false accuser. And having dismissed the stage and the mimes and the dancers, you have ruined our city, so that we have no good from you but your severity, enduring which now this seventh month, we have left it to the little old women rolling about the tombs to pray that we may by all means be rid of so great an evil, but we ourselves have accomplished it through our own ready wit, pelting you with our jests as with arrows. But you, noble sir, how will you endure the darts of the Persians, when you tremble at our jests?

Behold, I wish again, from another beginning, to revile myself. You frequent the temples, O peevish and ill-tempered and altogether wretched man. Through you the multitudes flock to the precincts, and moreover most of those in office too, and they receive you with shouting and clapping splendidly in the precincts as in the theaters. Why, then, are you not content nor approve, but undertake to be wiser in such matters than the Pythian, and harangue the multitude, and rebuke those who shout, bitterly saying this very thing: "You assemble in the precincts seldom for the gods' sake, but running together because of me you fill the temples with much disorder. Yet it befits temperate men to pray in good order, in silence, asking good things of the gods. Have you not heard this rule of Homer's, 'Pray in silence among yourselves'? nor how Odysseus restrained Eurycleia, struck with amazement at the greatness of his achievement, 'Rejoice, old woman, in your heart, and hold still, and do not shriek aloud'? But the Trojan women—not to Priam or any of his daughters or sons, nor yet to Hector himself, though to him he says the Trojans prayed as to a god; but praying, he did not show in his poem either women or men, but 'To Athena with a shriek all,' he says, 'raised their hands'—and this too is barbarous and befits women, yet is not impious toward the gods, as is what is done by you. For you praise men instead of the gods, or rather, instead of the gods you flatter us men. But it is best, I think, not even to flatter those gods, but to serve them temperately."

Behold, again I am working up my customary little phrases, and do not even allow myself to speak as it chances, fearlessly and freely, but through my habitual awkwardness I play the false accuser even against myself. Such things, and the like, would one say to men who wish to be free, not only in their relations toward the rulers, but also toward the gods—how one might be thought kindly toward them, like a gentle father, being by nature wicked, as I am.

Bear with them, then, hating and reviling you secretly or even openly, since you reckoned it flattery that those in the temples praised you with one impulse. For you did not, I think, consider how you would suit those men, neither in their pursuits nor their lives nor their characters.

So be it. But who will endure this in you? You sleep, as a rule, by night alone, and there is nothing to soften your savage and untamed temper; and access is shut off everywhere to all sweetness of spirit; and the greatest of evils is that, living such a life, you take delight in it and have made the common curses your pleasure. And then you are indignant if you hear such things of yourself? When you might be grateful to those who, out of goodwill, admonish you more tunefully in their anapaests—to shave bare your cheeks, and, beginning first with yourself, to display to this laughter-loving people all fair spectacles: mimes, dancers, shameless women, little boys vying in beauty with the women, men made smooth not only as to their cheeks but over the whole body, that they might appear smoother than women to those who meet them; festivals, panegyrics—not, by Zeus, the sacred ones, in which one must be temperate; for of those there is a surfeit, as of the oak, and great is the satiety of them.

Caesar sacrificed in the temple of Zeus once, then in that of Fortune; he went to that of Demeter three times in succession. For I have forgotten how many times I entered the precinct of Daphne, which, betrayed by the negligence of its guardians, was made to vanish by the daring of godless men. The Syrian new moon comes round, and Caesar again goes to the temple of Zeus the Friend; then the common festival, and Caesar goes to the precinct of Fortune. Waiting through the inauspicious day, he again takes up his prayers at the temple of Zeus the Friend, according to the ancestral customs. And who will endure a Caesar who goes so often to the temples, when he might trouble the gods once or twice, and celebrate those panegyrics which are common to all the people, and in which it is possible to share not only for those who know the gods, but also for those of whom the city is full? Where there is much pleasure and grace, such as one might delight in, enjoying it continually, beholding men dancing, and little boys, and many women.

When, then, I reckon up these things, I count you happy in your felicity, but am not vexed with myself; for these things are dear to me, perhaps by some god's will. Wherefore I am not even indignant, be well assured, with those who are displeased at my life and my purpose. I myself add, so far as I can, to the jests against me, pouring upon myself these reproaches more abundantly—I, who through folly did not understand from the beginning what was the character of this city, and that too though I had unrolled, as I persuade myself, books not fewer in number than any of my contemporaries.

It is told, you know, that once the king who gave his name to this city—or rather, he from whom this city, after he had founded it, took its name; for it was built by Seleucus, but has its name from the son of Seleucus—whom, they say, through excess of delicacy and luxury, ever loving and beloved, an unjust love at last seized for his own stepmother; and wishing to hide the passion, he could not, but his body, melting little by little, was secretly wasting away, and his powers were ebbing, and his breath was less than usual. His case resembled a riddle, the disease having no clear cause—or rather, the disease itself, whatever it was, not appearing, while the weakness about the young man was plain. Here a great task was set before the Samian physician, to discover what the disease was. He, suspecting from Homer's verses what the "limb-devouring cares" might be, and that often not weakness of body but sickness of soul is the cause of wasting to the body, and seeing the young man to be, by his age and habits, not without susceptibility to love, took this road to the hunting of the disease. He sat down near the bed, gazing at the youth's face, having bidden handsome men and women to pass by, beginning with the queen. And when she came, as if forsooth to visit him, at once the youth gave the signs of his passion: he let out the gasping of those in distress, for though he greatly wished to check it as it stirred, he could not, and there was a disturbance of his breath and much redness about his face. Seeing this, the physician laid his hand upon his breast, and the heart leapt terribly and rushed outward. Such things he suffered while she was present; but when she departed, while others came in, he was at rest and like men who suffer nothing. Perceiving the passion, Erasistratus told the king, and he, out of love for his son, said he would yield his wife to the boy. The young man at first denied it; but a little later, when his father had died, the favor which, when offered him before, he had nobly refused, he very strongly pursued.

So these things were done by Antiochus. And for those descended from him it is no cause for indignation to emulate the founder or the eponymous hero. For as among plants it is likely that the qualities are transmitted far, and perhaps the later ones grow on the whole like those from which they sprang, so too among men it is likely that the characters of the descendants are very similar to those of their forefathers. I myself, indeed, found the Athenians most ambitious and most humane of the Greeks; and yet I saw this fairly in all the Greeks, and I can say of them that they are most of all god-loving and gracious toward strangers—generally all the Greeks, but of the Greeks themselves I can bear this witness most of the Athenians. And if they preserve an image of the ancient virtue in their characters, it is likely, surely, that the same holds also for the Syrians and Arabians and Celts and Thracians and Paeonians, and for those who lie between the Thracians and the Paeonians, upon the very banks of the Ister, the Mysians—whence indeed my whole race is, boorish, austere, ungracious, loveless, abiding by its decisions unmovably; all which are proofs of a terrible boorishness. I ask, then, pardon first for myself, but in turn I grant it also to you, who emulate the ways of your fathers; nor do I cast in your teeth as a reproach the line, "Liars and dancers, in choral beatings the best"; but, on the contrary, in place of praises, I say that you have a zeal for your ancestral pursuits. For Homer too, praising Autolycus, says that he surpassed all "in thievery and the oath." And I cherish, as praises, my own awkwardness and ignorance and ill temper, and my not being easily softened nor giving up my own at the bidding of suppliants or deceivers, nor yielding to clamor, and such reproaches. Which of these, then, is the lighter, is perhaps plain to the gods, since none of men is able to arbitrate for us concerning our differences; for we shall by no means obey him, out of self-love—for each man is likely to admire his own and despise what belongs to others. But he who grants pardon to one who emulates the opposite seems to me most gentle.

But considering, I find that I have done myself other terrible things too. For coming to a free city, one that does not endure the squalor of hair, I rushed in unshorn and deep-bearded, like men who lack barbers; you would have thought you saw a Smicrines or a Thrasyleon, a peevish old man or a witless soldier, when I might have appeared by my adornment a comely boy, and become a youth, if not in age, at least in manner and in the delicacy of my face.

You do not know how to consort with men, nor are you a praiser of Theognis, nor do you imitate the polypus that makes itself like to the rocks, but the so-called Myconian boorishness and ignorance and stupidity is practiced by you toward all. Has it escaped you that these people are far from being Celts and Thracians and Illyrians? Do you not see how many taverns there are in this city? But you make yourself hateful to the tavern-keepers by not allowing them to sell their wares to the people and to the visitors at whatever price they wish. And they lay the blame on those who own the land. But you make these too your enemies by compelling them to do what is just. And those in office in the city, sharing in both penalties, just as, I think, they formerly rejoiced reaping profits from both sources, both as owners and as traders, are now naturally grieved, being deprived through both of their gains. And the Syrian people, unable to get drunk or to dance the cordax, is vexed. But you, providing abundant grain, think you nourish them sufficiently. And this is the charming thing about you, that you take no thought even how there shall be sea-fish in the city; but lately too, when someone complained that neither little fish nor many birds were to be found in the market, you laughed very mockingly, saying that a temperate city needs bread and wine and oil, but a luxurious one needs meat as well; for to make account of fish and fowl, you said, is beyond luxury, and such as not even the suitors in Ithaca had a share of in their wantonness. And whoever finds no pleasure in eating pork and mutton will do well to lay his hands on the legumes. These things you thought you were legislating for Thracians, your own fellow-citizens, or for the insensible Galatians, who trained you up against us to be of oak, of maple, but no longer also a fighter at Marathon, but half an Acharnian, and a man wholly disagreeable and a graceless fellow. Was it not better that the marketplace should smell of perfumes as you walk through it, and that handsome boys should lead the way, on whom the citizens would gaze, and choruses of women, such as stand among us every day? But my manner does not permit me to glance languishingly, casting my eyes in every direction, that I might appear handsome to you—not in soul, but in face. For, as you judge it, the true beauty of a soul is a soft and dissolute life. But my tutor taught me to look upon the ground as I went to school; and a theater I never saw before my beard grew longer than the hair of my head, and at that time of life never privately and on my own account, but three or four times, be well assured—"bringing pleasure to Patroclus"—a ruler ordered it, who was a kinsman of mine and a near connection; and I happened to be still a private person.

Forgive me, then; for I give you, in my stead, one whom you will more justly hate—the quarrelsome tutor, who both then grieved me by teaching me to go but one road, and now is the cause to me of my hatefulness toward you, having worked into my soul and, as it were, stamped upon it that which I indeed did not then wish, but which he, as though doing some graceful thing, very eagerly implanted, calling, I think, boorishness dignity, and insensibility temperance, and the not yielding to desires nor becoming happy thereby, manliness. He often said to me, be well assured—yes, by Zeus and the Muses—this tutor, while I was still quite a small boy: "Let not the multitude of your contemporaries, who throng to the theaters, persuade you ever to long for such a sight. Do you desire horse-races? There is one most skillfully composed in Homer; take the book and go through it. Do you hear of the pantomime dancers? Let them be; the youths among the Phaeacians dance more manfully; and you have the lyre-singer Phemius and the singer Demodocus. There are also among him many plants more delightful to hear of than to behold: 'In Delos once, by the altar of Apollo, I marked the young shoot of a palm springing up.' And the wooded island of Calypso, and the caves of Circe, and the garden of Alcinous—be well assured, you shall see nothing more delightful than these."

Do you long for me to tell you the tutor's name too, and of what race he was who said these things? A barbarian, by the gods and goddesses, a Scythian by race, and bearing the same name as the man who persuaded Xerxes to make war upon Hellas; and this much-talked-of name, twenty months ago adored, but now brought forward as a wrong and a reproach—he was a eunuch, reared under my grandfather, that he might lead my mother through the poems of Homer and Hesiod. But since she, having borne me first and alone, died a few months later, snatched away by the motherless virgin from many misfortunes, a maiden and young, after my seventh year I was handed over to him. He from that time persuaded me to these things, leading me to school by one road; and willing neither to know another himself nor to permit me to walk in it, he made me hateful to all of you.

But, if it seem good, let us make a truce with him, I and you, dissolving the hatred. For neither did he know that I should come to you, nor, if I should by all means come, that I should be a ruler—and a rule so great as the gods gave, forcing many things together at once. Believe me—both the giver and the receiver. For neither of us, it seems, was willing—neither he who gave the honor or favor, or whatever you please to call it, nor he who received it, as all the gods know, truly refused. And so let this be and remain as is dear to the gods. But perhaps the tutor, had he foreknown this, would have taken much forethought that I should appear as agreeable as possible to you. Then is it not possible now to put off and unlearn, if some boorish character was bred in us before? "Habit," they say, "is second nature"; and to fight against nature is a hard task, and to give up a discipline of thirty years is altogether grievous, especially when it was implanted with so much harshness; and to me it is now more than this.

So be it. But what has come over you, that you undertake yourself to hear cases about contracts and to give judgment? For surely the tutor did not teach you this too, who did not even know that you would rule. A clever old man persuaded you to it, whom you too, doing rightly, revile along with me as being most of all the cause of my pursuits—and he too, be well assured, deceived by others. Names have often come to you, mocked in comedy: Plato and Socrates and Aristotle and Theophrastus. To these this old man, persuaded by his folly, and then finding me young, a lover of letters, persuaded me that, if I should become an emulator of those men in all things, I should be better—than other men, perhaps, no one, for there is no contest for me with them, but at all events better than myself. And I—for I knew not what to do—being persuaded, can no longer change, and that though I often wish it; but I reproach myself because I do not grant to all impunity for all wrongs. And there steals upon me out of Plato all that the Athenian stranger went through:

Honored is he who does no wrong; but he who does not even permit wrongdoers to do wrong is worthy of more than twice the honor of that other; for the one is worth one man, the other worth many others, in disclosing the injustice of the rest to the rulers. And he who joins in punishing, to the best of his power, with the rulers—the great man in a city and the perfect one—let him be proclaimed victor in virtue. This same praise must be spoken also concerning temperance and prudence and whatever other goods a man possesses such as he can not only have himself, but also impart to others. These things he taught me, thinking I should be a private man; for he did not foreknow that this fortune would be mine from Zeus, to which the god has now brought and set me. And I, ashamed that as a ruler I should be baser than a private man, have, without need, all unawares to myself, imparted to you my own boorishness. And another of Plato's laws has, when I called it to mind, made me hateful to you—the one that says rulers and elders must practice modesty and temperance, that the multitudes, looking to them, may be well ordered. To me alone, then—or rather to me with a few others—who now practice this, the thing has turned out otherwise, and has become, not unreasonably, a reproach. For we are here seven foreign newcomers among you, and one besides who is your own citizen, dear to Hermes and to me, a good craftsman of words, men who have no contract with anyone, nor walk any other road than to the temples of the gods, and seldom, not all of us, to the theaters, having made the most inglorious of deeds and the most reproachful end of life. The wise men of the Greeks will surely permit me to say one of the things that are current among you—for I know not how I could better show it. We have ranged ourselves on the side of mediation; so much do we make of giving offense to you and being hated, when we ought to please and flatter.

"So-and-so wronged so-and-so." What is that to you, fool? When you might, with goodwill, share in the wrongdoings, you give up the profit and take on enmity, and doing this you think you do rightly and are minded for your own good. You ought to have reckoned that of those wronged none blames the rulers, but the wrongdoer; while the wrongdoer, being then restrained, ceasing to blame the one he wronged, turns his grievance upon the rulers. You might, then, by this good reasoning, refrain from compelling men to do what is just, and permit each to do whatever he wishes and is able; for the character of the city is, I think, such—exceedingly free. But you, not understanding this, think it right that they be ruled with prudence? You have not even looked at how great is the freedom among them, extending even to the asses and the camels. Their hired drivers lead even these through the porticoes as though they were brides; for the open lanes and the broad ways of the streets were not made for this, that the pack-animals should use them, but those are set out, you see, for a kind of ornament and magnificence, while the asses, out of freedom, wish to use the porticoes, and no one keeps any one of them from it, lest he take away their freedom—so free is the city. But you think fit that the young men in it should keep quiet, and above all that they should think what is dear to you, or, failing that, should utter only what you would gladly hear. But they, out of freedom, are wont to revel, doing it always pretty freely, but at the festivals more.

The Tarentines once paid the penalty to the Romans for such jests, because, being drunk at the Dionysia, they outraged their embassy. But you are in all things more fortunate than the Tarentines, since in place of a few days you make merry the whole year through, and in place of foreign ambassadors you outrage the rulers themselves, and of these the very hairs upon the chin and the stampings upon the coins. Well done, temperate citizens, both you who play at such things and you who approve and take pleasure in the players! For it is plain that to the one the speaking gives pleasure, and the others are gladdened by hearing such jests. I rejoice with you in this concord, and you do well in being one city in such matters, since it is nowhere a serious or enviable thing to restrain and punish the unbridledness of the young. For it is to take away and break off the sum and head of freedom, if one should deprive men of saying and doing whatever they wish. You, then, rightly knowing this, that one must be free in all things, first permitted the women to rule themselves, that they might be too free and unbridled for you; then you granted them to bring up the children, lest they, having had a taste of harsher rule, should later be declared slaves, and being grown to youths, should first be taught to reverence their elders, and through such bad custom should become more cautious toward the rulers, and at last, having been made not men but slaves, and become temperate and decent and orderly, should be ruined altogether unawares. And what do the women do? They lead them, through pleasure, to their own objects of worship, which seems most blessed and most honored, not to men only but to beasts also. Thence, I think, it comes about that you are very happy, refusing all servitude—beginning first with that toward the gods, then the laws, and thirdly us, the guardians of the laws. We should be strange men indeed, if, while the gods overlook the city's being so free and do not proceed against it, we should be indignant and harsh. For be well assured that the gods have shared with us this dishonor in your city.

"The Chi," they say, "did the city no harm, nor did the Kappa." What this riddle of your wisdom is, it is hard to understand; but, happening upon interpreters from your city, we were taught that these are the first letters of names, and that the one means Christ, the other Constantius. Bear with me, then, as I speak with frankness. In one thing only did Constantius wrong you, that having made me Caesar he did not kill me. As for the rest, may the gods grant to you alone of all the many Romans to make trial of many Constantiuses—or rather of the greed of his friends. For the man was both my cousin and my friend. But since he chose enmity before friendship, and then the gods arbitrated our contest with one another very humanely, I became to him a more faithful friend than he expected to have me before I became his enemy. Why, then, do you think to grieve me with his praises, I who am vexed with those who revile him? But loving Christ, you have him as your city's guardian instead of Zeus and the god of Daphne and Calliope, who exposed your trick. Did the Emesenes long for Christ, who cast fire upon the tombs of the Galilaeans? But what Emesene did I ever grieve? Many of you, however, and I had almost said all—the council, the wealthy, the people. For the people, for the most part—or rather all of them—having chosen godlessness, is vexed with me, because it sees me devoted to the ancestral ordinances of holiness; and the powerful, because they are hindered from selling all things at much silver; and all, on behalf of the dancers and the theaters—not because I deprive others of these, but because I care for such things less than for the frogs in the marshes. Then do I not with reason accuse myself, who have furnished so many handles for hatred?

But the Roman Cato—how he was provided with a beard I do not know, but worthy to be praised beyond anyone of those who pride themselves on temperance and magnanimity and, greatest of all, manliness—approaching this populous and luxurious and wealthy city, and seeing the youths in the suburb arrayed with the magistrates as for some bodyguard, thought that your forefathers had made all this preparation in his honor; and quickly dismounting from his horse he went forward, and at the same time was vexed with those of his friends who had gone before, as having become informers to them that Cato was approaching, and as having persuaded them to run out. While he was in such a state, and gently at a loss and blushing, the gymnasiarch ran up and said: "Stranger, where is Demetrius?" This man was a freedman of Pompey, who had acquired a very large estate; and if you long to learn its amount—for I think that of all I have said you have been most eager for this piece of news—I will tell you who said it. By Damophilus the Bithynian such works have been composed, in which, culling from many books, he made discourses most pleasant to a young man fond of listening and to an old. For old age loves to bring the aged back again to the love of listening that belongs to the young; whence, I think, it comes about that the young and the old are equally fond of stories. So be it. And do you wish me to tell how Cato answered the gymnasiarch? Do not suppose that I am reviling the city; the saying is not mine. If any report carried about has reached you too, of a man of Chaeronea, of the base sort which is called by the boastful "philosopher"—whom indeed I myself did not attain to, but, through my ignorance, prayed to share and partake in—he, then, related that Cato answered nothing, but only cried out, like some thunderstruck and witless man, "O ill-starred city!" and went his way.

Do not, then, marvel if I too now feel this toward you, a man more savage and bolder and more self-willed than he, by as much as the Celts are than the Romans. For he, born there, came near to old age, reared together with his fellow-citizens; but for me the Celts and Germans and the Hercynian forest were my care, just when I was first being numbered among men, and I have now spent much time among them, like some hunter consorting and grappling with savage beasts, meeting characters that know neither how to fawn nor to flatter, but to deal simply and freely and on equal terms with all. So there came to me, after my nurture among children, the way among youths through the discourses of Plato and Aristotle, in no way fitted for consorting with peoples that suppose themselves most happy through luxury; and the self-labor among men, among the most warlike and high-spirited of the nations, where they know only the wedded Aphrodite and Dionysus the giver of drink, for the sake of marriage and the begetting of children and of as much wine-drinking as is possible for each. And there is no wantonness in the theaters nor insult, nor does anyone drag the cordax within the stage.

It is told, you know, that a little while ago a certain Cappadocian, an exile from here to there, reared in your city at the goldsmith's—you doubtless recognize the man I mean—having learned where indeed he learned it, that one ought not to consort with women but to attempt boys, after doing and suffering I know not how much here, when he lately came to the emperor there, in memory of the things here brought many dancers to them, and other such goods from here, and indeed at last, since there was still need of a "cup-shaker"—this word, together with the thing, you know—called this man too from here, out of longing and love for the dignified life among you. But the Celts knew not the cup-shaker, for the palace received him at once; and the dancers, permitted to display their art in the theater, they let go, thinking they were like men possessed by the nymphs. And there, as with me, the theater was most laughable to them; but they, the few, laughed at the many, whereas I, with the few here, appear to all of you ridiculous in everything.

And I am not vexed at the matter. For I should be unjust if I did not love the present too, having especially welcomed those things. For the Celts so loved me, through likeness of manners, that they dared not only to take up arms on my behalf, but also gave much money, and when I declined, all but forced me to take it, and obeyed me readily in everything. And what was greatest, from thence to you my name was much carried, and all proclaimed me brave, intelligent, just, terrible to deal with not only in war but skillful also in using peace, accessible, gentle. But you have now given them in return, first, that through me the affairs of the world are overturned—though I am conscious of overturning nothing, willingly or unwillingly—then, that one must plait ropes from my beard, and that I make war upon the Chi, while a longing for the Kappa steals upon you.

And may the guardian gods of this city grant you this twofold, since besides this you have falsely accused the neighboring cities too, sacred and fellow-servants of mine, as though from them came the things composed against me, whom I well know they love more than their own sons—they who at once set up again the precincts of the gods and overturned all the tombs of the godless. From the watchword which I gave a little while ago, so lifted up in mind and so exalted in thought were they, that they proceeded against those who sin against the gods even further than I wished. But your doings: many overturned the altars just raised, which our gentleness scarcely taught to keep quiet. And when we had cast out the corpse of Daphne, some of you, expiating your offense toward the gods, gave back, to those indignant about the relics of the corpse, the precinct of the god of Daphne; while others, whether unawares or not, set that fire to it—a fire fearful to the visiting strangers, but to your people a source of pleasure, neglected by the council and still neglected.

To me, then, it seemed that even before the fire the god had forsaken the temple; for the statue gave me a sign when I first entered, and of this I call to witness the great Helios against the unbelievers. But I wish to remind you of another of my hatefulnesses, and then, as I am fairly wont to do, to reproach and accuse and blame myself for this too. For in the tenth month, as counted among you—Loos, I think, you call it—there is an ancestral festival of this god, and one ought to have gone in earnest to Daphne. So I hastened from Casian Zeus to this, thinking there above all to enjoy your wealth and public spirit. And I pictured to myself a procession, as though seeing dreams—victims and libations and choruses for the god and incense, and the youths there about the precinct, in soul most divinely arrayed, and adorned with white and magnificent raiment. But when I had passed within the precinct, I found neither incense nor cake nor victim. At first, then, I marveled and thought I was outside the precinct, and that you were waiting for me—honoring me, that is, as high priest—to give the watchword. But when I asked what the city meant to sacrifice in celebrating the annual festival to the god, the priest said: "I have come bringing from my own house a goose as a victim for the god, but the city has this time made no preparation."

Thereupon I, the quarrelsome one, addressed the council in very unbecoming words, which perhaps it is not out of place to recall even now.

"It is a dreadful thing," said I, "that so great a city should be so neglectful of the gods as not even a single village dwelling at the farthest ends of Pontus—a city that owns ten thousand lots of its own land, when for the first time now an annual festival is established for the ancestral god, since the gods have scattered the cloud of godlessness, brings not one bird on its own behalf, when it ought above all to sacrifice oxen by tribes, or, if that were not easy, at least to offer in common, on behalf of the whole city, one bull to the god. But each of you delights to spend privately on his dinners and festivals, and I well know that many of you have wasted very much money on the dinners of the Maiumas; yet on behalf of yourselves and the safety of the city no one sacrifices, neither privately among the citizens nor publicly as a city, but the priest alone—whom, I think, it were more just to send home with portions from the abundance of the offerings brought to the god by you. For to the priests the gods enjoined to honor them by goodness and the practice of virtue and to render them fitting service; but it befits the city, I think, to sacrifice both privately and publicly. But now each of you permits his wife to carry everything out of the house to the Galilaeans, and those women, feeding the poor at your expense, work a great miracle of godlessness in the eyes of those who need such things—and such, I think, is the greater part of mankind. But you yourselves, first being negligent of the honors due to the gods, suppose you do nothing strange; and none of the needy come to the temples, for there is, I think, nothing whence they may be fed. And when a man celebrates a birthday, he prepares an ample dinner and breakfast, receiving his friends at a costly table; but when an annual festival is held, no one brought oil for a lamp to the god, nor libation, nor victim, nor frankincense. I, then, do not know how any good man, seeing these things among you, could approve of them, and I, for my part, think they please not even the gods."

I remember saying such things then, and the god bore witness to my words—as I would he had not—by forsaking the suburb which he had guarded a long time, in that storm turning the mind of the rulers elsewhere and forcing their hands. But I made myself hateful to you, acting foolishly. For I ought to have kept silent, as, I think, did many others of those who entered with me, and not to have been a busybody nor to have rebuked. But through rashness, and through ridiculous flattery—for it must not be thought that the words I then spoke to you were out of goodwill, but, I think, hunting a reputation for piety toward the gods and for guileless goodwill toward you; and this is, I think, the most laughable flattery—I poured out much upon you in vain. You therefore deal justly in avenging yourselves for those rebukes and exchanging places with me. I, under the god, by the altar and the footprints of the statue, ran you down among a few of you; but you, in the marketplace, among the people, through citizens fully capable of being witty in such matters. For be well assured, all who speak share their words with their hearers, and he who has heard the blasphemies with pleasure, partaking of equal pleasure with less trouble than the speaker, is a partner in the guilt. It has, then, been said to you, and heard throughout the whole city, all the jests that have been made at this wretched beard, and at the man who has displayed to you no fair manner, nor will display one. For he will not display a life such as yours. You live ever, and you long to see, even in your rulers.

As for the blasphemies, then, which both privately and publicly you poured upon me, sporting in your anapaests, having joined in the accusation against myself, I permit you to use it with greater freedom, since I will never on that account do you any harm—neither slaying nor beating nor binding nor shutting up nor punishing. For how should I, who, since I displayed myself to you, with my friends, living temperately—a sight to you most base and most unpleasant—and showed no fair spectacle, have resolved to depart from the city and withdraw, persuaded by no means that I shall by all means please those to whom I am going, but judging it preferable, even if I fail at least to seem to them honorable and good, to share in turn with all my own unpleasantness, and not to wear out this happy city, as though by the foul odor of my moderation and the temperance of my close companions. For none of us bought a field or a garden among you, nor built a house, nor married from among you, nor gave in marriage to you, nor fell in love with your beauties, nor coveted Assyrian wealth, nor distributed the patronages, nor suffered any of those in office to wield power beside us, nor persuaded the people to preparations of dinners or theaters, whom we made so luxurious that, having leisure from his want, he composed his anapaests against the very man who was the author of his plenty; nor did we levy gold or ask for silver or increase the tributes; but, besides the arrears, a fifth part of all the customary contributions has been remitted. I do not think it suffices that I am temperate, but I have also—yes, by Zeus and the gods, as I persuade myself—a moderate prosecutor, well rebuked by you because, being old and bald, through ill temper he is ashamed to wear his hair long behind, as Homer made the Abantes do; and I have at home with me men no worse than he, two and three, nay four, and if you wish now, even a fifth. And did not my uncle, of the same name, preside over you most justly, as long as the gods permitted him to be with us and to act with us? Did he not most providently go through all the administrations of the city?

To us, then, these things seemed fair—gentleness in rulers together with temperance; and we thought that through these pursuits we should appear fair enough to you. But since the depth of the beard displeases you, and the unkemptness of the hair, and my not frequenting the theaters, and my thinking it right to be dignified in the temples, and before all these, our busying about the trials and our restraining of greed in the marketplace, we willingly give up the city to you. For it is not, I think, easy for one who has changed in old age to escape the fable told of the kite. For it is said that the kite, having a voice like the other birds, set itself to neigh, like the noble horses; then, forgetting the one and not being able sufficiently to attain the other, it was deprived of both, and had a voice baser than the other birds. This I too am wary of suffering—of falling short both of boorishness and of grace. For already, as you yourselves perceive, we are near, the gods willing, to the time when "white hairs shall be mingled with my black," as the Teian poet said.

So be it. But of your ingratitude, in the name of the gods and of Zeus of the marketplace and guardian of the city, render an account. Have you ever been wronged by me in common or even in private, and, unable to take justice for this openly, do you wear me down through your anapaests—as the comic poets drag and bandy about Heracles and Dionysus—reviling us in the marketplaces? Or did I refrain from doing you any harm, but not from speaking ill of you, that you, going the same way, might avenge yourselves on me too? What, then, is your cause of offense and hatred toward us? For I well know that I have done none of you any terrible or incurable thing, neither privately to the men nor publicly to the city, nor said anything mean, but even praised you, as seemed to me fitting, and imparted some benefit, as much as it was likely for one who desires, with ability, to do good to many men. But it is impossible, be well assured, both to grant everything to those who pay taxes and to give everything to those accustomed to receive. When, then, I appear to have diminished none of the public contributions which the imperial expenditure is wont to apportion, but to have remitted to you not a little of the imposts, does not the matter resemble a riddle?

And these things were of the very small sort, and not yet able to set the city at war with me; but the greatest thing, from which the great hatred was raised: when I had come to you, the people in the theater, choked by the rich, raised this cry first: "All is full, all is dear." The next day I conversed with your powerful men, trying to persuade them that it is better, despising unjust acquisition, to do good to citizens and strangers. And they, having promised to attend to the matter, when for three months in succession I overlooked it and waited, were so neglectful of the matter as no one would have expected. And when I saw that the people's cry was true, and that the marketplace was straitened not by scarcity but by the insatiableness of those who held the goods, I fixed a moderate price for each thing and made it plain to all. And since they had everything else in great abundance—for there was wine and oil and all the rest—but were in want of grain, a terrible barrenness having come from the previous droughts, I resolved to send to Chalcis and Hierapolis and the cities round about, whence I brought in to you four hundred thousand measures. And when this too was spent, I expended first five thousand, then seven thousand, then now ten thousand, which it is the local custom to call modii, of grain, having it all from my own stores. The grain brought to me from Egypt I gave to the city, exacting silver not for ten measures but for fifteen, the same amount that was before paid for ten. And if in summer so many measures of grain went among you for a piece of money, what was to be expected then, when, as the Boeotian poet says, "the famine grew grievous in the house"? Was it not, hardly and as a favor, five—especially as so great a winter came on as well? What, then, did your rich men do? They sold the grain on their estates secretly at a higher price, and weighed down the public with their private expenditures; and not only does the city flock to this, but most come running together even from the country, buying bread—the only thing to be found in quantity and cheap. And yet who remembers, when your city was flourishing, fifteen measures of grain being sold for the gold piece?

For this deed I made myself hateful to you, that I did not permit you to sell your wine and your vegetables and your fruits for gold, and that the grain shut up by the rich in their storehouses should suddenly become silver and gold for them from you. For they disposed of it well outside the city, having wrought for men "a famine, the destroyer of mortals," as the god said, convicting those who practice such things. But the city has come into abundance of bread alone, and of nothing else. I understood, then, even at the time, that in doing these things I should not please all, but it was nothing to me; for I thought I ought to help the wronged multitude and the strangers who came, both for my own sake and for that of the rulers who were with us. But since, I think, it comes about that they depart, while the city is of one mind toward me—for some hate me, and others, fed by me, are ungrateful—I will commit all things to Adrasteia and depart to another nation and another people, reminding you of nothing of what, nine years before, doing justly toward one another, you wrought: the people carrying with shouting the flame to the houses of the powerful and killing the ruler, and then paying penalty in turn for these things which, justly angered, it had done no longer moderately.

For what, then, in the name of the gods, are we ungrateful met with? Because we feed you from our own stores, which till today has fallen to the lot of no city, and feed you so splendidly? Because we increased your roll of councilors? Because, having caught thieves, we did not proceed against them? Do you wish me to remind you of one or two things, lest anyone suppose that the matter is a figure and rhetoric and pretense? Three thousand lots of land, I think, you said were unsown, and asked to receive them; and having received them, you all distributed them among yourselves who had no need. This, on examination, plainly appeared. And taking them away from those who held them unjustly, and making no inquiry about the past, when they held them tax-free—who above all ought to have been liable to tax—I assigned them to the heaviest public services of the city. And now those who breed horses each year hold tax-free nearly three thousand lots of land, by the device and management of my uncle and namesake, and by my favor—I who, punishing the rogues and thieves thus, naturally appear to you to overturn the order of the world. For be well assured that toward such men gentleness increases and nourishes the wickedness in mankind.

My discourse, then, here too comes round again to the very point I wish. For I am the cause to myself of all my evils, in having laid up my favors with ungrateful characters. This, then, is the fault of my folly, and not of your freedom. I, indeed, will try for the future to be more prudent in my dealings with you; but to you may the gods render the recompense of your goodwill toward us and the honor which you publicly paid us.