Clouds (870-909)

You would yourself be used to them if you were hanged.

A mischief take you! Do you abuse your teacher?

Were hanged quoth’a! How sillily he pronounced it, and with lips wide apart! How can this youth ever learn an acquittal from a trial

or a legal summons, or persuasive refutation? And yet Hyperbolus learned this at the cost of a talent.

Never mind; teach him. He is clever by nature. Indeed, from his earliest years, when he was a little fellow only so big, he was wont to form houses and carve ships within-doors,

and make little wagons of leather, and make frogs out of pomegranate-rinds, you can’t think how cleverly. But see that he learns those two causes; the better, whatever it may be; and the worse, which, by maintaining what is unjust, overturns the better.

If not both, at any rate the unjust one by all means.

He shall learn it himself from the two causes in person.

I will take my departure. Remember this now, that he is to be able to reply to all just arguments.