Nigrinus (10-14)

A Hermes![*] what a fine introduction you have made, just like a professor of public speaking! You intend, I am sure, to add that your conversation was short, that you didn’t come prepared to speak, and that it would be better to hear him tell it himself, for really you have only carried in mind what little you could. Weren’t you going to say that? Well, there is no longer any necessity for it on my account; consider your whole introduction finished as far as I am concerned, for I am ready to cheer and to clap. But if you keep shilly-shallying, I'll bear you a grudge all through the speech and will hiss right, sharply.

B Yes, I should have liked to say all that you mention, and also that I do not intend to quote him without a break and in his own words, in a long speech covering everything, for that would be quite beyond my powers; nor yet to quote him in the first person, for fear of making myself like the actors whom I mentioned in another way. Time and again when they have assumed the role of Agamemnon or Creon or even Heracles himself, costumed in cloth of gold, with fierce eyes and mouths wide agape, they speak in a voice that is small, thin, womanish, and far too poor for Hecuba or Polyxena. Therefore, to avoid being criticised like them for wearing a mask altogether too big for my head and for being a disgrace to my costume, I want to talk to you with my features exposed, so that the hero whose part I am taking may not be brought down with me if I stumble.

A Will the man never stop talking so much stage and tragedy to me?

B Why, yes! I will stop, certainly, and will now turn to my subject. The talk began with praise of Greece and of the men of Athens, because Philosophy and Poverty have ever been their fuster-brothers, and they do not look with pleasure on any man, be he citizen or stranger, who strives to introduce luxury among them, but if ever anyone comes to them in that frame of mind, they gradually correct him and lend a hand in his schooling and convert him to the simple life.

For example, he mentioned a millionaire who came to Athens, a very conspicuous and vulgar person with his crowd of attendants and his gay clothes and jewelry, and expected to be envied by all the Athenians and to be looked up to as a happy man. But they thought the creature unfortunate, and undertook to educate him, not in a harsh way, however, nor yet by directly forbidding him to live as he would in a free city. But when he made himself a nuisance at the athletic clubs and the baths by jostling and crowding passers with his retinue, someone or other would say in a low tone, pretending to be covert, as if he were not directing the remark at the man himself: “He is afraid of being murdered in his tub! Why, profound peace reigns in the baths; there is no need of an army, then!” And the man, who never failed to hear, got a bit of instruction in passing. His gay clothes and his purple gown they stripped from him very neatly by making fun of his flowery colours, saying, “Spring already?” ‘How did that peacock get here f” “Perhaps it’s his mother’s” and the like. His other vulgarities they turned into jest in the same way—

To show that they are not ashamed to confess poverty, he mentioned to me a remark which he said he had heard everybody make with one accord at the Panathenaic games. One of the citizens had been arrested and brought before the director of the games because he was looking on in a coloured cloak. Those who saw it were sorry for him and tried to beg him off, and when the herald proclaimed that he had broken the law by wearing such clothing at the games, they all cried out in one voice, as if by pre-arrangement, to excuse him for being in that dress, because, they said, he had no other. Well, he praised all this, and also the freedom there and the blamelessness of their mode of living, their quiet and leisure; and these advantages they certainly have in plenty. He declared, for instance, that a life like theirs is in harmony with philosophy - and can keep the character pure; so that a serious man who has been taught to despise wealth and elects to live for what is intrinsically good will find Athens éxactly suited to him.