A Hermes! Invoked as the god of orators. 
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—


 

the number of his rings, the over-niceness of his
hair, the extravagance of his life. So he was
disciplined little by little, and went away much
improved by the public education he had received.

 

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.