Nigrinus (intro-2)

Best wishes to Nigrinus from Lucian!

The proverb says “An owl to Athens!” meaning that it would be ridiculous for anyone to bring owls there, because they have plenty in the city. If I wanted to display my command of language, and were sending Nigrinus a book written for that purpose, I should be exposing myself to ridicule as a genuine importer of owls. But it is only my state of mind which I wish to reveal to you, how I feel now, and how deeply I have been moved by your discourse. So I may fairly be acquitted even of the charge contained in Thucydides’ saying[*] that ignorance makes men bold, but discourse [*] cautious, for clearly this great hardihood of mine is not due to ignorance alone, but also to fondness for discourse! Good health to you!

A How very lordly and exalted you are since you came back! Really, you don’t deign to notice us any more, you don’t associate with us, and you don’t join in our conversations: you have changed

all of a sudden, and, in short, have a supercilious air. I should be glad to find out from you how it comes that you are so peculiar, and what is the cause of all this?

B Nothing but good fortune, my dear fellow.

A What do you mean?

B I have come back to you transformed by the wayside into a happy and a blissful man—in the language of the stage, “thrice blessed.”

A Heracles! in so short a time?

B Yes, truly.

A But what is the rest of it? What is it that you are puffed up about? Let us enjoy something more than a mere hint: let us have a chance to get at the facts by hearing the whole story.

B Don’t you think it wonderful, in the name of Zeus, that once a slave, I am now free! « once poor, now rich indeed”; once witless and befogged, now saner?[*]

A Why, yes! nothing could be more fmportant. But even yet I don’t clearly understand what you mean.

B Well, I made straight for Rome, wanting to see an oculist; for I was having more and more trouble with my eye.

A I know all that, and hoped you would find an able man.

B As I had resolved to pay my respects to Nigrinus the Platonic philosopher, which I had not done for a long time, I got up early and went to his house, and when I had knocked at the door and the man had announced me, I was asked in. On

entering, I found him with a book in his hands and many busts of ancient philosophers standing round about. Beside him there had been placed a tablet filled with figures in geometry and a reed globe, made, I thought, to represent the universe.