LETTER TO NIGRINUS 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 2, 40, 3. that
ignorance makes men bold, but discourse
 To bring out the play on words, "discourse” is used here
in the obsolete sense of "consideration, reflection.” 
cautious,
for clearly this great hardihood of mine is not due to
ignorance alone, but also to fondness for discourse!
Good health to you!
 THE WISDOM OF NIGRINUS 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? Apparently a free quotation from some play that is lost.
(Kock, adesp. 1419.) 

 
 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.