Nigrinus (intro-4)

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

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

Well, he greeted me in very friendly way and asked me how I was getting on. I told him everything, and naturally in my own tum wanted to know how he was getting on, and whether he had made up his mind to take the trip to Greece again. Beginning:-to talk on these topics and to explain his position, my dear fellow, he poured enough ambrosial speech over me to put out of date the famous Sirens [*] (if there ever were any) and the nightingales [*] and the lotus of Homer. [*] A divine utterance!

For he went on to praise philosophy and the freedom that it gives, and to ridicule the things that are popularly considered blessings— wealth and reputation, dominion and honour, yes and purple and gold—things accounted very desirable by most men, and till then by me also. I took it all in with eager, wide-open soul, and at the moment I couldn’t imagine what had come over me; I was all confused. Then I felt hurt because he had criticised what was dearest to me—wealth and money and reputation,—and I all but cried over their downfall;