LETTER TO NIGRINUS Best wishes to Nigrinus from Lucian ! The proverb says “An ow] 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.

 

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
 Odyss. 12, 39 ; 167. 
(if there ever were any) and the
nightingales
 Odyss. 19, 518. and the lotus of Homer.
 Odyss. 9, 94. The lotus is mentioned because of its
effect. 1t made Odysseus’ shipmates
 Among the Lotus-eaters fain to stay And gather lotus, and forget their homes. 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 ;




 

and then I thought them paltry and ridiculous, and
was glad to be looking up, as it were, out of the
murky atmosphere of my past life to.a clear sky and
a great light. In consequence, I actually forgot my
eye and its ailment—would you believe it ?—and by
degrees grew sharper-sighted in my soul ; which, all
unawares, I had been carrying about in a purblind
condition till then.