Lycinus

There now appeared a messenger who said he brought a communication from Hetoemocles the Stoic, which his master had directed him to read publicly, and then return. With Aristaenetus’s permission he took it to the lamp, and began reading.

Philosophy

The usual thing, I suppose—a panegyric on the bride, or an epithalamium?

Lycinus

Just what we took it for; however, it was quite another story. Here are the contents:

Lycinus

HETOEMOCLES THE PHILOSOPHER TO ARISTAENETUS, GREETING.

My views on dining are easily deducible from my whole past life; though daily importuned by far richer men than you to join them, I invariably refuse; I know too well the tumults and follies that attend the wine-cup. But if there is one whose neglect I may fairly resent, it is yourself; the fruit of my long and unremitting attentions to you is to find myself not on the roll of your friends; I, your next-door neighbour, am singled out for exclusion. The sting of it is in the personal ingratitude; happiness for me is not found in a plate of wild boar or hare or pastry; these I get in abundance at the houses of people who understand the proprieties; this very day I might have dined (and well, by all accounts) with my pupil Pammenes; but he pressed me to no purpose; I was reserving myself, poor fool, for you.

Lycinus

But you pass me by, and feast others. I ought not to be surprised; you have not acquired the power of distinguishing merit; you have no apprehensive imagination. I know whence the blow comes; it 1s from your precious philosophers, Zenothemis and The Labyrinth, whose mouths (though I would not boast) I could stop with a single syllogism. Let either of them tell me, What is Philosophy? or, not to go beyond the merest elements, how does condition differ from constitution? for I will not resort to real puzzles, as the Horns, the Sorites, or the ReaperSee Puzzles in Notes.. Well, I wish you joy of their company. As for me, holding as I do that nothing is good but what is right, I shall get over a slight like this.

Lycinus

You will be kind enough not to resort later to the well-worn excuse of having forgotten in the bustle of your engagements; I have spoken to you twice to-day, in the morning at your house, and later when you were sacrificing at the Anaceum. This is to let your guests know the rights of the case.

Lycinus

If you think it is the dinner I care about, reflect upon the story of Oeneus; you will observe that, when he omitted Artemis alone from the Gods to whom he offered sacrifice, she resented it. Homer’s account of it states that he Forgot or ne’er bethought bim—woeful blindness! Euripides’s begins, This land of Calydon, across the gulf From Pelops land, with all its fertile plains—; and Sophocles’s, Upon the tilth of Oeneus Leto’s child, Far-darting Goddess, loosed a monstrous boar.