ACADEMIC But I swear to you by the dog and the plane-tree that this is so. BUYER Heracles! What curious gods! ACADEMIC What is that you say? Don’t you think the dog is a god? Don’t you know about Anubis in Egypt, how great he is, and about Sirius in the sky and Cerberus in the world below? BUYER Quite right; I was entirely mistaken. But what is your manner of life? ACADEMIC I dwell in a city that I created for myself, using an imported constitution and enacting statutes of my own. The allusion is to Plato’s Republic. BUYER I should like to hear one of your enactments. ACADEMIC Let me tell you the most important one, the view that I hold about wives; it is that none of thei shall belong solely to any one man, but that everyone who so desires may share the rights of the husband. BUYER You mean by this that you have abolished the laws against adultery? ACADEMIC Yes, and in a word, all this pettiness about such matters. BUYER What is your attitude as to pretty boys? ACADEMIC Their kisses shall be a guerdon for the bravest after they have done some splendid, reckless deed. BUYER My word, what generosity! And what is the gist of your wisdom? ACADEMIC My “ideas”; I mean the patterns of existing things: for of everything that you behold, the earth, with all that is upon it, the sky, the sea, invisible images exist outside the universe. BUYER Where do they exist? ACADEMIC Nowhere; for if they were anywhere, they would not be. As space cannot be predicated of anything outside the univerge, it cannot be predicated of the Platonic Ideas. To do so would be to make them phenomena instead of realities, for nothing in the universe is real. BUYER I do not see these patterns that you speak of. ACADEMIC Of course not, for the eye of your soul is blind; but I see images of everything,—an invisible “you,” another “me,” and in a word, two of everything. BUYER Then I must buy you for your wisdom and your sharp sight. (Zo Hermes.) Come, let’s see what price you will make me for him? HERMES Give me two talents. BUYER He is sold to me at the price you mention, But I will pay the money later on. HERMES What is your name? BUYER Dion of Syracuse. Chosen for mention, because he was Plato’s pupil. HERMES He is yours; take him, with good luck to you. Epicurean, I want you now. Who will buy him? He is a pupil of the laugher yonder and of the drunkard, both of whom we put up a short time ago. The Epicureans took over the atomic theory from Democritus and the idea that pleasure is the highest good from the Cyrenaics. In one way, however, he knows more than they, because he is more impious. Besides, he is agreeable and fond of good eating. BUYER What is his price? HERMES Two minas. BUYER Here you are. But, say! I want to know what food he likes. HERMES He eats sweets and honey-cakes, and, above all, figs. BUYER No trouble about that; we shall buy him cakes of pressed figs from Caria. ZEUS Call another, the one over there with the cropped head, the dismal fellow from the Porch. HERMES Quite right; at all events it looks as if the men who frequent the public square were waiting for him in great numbers. Lucian means that the Stoic philosophy was in high favour with statesmen, lawyers, and men of affairs generally. I sell virtue itself, the most perfect of philosophies. Who wants to be the only one to know everything? BUYER What do you mean by that? HERMES That he is the only wise man, the only handsome man, the only just man, brave man, king, orator, rich man, lawgiver, and everything else that there is. Compare Ad summam: sapiens uno minor est Jove, dives, Liber, honoratus, pulcher, rex denique regum, Praecipue sanus,— nisi cum pituita molestast! Horace, Epp. 1, I 106 ff BUYER Then he is the only cook,—yes and the only tanner or carpenter, and so forth? HERMES So it appears.