But I swear to you by the dog and the plane-tree that this is so.

Heracles! What curious gods!

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?

Quite right; I was entirely mistaken. But what is your manner of life?

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.

I should like to hear one of your enactments.

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.

You mean by this that you have abolished the laws against adultery?

Yes, and in a word, all this pettiness about such matters.

What is your attitude as to pretty boys?

Their kisses shall be a guerdon for the bravest after they have done some splendid, reckless deed.

My word, what generosity! And what is the gist of your wisdom?

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.

Where do they exist?

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.

I do not see these patterns that you speak of.

What is your name?

Dion of Syracuse.Chosen for mention, because he was Plato’s pupil.

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.

What is his price?

Two minas.

Call another, the one over there with the cropped head, the dismal fellow from the Porch.

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?

What do you mean by that?

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

Then he is the only cook,—yes and the only tanner or carpenter, and so forth?