Pelt, pelt the scoundrel with plenty of stones! Heap him with clods! Pile him up with broken dishes, too! Beat the blackguard with your sticks! Look out he doesn’t get away! Throw, Plato; you too, Chrysippus; you too; everybody at once! Let’s charge him together. “Let wallet to wallet give succour, and cudgel to cudgel,” κρῖν᾽ ἄνδρας κατὰ φῦλα, κατὰ φρήτρας, ᾿Ἀγάμεμνον,ὡς φρήτρη φρήτρηφιν ἀρήγῃ, φῦλα δὲ φύλοις.Iliad2, 363 for he is our joint enemy, and there is not a man of us whom he has not outraged. Diogenes, ply your stick, if ever you did before; let none of you weaken; let him pay the penalty for his ribaldry. What is this? Have yon given out, Epicurus and Aristippus? Come, that is too bad! Show yourselves men, ye sages, and call up the fury of battle.Iliad6, 112; Homer has “friends,” not “sages.”

Aristotle, make haste! Still faster! That’s well; the game is bagged. We have you, villain! you shall soon find out what sort of men you have been insulting. But how are we to punish him, to be sure? Let us invent a complex death for him, such as to satisfy us all; in fact he deserves to die seven times over for each of us.

I suggest he be crucified.

Yes, by Heaven; but flogged beforehand.

Let him have his eyes put out long beforehand

Let him have that tongue of his cut off, even longer beforehand.

And you, Empedocles—what do you suggest?

That he be thrown into my crater,

Aetna, into which Eimpedocles is said to have leapt.

Indeed, the best suggestion would have been for him, like another Pentheus or Orpheus, “To find among the crags a riven doom,”

Both Pentheus and Orpheus were torn to ieces by Maenads. The verse is from a lost tragedy (Nauck, Fr Fragm. p. 895).

No, no! In the name of Him who hears the suppliant,

Zeus.

Well, then, as you are absolutely determined to kill me and there is no possibility of my escaping, do tell me at least who you are and what irreparable injuries you have received from me that you’ are irreconcilably angry and have seized me for execution.

What dreadful wrongs you have done us you may ask yourself, you rascal, and those precious dialogues of yours in which you not only spoke abusively of Philosophy herself, but insulted us by advertising for sale, as if in a slave-market, men who are learned, and what is more, free-born. Indignant at this, we requested a brief leave of absence from Pluto and have come up to get you—Chrysippus here, Epicurus, Plato (myself), Aristotle over there, Pythagoras here, who says nothing, Diogenes, and everyone that you vilified in your dialogues.

I breathe again, for you will not put me to death if you understand how I have acted as regards you. So throw away your stones; or better, keep them. You will make use of them against those who deserve them.

It is curious that this suggestion, though emphasized by being repeated (§ 11), is not worked out.