The Dead Come to Life, or the Fisherman (5-6)

FRANKNESS

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.[*]

PLATO

Nonsense: you must die to-day. Yes, forthwith

Don your tunic of stone on account of the wrongs you have done us!

Iliad3, 57.

FRANKNESS

Truly, gentlemen, you will put to death, you may depend upon it, the one man in the world whom you ought to commend as your friend, well-wisher, comrade in thought, and, if it be not in bad taste to say so, the defender of your teachings, if you put me to death after I have laboured so earnestly in your behalf. Take care, then, that you yourselves are not acting like most of our present-day philosophers by showing yourselves ungrateful and hasty and inconsiderate toward a benefactor.

PLATO

O what impudence! So we really owe you gratitude for your abuse, into the bargain? Are you so convinced that you are truly talking to slaves? Will you actually set yourself down as our benefactor, on top of all your insolent and intemperate language?

FRANKNESS

Where, pray, and when have I insulted you? I have always consistently admired philosophy and extolled you and lived on intimate terms with the writings that you have left behind. These very phrases that I utter—where else but from you did I get them? Culling them like a bee, I make my show with them before men, who applaud and recognize where and

from whom and how I gathered each flower; and although ostensibly it is I whom they admire for the bouquet, as a matter of fact it is you and your garden, because you have put forth such blossoms, so gay and varied in their hues—if one but knows how to select and interweave and combine them so that they will not be out of harmony with one another. Would any man, after receiving this kindly treatment at your hands,-attempt to speak ill of benefactors to whom he owes his reputation? Not unless he be like Thamyris or Eurytus in his nature, so as to raise his voice against the Muses from whom he had the gift of song, or to match himself against Apollo in archery—and he the giver of the bow!