“You who are now the beggarly son of a nobody,
who have entertained some thought of so illiberal a
trade, will after a little inspire envy and jealousy
in all men, for you will be honoured and lauded, you
will be held in great esteem for the highest qualities
and admired by men_ preeminent in lineage and in
wealth, you will wear clothing such as this”—she
pointed to her own, and she was very splendidly
dressed—“and will be deemed worthy of office and
precedence. If ever you go abroad, even on foreign
soil you will not be unknown or inconspicuous, for
will attach to you such marks of identification that
everyone who sees you will nudge his neighbour and
point you out with his finger, saying, ‘There he is!’

 

If anything of grave import befalls your friends or
even the entire city, all will turn their eyes upon
you; and if at any time you chance to make a
speech, the crowd will listen open-mouthed, marvelling and felicitating you upon your eloquence and
your father upon his good fortune. They say that
some men become immortal. I shall bring this to pass


 

with you; for though you yourself depart from life, you
will never cease associating with men of education and
conversing with men of eminence. You know whose
son Demosthenes was, and how great I made him.
You know that Aeschines was the son of a tambourine girl, but for all that, Philip paid court to him
for my sake. And Socrates himself was brought upunder the tutelage of our friend Sculpture, but as
soon as he understood what was better he ran away
from her and joined my colours ; and you have heard
how his praises are sung by everyone.
 
“On the other hand, if you turn your back upon
these men so great and noble, upon glorious deeds
and sublime words, upon a dignified appearance,
upon honour, esteem, praise, precedence, power and
offices, upon fame for eloquence and felicitations for
wit, then you will put on a filthy tunic, assume a
servile appearance, and hold bars and gravers and
sledges and chisels in your hands, with your back bent
over your work; you will be a groundling, with groundling ambitions, altogether humble ; you will never lift
your head, or conceive a single manly or liberal
thought, and although you will plan to make your
works well-balanced and well-shapen, you will not
show any concern to make yourself well-balanced and
sightly ; on the contrary, you will make yourself a
thing of less value than a block of stone.”

 

While these words were still on her lips, without
waiting for her to finish what she was saying, I stood
up and declared myself. Abandoning the ugly


 

working-woman, I went over to Education with a
right good will, especially when the stick entered
my mind and the fact that it had laid many a blow
upon me at the very outset the day before. When
I abandoned Sculpture, at first she was indignant
and struck her hands together and ground her
teeth ; but at length, like Niobe in the story, she
grew rigid and turned to stone. Her fate was
strange, but do not be incredulous, for dreams work
miracles.

 
The other fixed her eyes upon me and said: “I
will therefore repay you for the justice that you have
done in judging this issue rightly : come at once and
mount this car”—pointing to a car with winged
horses resembling Pegasus—“in order that you may
know what you would have missed if you had not
come with me.” When I had mounted she plied whip
and reins, and I was carried up into the heights and
went from the East to the very West, surveying
cities and nations and peoples, sowing something
broadcast over the earth like Triptolemus. I do not
now remember what it was that I sowed; only that
men, looking up from below, applauded, and all those
above whom I passed in my flight sped me on my way
with words of praise.