On Salaried Posts in Great Houses (21-25)

You must be content, how- “ever, for it would not even be possible for you to get away, now that you are in the paddock. So you take the bit with your eyes shut, and in the beginning you answer his touch readily, as he does not pull hard or spur sharply until you have imperceptibly grown quite used to him.

People on the outside envy you after that, seeing that you live within the pale and enter without let and have become a notable figure in the inner circle.

Slowly and gradually, therefore, as if you could then distinguish things for the first time in the indistinct light, you begin to realize that those golden hopes were nothing but gilded bubbles, while your labours are burdensome and genuine, inexorable and continuous. “What are they?” perhaps you will ask me: “J. do not see what there is in such posts that is laborious, nor can I imagine what those wearisome and insupportable things are that you spoke of.”[*] Listen, then, my worthy friend, and do not simply try to find out whether there is any weariness im the thing, but give its baseness and humility and general slavishness more than incidental consideration in the hearing.

First of all, remember never again from that time forward to think yourself free or noble. All that— your pride of race, your freedom, your ancient lineage—you will leave outside the threshold, let me tell you, when you go in after having sold yourself into such service; for Freedom will refuse to enter with you when you go in for purposes so base and humble. So you will be a slave perforce, however distasteful you may find the name, and not the slave of one man but of many; and you will

Perhaps, however, you think it quite enough to establish your freedom that you are not the son of a Pyrrhias or a Zopyrion, and that you have not been sold in the market like a Bithynian by a loud-voiced auctioneer. But, my excellent friend, when the first of the month arrives and side by side with Pyrrhias and Zopyrion you stretch out your hand like the rest of the servants and take your earnings, whatever they are—that is sale! There was no need of an auctioneer in the case of a man who put himself up at auction and for a long time solicited a master.

Ah, scurvy outcast (that would be my language, above all to a self-styled philosopher), if a wrecker or a pirate had taken you at sea and were offering you for sale, would you not pity yourself for being ill-fated beyond your deserts; or if someone had laid hands upon you and were haling you off, saying that you were a slave, would you not invoke the law and make a great stir and be wrathful and shout ‘“Heavens and Earth!” at the top of your voice? Then just for a few obols, at that age when, even if you were a slave by birth, it would be high

Indeed, it would be lucky for you if the thing

You must therefore be seen with him always and never be missing; you must get up early to let yourself be noted in attendance, and you must not desert your post. Putting his hand upon your shoulder now and then, he talks nonsense at random,