On Salaried Posts in Great Houses (3-4)

upon that life. I detected it first one time when our conversation turned to that theme, and then someone of the company praised this kind of wage-earning, saying that men were thrice happy when, besides having the noblest of the Romans for their friends, eating expensive dinners without paying any scot, living in a handsome establishment, and travelling in all comfort and luxury, behind a span of white horses, perhaps, with their noses in the air,[*] they could also get no inconsiderable amount of pay for the friendship which they enjoyed and the kindly treatment which they received; really everything grew without sowing and ploughing for such as they. When you heard all that and more of the same nature, I saw how you gaped at it and held your mouth very wide open for the bait.

In order, then, that as far as I am concerned I may be free from blame in future and you may not be able to say that when I saw you swallowing up that great hook along with the bait I did not hold you back or pull it away before it got into your throat or give you forewarning, but waited until I saw you dragged along by it and forcibly haled away when at last it was pulled and had set itself firmly, and then, when it was no use, stood and wept—in order that you may not say this, which would be a very sound plea if you should say it, and impossible for me to controvert on the ground that I had done no wrong by not warning you in advance—listen to everything at the outset; examine the net itself and the impermeability of the pounds beforehand, from the outside at

your leisure, not from the inside after you are in the fyke; take in your hands the bend of the hook and the barb of its point, and the tines of the harpoon; puff out your cheek and try them on it, and if they do not prove very keen and unescapable and painful in one’s wounds, pulling hard and gripping irresistibly, then write me down a coward who goes hungry for that reason, and, exhorting yourself to be bold, attack your prey if you will, swallowing the bait whole like a gull!

The whole story will be told for your sake, no doubt, in the main, but it will concern not only students of philosophy like yourself, and those who have chosen one of: the more strenuous vocations in life, but also grammarians, rhetoricians, musicians, and ina word all who think fit to enter families and serve for hire as educators. Since the experiences of all are for the most part common and similar, it is clear that the treatment accorded the philosophers, so far from being preferential, is more contumelious for being the same, if it is thought that what is good enough for the others is good enough for them, and they are not handled with any greater respect by their paymasters. Moreover, the blame for whatever the discussion itself brings out in its advance ought to be given primarily to the men themselves who do such things and secondarily to those who put up with them. I am not to blame, unless there is something censurable in truth and frankness.

As to those who make up the rest of the mob, such as athletic instructors and parasites, ignorant, pettyminded, naturally abject fellows, it is not worth while to try to turn them away from such household positions, for they would not heed, nor indeed is it proper to blame them for not leaving their paymasters,

however much they may be insulted by them, for they are adapted to this kind of occupation and not too good for it. Besides, they would not have anything else to which they might turn in order to keep themselves busy, but if they should be deprived ot this, they would be without a trade at once and out of work and superfluous. So they themselves cannot suffer any wrong nor their employers be thought insulting for using a pot, as the saying goes, for a pot’s use. They enter households in the first instance to encounter this insolence, and it is their trade to bear and tolerate it. But in the case of the educated men whom I mentioned before, it is worth while to be indignant and to put forth every effort to bring them back and redeem them to freedom.