While you are still debating these matters the
bell rings, and you must follow the same routine, go
the rounds and stand up; but first you must rub
your loins and knees with ointment if you wish to
last the struggle out! Then comes a similar dinner,
prolonged to the same hour. In your case the diet
is in contrast to your former way of living; the
sleeplessness, too, and the sweating and the weariness
gradually undermine you, giving rise to consumption,
pneumonia, indigestion, or that noble complaint, the
gout. You stick it out, however, and often you
ought to be abed, but this is not permitted. They
think illness a pretext, and a way of shirking your
duties. The general consequences are that you are
always pale and look as if you were going to die any
minute.
 
So it goes in the city. And if you have to go into the
country, I say nothing of anything else, but it often
rains; you are the last to get there—even in the
matter of horses it was your luck to draw that kind!—
and you wait about until for lack of accommodation
they crowd you in with the cook or the mistress’s
hairdresser without giving you even a generous
supply of litter for a bed!


 
 
I make no bones of telling you a story that I was
told by our friend Thesmopolis, the Stoic, of something that happened to him which was very comical,
and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that
the same thing may happen to someone else. He
was in the household of a rich and self-indulgent
woman who belonged to a distinguished family in
the city. Having to go into the country one time,
in the first place he underwent, he said, this highly
ridiculous experience, that he, a philosopher, was
given a favourite to sit by, one of those fellows who
have their legs depilated and their beards shaved off;
the mistress held him in high honour, no doubt. He
gave the fellow’s name; it was Dovey! Chelidonion: Little Swallow. _ Now what
a thing that was, to begin with, for a stern‘old man
with a grey beard (you know what a long, venerable
beard Thesmopolis used to have) to sit beside a
fellow with rouged cheeks, underlined eyelids, an
unsteady glance, and a skinny neck—no dove, by
Zeus, but a plucked vulture! Indeed, had it not
been for repeated entreaties, he would have worn a
hair-net on his head. In other ways too Thesmopolis
suffered numerous annoyances from him all the way,
for he hummed and whistled and no doubt would
even have danced in the carriage if Thesmopolis had
not held him in check.
 
Then too, something else of a similar nature was
required of him. The woman sent for him and said:
“Thesmopolis, I am asking a great favour of you;


 

please do it for me without making any objections or
waiting to be asked repeatedly.” He promised, as
was natural, that he would do anything, and she
went on: “I ask this of you because I see that you
are kind and thoughtful and sympathetic—take my
dog Myrrhina (you know her) into your carriage and
look after her for me, taking care that she does not
want for anything. The poor thing is unwell and is
almost ready to have puppies, and these abominable,
disobedient servants do not pay much attention even
to me on journeys, let alone to her. So do not think
that you will be rendering me a trivial service if you
take good care of my precious, sweet doggie.”
Thesmopolis promised, for she plied him with many
entreaties and almost wept. The situation was as
funny as could be: a little dog peeping out of his
cloak just below his beard, wetting him often, even
if Thesmopolis did not add that detail, barking in a
squeaky voice (that is the way with Maltese dogs,
you know), and licking the philosopher’s beard,
especially if any suggestion of yesterday's gravy was
in it! The favourite ‘who had sat by him was joking
rather wittily one day at the expense of the company
in the dining-room, and when in due course his
banter reached Thesmopolis, he remarked: “As to
Thesmopolis,- I can only say that our Stoic has
finally gone to. the dogs!” i.e. had become a Cynic. I was told, too, that
the doggie actually had her puppies in the cloak of
Thesmopolis.
 
That is the way they make free with their dependants, yes, make game of them, gradually rendering
them submissive to their effrontery. I know a sharp-


 

tongued rhetorician who made a speech by request at
dinner in a style that was not by any means uncultivated, but very finished and studied. He was
applauded, however, because his speech, which was
delivered while they were drinking, was timed by
flasks of wine instead of measures of water! And he
took this venture on, it was said, for two hundred
drachmas. It was not the fashion at ancient banquets for guests to make speeches. In consenting to deliver a selection from his repertory, the rhetorician put himself on a par with a professional entertainer. This was bad enough, but he made things still worse by allowing the company to time his speech with a substitute for a water-clock which they improvised out of a flask of wine. 
All this is not so bad, perhaps. But if Divesf
himself has a turn for writing poetry or prose and
recites his own compositions at dinner, then you
must certainly split yourself applauding and flattering
him and excogitating new styles of praise. Some
of them wish to be admired for their beauty also,
and they must hear themselves called an Adonis
or a Hyacinthus, although sometimes they have
a yard of nose. If you withhold your praise, off you
go at once to the quarries of Dionysius because
you are jealous and are plotting against your master.
They must be philosophers and rhetoricians, too,
and if they happen to commit a solecism, precisely
on that account their language must seem full of
the flavour of Attica and of Hymettus, and it must
be the law to speak that way in future.