But I must add at least this much, that the rough, steep road used not to have many tracks of wayfarers, and whatever tracks there were, were very old. I myself, unlucky dog, got up by that road and did all that hard work without any need; but as the other was level and had no windings at all, I could see from a distance what it was like without having travelled it myself. You see, being still young, I could not discern what was better, but believed that poet

Epicharmus.

to be telling the truth when he said that blessings were engendered of toil.

The thought is expressed in Works and Days, 289: “The immortal gods have put sweat before virtue;” but Lucian’s wording is closer to the famous line of E icharmus quoted (just after the passage from Hesiod) in Xenophon’s Memorabilia, 2, 1, 20: “’Tis at the price of toil that the gods sell us all their blessings.”

That was not so, however; at all events, I notice that most people are accorded greater returns without any labour, through their felicitous choice of words and ways.

But, to resume—when you reach the starting-point, I am sure that you will be in doubt, and indeed are even now in doubt, which road to follow. I propose, therefore, to tell you how to do now in order to mount to the highest peak with the greatest ease, to be fortunate, to bring off the marriage, and to be accounted wonderful by everyone. It is quite enough that I should have been duped and should have worked hard. For you, let everything grow “without sowing and without ploughing,” as in the time of Cronus.

The quotation is from Odyssey, 9,.109, but there is also an allusion to Hesiod’s description of the time of Cronus, the golden age, when the “‘grain-giving earth bore fruit of itself, in plenty and without stint” (Works and Days, 117-118).