The Runaways (16-20)

Consequently, every city is filled with such upstarts, particularly with those who enter the names of Diogenes, Antisthenes, and Crates as their patrons and enlist in the army ofthe dog. Those fellows have not in any way imitated the good that there is in the nature of dogs, as, for instance, guarding property, keeping at home, loving their masters, or remembering kindnesses, but their barking, gluttony, thievishness, excessive interest in females, truckling, fawning upon people who give them things, and hanging about tables—all this they have copied with painful accuracy.

You shall see what will happen presently. All the men in the workshops will spring to their feet and leave their trades deserted when they see that by toiling and moiling from morning till night, doubled over their tasks, they merely eke out a bare existence from such wage-earning, while idle frauds live in unlimited plenty, asking for things in a lordly way, getting them without effort, acting indignant if they do not, and bestowing no praise even if they do. It seems to them that this is ‘life in the age of Cronus,’ and really that sheer honey is distilling into their mouths from the sky!

The thing would not be so dreadful if they offended against us only by being what they are. But although outwardly and in public they appear very

What they do at drinking-parties, how intoxicated they become, would make a long story. And while they do all this, you cannot imagine how they berate drunkenness and adultery and lewdness and covetousness. Indeed you could not find any two things so opposed to each other as their words and their deeds. For instance, they claim to hate toadying, when as far as that goes they are able to outdo Gnathonides or Struthias;[*] and although they exhort everyone else to tell the truth, they themselves cannot so much as move their tongues except ina lie. To all of them pleasure is nominally an odious thing and Epicurus a foeman; but in practice they do everything for the sake of it. In irascibility, pettishness, and proneness to anger they are beyond young children; indeed, they give no little amusement to onlookers when their blood boils up in

And “may you never chance to be there”[*] when that vile filth of theirs is exuded! “As to gold or silver, Heracles! I do not want even to ownit. An obol is enough, so that I can buy lupines, for a spring or a stream will supply me with drink.” Then after a little they demand, not obols nor a few drachmas, but whole fortunes. What shipman could make as much from his cargoes as philosophy contributes to these fellows in the way of gain? And then, when they have levied tribute and stocked themselves up to their heart’s content, throwing off that ill-conditioned philosopher’s cloak, they buy farms every now and then, and luxurious clothing, and long-haired pages, and whole apartmenthouses, bidding a long farewell to the wallet of Crates, the mantle of Antisthenes, and the jar of Diogenes.