PAMPHILUS 
Where have you been, Lycinus, and what are you
laughing at, I should like to know, as you come?
Of course, you are always in a good humour, but this
appears to me to be something out of the ordinary,
as you cannot restrain your laughter over it.
 LYCINUS 
I have been in the Agora, I’d have you know,
Pamphilus; and I shall make you share my laughter
at once if you let me tell you what sort of case has
been tried in my presence, between philosophers
wrangling with each other.
 PAMPHILUS 
Well, what you have already said is laughable, in
all truth, that followers of philosophy should have it
out with one another at law, when they ought, even
if it should be something of importance, to settle their
complaints peaceably among themselves.
 LYCINUS 
Indeed, you blessed simpleton! Peaceably! They!
Why, they came together at full tilt and flung whole
cartloads of abuse upon each other, shouting and
straining their lungs enough to split them!

 

 PAMPHILUS 
No doubt, Lycinus, they were bickering about their
doctrines, as usual, being of different sects?
 LYCINUS 
Not at all; this was something different, for they
were of the same sect and agreed in their doctrines.
Nevertheless, a trial had been arranged, and the
judges, endowed with the deciding vote, were the
most prominent and oldest and wisest men in the
city, in whose presence one would have been ashamed
even to strike a false note, let alone resorting to such
shamelessness.
 PAMPHILUS 
Then do please tell me at once the point at issue
in the trial, so that I may know what it is that has
stirred up so much laughter in you.
 LYCINUS 
Well, Pamphilus, the Emperor has established, as
you know, an allowance, not inconsiderable, for the
philosophers according to sect—the Stoics, I mean,
the Platonics, and the Epicureans; also those of the
Walk, the same amount for each of these. It was
stipulated that when one of them died another should
be appointed in his stead, after being approved by
vote of the first citizens. And the prize was not “a
shield of hide or a victim,” as the poet has it, Homer, Iliad, XXII, 159. but a
matter of ten thousand drachmas a year, for instructing boys.
 PAMPHILUS 
I know all that; and one of them died, they say,
recently—one of the two Peripatetics, I think.


 

 LYCINUS 
That, Pamphilus, is the Helen for whom they were
meeting each other in single combat. And up to
this point there was nothing to laugh at except perhaps that men rah to be philosophers and to
despise lucre should fight for it as if for imperilled
fatherland, ancestral fanes, and graves of forefathers.
 PAMPHILUS 
Yes, but that is the doctrine of the Peripatetics,
not to despise wealth vehemently but to think it a
third “supreme good.”
 LYCINUS 
Right you are; they do say that, and the war
that they were waging was on traditional lines.
 
But
listen now to the sequel.
Many competitors took part in the funeral games
of the deceased, but two of them in particular were
the most favoured to win, the aged Diocles (you
know the man I mean, the dialectician) and Bagoas,
the one who is reputed to be a eunuch. The matter
of doctrines had been thrashed out between them
already, and each had displayed his familiarity with
their tenets and his adherence to Aristotle and his
placita; and by Zeus neither of them had the better
of it.
 
The close of the trial, however, took a new
turn; Diocles, discontinuing the advertisement of
his own merits, passed over to Bagoas and made a
great effort to show up his private life, and Bagoas
met this attack by exploring the history of Diocles
in like manner.

 

 PAMPHILUS 
Naturally, Lycinus; and the greater part, certainly,
of their discussion ought rather to have centred upon
that. For my own part, if I had chanced to be a
judge, I should have dwelt most, I think, upon that
sort of thing, trying to ascertain which led the better
life rather than which was the better prepared in the
tenets themselves, and deeming him more suitable
to win.