The Eunuch (3)

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,[*] 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.