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.