A Conversation with Cronus (16-20)

Those who receive shall not complain, but think the gift, whatever it is, generous. A jar of wine, a hare, or a plump bird shall not be reckoned a gift for Cronus’s festival, nor shall Cronian gifts be laughed at.

In return the poor scholar shall send the rich man any pleasant, convivial, old book he may have, or a work of his own, the best he can. The rich man shall receive this gift with a glad countenance and then read it at once. If he rejects it or throws it away, he shall know that he is liable to what the sickle threatens, even if what he sends is adequate. The other poor recipients shall send garlands of flowers or grains of frankincense. If a poor man sends clothing or silver or gold beyond his means to a rich man, his gift shall be declared public property and sold, the money going into the treasury of Cronus; and the poor man on the next day shall receive from the rich man strokes on his hands with a cane to the number of not less than two hundred and fifty.

3. Laws for Banquets

The time for bathing shall be when the shadow of the sundial is six feet long; before the bath there shall be nuts and gaming.

Each man shall take the couch where he happens to be. Rank, family, or wealth shall have little influence on privilege. All shall drink the same wine, and neither stomach trouble nor headache shall give the rich man an excuse for being the only one to drink the better quality. All shall have their meat on equal terms. The waiters shall not show favour to anyone, but shall neither be too slow nor be dismissed until the guests choose what they are to take home. Neither are large portions to be placed before one and tiny ones before another, nor a ham for one and a pig’s jaw for another—all must be treated equally.

The man who pours the wine shall keep a sharp eye on each guest from a vantage-point; he shall pay less attention to his master, and his ears shall be sharper than usual. The cups shall be of all kinds. It shall be permissible to pass a loving-cup, if desired. Everyone shall drink to everyone else, if desired, when the rich man has set the example. No one shall be made to drink if he cannot.

It shall not be permissible for anyone who wishes it to introduce into the banquet a dancer or lyre-player who is still learning. Jesting shall be limited in all cases to what is inoffensive. All gambling shall be for nuts. If anyone gambles for money he shall go without food for the next day. Each guest shall stay and go as he likes. When a rich man gives a banquet to his servants, his friends shall aid him in waiting on them. Every rich man shall inscribe these laws on a slab of bronze and keep it in the centre of his hall, and read them. And it must be realised that as long as this slab shall last neither famine nor plague nor fire nor any other harm shall come to their house. May it never be taken down! For if it is, Heaven avert what is in store for them!

1. Myself to Cronus—Greetings!

I wrote to you earlier telling you what my position was and how my poverty made it likely that I alone should have no share in the festival which you proclaimed, adding this, I remember, that it was most unreasonable for some of us to have too much wealth and live in luxury and not share what they have with those who are poorer than they while others are dying of hunger, and that too when the festival of Cronus is near. Since you sent no reply then, I have thought it necessary to remind you of it again. You ought, my dear Cronus, to have abolished this inequality, made the good things accessible to everyone, and then bid the festival begin. As we now are it is a case of “ant or camel”, as the saying has it. [*] Better still, imagine a tragic actor with one foot on something high, like a tragic buskin, and let the other be unshod. Now if anyone were to walk like this you can see he would have to be up in the air at one moment and down again at the next according to whichever foot he is putting forward. Inequality in human life is the same: some put on the buskins which our producer Luck supplies and strut the human stage, but the rank and file of us go unshod on the earth below, though we could play a part and stride the boards no worse than they, you may be sure, if anyone had decked us out like them.

Indeed I hear the poets saying that things were not like that in old times when you were still lord. No, the earth produced its good things for the folk without sowing and without ploughing, an ample meal ready to each man’s hand; the rivers flowed some with wine, some with milk, and others again with honey. And, above all, they say the men themselves were gold and poverty was nowhere near. As for us, we could not even be thought of as lead, but something meaner, if such there be; and for most of us food is won with toil; and poverty, want, and helplessness, and “alas!”, and “how can I get it?”, and “oh, what bad luck!” and such exclamations are plentiful, at least among us poor.

We should be less distressed about it, you may be sure, if we did not see the rich living in such bliss, who, though they have such gold, such silver in their safes, though they have all that clothing and own slaves and carriage-horses and tenements and farms, each and all in large numbers, not only have never shared them with us, but never deign even to notice ordinary people.