The Scythian or Consul (6-10)

LYCINUS

But you have not said how long, to give it a date.

HERMOTIMUS

I don’t know myself exactly, Lycinus. Not more than twenty years at a guess. After that I shall surely be on the top.

LYCINUS

Good Heavens! As long as that!

HERMOTIMUS

Yes, Lycinus; my struggles are for great prizes.

LYCINUS

Perhaps so. But those twenty years—has your teacher promised you that length of life? If he has he must be more than a wise man—a prophet, or an oracle-monger, or an expert in Chaldean lore, as well—they say that they know this sort of thing. For, if it is not certain that you will live to reach Virtue, it is quite unreasonable to take all this trouble and wear yourself out night and day, not knowing whether Fate as you near the top will come and pull you down by the foot with your hopes unfulfilled.

HERMOTIMUS

Away with you! That, Lycinus, is blasphemy. May I live to enjoy happiness through wisdom for just one day!

LYCINUS

Would that repay you for all your labours—just one day?

HERMOTIMUS

For me even a moment is enough.

LYCINUS

How can you know that up there there is a happiness and the like worth enduring everything to attain? You yourself have not yet been up there, I suppose?

HERMOTIMUS

I believe what my teacher says. He is already right at the top and knows very well.

LYCINUS

What in Heaven’s name did he say about conditions there? What did he say this happiness there was? Some sort of riches, I suppose, and glory, and pleasures beyond compare?

HERMOTIMUS

Hush, friend! These have nothing to do with the life in Virtue.

LYCINUS

If not these then, what does he say are the good things which those who complete their training will get?

HERMOTIMUS

Wisdom, courage, beauty itself, justice itself, the sure certainty of knowing everything as it really is. Riches and glories and pleasures and bodily things are all stripped off the climber and left down below before he makes his ascent. Think of the story of Heracles when he was burned and deified on Mount Oeta: he threw off the mortal part of him that came from his mother and flew up to heaven, taking the pure and unpolluted divine part with him, the part that the fire had separated off. So philosophy like a fire strips our climbers of all these things that the rest of mankind wrongly admires; they climb to the top and are happy; they never even remember

wealth and glory and pleasures any more, and they laugh at those who believe them to be real.

LYCINUS

By Heracles on Oeta, Hermotimus, you tell a brave and happy tale about them! But tell me this: do they ever come down from their hill-top (if that is their wish), to make use of what they have left down here below? Or must they stay there once they are up and live in Virtue’s company, laughing at wealth and glory and pleasures?

HERMOTIMUS

That is not all, Lycinus. A man who is perfected in Virtue can never be a slave to anger or fear or lusts; he will not know grief and in short he will not experience feelings of this sort any longer.

LYCINUS

Well, if I must speak the truth without fear—but I had better keep quiet, I suppose; it would not be pious to question what wise men do.

HERMOTIMUS

Not at all. Please say what you mean.

LYCINUS

Look, friend, how afraid I am!

HERMOTIMUS

Don’t be afraid, good Lycinus. You are speaking to me alone.

LYCINUS

Well, I followed and believed most of what you said, Hermotimus, that they become wise and brave and just and so on; in a way your description held me in a sort of spell. But when you said they despised riches and glory and pleasures and were not angry or grieved, there (we are alone) I came to a stop. I remembered something I saw a certain person doing the other day—shall I name him? Or is it enough to leave him anonymous?

HERMOTIMUS

Not at all. Please tell me who he was.

LYCINUS

This very teacher of yours—in general he deserves respect and is now quite old.

HERMOTIMUS

What was he doing?

LYCINUS

You know the stranger from Heraclea who has studied philosophy under him a long time, the one with yellow hair, a quarrelsome fellow?

HERMOTIMUS

I know the man you mean. He’s called Dion.

LYCINUS

That is the man. Well! it seems he didn’t pay his fee on time, and the other day your teacher in a temper pulled the man’s cloak round his neck and

shouted and dragged him off to the magistrate. If some friends of the young fellow had not come between them and pulled him from his grasp, the old man would certainly have taken hold of him and bitten his nose off, he was so angry.

HERMOTIMUS

That fellow has always been a senseless rogue when it comes to paying his debts, Lycinus. My master has never yet treated any of the others to whom he lends money like that and there are many of them. But they pay the interest on time.

LYCINUS

And if they don’t, my dear Hermotimus? Does it matter, when he is now already purified by philosophy and no longer needs what he has left behind on Oeta?

HERMOTIMUS

Do you think it is for himself that he has made this fuss? No, he has young children and he is concerned lest they spend their lives in want.

LYCINUS

He ought, Hermotimus, to lead them too up the path to Virtue, so that they can despise wealth and be happy with him.