Florida — Apuleius
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Florida
Translation/edition: Bohn's Classical Library (1853)
Language: English
Read in Plato Scroll: https://plato-scroll.com/s/apuleius-florida/
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Sources and licences: https://plato-scroll.com/attribution.html
Numbers in [brackets] are the edition's reference loci (Stephanus, Bekker, book.line, page...). Superscript numerals refer to the Notes at the end.


## I

It is a common custom with religious travellers, when they come upon some grove or sacred place, to beseech favour, offer up prayers, and sit down a while; in like manner, now that I have entered this most hallowed city, though I am in great haste, I must entreat favour, make oration, and check my hurry. For the traveller can find no fitter motives for a religious pause in an altar decked with flowers, or a dell shaded with foliage, or an oak loaded with horns, or a beech festooned with skins, or even a consecrated and enclosed hillock, or a trunk chiselled into the form of an image, or a turf redolent of libation, or a stone bedewed with ointment. These are small things indeed, and though adored by the few who scrutinise them, are passed unnoticed by those who are not aware of them.

## II

But not so my predecessor, Socrates, who, when he had looked for some time upon a handsome but silent youth, exclaimed: “Say something, that I may see you.” Socrates saw not a silent man; for he thought that men were to be considered not with the eyes, but with the rays of the intellect and the gaze of the soul. In this he differed in opinion with the soldier in Plautus, who says: “One eye-witness is worth more than ten ear-witnesses.” Nay, he held the converse of this verse with regard to the examination of men: “One ear-witness is worth more than ten eye-witnesses.” But if the judgments formed by the eyes were more valued than those of the mind, the palm of wisdom would be due to the eagle. For we men can neither discern things far away nor very near us, but are all in a measure blind; and if you consider us only with regard to our eyes, and our earthly and dull vision, truly the great poet has well said that there is a mist, as it were, before our eyes, and that we cannot see clearly beyond a stone’s throw. But the eagle when he has soared aloft as high as the clouds, sweeping with his wings all that space in which it rains and snows, a height beyond which there is no place for the thunder or lightning, on the very base of the ether and summit of the tempest, so to speak; the eagle when he has soared thither, glides along bodily, with a gentle inclination left or right, turning his sail-spread wings in whatever direction he pleases, using his tail as a small helm. Looking down thence on all below him, with unwearied rowing of his wings, and with his flight stayed awhile, he remains at gaze suspended nearly in the same spot, and considers in what direction he shall swoop down on his prey like a thunderbolt; seeing at one glance, himself unseen in the heavens, cattle in the fields, wild beasts on the mountains, and men in the towns, he considers where he may pierce with his beak or hook with his talons a heedless lamb or timid hare, or any living thing that chance may offer him to tear and devour.

## III

Hyagnis, as we have heard say, was the father and teacher of Marsyas the flute-player, and surpassed all in his performance in an age as yet uncultivated in music; not that he played, indeed, with such soul-subduing tone as later musicians, or with such manifold modulations, or on a pipe of so many holes; for the art had been but recently invented, and was then in its infancy. Nothing can be perfect in the beginning, but in almost all cases some rudiment of the promised thing precedes its consummation. Before Hyagnis appeared then, most people could do no more than, like the shepherd or neatherd in Virgil,
“Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw.”
And if there was any one who appeared to have made somewhat more progress in the art, even he too, followed the common practice of playing only on one pipe, just as on one trumpet. Hyagnis was the first who separated the hands in playing; the first who gave breath to two pipes; the first who mingled a shrill and a grave tone in musical concert, by means of left and right apertures. His son Marsyas, when he had acquired the paternal art of minstrelsy — a Phrygian and a barbarian he was, a rough brutish-looking fellow, hirsute, with a dirty beard, covered with bristles and hairs, — is said (oh monstrous!) to have contended with Apollo: a Thersites with a beautiful youth, a clown with a scholar, a brute with a god! The Muses with Minerva sat as judges by way of a joke, to laugh at the barbarity of that monster, and no less to punish his stupidity. But Marsyas, not perceiving that he was made a laughing stock, which is the greatest proof of folly, before he began to play, sputtered out some barbarous nonsense about himself and Apollo, praising himself because he had short crisp hair, a squalid beard, a shaggy breast, was in art a flute-player, and in fortune needy; on the other hand, ridiculous to relate, he decried the opposite merits as so many faults in Apollo, saying: that Apollo had unshorn locks, a handsome face, and a smooth body; that he was of manifold proficiency in art, and opulent in fortune. In the first place, said he, his locks flow freely, those in front being drawn forward, those behind tossed back; his whole form is beautiful; his limbs are smooth and fair; his tongue is prophetic, and endowed with equal eloquence in prose and verse. What! his garment is fine in texture, soft to the touch, and glowing with purple. What! his lyre is ruddy with gold, white with ivory, and variegated with gems. What! he trills most skilfully and most sweetly. “All these prettinesses,” he says, “are by no means becoming to virtue, but adapted to luxury, whereas the native quality of my own person exhibits the greatest comeliness.” The Muses laughed when they heard things like these, which a wise man might well desire, charged as crimes against Apollo; and when the flute-player had been beaten in the contest, they left him, like a two-footed bear, stripped of his skin, with his flesh naked and torn. Thus Marsyas played for punishment and suffered it. But Apollo was ashamed of so low a victory.

## IV

Antigenidas was a certain flute-player, a honeyed modulator of every tone, and a skilled performer in every mode, whether it were the simple Æolian, the varied Asian, the plaintive Lydian, the religious Phrygian, or the warlike Dorian. Being thus a most distinguished flutist, he used to say, that nothing so vexed and fretted his mind, as, that the horn-players at funerals were called flutists. But he would have patiently endured this community of names if he had seen mimes. Then he would have seen some commanding, others suffering blows, and all dressed nearly alike in purple. So also if he saw our games for there too he would see a man preside, a man fight. He would see the toga employed both for the registering of a vow and for a funeral. Likewise he would see corpses covered, and philosophers clad with a pallium.

## V

For you have assembled in the theatre with good will, as knowing that the place does not detract from the weight of what is delivered there; but that the chief thing to be considered is, what you find in the theatre. For if it is a mime, you may laugh; if it is a rope-dancer, you may be alarmed; if it is a comedy, you may applaud; if it is a philosopher, you may learn.

## VI

The Indians are a populous nation of vast extent of territory, situated far from us to the East, near the reflux of the ocean and the rising of the sun, under the first beams of the stars, and at the extreme verge of the earth, beyond the learned Egyptians, and the superstitious Jews, and the mercantile Nabathæans, and the flowing robed Arsacidæ, and the Ityræans, poor in crops, and the Arabians rich in perfumes. How I do not so much admire the heaps of ivory of these Indians, their harvests of pepper, their bales of cinnamon, their tempered, steel, their mines of silver, and their golden streams; nor that among them the Ganges, the greatest of all rivers,
Rolls like a monarch on his course, and pours
His eastern waters through a hundred streams,
Mingling with ocean by a hundred mouths; nor that those Indians, though, situated at the dawn of day, are yet of the colour of night; nor that among them immense dragons fight with enormous elephants, with parity of danger, to their mutual destruction; for they hold them enwrapped in their slippery folds, so that when the elephants cannot disengage their legs, or in any way extricate themselves from the scaly bonds of the tenacious dragons, they are forced to seek revenge from the fall of their own bulk, and to crush their captors by the mass of their bodies. There are among them also various kinds of inhabitants. I will rather speak of the marvellous things of men than of those of nature. There is among them a race who know nothing but how to tend cattle; whence they are called neatherds. There are races clever in trafficking with merchandise, and others stout in fight, whether with arrows or hand-to-hand with swords. There is also among them a pre-eminent race called Gymnosophists. These I exceedingly admire, for they are men skilled not in propagating the vine, nor in grafting trees, nor in tilling the ground. They know not how to cultivate the fields, or to wash gold, or to break horses, or to tame bulls, or to shear or feed sheep or goats. What is it then? They know one thing instead of all these. They cultivate wisdom, both the aged professors and the young students. Nothing do I so much applaud in them as that they hate torpor of mind and sloth. Accordingly, when the table is laid, before the meal is served up, all the young men assemble round it from their several places and occupations, and the masters enquire what good thing each has done that day since sunrise. Thereupon one relates that having been chosen arbitrator between two, he has allayed their quarrel, restored good will, cleared up suspicion, and changed them from enemies to friends. Another states that he has obeyed some command or another of his parents; and another, that he has found out something by his own reflection, or from another’s teaching. In short, all tell their tale. He who has no cause to offer why he should dine, is turned out of doors, and sent about his business without a dinner.

## VII

It was the will of Alexander, that most excellent of all kings, who received the surname of the Great for his achievements, that he who had attained that singular glory, should never be named without praise. For he alone, since the beginning of time, as far as human memory extends, having possessed himself invincibly of the dominion of the world, was greater than his fortune, and both induced its vast successes by his valour, and equalled them by his merits, and surpassed them by his superior greatness. He alone was so illustrious beyond all rivalry, that no one can dare to hope for his excellence or covet his fortune. You would be wearied with admiring the lofty deeds of that great Alexander, whether those which he achieved in war, or those which he wisely accomplished in peace; all which, my Clemens, the most learned and sweetest of poets, has undertaken to illustrate in a very beautiful poem. Now this is a most signal fact respecting Alexander, that in order to have his image descend the more authentically to posterity, he would not allow it to be vulgarised by many artists, but commanded throughout all his empire, that no one should presumptuously make the king’s likeness in brass, or in painting, or with the graver; but that Polycletus alone should mould it in brass, Apelles alone delineate it in colours, Pyrgoteles alone should elaborate it with the graver. Besides these three artists, far the most eminent in their several kinds, if any other was found to have put his hands to the king’s most sacred image, he should be punished just as one who had committed sacrilege. The consequence of that fear imposed on all was, that Alexander was presented with singular excellence in all his likenesses; so that in all statues, pictures, and engraved gems, he appears with the same vigorous aspect of a most intrepid warrior, the same genius of a mighty hero, the same beauty and freshness of youth, the same noble expansion of forehead. Now I would that in like manner, it wore a valid decree of philosophy that no one should presumptuously attempt its likeness; that a few good artists, and those soundly instructed, should consider the study of philosophy in every way, and that no rude, squalid, ignorant pretenders should imitate philosophers as far as regards their garb, and should disgrace that royal science which was devised both for speaking well and living well, by talking ill and living no better. Both which things are indeed very easy; for what can be easier than rabidness of tongue and baseness of conduct, the former from contempt of others, the latter from self contempt? For to conduct oneself basely is self-contempt; to vilify others barbarously, is insolence towards one’s hearers. Does he not insult you in the highest degree who supposes you to delight in slanders against any good man; who thinks you do not understand had and vicious words, or that if you understand, you like them? Where is the clown, the porter, or the pothouse sot, so silly that if he had a mind to put on the pallium, he could rail in better terms?

## VIII

For he owes more to you than to his dignity, although that is not common to him with others. For out of countless men there are but few senators, and of senators few are of noble birth; and of those consular men few are good, and of those good, moreover, few are learned. But to speak only of his dignity, its insignia are not to be lightly assumed either in the garments or the foot-dress.

## IX

If perchance in this fair assembly sits any malicious person of the number of those my enemies — since in a great city that kind of men is also found who like rather to rail at their betters than to imitate them, and who affect enmity towards those whom they cannot hope to resemble; men whose own names being obscure, wish to become known through mine; if, then, any of those croakers has come hither to be a blot upon this brilliant assembly, I should like him to run his eyes for a while over this incredible concourse; and having contemplated such a crowd as never before my time was seen gathered together to listen to a philosopher, let him compute in his own mind, how great a risk of sustaining his reputation is here encountered, by one who has not been used to be contemned; since it is an arduous and very difficult thing to satisfy even the moderate expectations of a few, especially for me, whom my acquired reputation, and your favourable predisposition towards me, suffer not to utter any thing negligently, and without deep reflection. For which of you would forgive me a single solecism? Which of you would absolve me for one syllable of barbarous pronunciation? Which of you would permit me to jabber, like crazy people, any unauthorised and corrupt words that come uppermost? Yet these faults you easily and very justly pardon in others. But every phrase of mine you scrutinise keenly, weigh it carefully, test it by the file and the rule, and again compare it with the lathe and the buskin. Lowliness is as much excused as dignity is difficult to sustain. I acknowledge then my difficulty, and do not desire you to think otherwise of it. Nor let a paltry and spurious similitude mislead you, since, as I have often said, certain cloaked lies walk about. The crier ascends the tribunal with the proconsul, and he too is seen there dressed in the toga; and indeed he stands there a long while, or he walks about, or he bawls often with all his might; but the proconsol himself speaks in a moderate tone, rarely, and in a sitting posture, and he generally reads from a tablet. Tor the crier’s garrulous voice is the function of his office; but the tablet is the proconsol’s sentence, which when once read, cannot be lengthened or shortened by a single letter, but as soon as it is pronounced, it is inserted in the registry of the province. I, in my degree, suffer something like this in my studies. Tor whatever I have delivered to you is immediately taken up and recited, nor is it free to me to recall any part of it, or to change or correct it in any respect. Wherefore, I must be the more scrupulous in speaking, and that too not in one kind of matter only. Tor there are extant more works of mine in the Muses than of Hippias in art. What that means, give me your attention, and I will diligently and accurately set forth.
This Hippias was one of the sophists, superior to all in the number of the arts he knew, inferior to none in eloquence. He was contemporary with Socrates, a native of Elis, of what family is not known. His glory was great, his fortune small; but his genius was great, his memory excellent, his studies various, his rivals many. This Hippias came once to Pisa to the Olympic games, where he was not less remarkable for the ornaments he wore than for the fact that he had wrought them himself. Of all those things he had with him he had purchased not one, but had made them with his own hands; the garments in which he was clad, the shoes on his feet, and everything he carried on his person. Tor clothing he had an inner tunic of very fine texture, of triple thread, and double purple dye. He had wrought it single-handed at home. He was girt with a belt adorned with a sort of Babylonian picture of admirable colours. Nor had any one helped him in that work. His outer covering was a white cloak, which also is known to have been his own handiwork. Also he had put together the soles of his own foot gear; and as for the gold ring on his left hand, bearing a most skilfully cut seal which he often exhibited, he himself had rounded the ring, and had closed the pallet, and engraved the gem. I have not yet told all he did. For I shall not be loth to relate what he was not ashamed to display, who asserted in a large assembly that he had also made himself an oil flask which he carried about him, of a lenticular form, of a rounded outline and small convexity; and with it a neat little scraper to be used in the bath, with a convenient handle and tubulated face, so that it might be held steadily in the hand, and that the sweat might flow out of it in a stream. Who will not extol a man skilled in so many arts; illustrious for such manifold knowledge; a Dædalus in the use of so many tools? Certainly, I admire Hippias, but I would rather rival the fecundity of his genius in matters of learning, than in multitudinous appliances for personal use.
I confess, indeed, that I am not expert in handicraft arts; that I buy my garments at the clothier’s — these shoes at the shoe-maker’s; that I wear no ring, and hold gems and gold of no more account than lead and pebbles; that I buy a scraper, a flask, and other bath utensils at the shops. I am far from denying that I do not know how to use the loom, or the awl, or the file, or the lathe, or any such implements; instead of these, I confess I prefer to compose with a writing reed, poems of all kinds adapted to the laurel branch, the lyre, the sock, the buskin; likewise satires and enigmas; likewise various histories; as, also, orations praised by the eloquent, and dialogues praised by philosophers; and to compose these and such like works, both in Greek and Latin, with two-fold study, with equal diligence and in similar style. These things I would, indeed, Proconsul, excellent man, that I could lay before you not singly and piece-meal, but collectively in one heap, and enjoy your honourable testimony regarding all my literary labours. It is not, indeed, from penury of fame that I desire this, for fame has long subsisted for me, bright and unbroken among all your predecessors, down to yourself; but because by no one am I more desirous of being esteemed than by him which I justly esteem above all others. For it is a law of nature that whom you praise, him you also love; and moreover, whom you love, by him you would wish to be praised. Now I profess myself one who prizes you dearly, being bound to you by no private, but by all manner of public favours. I have, indeed, obtained nothing from you, for nothing have I asked. But philosophy has taught me to love not only kindness but injury, and rather to do homage to reason than to seek my own advantage, and to prefer public expediency to my own. Hence, whilst the majority love the beneficial effects of your goodness, I love its principle. And this I have begun to do whilst considering your conduct in the affairs of the inhabitants of this province, for which they ought to love you intensely: such of them as have felt it in their own persons, for, sake of the benefit they have received; such as have not personally experienced it for sake of the example. For you have benefited many individually, and all by your example. For who does not delight to learn from you by what adjustment may be acquired that pleasant gravity of yours, that mild austerity, that placid firmness, that gracious vigour of mind. Never, to my knowledge, did the province of Africa ever revere more, and fear less any proconsul; in no year of administration but yours, had shame more power than fear towards restraining offences. No one but you has used the like power so often to serve, so seldom to terrify. No one has brought with him a son more resembling himself in virtue. Hence, no proconsul has remained longer in Carthage. For at the time you made a tour of the province, while Honorinus remained with us, we did not feel your absence so much as rather to wish you back. There is in the son the equity of the father, in the youth the prudence of the old man, in the legate the personal weight of the consul. So thoroughly does he copy and reflect all your good qualities, that truly, such excellence would be more worthy of admiration in the young man than in you, were it not that you had imparted it to him. Would that we might always enjoy it! What to us are these changes of proconsuls? What these brief years and rapid months? O swift days of good men! O quickly lapsing tenure of the best governors! Our whole province, Severianus, now grieves to lose you. But Honorinus is called by his own worth to the prætorship, and the favour of the Cæsars is preparing - him for the consulship; our love beholds him, at present; and the hope of Carthage promises for the future, relying on the sole consolation of your example, that he who leaves us a legate, soon returns to us as proconsul.

## X

“Sun, who with burnished car and rushing steeds Display’st thy radiant flames and glowing fire.”
Likewise the Moon, imitatress of his light, and the five other powers of the planets, power beneficent in Jupiter, voluptuous in Venus, swift in Mercury, pernicious in Saturn, fiery in Mars. There are also other intermediate powers of gods, which we can feel, but which it is not given us to see; as of Love and the like, whose form is unseen, their force known; that power, likewise, which in one part of the earth reared the lofty peaks of mountains, and elsewhere levelled the expanse of plains, as the design of Providence required; likewise, that which everywhere defined the courses of rivers, the green vigour of the meadows, and gave flight to birds, gliding folds to serpents, swift feet to wild beasts, and upright gait to men.

## XI

For just as those who have the misfortune to cultivate a sterile farm, and a stony field, mere rocks and brambles, since there is no produce in their unkindly ground, and they see in it no other growth, but
“Unlucky darnel and unfruitful straw,”
lacking harvest of their own, go and thieve from others, and pluck their neighbours’ flowers, to mingle them forsooth with their own thistles; just so does he who has no virtue of his own.

## XII

The parrot is a bird of India, in form a little less than the dove; but its colour is not that of the dove, for it is not white, nor blackish, or yellowish on either side, or variegated; but the parrot’s colour is green both in its inner down and jits outer feathers, except that it is varied in the neck alone.
For its neck is encompassed and girded with a red circle, like a gold necklace, and of equal splendour. Its beak is hard in the highest degree. When it swoops down from its highest flight upon a rock, it lights there upon its beak, and fixes itself as with an anchor. Its head too, is as hard as its beak. When it is compelled to imitate our speech, its head is beaten with a little iron rod, to make it attend to the commands of its master. This is the ferula beneath which it learns. Its schooling begins when it is but a chick, and continues until its second year, as long as its mouth is easy to mould, and its tongue is pliable. If taken old, it is indocile and forgetful. But that kind of parrot is apter to learn human speech which feeds on nuts, and which has feet with five toes like man; for all parrots have not that characteristic; but it is common to them all to have the tongue broader than that of other birds, whereby they more easily articulate human words, as having a more expanded plectrum and palate. But what it has learned it sings, or rather speaks, like us, so that if you heard it, you would suppose it was the voice of a man; but if you saw it, you would say it was not speaking, but trying to do so. Now both the crow and the parrot pronounce only what they have been taught. If you teach a parrot ribaldry, he will be a ribald, screaming scurrility day and night. This is its song; this it considers warbling. When it has run through all the scurrilous phrases it has learned, it begins the same strain over again. If you would be free from its ribaldry, you must cut out its tongue, or at once send it back to its woods.

## XIII

For philosophy has not bestowed on me that kind of speech, as nature has endowed some birds with a brief and periodical song, a morning song to swallows, a mid-day to cicalas, an afternoon to buzzards, an evening to screech owls, a nocturnal to horned owls, a peep of day song to cocks. All these creatures differ from each other in the period and the manner of their song; the cocks sing with an awakening strain, the horned owls moan, the screech owls are querulous, the buzzards have inflected notes, the cicalas are obstreporous, the swallows twitter shrilly. But the discourse of the philosopher is practised at all seasons, and is reverend to hear, useful to understand, and omnisonant in compass.

## XIV

Crates, the follower of Diogenes, who was adored like a domestic Lar by the Athenians of his time, was one against whom no door was ever shut; nor had any father of a family a secret so profound as not to admit the seasonable interposition of Crates, the analyser and arbitrator of all disputes and altercations between relations. As the poets relate that Hercules formerly quelled by his valour horrid monsters, both human and brute, so was that philosopher a Hercules against anger and envy, avarice and lust, and other monsters and enormities of the human mind. All these pests he drove out from the minds of men, purged families of them, and quelled malevolence. He, too, was half naked, and notable for his club; he was likewise a native of Thebes, whence Hercules is known to have derived his birth. Before he became downright Crates, he was numbered among the nobles of Thebes: his family was one of the best, his household numerous, his dwelling adorned with an ample vestibule. He himself was well dressed, and well endowed with lands. Afterwards he came to understand that no security was bequeathed him with his wealth that he should enjoy it all his life; that all things are unstable and insecure; that all the riches under the sky avail nothing towards a happy life. When Crates learned these and similar truths, partly from Diogenes and partly from his own reflection, he at last went out into the forum, and threw down his wealth like a load of dung, more fatiguing than useful. Then when a great crowd had assembled, he cried out, “Crates manumits Crates.” Thenceforth he lived happily all his days, not only without servants, but also bare and disencumbered of every thing. And so much was he sought after, that a noble virgin, scorning younger wooers, voluntarily chose him for her own. And when Crates uncovered his shoulders and showed how he was hunchbacked, and laid his wallet and staff and his cloak on the ground, telling her that these were his worldly gear, and that such as she had seen was his beauty, and bidding her therefore ponder carefully, that she might not find reason to complain afterwards, Hipparche still accepted the proposed conditions. She replied that she had already sufficiently considered the matter; that she could nowhere in the world find a richer or a handsomer husband; and he might therefore take her where he pleased. The cynic led her to the portico, and there lay with her in a frequented spot, publicly in broad daylight; and he would have deflowered her in all men’s sight, prepared as she was to bear it with equal indifference, had not Zeno concealed his master from the gaze of the surrounding throng, by hanging his tattered cloak before him.

## XV

Samos is an island of moderate extent in the Icarian Sea, opposite Miletus, situated to the westward of it, and separated from it by no great breadth of sea. Passing with easy sail from one to the other, the second day puts you in port. The soil of the island is inapt for com, unfit for the plough, more productive of olives, nor is it dug by the vinegrower or the gardener. Its whole cultivation consists in hoeing and planting rows of olives, from the produce of which the island is more fructiferous than frugiferous. Furthermore, it abounds in inhabitants, and is much frequented by strangers. It has a town by no means corresponding to its reputation; but that it was once large is shown by the ruins of walls in many places. There stands the most celebrated temple of Juno. It stands near the sea-shore, at a distance, if I remember rightly, of not more than twenty stadia from the town. It contains a most opulent shrine of the goddess, and a vast quantity of silver in platters, mirrors, cups, and such like utensils. There is also a great amount of bronze, in various figures, of very ancient and handsome workmanship. For instance, there is before the altar a statue of Bathyllus, dedicated by the tyrant Polycrates, than which I do not think I have seen anything more exquisite. Some erroneously suppose it to be the statue of Pythagoras. It is a youth of remarkable beauty, with hair parted on the forehead, and falling evenly on the cheeks; but behind the hair is longer, and covers the neck, which shines through them as far as the verge of the shoulders. The neck is plump, the cheeks round and beardless, and there is a little dimple in the chin; the costume is exactly that of a harper; he looks towards the goddess like one who is singing; he wears a figured and coloured tunic, flowing down to his feet, with a zone in the Greek fashion; and a chlamys covering both arms to the wrists. The other histrionic ornaments hang upon the figure. The lyre is suspended from a short engraved baldrick. The hands are delicate; the left is stretched out, and touches the strings with its spread fingers; the right applies the plectrum to the lyre, as if ready to strike the chords when the voice has paused in singing. Meanwhile he seems to pour out his song from his rounded mouth, with lips intentionally half opened. Now this is the statue of a certain youth beloved by Polycrates, the tyrant, whom Anacreon, the Teian, celebrates in song for friendship’s sake. But it is far from being the statue of Pythagoras, the philosopher. —
The latter was by birth a Samian, most remarkable for beauty, deeply versed in minstrelsy and all kinds of music, and he lived about the time when Polycrates ruled in Samos. But the philosopher was by no means a favourite with the tyrant. Just after the latter had began to rule, Pythagoras fled privily from the island, having lately lost his father Mnesarchus, whom I find to have been an artist, and to have acquired reputation rather than wealth, by very cleverly engraving gems. Some say that Pythagoras was at that time conveyed to Egypt among the captives of king Cambyses, and that he had for teachers the Persian magi, and especially Zoroaster, the adept in every divine mystery; and that he was afterwards received by a certain Gillus, a leading man among the inhabitants of Crotona. But the more generally received story is, that he went of his own accord to acquire the learning of Egypt, and that he was there taught by the priests the incredible powers of ceremonies, the wonderful commutations of numbers, and the most ingenious figures of geometry; but that not satisfied with these mental accomplishments, he afterwards visited the Chaldæans and the Brahmins, and among the latter the Gymnosophists. The Chaldæans taught him the stars, the definite orbits of the planets, and the various effects of both kinds of stars upon the nativity of men; as also, for much money, the remedies for human use derived from the earth, and the air, and the sea. But the Brahmins taught him the greater part of his philosophy: what are the rules and principles of the understanding; what the functions of the body; how many are the faculties of the soul, how many the mutations of life; what torments or rewards devolve upon the souls of the dead according to their respective deserts. Moreover, there was Pherecydes, a native of the island of Syros, who was the first who ventured to reject the fetters of verse, and to write in prose: him, too, Pythagoras waited on as another master, and when turned into a scab of creeping things by the corruption of a most horrible disease, he buried him religiously. He is said also to have discussed natural science under Anaximander, the Milesian; to have followed for instruction Epimenides, of Crete, the illustrious seer and poet; and likewise Leodamas, the disciple of Creophylus, which latter is said to have been the host of the poet Homer, and his imitator in song.
Instructed by so many masters, having drunk of so many various fountains of knowledge all over the world, this man of surpassingly mighty genius, and of more than human grandeur of soul, the first namer and founder of philosophy, taught his disciples nothing in the first place but to be silent. With him the first study imposed upon the future sage was to hold his tongue altogether, and as for the words which poets call winged, to pluck their plumes and shut them up within the walls of his white teeth. This was, I say, absolutely the first rudiment of wisdom, to learn to think, and unlearn to prate. But they did not abstain from speaking all their lives long, nor did all follow their master in silence during an equally long period; but silence observed during a short space of time was thought enough for men of graver disposition, whilst the more talkative were punished by a silence of five years, their voice being sent, as it were, into exile. Now our master, Plato, imitates Pythagoras, differing in little or no degree from his sect. I, too, among a great many men, having been admitted into his sect by my teachers, have learned both these things in academic meditations: to speak with all my might when speech is required; and when silence is required, to hold my tongue willingly. Through this moderation I think I have obtained credit from all your predecessors, not less for my opportune silence, than for my timely speaking.

## XVI

Before I begin, noblemen of Africa, to thank you for the statue which you did me the honour to propose during my presence here, and which you kindly decreed to erect to me during my absence, I wish first to acquaint you with the reason why I have not been seen by this assembly for a good many days, having betaken myself to the Persian waters, so pleasant to healthy bathers, and so curative to the sick. For I have made it my resolution thus to submit the whole course of my time to your approval, to whom I have perpetually dedicated myself. Never will I do anything, great or small, of which I will not make you cognizant and judges. That you may know, therefore, why I suddenly disappeared from the sight of this your illustrious assemblage, I will relate an almost parallel case of the comic writer, Philemon, as an example of what unforeseen dangers suddenly befall men. You who know enough of his genius, hear a few words about his death. Do you wish me to say a few words also about his genius? This Philemon was a poet, and a writer of the middle comedy. He produced pieces for the stage along with Menander, and contended with him, being perhaps inferior to him, but at all events his rival. For that he was often victorious over him is a shameful thing to tell. Nevertheless, we find in him much wit; plots ingeniously involved; recognitions clearly made out; personages suited to the matter; phrases appropriate to each character; gaieties not beneath the sock; gravities not quite up to the buskin. Impurities are rare in his works, and amours are admitted as errors. Nevertheless, you find in him the perjured pimp, the hot lover, the cunning slave, the wheedling mistress, the peremptory wife, the indulgent mother, the scolding uncle, the helpful friend, and the fighting soldier, together with various parasites, and stingy parents, and wanton harlots.
Distinguished by these merits as a comic writer, it happened that he recited part of a play he had recently composed. When he had come to the third act, and was exciting those pleasant emotions which comedy delights in, a sudden shower of rain coming on, as very lately happened to myself when speaking before you, compelled him to dismiss his audience and suspend his reading. But many persons calling for the remainder, he promised that he would deliver it on the following day without interruption. Next day, accordingly, a great concourse assembled, extremely eager for what was to come, and every one took the nearest seat he could find opposite the reader’s place. The late comer nodded to his friends, who found sitting room for him. The whole theatre being crammed, the pressure was great, and they began to complain of each other. All those who were so late as to be excluded from the benches were pitied. Those who had not been present at the first day’s reading enquired what had then been delivered; those who had been present recalled to mind what they had heard, and knowing all that had gone before, began to look for what was to come. Meanwhile the day was passing away, and Philemon did not keep his appointment. Some murmured at the poet’s delay, many defended him. But when the audience had waited an unreasonable time and no Philemon appeared, some of the readiest were sent to fetch him, and found him dead in his bed. He had just stiffened after giving up the ghost, and lay resting on his elbow on the bed as if thinking. His hand was still inserted in the scroll; his face was turned toward the book which he held straight before him; but he was already senseless, unconscious of the book, and regardless of his audience. Those who had entered stood still awhile, struck with wonder at so unexpected an event, so beautiful a death. They then returned and announced to the people that Philemon, who was expected to finish his fictitious plot in the theatre, had concluded the real comedy at home. He had said to human affairs, “Farewell and applaud,” but to his friends, lament and wail; that shower of yesterday had boded him tears; his comedy had arrived sooner at the funeral than the nuptial torch. And since this excellent poet had made his exit from life, it was meet that the audience should proceed straightway to his obsequies; that his bones should now be collected, and by and by his poems.
I learned long ago, that these facts occurred as I have related; but I have been reminded of them to-day by my own mischance. For, as you remember, when my recitation was interrupted by the rain, I postponed it at your desire to the following day; and certainly after Philemon’s example; for the very same day I so violently sprained my ankle in the palæstra, that I all but broke off the joint from the leg. It was put out of place, however, and is still infirm from the dislocation; and when I reduced it at first with great force, I sweated profusely and had long rigors. Then I suffered acute pain of the intestines, which hardly ceased until its violence had destroyed me, and compelled me, after the manner of Philemon, to be dead before I had read; to finish what was written for me in the book of fate sooner than what I had written; to end my life sooner than my history. As soon, then, as I had recovered the power of walking at the Persian waters, by their mild temperature and their no less useful than soothing warmth, not, indeed, so as to be able to tread firmly, but as much as seemed to me sufficient for my haste to return to you, I came to perform what I had promised; whilst you in the meantime had, by your kindness, not only taken away my lameness, but even added speed to my feet.
Had I not good cause to hasten, that I might return you many thanks for that honour for which I had not petitioned you? Not but that the grandeur of Carthage is worthy that even a philosopher should sue to it for honours; but that your kindness should be whole and unimpaired, if no solicitation of mine detracted from its spontaneous grace. For neither does he who prays buy the object of his prayers for a cheap consideration, nor does he who is solicited accept a small price, so that you would rather buy all kinds of commodities than beg for them. This, I think, is especially to be considered a matter of honour: he who obtains with much pains and solicitation on his own part, owes one debt of gratitude to himself for as much as he has succeeded in his suit; but he who has received it without the trouble of a canvass, owes a double debt of gratitude to the grantors; both because he has not sought, and he has obtained. I therefore owe you twofold thanks, nay, manifold thanks, as I shall always and everywhere declare. But now for the present time I will publicly profess it, as is my wont, in this book composed by me, on account of this honour. For there is a certain method in which a philosopher ought to return thanks for a statue publicly decreed to him; from that method that book will diverge little which the distinguished honour of Strabo Æmilianus demands, a book which I think I can suitably compose, if you will join in extolling him to-day with me. For he so excels in studies, that he is much more illustrious by his own genius than by his father’s consulship.
In what words, Æmilianus Strabo, of all men who have been, or are, or will be in Numantia, most illustrious amongst the best, and best among the most illustrious, and most learned among both; in what words shall I return thanks in my discourse for this disposition of yours towards me? In what worthy manner I can extol your honourable good-will, with what remuneration of speech I can match the high praise of this act of yours, by Hercules! I am yet at a loss to know; but I will diligently seek and strive to discover, “Whilst conscious of myself, whilt spirit rules this frame.”
For at present, I will not deny it, joy overpowers my eloquence, and thought is hindered by pleasure, and my mind, engrossed with delight, is at present more inclined to exult than to extol. What shall I do? I wish to appear grateful, but joy will not leave me free to express gratitude. Let no one, let no one of those morose censors vituperate me because I do not less deserve than I appreciate this honour; because I exult in so great an honour conferred on me by a most illustrious and erudite man. A consular man, to whom it is a high honour to be merely known, has borne testimony for me in the equally illustrious and most benign senate of Carthage. He has also been in a manner my panegyrist before the chief men of Africa. For as I learn, in a memorial he sent in the day before yesterday, in which he asked for a frequented site for the erection of my statue, he mentioned in the first place the rights of friendship honestly cemented between us through our companionship in study under the same masters; and then he enumerated all my vows for his successive advancement in public honours. That is in itself a first kindness, that he records his having been my fellow-student. — And this is another, that a man of his eminence declares that he is beloved reciprocally by me. Moreover, he has mentioned that statues and other honours have been decreed to me in other countries and cities. What can be added to these encomiums by a man of consular dignity? Nay, he proved from the priesthood I have taken upon me, that the highest honour in Carthage was before me. This is a capital service he has conferred on me, and far excelling the rest, that he, a most influential witness, commends me to you even by his own suffrage. Finally, he has promised that he will erect a statue to me in Carthage at his own expense, he to whom all provinces delight every where to erect equestrian statues, with chariots of four and of six horses. What more, then, is wanting to the base and summit of my honour, to the culmination of my glory? Nay, what more is there behind? Æmilianus Strabo, a consular man, soon by universal consent to be proconsul, pronounced his opinion concerning the honours to be paid to me in the senate of the Carthaginians: all followed his lead. Does not this seem to you tantamount to a decree of the senate? What? that all the Carthaginians who were present in that most august senate, so willingly appointed a place for my statue as to make it apparent, as I hope, that they only postponed to the next senate a motion for another statue to me, in order that, saving the veneration and reverence due to their consular member, they might seem not to have rivalled but followed his act: that is to say, that a public testimonial should be conferred on me on a fresh day. Moreover, those excellent magistrates and most obliging nobles remembered that what they desired was prescribed to them by you. Could I be ignorant of this? Should I fail to vaunt it? I should be ungrateful. Truly, I feel and profess the greatest possible thanks to your whole order for your exceeding kindness to me, you who have dignified me with the most flattering acclamations in that senate-house, in which to be named merely is the highest honour. So, then, what was hard to do, and what I thought truly arduous, to be pleasing to the people, acceptable to the order, and approved by the magistrates and chief men; this — fascination apart — has some how befallen me. What, then, remains that I should enjoy the honour of a statue, but the price of the bronze and the pay of the artist? things which never failed me even in small cities, not to speak of Carthage, where the most illustrious order is wont rather to decree than to compute the cost even in greater affairs. But of these things I will speak more when you shall have done more. Also to you, noble senators, famous citizens, worthy friends, I will express my thanks more at large in the book I will presently compose for the dedication of my statue; and I will incontinently bid that book go through all the provinces, and publish abroad the praises of your bounty throughout the whole world, in all time to come, among all nations, throughout all years.

## XVII

Let those who are in the habit of obtruding themselves upon the leisure moments of governors, consider how they promote the fame of their genius by the immoderate volubility of their tongue, and glorify themselves in a pretended appearance of your friendship. Both these faults are far alien from me, Scipio Orfitus. For whatever he my little genius, it is already in its degree too well known to the world to need new commendation; and I desire more than I boast of your good-will and that of men like you; since no one can desire a thing unless he thinks it really desirable; but any one may boast falsely. Moreover, I have always thus studiously applied myself to good morals from the outset of my life; and you yourself are a most sufficient witness that I have sought such a character as to my life and pursuits both in your province and in Borne with your friends; so that my friendship is not less worthy of your acceptance than yours of being sought by me. For not readily to forgive one who makes his visits scarce, argues a desire that one should come often; and it is a great proof of friendship to delight in the frequent presence of friends, to be angry with them when they stay away, to praise him who is constant in his attendance, to feel the loss of him who stays away; for it is certain that he must be liked whose absence gives pain. But a voice bound down to perpetual silence, would he of no more use than nostrils stuffed with rheum, ears closed by wind, eyes veiled by cataract. What if the hands he manacled? What if the feet be fettered? or our guide, the mind, be relaxed in sleep, or drowned in wine, or buried in disease? Truly as the sword is brightened by use, and rusts when laid by; so the voice sheathed in silence loses power by long torpor. Disuse makes every one slow, and sloth causes lethargy. Unless tragedians declaim daily, their throats lose clearness of voice; therefore they clear off their huskiness by vociferating again and again. In other respects it is lost labour to exercise the human voice, for it is surpassed in a great many ways, since the trumpet brays more grimly than the voice of man, the lyre is of more varied compass, the flute more sweetly plaintive, the pipe warbles more agreeably, and the horn is heard to a greater distance. I say nothing of the inarticulate voices of many animals, which are to be admired for distinct qualities: such as the deep lowing of the bull, the shrill howl of the wolf, the melancholy bray of the elephant, the cheerful neigh of the horse; then there are the songs of excited birds, the angry roar of the lion, and other voices of animals, both fierce and gentle, as they are called forth by vehement rage or pleasure. Instead of these, the gods have given man a voice of less volume, indeed; but it affords more of utility to the mind than of delight to the ear. Wherefore it should be the more cultivated by frequent use, and that nowhere else than in the public assembly, under the presidency of so great a man, in this excellent concourse of many learned, many gracious men. Certainly though I were a first-rate performer on the lute, I would seek only crowded audiences. In solitude
“Orpheus in woods, Arion harped mid dolphins.”
Now, if legends are to be believed, Orpheus was made a solitary by exile, Arion was thrown overboard from a ship. The one was a soother of savage beasts, the other was a delighter of compassionate brutes; both were very unfortunate minstrels, for they played not spontaneously for praise, but of necessity for safety. I would admire them more if they had delighted men rather than brutes. Such sequestered places were certainly better suited to birds, such as thrushes, nightingales, and swans. Thrushes sing in lonely spots; nightingales warble their song of youth in the African desert; swans modulate their song of age in unfrequented streams. But whoso has a song to sing that is good for youth, and adults, and seniors, let him sing in the midst of thousands of men. Such is this song of mine concerning the virtues of Orfitus; late, perhaps, indeed, but serious; and not less pleasing than profitable to the youths, and adults, and seniors of the Carthaginians, whom this worthiest of all proconsuls has relieved by his indulgence; and has, by the moderation of his desires and his temperate treatment, given plenty to youth, joyfulness to adults, serenity to seniors. I fear, indeed, Scipio, since I have touched upon your praises, lest I be curbed at present either by your generous modesty or my ingenuous bashfulness. But I cannot forbear, out of very many things which are most deservedly admired in you, I cannot forbear from touching upon at least a very few of these very many. Citizens preserved by him, tell these over with me.

## XVIII

You have come in such a multitude to hear me, that I must rather congratulate Carthage that it counts in it so many friends of learning, than apologize because as a philosopher I have not refused to lecture. For the audience collected is proportioned to the greatness of the city, and the place selected is proportioned to the magnitude of the audience. Moreover, in an assembly of this sort, what is to be considered is not the marble of the floor, nor the painting of the proscenium, nor the columns of the stage; nor yet the height of the roof, nor the brilliancy of the cornices, nor the extent of the benches; nor that here at other times the mime foots it, the comedian speaks, the tragedian declaims, the rope-dancer incurs danger, the juggler filches, the pantomimist gesticulates, and all the other players exhibit their several performances to the people; but setting aside all these things, nothing else ought to be considered but the understanding of the audience and the language of the speaker. Wherefore, as the poets are wont to represent various cities on this spot, like that tragic writer who makes the player say in the theatre,
“Bacchus, who in this grand Cithæron dwellest or that comic writer, who says —
“Of all your pleasant city’s ample space,
How small the part which Plautus asks, whereon
He may place Athens without architects;”
in like manner let it be allowed me, too, to set here before you no distant or transmarine city, but the very senate-house, the very library, of Carthage itself. Therefore, if I utter words worthy of the senate, think of them as though you heard me in the senate itself; if the things I deliver are learned, accept them as though they were read in the library. I would that I had ready a long oration corresponding to the magnitude of my audience, and that my speech did not halt here where I should wish to be most eloquent. But the common saying is a true one: “Nothing has been granted to man by the gods so fortunate but that some difficulty is nevertheless attached to it;” so that in every greatest delight there lurks at least some little grievance, by a certain combination of honey and gall. Where there is a breast of milk there is a tuberosity. This I have experienced at other times, and now especially, for the more suffrages I seem to have among you in my favour, the more timid I am in addressing you, from the exceeding respect I bear you. I, who many a time disputed with the greatest readiness among foreigners, now hesitate among my own countrymen, and, strange to say, I am deterred by what should allure, curbed by what should spur me, restrained by what should incite me. Have I not many encouragements among you, I who am neither alien to you by birth, nor unseen by you in boyhood, who have had masters among you, whose sect is not unknown to you, whose voice has not been unheard, nor my books unread or disapproved by you? Thus, my country is within the bounds of Africa, my boyhood has been spent among you, and you were my masters; and my philosophy, though confirmed in Attic Athens, was begun here; and my voice has been for more than six years familiar to your ears in both languages. My books, too, nowhere receive a higher honour than that they are approved by your judgment. These great and manifold common inducements no less invite you to hear than they check me from haranguing; and I could more easily celebrate your praises anywhere else than among yourselves: thus, a man’s modesty stands in his way among his own people, but before foreigners truth is free. Accordingly, I extol you always and every where as my parents and first masters, and I pay you your due remuneration: not that which Protagoras, the sophist, bargained for and did not receive, but that which Thales the wise did not bargain for, but received. I see what you desire. I will tell both stories.
Protagoras was a sophist of very varied knowledge, and extremely eloquent, as being one of the first inventors of rhetoric. He was the fellow-citizen and contemporary of Democritus, the physical philosopher, from whom he derived his knowledge. They say that this Protagoras stipulated with his disciple, Euathlus, for an inordinate payment upon a whimsical condition, namely, that he should pay him the stated sum if he was successful in the first cause he pleaded before the judges, and not otherwise. Euathlus, then, who was of a shrewd and cunning turn of mind, having easily learned all the artifices for softening judges and deceiving adversaries, and all the tricks of pleaders, and knowing to his full content what he had desired, began to be unwilling to pay what he had promised, and to cheat his teacher with cunningly-devised excuses, and for a long time would neither refuse outright nor pay. At last, Protagoras summoned him before the judges, and stating the condition on which he had undertaken to teach him, propounded this dilemma:—” If I gain the cause, you will have to pay the price as cast in judgment; or, if you gain, you will nevertheless have to pay, as bound by your bargain. Thus, if you beat me, you fall under the force of the condition; if you are beaten, you will lie under the decree of the court. What more would you have?” The conclusion appeared to the judges to be cogently and unanswerably made out. But Euathlus, as a most finished disciple of so subtle a teacher, turned his own dilemma against him. “If the thing is so,” said he, “in neither way do I owe what you demand. For either I gain the cause, and am cleared by the decree of the court, or I am beaten, and then I am discharged by our bargain, according to which, I owe you no payment if I shall have been beaten in this first cause I plead before the judges. Thus, I am acquitted in every way; by the verdict if I beat you, by our condition if I am beaten.”
Do not these sophisms, turned against each other, seem to you like burs rolled together by the wind, which stick each other alike by their prickles? Let us leave then this thorny pay of Protagoras to the crafty and the avaricious; far better is that other pay which Thales is said to have demanded. Thales, the Milesian, was decidedly the foremost of the celebrated seven wise men; for he was the first discoverer of geometry among the Greeks, a sure explorer of nature, and a skilful observer of the stars; by means of small lines he discovered vast things, the circuits of the seasons, the courses of the winds, the paths of the stars, the sonorous marvels of the thunder, the oblique courses of the constellations, the annual revolution of the sun; likewise, the increase of the new moon, the waning of the old, and the obstacles that cause her light to fail. He also, when advanced in years, excogitated a divine theory, respecting the sun, which I have not only learned but confirmed by experience, namely, by what multiple of its diameter the sun measures its own orbit. Thales is related to have demonstrated this recent discovery of his, to Mandraytus the Prienensian, who being intensely delighted with that new and unexpected observation, bade him name whatever reward he desired for so great a communication. “I shall be sufficiently paid,” said Thales the Wise, “if, when you have begun to unfold to others what you have learned from me, you do not attribute it to yourself, but declare that it was I, and no one else, who discovered it.” A handsome payment truly, worthy of such a man, and perpetual! For at this day, and in all time to come, that tribute will be paid to Thales by all of us who are truly acquainted with his celestial studies. This is the kind of payment I everywhere make on your account, Carthaginians, for the education I received among you in my boyhood, For I everywhere declare myself a nursling of your city; everywhere I extol you in all manner of ways; I diligently cultivate your literature; I boast of your wealth; and I religiously venerate your gods.
Now, too, I will take for the most auspicious subject of my exordium, your god, Æsculapius, who propitiously regards your citadel of Carthage with his indubitable divinity. I will here sing to you a hymn in honour of that god, which I have composed in Greek and Latin. For I am his not unknown priest, nor recent worshipper, nor unfavoured minister; and I have already paid him reverence in prose and verse, in like manner as I shall now sing his hymn in both languages. I have prefaced it with a dialogue likewise in Greek and Latin, the speakers being Sabidius Severus and Julius Persius, men who, with good reason, are the warmest friends to each other, and to you, and to the public weal, and are equals in learning, eloquence, and good feeling; and of whom it is a question whether they are more distinguished by their placid moderation, their prompt ingenuity, or their eminent honours. Thoroughly at concord as they are, there is yet between them this sole emulation, this sole contest, which of them more loves Carthage, and on this point they both contend with all their might, but neither yields the victory. Thinking that a discourse between them would he most pleasing to you, a congenial subject of composition to me, and worthy of being dedicated to the service of religion, I introduce in the beginning of my work, one of my fellow students at Athens inquiring of Persius, in Greek, what I had delivered the day before in the temple of Æsculapius; and presently I add to them Severus, whom meanwhile I have made speak Latin. For though Persius is perfectly acquainted with Latin, he will to-day speak for you and me in the Attic tongue.

## XIX

Asclepiades, one of the first of physicians, and superior to all, Hippocrates alone excepted, was the first who used wine as a remedy for the sick; but with this precaution, that he gave it in good time, a point which he was very sagacious in determining, being a most diligent observer of the inordinate or depraved pulsation of the arteries. Once, when he returned to the city from his country house, he saw a great funeral pile in the outskirts of the town, and around it a vast multitude, who had followed the funeral, all in great grief and soiled garments. He went up to the spot, as is the nature of the human mind, that he might know who it was, since no one answered his enquiries. Or, rather, he went that he might notice something in the deceased by means of his art. At all events, he took away death from that man who was stretched on the bier and nearly consigned to the tomb. The unfortunate man’s body was already ail bedewed with perfumes, and his face was anointed with odorous ointment. Having carefully contemplated the man thus anointed and made ready for the funeral banquet, he noticed in him certain signs, handled the body again and again, and found life latent in it. Instantly he cried out that the man was alive, that they should take away the torches, put out the fire, pull down the pile, and carry back the funeral banquet from the tomb to the table. Meanwhile, a murmur arose, some saying that the physician should be believed, others making a mock of medicine. Finally, against the will of all the relations, whether it was that they were disappointed of the inheritance, or that they did not believe him, Asclepiades, with great difficulty, obtained a brief respite for the defunct, and so, in the end, he took him back to his house, snatched from the hands of the undertakers, and as it were from the infernal regions, and immediately revived his spirits, and called forth, by some medicine, the vital breath that was lurking in the recesses of his body.

## XX

There is a celebrated saying of a wise man concerning the table. The first cup is for thirst, the second for mirth, the third for delight, the fourth for madness. The goblet of the Muses, on the contrary, the oftener it is drained and the more unmixed it is, the more it conduces to soundness of mind. The first cup, that of the reading master, takes away ignorance; the second, of the grammarian, instructs in science; the third, the rhetorician’s, arras with eloquence. Thus far most people drink. But I have drunk other cups at Athens; the cup of poetry, the inventive; of geometry, the limpid; of music, the sweet; of dialectics, the roughish; and of universal philosophy, the never-satiating nectareous cup. For Empedocles gives us verses; Plato, dialogues; Socrates, hymns; Epicharmus, modulations; Xenophon, histories; Xenocrates, satires: your Apuleius all these together; and he has cultivated the nine Muses with equal assiduity, that is to say, with more good-will than capacity. Perhaps he is the more to be praised for this, since in all good things the attempt is laudable, the effect contingent; whilst, conversely in evil things, crimes that are but designed, not accomplished, are punished; the mind being blood-stained, the hands pure. Therefore, just as it suffices for the incurring of punishment to have meditated things that deserve punishment, so it is a sufficient cause of praise to attempt laudable things. But what greater or surer source of praise is there than to speak well at Carthage, where all your citizens are most learned; among whom, boys learn all they know, adults exhibit it, and old men teach it? Carthage, the venerable mistress of our province; Carthage, the celestial Muse of Africa; Carthage, the Camoena of those who wear the toga.

## XXI

Even necessary haste sometimes admits of proper delay, so that you may often be pleased at the interruption of your purpose. So it is with those who have occasion to travel fast, so that they would rather ride on horseback than sit in a car, on account of the annoyance of baggage, the weight of vehicles, the clogging of wheels, the roughness of the track, the heaps of stones, the projecting roots of trees, the streams on the plain, and the declivities of hills. Wishing, then, to avoid all these retardations, they select a riding-horse of enduring powers and lively speed, strong to bear and a good goer, “That sweeps at equal pace o’er hill and dale,” as Lucilius says. Then, when they are riding at the horse’s speed along the way, if they espy any man of high station, of great influence, and well known, in spite of their haste they check their speed and stop their horse; they jump down, and pa3s the rod they carry for beating the horse into their left hand. With their right hand thus at liberty, they go up and salute him; and if he asks questions at some length, they walk for some time, and chat with him. In short, they willingly submit to any delay, as a matter of courtesy.

## XXII

As we see a good ship, well built, stoutly put together within, elegantly painted without, having a helm that moves freely, strong rigging, a tall mast, a fine mast top, shining sails, and, in short, found in everything requisite for use, and fair to see; but if the helmsman does not steer that ship, either it is driven before the tempest, or the deeps engulf, or the rocks shatter it with all its excellent gear. Again, when physicians enter a house to visit a sick man, none of them ever bids the patient be of good cheer, because they see in the house handsome bookcases, gilded cornices, and crowds of boys and youths of comely form waiting in the chamber round the bed. But when the physician has sat down by the patient, he takes his hand, feels it, notes the pulse and the force of the arteries, and if he find anything disturbed and inordinate there, he tells the man that his case is a bad one. That wealthy patient is forbidden food, and that day he gets no food in his opulent house, though, meanwhile, all his domestics feast and make good cheer In that respect his fortune avails him nothing.

## XXIII

You who wished me to speak extempore, hear now a rude attempt after a finished specimen. For, as I think, I shall venture with a fair chance, when I am to speak improviso, after having made premeditated speeches which have been approved; nor am I afraid that I shall displease in trivial things, since I have given satisfaction in more serious matters. But that you may test and know me in every way, try me in this rough and unfinished sketch, as Lucilius says, whether I am the same on a sudden as when prepared; if, indeed, there are any among you who have not heard any of these off-hand efforts of mine, which you will listen to with the same attention as you hearken to those discourses which we write and recite, and with more indulgence. For so it is usual with wise men to exercise more accurate judgment with elaborate works, and more indulgence towards those that are unprepared. For you weigh and examine what is written, and you hear at once impromptu discourses, and pardon what is amiss in them, and with good reason. For those things which we recite when written, will be such as they were composed, even though you be silent; but those which are to be produced on the spot, and, as it were, in combination with you, will be such as you shall have made them by your favour. The more I sink in my discourse, the more it will be lifted up by you. I perceive that you hear me willingly. So it is in your power to spread my sail, and inflate it, that it may not hang flaccid, or be furled and brailed. Now, I will venture to do that which Aristippus said. That Aristippus was the founder of the Cyrenaic sect, and what he himself most desired, a disciple of Socrates. A certain tyrant asked him, What good had he got by his intent and long-continued pursuit of philosophy? “ To be able to speak at my ease and intrepidly with all men,” replied Aristippus. This saying was impromptu, for the occasion was sudden; just as in rubble masonry it is necessary that stones should be laid down as they come to hand, no grouting being interposed within, nor their position made even in front, nor their faces arranged by line. I, myself, the builder of this oration, will not bring to it from my quarry a stone cut fair, well squared, and accurately smoothed on all its faces; but I will fit to every part of the work rough and uneven stones, or smooth and slippery, or round and rolling, without correcting them by the rule, or equalizing them on measuring, or adjusting them by the plumb-line. For nothing can be at the same time hurried and deliberate; nor can anything possess at once the merit of elaboration and the grace of despatch. I have yielded to the wish of some who greatly desired that I should speak extempore what was expected of me; and, by Hercules! there is some fear lest that befall me which is narrated by Æsop of his crow: that is, that whilst I catch at this hew glory, I shall lose that little glory which I have already acquired. If you call upon me for the apologue, I shall have no objection to deliver a fable.
A Crow and a Fox simultaneously espied a gobbet, and hastened to seize it with equal greed but unequal speed — the Pox running, the Crow flying. The bird outstripped the beast, gliding before him with both wings outspread to the favouring gale; and then exulting at once in the booty and the victory, soared aloft, and perched securely on the top of an oak. Nevertheless, even there the Pox hit the victor with a trick, because he could not hit him with a stone; for he went up to the same tree, and stopping when he saw the spoiler aloft, exulting over his booty, began cunningly to flatter him. “Truly I was foolish to contend in vain with the bird of Apollo, whose body is so elegant, neither very small, nor too large, but just of the size sufficient for use and beauty, with soft plumage, a delicate head, and strong beak. It is a bird of keen eye and tenacious talons. But what shall I say of its colour? For, whereas two colours were superior to all others, black and white, which mark the difference between day and night, Apollo bestowed both on his birds — white on the swan, black on the crow. I wish that, as he granted song to the swan, he had also given voice to this bird, that so beautiful a bird, far the first of the whole feathered creation, the pet of the eloquent god, might not live mute and tongueless.” When the Crow heard that this alone was wanting to him that he should surpass the rest of the birds, he resolved to croak as loud as he could, to show that in that respect he was not inferior to the swan; and forgetting the gobbet he held in his beak, he opened it as wide as he could gape; and thus he lost by his song what he had won by his flight; but the Pox recovered by his craft what he had lost in running.
Let us epitomise this fable as compactly as possible. The Crow, to prove itself a vocalist, the only thing which the Pox had pretended was wanting to its great beauty, began to croak, and made the wheedling Fox possessor of the booty it held in its beak.

## XXIV

I know well what you desire by this token, namely, that I should proceed with the rest of the Latin matter. For in the beginning, when you asked for different things, I remember to have promised that neither portion of you, neither those who called for Latin nor those who called for Greek, should go away disappointed. “Wherefore, if you please, let us conclude that I have talked Greek long enough. It is now time to migrate from Greece to Latium. For we have now come nearly to the middle of this discourse; and, as I think, this latter part, compared with the Greek portion which preceded it, is neither less copious in arguments, nor less abundant in maxims, nor more scant of examples, nor more brief in matter.