brought back all the young men to contempt of things divine. "What
then, does not this satisfy you? Learn now, that justice is nothing,
that modesty is folly, that a father is nothing, a son nothing."
Well done, philosopher, persist, persuade the young men, that we may
have more with the same opinions as you who say the same as you.
From such you an principles as those have grown our well-constituted
states; by these was Sparta founded: Lycurgus fixed these opinions
in the Spartans by his laws and education, that neither is the servile
condition more base than honourable, nor the condition of free men
more honorable than base, and that those who died at Thermopylae
died from these opinions; and through what other opinions did the
Athenians leave their city? Then those who talk thus, marry and
beget children, and employ themselves in public affairs and make
themselves priests and interpreters. Of whom? of gods who do not
exist: and they consult the Pythian priestess that they may hear lies,
and they repeat the oracles to others. Monstrous impudence and
imposture.
Man what are you doing? are you refuting yourself every day; and
will you not give up these frigid attempts? When you eat, where do you
carry your hand to? to your mouth or to your eye? when you wash
yourself, what do you go into? do you ever call a pot a dish, or a
ladle a spit? If I were a slave of any of these men, even if I must be
flayed by him dally, I would rack him. If he said, "Boy, throw some
olive-oil into the bath," I would take pickle sauce and pour it down
on his head. "What is this?" he would say. An appearance was presented
to me, I swear by your genius, which could not be distinguished from
oil and was exactly like it. "Here give me the barley drink," he says.
I would fill and carry him a dish of sharp sauce. "Did I not ask for
the barley drink?" Yes, master; this is the barley drink. "Take it and
smell; take it and taste." How do you know then if our senses
deceive us? If I had three or four fellow-slaves of the same
opinion, I should force him to hang himself through passion or to
change his mind. But now they mock us by using all the things which
nature gives, and in words destroying them.
Grateful indeed are men and modest, who, if they do nothing else,
are daily eating bread and yet are shameless enough to say, we do
not know if there is a Demeter or her daughter Persephone or a
Pluto; not to mention that they are enjoying the night and the day,
the seasons of the year, and the stars, and the sea, and the land, and
the co-operation of mankind, and yet they are not moved in any
degree by these things to turn their attention to them; but they
only seek to belch out their little problem, and when they have
exercised their stomach to go off to the bath. But what they shall
say, and about what things or to what persons, and what their
hearers shall learn from this talk, they care not even in the least
degree, nor do they care if any generous youth after hearing such talk
should suffer any harm from it, nor after he has suffered harm
should lose all the seeds of his generous nature: nor if we should
give an adulterer help toward being shameless in his acts; nor if a
public peculator should lay hold of some cunning excuse from these