Discourses - Book IV   

gone out of the school. Away with this talk of scholars and fools."
Thus a friend is overpowered by the testimony of a philosopher: thus a
philosopher becomes a parasite; thus he lets himself for hire for
money: thus in the senate a man does not say what he thinks; in
private he proclaims his opinions. You are a cold and miserable little
opinion, suspended from idle words as from a hair. But keep yourself
strong and fit for the uses of life and initiated by being exercised
in action. How do you hear? I do not say that your child is dead-
for how could you bear that?- but that your oil is spilled, your
wine drunk up. Do you act in such a way that one standing by you while
you are making a great noise, may say this only, "Philosopher, you say
something different in the school. Why do you deceive us? Why, when
you are only a worm, do you say that you are a man?" I should like
to be present when one of the philosophers is lying with a woman, that
I might see how he is exerting himself, and what words he is uttering,
and whether he remembers his title of philosopher, and the words which
he hears or says or reads.
"And what is this to liberty?" Nothing else than this, whether you
who are rich choose or not. "And who is your evidence for this?" who
else than yourselves? who have a powerful master, and who live in
obedience to his nod and motion, and who faint if he only looks at you
with a scowling countenance; you who court old women and old men,
and say, "I cannot do this: it is not in my power." Why is it not in
your power? Did you not lately contend with me and say that you are
free "But Aprulla has hindered me." Tell the truth, then, slave, and
do not run away from your masters, nor deny, nor venture to produce
any one to assert your freedom, when you have so many evidences of
your slavery. And indeed when a man is compelled by love to do
something contrary to his opinion, and at the same time sees the
better but has not the strength to follow it, one might consider him
still more worthy of excuse as being held by a certain violent and, in
a manner, a divine power. But who could endure you who are in love
with old women and old men, and wipe the old women's noses, and wash
them and give them presents, and also wait on them like a slave when
they are sick, and at the same time wish them dead, and question the
physicians whether they are sick unto death? And again, when in
order to obtain these great and much admired magistracies and honours,
you kiss the hands of these slaves of others, and so you are not the
slave even of free men. Then you walk about before me in stately
fashion, praetor or a consul. Do I not know how you became a
praetor, by what means you got your consulship, who gave it to you?
I would not even choose to live, if I must live by help of Felicion
and endure his arrogance and servile insolence: for I know what a
slave is, who is fortunate, as he thinks, and puffed up by pride.
"You then," a man may say, "are you free?" I wish, by the Gods,
and pray to be free; but I am not yet able to face my masters, I still
value my poor body, I value greatly the preservation of it entire,
though I do not possess it entire. But I can point out to you a free
man, that you may no longer seek an example. Diogenes was free. How
was he free?- not because he was born of free parents, but because