Vitarum auctio

Zeus: (to his assistants) Set the benches in order, and get the place ready for visitors; and you, range the lives in order and usher them in, but tidy them up first so that they may make a good appearance and attract a crowd. You, Hermes, make a proclamation, and, by the grace of heaven, summon the buyers to the sale-room forthwith. We are going to announce for sale philosophic lives of every description and varied principles, and if any one is not able to lay down his money on the nail he can pay up next year if he gives security.

Hermes: A crowd is gathering, so we must not waste time nor keep them waiting.

Zeus: Then let us proceed to sell.

Hermes: Which of them shall we put up first?

Zeus: This one with the long hair, the Ionian, for he seems to be a reverend person.

Hermes: Let the Pythagorean there show his points to the company.

Zeus: Announce him, pray.

Hermes: I offer the noblest life, the most reverend. Who will buy? Who wishes to be more than human, to know the harmony of the all, and rise from the dead?

Buyer: He is not bad to look at, but just what does he know?

Hermes: Arithmetic, astronomy, magic, geometry, music, jugglery. A finished fortune-teller is before you.

Buyer: May one question him?

Hermes: With all my heart.

Buyer: What country are you of?

Pythagoras: Samos.

Buyer: Where were you educated?

Pythagoras: In Egypt, among the sages there.

Buyer: Well, then, if I buy you what will you teach me?

Pythagoras: I will not teach you anything. I will remind you.

Buyer: How will you remind me?

Pythagoras: By first making your soul clean, and washing off the filth that is on it.

Buyer: Now, suppose me already purified, what is your method of reminding?

Pythagoras: The first step is a long, speechless silence; you must not say a word for five whole years.

Buyer: You ought to teach mutes, my friend. But I am a talker with no desire to become a graven image. All the same, what comes after the silence and the five-year term?

Pythagoras: Practise in music and geometry.

Buyer: That is a nice statement! If I am to become a philosopher I must first learn to play the harp!

Pythagoras: In addition to these, counting.

Buyer: I can count now.

Pythagoras: How do you do it?

Buyer: One, two, three, four.

Pythagoras: Look, now; what you deem four is really ten, and a perfect triangle, and what we swear by.

Buyer: Hear me swear a mighty oath: by Four, I never heard diviner or more holy words.

Pythagoras: And after that, stranger, you will have knowledge concerning earth and air and water and fire-the mass of each, and what form it has, and what motion by consequence.

Buyer: Then has fire form, or air, or water?

Pythagoras: Very clear forms, for the formless and shapeless is immovable; and besides these things you will know that God is number and mind and harmony.

Buyer: This is startling!

Pythagoras: Beyond what I have already said, you will know that you yourself, who seem to be a unit, are one person in appearance and another in reality.

Buyer: What do you say? Am I somebody else and not this person now talking to you?

Pythagoras: Now you are he, but formerly you appeared in another body and with another name; and in time you will change again into another.

Buyer: You mean this: that I shall be immortal, changing into one form after another? But that is enough on this subject.

Buyer: What are your habits of life?

Pythagoras: I touch no sort of animal food, but anything else except beans.

Buyer: What is the reason of that? Perhaps you dislike beans?

Pythagoras: Not at all, but they are sacred and of a marvellous nature. But, what is more important, it is the custom of the Athenians to vote for officers with beans.

Buyer: All your remarks are lofty and priestlike. But take off your clothes and let me see you stripped. Good heavens, his thigh is golden! He seems to be a god, not a mortal. I will buy him, by all means. How much do you ask for him?

Hermes: Two hundred dollars.

Buyer: I will take him at the price.

Zeus: Make a note of the buyer's name and country.

Hermes: He is an Italian, I should think, from Croton or Tarentum, or somewhere in Magna Graecia. But he is not the sole purchaser; almost three hundred clubbed together with him.

Zeus: Let them take him off. Put up another.

Hermes: What do you say to that dirty one from Pontos?

Zeus: By all means.

Hermes: Come here, you with the wallet slung from your shoulder, and the bare arms. Walk round the room. I offer a manly life, a noble and generous life, a free life! Who buys?

Buyer: What do you say, salesman? You offer a free man for sale?

Hermes: I do.

Buyer: Then are you not afraid he will sue you for kidnapping, and bring you before the criminal court?

Hermes: He does not mind being sold at all, for he believes he is free in all circumstances.

Buyer: What use could one put such a dirty, ill-conditioned fellow to, unless you set him to digging or carrying water?

Hermes: Those are not his only uses. If you make a hall-porter of him you will find you can rely on him better than on your dogs; in fact, he has even the name of a dog.

Buyer: Where does he come from and what discipline does he profess?

Hermes: Ask the man himself; that is the better way.

Buyer: I am afraid of him, with his sullen, dark look, lest he should bark and spring at me, and bite me, too, by Zeus! See how he brandishes his club, and knits his brows, and scowls beneath them in that threatening, angry way!

Hermes: Don't be afraid; he is tame.

Buyer: In the first place, my friend, where are you from?

Diogones: Everywhere.

Buyer: What do you mean?

Diogones: You see before you a citizen of the world.

Buyer: And who is your model?

Diogones: Herakles.

Buyer: Then why don't you wear the lion-skin, too? You are like him as far as the club goes.

Diogones: This is my lion-skin, my threadbare coat. Like him, I make war on pleasures; not under orders, but of my own will, deliberately choosing to purify life.

Buyer: A noble choice! But just what are we to understand that you know? What art are you master of?

Diogones: I am the liberator of mankind and the physician of their passions; but, above all, I wish to be the prophet of truth and free speech.

Buyer: Come, prophet, if I buy you, what training will you put me through?

Diogones: First, I will take you in hand and strip you of your luxury, locking you up with poverty and clothing you in a threadbare cloak. Next, I will drive you to travail and toil, with the ground for your bed, water for your drink, and for your food whatever comes along. As for your money, if you have any, you will carry it down to the sea and throw it in, if you will be guided by me, and you will have no care for wife or child or fatherland; everything of that sort will seem trumpery to you. You will leave your paternal house, and take up your dwelling in a tomb, or in a deserted tower, or even in a tub. Let your wallet be full of pease and bescribbled books, and in this plight you will declare yourself happier than the great king. If any one should flog you or stretch you on the rack you will feel no pain.

Buyer: What do you mean by that feeling no pain when one is flogged? I have not got the covering of a turtle or a lobster on my shoulders!

Diogones: You will admire that little saying of Euripides, with a word or two altered.

Buyer: What one?

Diogones: Your heart will suffer, but your tongue will feel no pain.

Diogones: But the most necessary qualities are these: you must be reckless and daring, and abuse all alike, kings and subjects. By this means you will be noticed and thought manly. Let your speech be uncouth, your voice discordant and strongly resembling a dog's. Wear a strenuous face, and choose a gait in keeping with 5 it; and let all your ways be wild and boorish. But let shame and reason and moderation stand afar off, and strip your blushes from your cheeks altogether. Haunt the most frequented spots, and even in those let your desire be for unshared solitude; and attach yourself to neither friend nor stranger, for that would upset your empire. And at last, if you see fit, eat a raw polyp or a jelly-fish, and die. Such is the happiness we procure for you.

Buyer: Be off with you! Your ways are foul and unnatural.

Diogones: But the easiest, at least, sirrah, and handy for every one to pursue; for they will not ask education of you, or oratory, or nonsense. No; this road is a short cut to fame; for even if you are a private citizen, a tanner, or a fishmonger, or a carpenter, or a cabinet-maker, nothing prevents your being a wonder if only you are shameless and bold, and have acquired the art of skilful abuse.

Buyer: I do not want your services in that line, but you might perhaps be convenient as a sailor or a gardener-particularly if the vendor is willing to sell you for not more than five cents.

Hermes: Take him; we shall be glad to get rid of him. He is a nuisance, yelling and abusing everybody generally with his foul tongue.

Zeus: Call another, the Cyrenaic, the one in the purple robe with the garland on his head.

Hermes: Come now, attention, all! This article is expensive, and only for the rich. This is a life of sweetness, a thrice-blessed life! Who wants luxury? Who will buy the daintiest thing going?

Buyer: Step forward, you, and tell me what you happen to know. I will buy you if you are useful.

Hermes: Do not annoy him, my good fellow, or ask him questions. He is drunk and cannot answer you, for his tongue is thick, as you perceive.

Buyer: And who in his senses would buy such an abandoned, dissipated slave? How he reeks of perfumes, and how reeling and uncertain his gait is! But tell me yourself, Hermes, if need be, what his points are, and what his pursuits.

Hermes: Primarily he is a clever man to live with you, able to drink with you, and just the man to go with a flute-girl on the revels of an amorous and spendthrift master. Moreover, he is a connoisseur of made dishes, a most experienced cook, and a complete professor of the art of pleasant living. In fact, he was educated at Athens, and also served various despots in Sicily, and is highly esteemed by them. This is the substance of his principles: to despise everything, make use of everything, and gather pleasure from every source.

Buyer: You had better cast your eye on some one of these rich men with full purses. Certainly for buying a gay life I am not your man.

Hermes: It looks, Zeus, as though this one would be left on your hands.

Zeus: Set him aside and put up another. These two, for choice, the laugher from Abdera and the weeper from Ephesus, for I should like to sell the two together.

Hermes: Let them come down into full view. I offer the noblest lives; we announce the sagest of all!

Buyer: Heavens, what a contrast! The one never stops laughing, and the other seems to be in grief for somebody. He is consumed with weeping. What is the matter, fellow? Why are you laughing?

Demokritos: What a question! Because all your doings and you yourselves strike me as so funny!

Buyer: What? You are laughing at us all, and don't take our doings seriously?

Demokritos: Even so, for there is nothing serious in them. They are all empty, a whirl of atoms, the infinite.

Buyer: By no means; it is you that are really empty and infinitesimal. What impudence! Will you not stop laughing?

Buyer: But what are you weeping for, my good fellow? I imagine it will be much pleasanter to talk with you.

Herakleitos: Because, friend, I deem human life a lamentable thing, worthy of tears, so soon passeth it all away. Therefore, I pity you and bewail your lot. The present does not strike me as important, and what is to come hereafter is unmixed woe-I mean the final conflagration and the catastrophe of the universe. These are the things I lament. Nothing is steadfast, but all things are somehow pressed together into an olla-podrïda and the same thing is a joyless joy, a knowing without knowledge, a great littleness, drifting up and down and changing at the caprice of the playful Aeon.

Buyer: What may the Aeon be?

Herakleitos: A child at play, moving the chessmen, changing them by hazard.

Buyer: What, then, are men?

Herakleitos: Mortal gods.

Buyer: And what are the gods?

Herakleitos: Immortal men.

Buyer: Are you talking in riddles, fellow, or setting me conundrums? You make your meaning as dim, actually, as Apollo does.

Herakleitos: Because I am at no pains about you.

Buyer: Very well; neither will any but a lunatic buy you.

Herakleitos: I bid each of you go to the devil from his youth up, whether he purchase or purchase not.

Buyer: His affliction is not much removed from melancholia. For my part, I am not going to buy either of them.

Hermes: These two are left on our hands.

Zeus: Put up another!

Hermes: That Athenian there, the chatterbox?

Zeus: By all means.

Hermes: Come here, you! We offer a good, sensible life. Who buys the most holy?

Buyer: Tell me, just what do you happen to know?

Sokrates: I am a lover and wise in the science of love.

Buyer: Then how in the world could I buy you? For what I want is a tutor for my pretty boy.

Sokrates: Well, who could be a better man than I to associate with the fair? It is beautiful souls that I love, not bodies.

Sokrates: Indeed, I swear it to you by the dog and the plane-tree.

Buyer: Heavens, what strange gods!

Sokrates: What's that you say? Don't you think the dog is a god? Perhaps you have not noticed how great Anoubis is in Egypt, and Seirios in the heavens, and Kerberos among the dead.

Buyer: You are right, it was my mistake. But what is your manner of life?

Sokrates: I live by myself in a sort of state that I fashioned with a foreign form of government, and I enact my own laws.

Buyer: I should like to hear one of your principles.

Sokrates: Well, this is the most important: my decision about women. No woman is assigned to one man alone, but to every one who wishes her in marriage. Have you, then, abrogated the laws about marriage?

Buyer: What!

Sokrates: Dear me, yes, and all such petty formalities. Beauty shall be the reward of the bravest-those who have accomplished some brilliant feat of daring.

Buyer: A fine reward! And what is the substance of your philosophy?

Sokrates: The ideas and the types of existing things; for, indeed, everything that you see-the earth and all upon it, the sky, the sea-all these things have invisible images outside the universe.

Buyer: Where are they?

Sokrates: Nowhere; for if they were anywhere they could not be.

Buyer: I don't see these types you speak of.

Sokrates: Naturally; for your soul's eye is blind. But I see the images of all things: an invisible you, another me, and everything double.

Buyer: Then you will do to buy, for you are wise and have good eyes. Come, Hermes, how much will you charge me for him?

Hermes: Two thousand dollars.

Buyer: I take him at the price. However, I will pay you later.

Hermes: What is your name?

Buyer: Dion of Syracuse.

Hermes: Take him, with my best wishes. Next I call you, the Epicurean. Who will buy this one? He is the pupil of that laugher and of the drunkard whom I offered a little while ago. But he has made one step in advance of them, inasmuch as he has less regard for holy things. For the rest, he is pleasant and the friend of good living.

Buyer: What's the price?

Hermes: Forty dollars.

Buyer: Here you are. But tell me what sort of food he likes.

Hermes: He lives on sweet things like honey, and particularly figs.

Buyer: That is easy enough. I will buy him penny-loaves of fig-cake.

Zeus: Call up another-that scowling fellow with the shaved head from the Porch.

Hermes: Very well. At all events, a great crowd of those who have come to the sale seem to be waiting for him. I offer for sale virtue herself, the most perfect of lives. Who wishes to know everything, alone of all men?

Buyer: What do you mean?

Hermes: This man alone is wise, he alone is beautiful, he alone is just, manly, a king, an orator, a millionaire, a legislator, and everything else.

Buyer: Then, friend, is he alone a cook, and a tanner, by Jove! and a carpenter, and everything of that sort?

Hermes: Apparently.

Buyer: Come, my friend, and tell me, your purchaser, what sort of person you are, and, to begin with, whether it is not an affliction to you to be sold and in slavery.

Chrysippos: Not at all; for those things are not under our control, and what is not under our control is therefore indifferent.

Buyer: I don't understand just what you mean.

Chrysippos: What, do you not understand that in such matters some things are preferred and some again rejected?

Buyer: I don't understand even yet.

Chrysippos: Naturally, for you are not accustomed to our terminology, nor have you the perceptive imagination. But the virtuous man, he who has mastered logical theory, knows not only these things, but also the nature of an accident and a secondary accident, and how much difference there is between them.

Buyer: In the name of wisdom, kindly take the trouble to tell me this, too: what accidents and secondary accidents are. I am indescribably impressed by the roll of the words.

Chrysippos: No trouble at all. If a lame man, stumbling with that lame foot itself against a stone gets unexpectedly hurt, this man's lameness is evidently a primary accident to which he adds a secondary accident in the way of the wound.

Buyer: What else, now, do you claim to know?

Buyer: How clever!

Chrysippos: The meshes of argument wherewith I trip up my interlocutors and block their passage and reduce them to silence by actually muzzling them. The name of this faculty is the famous syllogism.

Buyer: By Herkules, it is an irresistible, mighty weapon, from your description.

Chrysippos: I will give you a specimen. Have you a child?

Buyer: Certainly.

Chrysippos: If a crocodile should manage to snatch it, finding it wandering too near the river, and if, then, he should promise to restore it if you could tell him truly whether he had determined to give it back or not, what would you tell him he had in mind?

Buyer: That is a difficult question, for I do not see which answer would be the more likely to get the child back. But do you, in Heaven's name, answer for me, and save my child before he eats him.

Chrysippos: Never fear, I will teach you other things still more surprising.

Buyer: What sort of things?

Chrysippos: The Reaper, the Master, and, above all, the Elektra, and the Veiled.

Buyer: What do you mean by the "Veiled," or the "Elektra?"

Chrysippos: Elektra is that famous person, the daughter of Agamemnon, who at the same moment knows a thing and does not know it; for when Orestes stands beside her, still incognito, she knows, indeed, that Orestes is her brother, but that this is Orestes she does not know. And I will tell you about the "Veiled," too, a most extraordinary figure. Answer me, do you know your father?

Buyer: Yes.

Chrysippos: Well, then, if I present some veiled person to you and ask whether you know him, what would you say?

Buyer: That I do not, of course.

Chrysippos: And yet this very person was your father! Therefore, if you do not know him, it is plain you do not know your father.

Buyer: Not at all, for if I unveil him I shall know the truth. However, what is the object of your philosophy? What do you do when you have reached the pinnacle of virtue?

Chrysippos: I shall then be occupied with the first things in the order of nature-riches, I mean, and health, and such like things. But before that one must needs toil much, sharpening his sight on books in fine print, taking notes, and filling himself with solecisms aand uncouth phrases. Most important of all, it is not permitted to become a sage until you have drunk hellebore three times in succession.

Buyer: This is all very noble in you and extremely manly. But what are we to say when a man, who has already drunk the hellebore and arrived at virtue, turns money - lender at fifty per cent., for I see this belongs to your principles too?

Chrysippos: By all means. The sage is the only man fit to lend money; for since ratiocination is his peculiar function, and calculating ratios and per cents. seems to be the next thing to ratiocinating, it follows from these premises that the special business of the good man alone is to get not only simple interest like other people, but compound. For you know there are two sorts of interest, one sort coming first, and the other second, as it were the offspring of the first, and of course you see what the syllogism has to say about it if he gets the simple interest, he will also get the compound, but he does get the simple interest, therefore he will also get the compound.

Buyer: And must we say the same of the fees you take for imparting your wisdom to young men? Is it clear that the good man alone will make money out of his virtue?

Chrysippos: You grasp the idea. It is not on my own account that I take fees, but for the good of the giver himself. For since one party in a transaction must give and the other receive, I train myself to receive and my pupil to give.

Buyer: It ought to be the other way about. The young man ought to receive, and you, who alone are rich, to give out.

Chrysippos: You are chaffing, fellow; but be careful lest I let fly at you with the apodeiktic syllogism.

Buyer: What are the frightful effects of the weapon?

Chrysippos: Embarrassment, silence, confusion of mind.

Chrysippos: If you like, I will give you an extreme example, and prove in a twinkling that you are a stone.

Buyer: How a stone? You do not look to me like Perseus with the Gorgon's head, my friend.

Chrysippos: This is the way. Is the stone a body?

Buyer: Yes.

Chrysippos: Well, is not a living creature a body?

Buyer: Yes.

Chrysippos: But you are a living creature?

Buyer: Certainly, I have that appearance.

Chrysippos: Then you are a stone, for you are a body.

Buyer: Heaven forbid! In Zeus' name, release me and make me a man again!

Chrysippos: That is easy; be a man once more. For, tell me, is every body a living creature?

Buyer: No.

Chrysippos: Well, is a stone a living creature?

Buyer: No.

Chrysippos: But you are a body?

Buyer: Yes.

Chrysippos: And being a body you are a living creature?

Buyer: Yes.

Chrysippos: Then you are not a stone, because you are a living creature.

Buyer: Thank you. My legs were getting lifeless already and stiff, like Niobe's. But I am certainly going to buy you. What is his price?

Hermes: Two hundred and forty dollars.

Buyer: Here it is.

Hermes: Are you the sole purchaser?

Buyer: Dear me, no. All these people are with me.

Hermes: There are plenty of them, and strong in the shoulder. They are fit for "the Mower."

Zeus: Don't waste time. Call up another, the Peripatetic.

Hermes: You are the man I want-the handsome, the rich one. Come now, buy the most intelligent life-the one whose forte is omniscience!

Buyer: What sort of a person is he?

Hermes: He leads a reasonable, well-ordered life, never doing either too much or too little. Most important of all, he is double.

Buyer: What do you mean?

Hermes: It seems that his visible man is one person and his inward man another; so, if you buy him, remember to call the one "exoteric," the other "esoteric."

Buyer: What does he know best?

Hermes: That there are three classes of goods, relating to the soul, the body, and to externals.

Buyer: He thinks like a human being. What is his price?

Hermes: Three hundred and seventy-five dollars.

Buyer: That is high.

Hermes: No, my good fellow, for he seems to have some money himself, so you can't buy him too quickly. Moreover, you will presently learn from him how long the gnat lives, how far down the sea is lighted by the sun, and the nature of the soul of the oyster.

Buyer: Herakles! there's precision for you.

Hermes: What would you say if you should hear things a great deal shrewder than these— how man is a laughing animal, but the ass neither a laughing, nor a house-building, nor a seafaring animal?

Buyer: Edifying and profitable knowledge! I will take him for four hundred dollars.

Hermes: Done.

Zeus: Whom have we still left?

Hermes: The sceptic here. Come forward, Pyrrhias, and be published as fast as you can. Most of the people have already stolen away, and there will be few buyers. All the same, who wants this fellow, too?

Buyer: I do. But first tell me, what is your line of knowledge?

Philosopher: Nothing.

Buyer: What do you mean by that?

Philosopher: That in my opinion nothing at all exists.

Buyer: Then are we nobody, too?

Philosopher: I don't even know that.

Buyer: Nor whether you happen to be somebody, either?

Philosopher: I am still more ignorant of that, by a good deal.

Buyer: What an uncertainty! But, tell me, what do you want with these balances?

Philosopher: I weigh arguments in them and get them even, and when I see them exactly equal and of the same weight, then I am ignorant which is the truer.

Buyer: What else are you clever at?

Philosopher: Everything, except chasing a runaway slave.

Buyer: Why can't you do that?

Philosopher: Because, good sir, I never appresee. hend.

Buyer: Of course. You do seem to be a slow, dull person. But what is the aim of your science?

Philosopher: Ignorance; neither to hear nor to apprehend.

Buyer: You mean, then, to be blind and deaf?

Philosopher: Yes, and incapable of judgment and sensation, and, in a word, the double of an earthworm.

Buyer: I must buy you for that. How much do you say he is worth?

Hermes: Twenty dollars.

Buyer: Here it is. What have you to say, fellow? Have I bought you?

Philosopher: Doubtful.

Buyer: Not at all. I have purchased you and paid the money.

Philosopher: I suspend my judgment about it and consider.

Buyer: You will follow me, as my slave should.

Philosopher: Who knows whether you are telling the truth?

Buyer: The salesman and the eighteen dollars and the by-standers.

Philosopher: Are there, then, any standing by?

Buyer: I will clap you into the mill in a moment, and persuade you by a vicious argument that I am your master.

Philosopher: Suspend your judgment about that.

Buyer: No, by Heaven, I have formed my opinion already!

Hermes: Here, stop your resistance and follow your purchaser. We will summon you again to-morrow, for we are going to put up the lives of the private citizens and artisans and tradesfolk.