themselves with allies from foreign states. In spite of all which
defensive machinery these same free citizens do occasionally fall
victims to injustice. But you, who are without any of these aids; you,
who pass half your days on the high roads where iniquity is rife;[20]
you, who, into whatever city you enter, are less than the least of its
free members, and moreover are just the sort of person whom any one
bent on mischief would single out for attack--yet you, with your
foreigner's passport, are to be exempt from injury? So you flatter
yourself. And why? Will the state authorities cause proclamation to be
made on your behalf: "The person of this man Aristippus is secure; let
his going out and his coming in be free from danger"? Is that the
ground of your confidence? or do you rather rest secure in the
consciousness that you would prove such a slave as no master would
care to keep? For who would care to have in his house a fellow with so
slight a disposition to work and so strong a propensity to
extravagance? Suppose we stop and consider that very point: how do
masters deal with that sort of domestic? If I am not mistaken, they
chastise his wantonness by starvation; they balk his thieving
tendencies by bars and bolts where there is anything to steal; they
hinder him from running away by bonds and imprisonment; they drive the
sluggishness out of him with the lash. Is it not so? Or how do you
proceed when you discover the like tendency in one of your domestics?

[18] Or, "Well foiled!" "A masterly fall! my prince of wrestlers."

[19] For these mythical highway robbers, see Diod. iv. 59; and for
Sciron in particular, Plut. "Theseus," 10.

[20] Or, "where so many suffer wrong."