villanous work of your new profession. Or will your aspirations after
Freedom be satisfied, perhaps, with the thought, that you are no son of a
Pyrrhias or a Zopyrion, no Bithynian, to be knocked down under the hammer
of a bawling auctioneer? My dear sir, when pay-day comes round each
month, and you mingle in the herd of Pyrrhiases and Zopyrions, and hold
out your hand for the wage that is due to you, what is that but a sale?
No need of an auctioneer, for the man who can cry his own wares, and
hawks his liberty about from day to day. Wretch! (one is prompted to
exclaim, and particularly when the culprit is a professed philosopher)
Wretch! Were you captured and sold by a pirate or a brigand, you would
bewail your lot, and think that Fortune had dealt hardly with you. Were a
man to lay violent hands on you, and claim a master's rights in you, loud
and bitter would be your outcry: 'By heaven and earth, 'tis monstrous! I
appeal to the laws!' And now, at an age at which a born slave may begin
to look towards Freedom, _now_ for a few pence do you sell yourself,
your virtue and wisdom, in one parcel? And could Plato's noble words,
could all that Chrysippus and Aristotle have said, of the blessings of
freedom and the curse of slavery, raise no compunction in you? Do you
count it no shame to be pitted against toadies and vulgar parasites? no
shame to sit at the noisy banquets of a promiscuous, and for the most
part a disreputable company, a Greek among Romans, wearing the foreign
garb of philosophy, and stammering their tongue with a foreign accent?
How fulsome are your flatteries on these occasions! how indecent your
tipplings! And next morning the bell rings, and up you must get, losing
the best of your sleep, to trudge up and down with yesterday's mud still
on your shoes. Were lupines and wild herbs so scarce with you? had the
springs ceased to give their wonted supply, that you were brought to such
a pass? No, the cause of your captivity is too clear. Not water, not
lupines were the object of your desire, but dainty viands and fragrant
wines; and your sin has found you out: you are hooked like a pike by your