brought on myself the additional imputation of flattery. It would be a
case of 'one nail drives out one nail,' and this time the one left in
would be the bigger; for flattery is the most servile, and consequently
reckoned the worst, of all vices.

Both these pleas, then, being excluded, what is left me but to confess
that I have no sound defence to make? I have indeed one anchor yet
aboard: I may whine over age and ill health, and their attendant poverty,
from which a man will purchase escape at any cost. The situation tempts
me to send an invitation to Euripides's _Medea_: will she come and
recite certain lines of hers on my behalf, kindly making the slight
changes needed?--

Too well I know how monstrous is the deed;
My poverty, but not my will, consents.

And every one knows the place in Theognis, whether I quote it or not,
where he approves of people's flinging themselves to the unplumbed deep
from sky-pointing crags, if one may be quit of poverty that way.

That about exhausts the obvious lines of defence; and none of them is
very promising. But never fear, my friend, I am not going to try any of
them. May never Argos be so hard put to it that Cyllarabis must be sown!
nor ever I be in such straits for a tolerable defence as to be driven
upon these evasions! No, I only ask you to consider the vast difference
between being a hireling in a rich man's house, where one is a slave, and
must put up with all that is described in my book--between that and
entering the public service, doing one's best as an administrator, and
taking the Emperor's pay for it. Go fully into the matter; take the two
things separately and have a good look at them; you will find that they