Book 1
4
Do you then show me your improvement in these things? If I were talking to an athlete, I should say, Show me your shoulders; and then he might say, Here are my Halteres. You and your HalteresHalteres are gymnastic instruments (Galen. i. De Sanitate tuenda; Martial, xiv. 49; Juvenal, vi. 420, and the Scholiast. Upton). Halteres is a Greek word, literally leapers. They are said to have been masses of lead, used for exercise and in making jumps. The effect of such weights in taking a jump is well known to boys who have used them. A couple of bricks will serve the purpose, Martial says (xiv. 49):— Quid pereunt stulto fortes haltere lacerti? Exercet melius vinea fossa viros. Juvenal (vi. 421) writes of a woman who uses dumb-bells till she sweats, and is then rubbed dry by a man, Quum lassata gravi ceciderunt brachia massa. (Macleane’s Juvenal.) As to the expression, Ὄψει σὺ, καὶ οἱ ἁλτῆρες, see Upton’s note. It is also a Latin form: Epicurus hoc viderit, Cicero, Acad. ii. c. 7; haec fortuna viderit, Ad Attic. vi. 4. It occurs in M. Antoninus, viii. 41, v. 25; and in Acta Apostol. xviii. 15. look to that. I should reply, I wish to see the effect of the Halteres. So, when you say: Take the treatise on the active powers (ὁρμή), and see how I have studied it. I reply, Slave, I am not inquiring about this, but how you exercise pursuit and avoidance, desire and aversion, how you design and purpose and prepare yourself, whether conformably to nature or not. If conformably, give me evidence of it, and I will say that you are making progress: but if not conformably, be gone, and not only expound your books, but write such books yourself; and what will you gain by it? Do you not know that the whole book costs only five denarii? Does then the expounder seem to be worth more than five denarii? Never then look for the matter itself in one place, and progress towards it in another.
