51
Because you do not perceive that you have slung your anchor on a slender thread, though it is the last blessed one you have. For when you have made fast the proposition "gods. exist" to the proposition "altars exist" you imagine that you have brought it to a safe anchorage. So since you have nothing more blessed to urge let us adjourn at once.
52
Do you then admit yourself worsted by crying" Enough?"
52
Yes, Timokles, for you, like a hardpressed fugitive, have taken sanctuary on your altars, and so, by the blessed anchor, I long to swear a truce with you on these very altars, so that we may no longer wrangle about them.
52
You are chaffing me, you grave-robber, you blackguard, you disgusting beast, you knavish slave, you refuse! Don't I know who your father was and your mother, too, and how you strangled your brother, and are an evil-liver and corrupter of lads, you filthy, shameless wretch? Don't run away now, for you are going to get blows from me, too, before you get off. I am going to cut your throat directly with this potsherd, miscreant that you are!
53
Damis is running off laughing, deities, and the other is chasing him with abuse, put out past bearing by Damis's wealth of impertinence, and apparently he is going to clip him in the head with the tile. But what shall we do now?
53
It seems to me the comic poet was right when he said: Do not profess defeat and you will suffer none. For what great harm is it if a handful of men go off persuaded to these views, seeing that there are many who know to the contrary, the majority of the Greeks, a numerous race, and all the barbarians?
53
However, Hermes, that was a capital remark that Dareios made about Zopyrus. In the same way I, too, would rather have one Damis for my ally than rule ten thousand Babylons.
