20
Quite right; at all events it looks as if the men who frequent the public square were waiting for him in great numbers.Lucian means that the Stoic philosophy was in high favour with statesmen, lawyers, and men of affairs generally. I sell virtue itself, the most perfect of philosophies. Who wants to be the only one to know everything?
20
What do you mean by that?
20
That he is the only wise man, the only handsome man, the only just man, brave man, king, orator, rich man, lawgiver, and everything else that there is.Compare Ad summam: sapiens uno minor est Jove, dives, Liber, honoratus, pulcher, rex denique regum, Praecipue sanus,— nisi cum pituita molestast! Horace, Epp. 1, I 106 ff
20
Then he is the only cook,—yes and the only tanner or carpenter, and so forth?
20
So it appears.
21
Come here, my good fellow, and tell your buyer what you are like, and first of all whether you are not displeased with being sold and living in slavery?
21
Not at all, for these things are not in our control, and all that is not in our control is immaterial.
21
I don’t understand what you mean by this.
21
What, you do not understand that of such things some are “approved,” and some, to the contrary, “disapproved”’? Just as things "in our control” were divided into the good and the bad, so those "not in our control” were divided into the “approved” and the "disapproved,” according as they helped or hindered in the acquirement of virtue.
21
Even now I do not understand.
