17
But in the midst of my narrative some one says, "Dear me, how tedious and long-winded his dream is." Or another interrupts with, "This is a mid-winter night's dream, when the nights are longest; or perhaps he is a three-night man himself, like Hercules. How did it enter his head to spin out this nonsense for us and recall the nights of his childhood and old, decrepit dreams, served up with the chill of death on them and stale already? Does he take us, forsooth, for interpreters of dreams?" No, my friend, and neither did Xenophon relate his dream when he thought his father's house was afire and the rest of it—you know his dream -as a bit of acting, nor was he consciously talking nonsense, seeing that he was in the midst of warfare and distress and surrounded by enemies.
18
No, his narrative had a useful purpose, and so I, too, have related this dream to you to the end that young men may turn to the better part and lay hold of culture, particularly those who are tempted by poverty to play truant and sink to the worse life, to the destruction of what may have been noble natures. I am sure that these will be fortified by hearing my story, and will take me for a sufficient example if they bear in mind. the origin whence I set forth after the higher life, and that my desire was for culture, so that I never lost heart in my old poverty, and, lastly, the guise in which I have come to you, certainly, to say the least of it, not less famous than any of the statuaries.
