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Dear Sabinus,
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I have been guessing how you are likely to have expressed yourself upon reading my essay about dependants. I feel pretty sure you read it all and had a laugh over it; but it is your running and general comment in words that I am trying to piece on to it. If I am any good at divination, this is the sort of thing: To think that a man can set down such a scathing indictment of the life, and then forget it all, get hold of the other end of the stick, and plunge headlong into such manifest conspicuous slavery! Take Midas, Croesus, golden Pactolus, roll them into one, multiply them, and could they induce him to relinquish the freedom which he has loved and consorted with from a child? He is nearly in the clutches of Aeacus, one foot is on the ferryman’s boat, and it is now that he lets himself be dragged submissively about by a golden collarOmitting as a scholium, with Dindorf and Fritzsche, the words: οἷά ἐστι τῶν τρυφώντων πλουσίων τὰ σφιγγία καὶ τὰ κουράλλια.. There is some slight inconsistency between his life and bis treatise; the rivers are running up-bill; topsy-turvydom prevails; our recantations are new-fashioned; the first palinodistSee Stesichorus in Notes. mended words with words for Helen of Troy; but we spoil words (those words we thought so wise) with deeds.
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Such, I imagine, were your inward remarks. And I dare say you will give me some overt advice to the same effect; well, it will not be ill-timed; it will illustrate your friendship, and do you credit as a good man and a philosopher. If I render your part respectably for you, that will do, and we will pay our homage to the God of wordsi.e., Hermes.; if I fail, you will fill in the deficiency for yourself. There, the stage is ready; I am to hold my tongue, and submit to any necessary carving and cauterizing for my good, and you are to plaster me, and have your scalpel handy, and your iron red-hot. Sabinus takes the word, and thus addresses me:
