Kitap 6
1.3
He was the first to define statement (or assertion) by saying that a statement is that which sets forth what a thing was or is. He used repeatedly to say, I’d rather be mad than feel pleasure, and We ought to make love to such women as will feel a proper gratitude. When a lad from Pontus was about to attend his lectures, and asked him what he required, the answer was, Come with a new book, a new pen, and new tablets, if you have a mind to (implying the need of brains as well).There is the same untranslateable pun upon καινοῦ = new and καὶ νοῦ = a mind too, as in ii. § 118. When someone inquired what sort of wife he ought to marry, he said, If she’s beautiful, you’ll not have her to yourself; if she’s ugly, you’ll pay for it dearly. Being told that Plato was abusing him, he remarked, It is a royal privilege to do good and be ill spoken of.Cf. M. Anton. vii. 36 Ἀντισθενικόν, βασιλικὸν μὲν εὐπράττειν, κακῶς δὲ ἀκούειν, and Plutarch, Alex. c. 41 (of Alexander).
1.4
When he was being initiated into the Orphic mysteries, the priest said that those admitted into these rites would be partakers of many good things in Hades. Why then, said he, don’t you die?
1.4
Being reproached because his parents were not both free-born, Nor were they both wrestlers, quoth he, but yet I am a wrestler. To the question why he had but few disciples he replied, Because I use a silver rod to eject them. When he was asked why he was so bitter in reproving his pupils he replied, Physicians are just the same with their patients. One day upon seeing an adulterer running for his life he exclaimed, Poor wretch, what peril you might have escaped at the price of an obol. He used to say, as we learn from Hecato in his Anecdotes, that it is better to fall in with crows than with flatterers; for in the one case you are devoured when dead, in the other case while alive.
