18
Then you will do to buy, for you are wise and have good eyes. Come, Hermes, how much will you charge me for him?
18
Two thousand dollars.
18
I take him at the price. However, I will pay you later.
19
What is your name?
19
Dion of Syracuse.
19
Take him, with my best wishes. Next I call you, the Epicurean. Who will buy this one? He is the pupil of that laugher and of the drunkard whom I offered a little while ago. But he has made one step in advance of them, inasmuch as he has less regard for holy things. For the rest, he is pleasant and the friend of good living.
19
What's the price?
19
Forty dollars.
19
Here you are. But tell me what sort of food he likes.
19
He lives on sweet things like honey, and particularly figs.
19
That is easy enough. I will buy him penny-loaves of fig-cake.
20
Call up another-that scowling fellow with the shaved head from the Porch.
20
Very well. At all events, a great crowd of those who have come to the sale seem to be waiting for him. I offer for sale virtue herself, the most perfect of lives. Who wishes to know everything, alone of all men?
20
What do you mean?
20
This man alone is wise, he alone is beautiful, he alone is just, manly, a king, an orator, a millionaire, a legislator, and everything else.
20
Then, friend, is he alone a cook, and a tanner, by Jove! and a carpenter, and everything of that sort?
20
Apparently.
21
Come, my friend, and tell me, your purchaser, what sort of person you are, and, to begin with, whether it is not an affliction to you to be sold and in slavery.
21
Not at all; for those things are not under our control, and what is not under our control is therefore indifferent.
21
I don't understand just what you mean.
21
What, do you not understand that in such matters some things are preferred and some again rejected?
21
I don't understand even yet.
