6
I did not find Leontichus there, for he had just gone out a little while before, they said; but I found plenty of others, among whom there was Cleodemus the Peripatetic, and Deinomachus the Stoic, and Ion —you know the one that thinks he ought to be admired for his mastery of Plato’s doctrines as the only person who has accurately sensed the man’s meaning and can expound it to the rest of the world. You see what sort of men I am naming to you, allwise and all-virtuous, the very fore-front of each school, every one venerable, almost terrible, to look at. In addition, the physician Antigonus was there, called in, I suppose, by reason of the illness. Eucrates seemed to be feeling better already, and the ailment was of a chronic character; he had had another attack of rheumatism in his feet.
6
He bade me sit by him on the couch, letting his voice drop a little to the tone of an invalid when he saw me, although as I was coming in I heard him shouting and vigorously pressing some point or other. I took very good care not to touch his feet, and after making the customary excuses that I did not know he was ill and that when I learned of it I came in hot haste, sat down beside him.
7
It so happened that the company had already, I think, talked at some length about his ailment and were then discussing it further; they were each suggesting certain remedies, moreover. At any rate Cleodemus said: “Well then, if you take up from the ground in your left hand the tooth of the weasel which has been killed in the way I have already described and wrap it up in the skin of a lion just flayed, and then bind it about your legs, the pain ceases instantly.”
