83
The thing caused some to marvel, some to laugh, and some to suspect that perhaps in consequence of his overdone mimicry he had fallen into the real ailment.
84
Moreover, the man himself, they say, once he had returned to his sober senses, was so sorry for what he had done that he really became ill through distress and in all truth was given up for mad. Indeed, he himself showed his repentance clearly, for when his supporters asked him to dance Ajax for them once more, begging to be excused, he said to the audience, “For an actor, it is enough to have gone mad once!”The point is that only a philosopher like Chrysippus may go mad more than once. Lucian delights in alluding to the story that Chrysippus took the hellebore treatment three times (True Story, 11, 18; Philosophies for Sale, 23). What irked him most was that his antagonist and rival, when cast for Ajax in the same role, enacted his madness so discreetly and sanely as to win praise, since he kept within the bounds of the dance and did not debauch the histrionic art.
