2
How can that be, Lycinus? I am just beginning to get a glimpse of my way there. Virtue, says Hesiod, Hesiod, Works and Days, 289. lives far away, and the path to her is long and steep and rough, with plenty of sweat for travellers.
2
Have you not sweated and travelled enough, Hermotimus?
2
No, I tell you. I couldn’t be other than perfectly happy if I were at the top. At this moment I am still beginning, Lycinus.
3
But this same Hesiod says that the beginning is half-way there, Hesiod, Works and Days, 40. so that we should not wrong you if we said that you were half-way up.
3
No, not even that yet. That would be a great achievement.
3
Well, where on the road may we put you?
3
Still down in the foothills, Lycinus, though lately struggling on. It is slippery and rough and needs a hand to help.
3
Your teacher can do that: he can let down his own teaching from the top like Zeus’s golden rope in Homer, Homer, Il. viii, 19. and clearly pull and lift you up to himself and Virtue. He made the climb long ago.
3
That is just what happens, Lycinus. As far as he is concerned I should have been pulled up long ago and been in their company. But my share still falls short.
4
Be brave now and keep cheerful. Look to the end of the journey and the happiness up there, especially since he is as keen as you are. But when does he suggest you may hope to come up? Did he suggest next year to reach the top—after the other Mysteries, say, or the Panathenaea?
4
Too soon, Lycinus.
4
Next Olympiad, then?
4
Too soon again for a training in virtue and the winning of happiness.
