BUYER
First of all, my friend, where are you from?
CYNIC
Everywhere.
BUYER
What do you mean?
CYNIC
You see in me a citizen of the world.
BUYER
Whom do you take for your pattern?
CYNIC
Heracles.
BUYER
Then why don’t you wear a lion’s skin? For as to the cudgel, you are like him in that.
CYNIC
This short cloak is my lion-skin; and I am a soldier like him, fighting against pleasures, no conscript but a volunteer, purposing to make life clean.
BUYER
A fine purpose! But what do you know best, and what is your business?
CYNIC
I am a liberator of men and a physician to their ills; in short I desire to be an interpreter of truth and free speech.
Vitarum auctio. Lucian of Samosata. Austin Morris Harmon (Translator). United States. Perseus 5.0.
Funding provided by National Endowment for the Humanities.