PHILOSOPHY
True: it was a needless question, to be sure. But what is your calling? That at least is worth knowing.
True: it was a needless question, to be sure. But what is your calling? That at least is worth knowing.
FRANKNESS
Iam a bluff-hater, cheat-hater, liar-hater, vanityhater, and hate all that sort of scoundrels, who are very numerous, as you know.
Iam a bluff-hater, cheat-hater, liar-hater, vanityhater, and hate all that sort of scoundrels, who are very numerous, as you know.
PHILOSOPHY
Heracles! You follow a hateful calling!
Heracles! You follow a hateful calling!
FRANKNESS
You are right. You see, in fact, how many have come to dislike me and how I am imperilled because I follow it. However, I am very well up in the opposite calling, too: I mean the one with love for a base; for I am a truth-lover, a beauty-lover, a simplicitylover, and a lover of all else that is kindred to love. But there are very few who deserve to have this calling practised upon them, while those who come under the other and are closer akin to hatefulness number untold thousands. So the chances are that by this time I have lost my skill in the pne calling for lack of practice, but have become very expert in the other.
You are right. You see, in fact, how many have come to dislike me and how I am imperilled because I follow it. However, I am very well up in the opposite calling, too: I mean the one with love for a base; for I am a truth-lover, a beauty-lover, a simplicitylover, and a lover of all else that is kindred to love. But there are very few who deserve to have this calling practised upon them, while those who come under the other and are closer akin to hatefulness number untold thousands. So the chances are that by this time I have lost my skill in the pne calling for lack of practice, but have become very expert in the other.
PHILOSOPHY
But that ought not to be so, for if a man can do the one, they say, he can do the other. So do not distinguish the two callings; they are but one, though they seem two.
But that ought not to be so, for if a man can do the one, they say, he can do the other. So do not distinguish the two callings; they are but one, though they seem two.
FRANKNESS
You know best as to that, Philosophy. For my part, however, I am so-constituted as to hate rascals and to commend and love honest men.
You know best as to that, Philosophy. For my part, however, I am so-constituted as to hate rascals and to commend and love honest men.
Piscator. Lucian of Samosata. Austin Morris Harmon (Translator). United States. Perseus 5.0.
Funding provided by National Endowment for the Humanities.