Lucian De mercede 2

[2] but when the others told of household tempests and third waves—yes, by Zeus, fifth and tenth waves, if one may say so—and how they first sailed in, with the sea apparently calm, and how many troubles they endured through the whole voyage by reason of thirst or sea-sickness or inundations of brine, and finally how they stove their unlucky lugger on a submerged ledge or a sheer pinnacle and swam ashore, poor fellows, in a wretched plight, naked and in want of every necessity—in these adventures and their account of them it seemed to me that they concealed the greater part out of shame, and voluntarily forgot it.

For my part I shall not hesitate to tell you everything, my dear Timocles, not only their stories but whatever else I find by logical inference to be characteristic of such household positions; for I think I detected long ago that you are entertaining designs

[2] It is otherwise with those whose narrative is of domestic storms, of billows rising mountain high (if so I may phrase it) within four walls. They tell us of the seductive calm that first lured them on to those waters, of the sufferings they endured throughout the voyage, the thirst, the sea-sickness, the briny drenchings; and how at last their luckless craft went to pieces upon some hidden reef or at the foot of some steep crag, leaving them to swim for it, and to land naked and utterly destitute. All this they tell us: but I have ever suspected them of having convenient lapses of memory, and omitting the worst part for very shame. For myself, I shall have no such scruple. All that I have heard, or can reasonably infer, of the evils of dependence, I shall place before you. For either, friend, my penetration is at fault, or you have long had a hankering for this profession.