Lucian Rhetorum praeceptor 24

[24] “If you thoroughly learn all this, my lad—and you can, for there is nothing difficult about it—I promise you confidently that right soon you will turn out an excellent speaker, just like myself. And there is no need for me to tell you what will follow—all the blessings that will instantly accrue to you from Rhetoric. You see my own case. My father was an insignificant fellow without even a clear title to his freedom, who had been a slave above Xois and Thmuis, ¹ and my mother was a seamstress in the slums. For myself, as my personal attractions were considered not wholly contemptible, at first I lived with an ill-conditioned, stingy admirer just for my keep. But then I detected the easi- ness of this road, galloped over it, and reached the summit; for I possessed (by thy grace, Fortune!) all that equipment which I have already mentioned— recklessness, ignorance, and shamelessness. And now, in the first place, my name is no longer Potheinus, ² but I have become a namesake of the sons of Zeus and Leda. ³ Moreover, I went to live with an old woman and for a time got my victuals from her by pretending to love a hag of seventy with only four teeth still left, and those four fastened in with gold! However, on account of my poverty I managed to endure the ordeal, and hunger made even those frigid, graveyard kisses exceedingly sweet to me. Then I very nearly became heir to all her property, if only a plaguy slave had not blabbed that I had bought poison for her.

[24] Master these instructions, young man—they are surely simple enough not to overtax your powers—, and I confidently promise that you shall soon be a first-class rhetorician like myself; after which I need not tell you what great and what rapid advancement Rhetoric will put in your way. You have but to look at me. My father was an obscure person barely above a slave; he had in fact been one south of Xois and Thmuis; my mother a common sempstress. I was myself not without pretensions to beauty in my youth, which earned me a bare living from a miserly ill-conditioned admirer; but I discovered this easy short-cut, made my way to the top—for I had, if I may be bold to say it, all the qualifications I told you of, confidence, ignorance, and effrontery—, and at once found myself ina position to change my name of Pothinus to one that levels me with the children of Zeus and Leda. I thenestablished myself in an old dame’s house, where I earned my keep by professing a passion for her seventy years and her half-dozen remaining teeth, dentist’s gold and all. However, poverty reconciled me to my task; even for those cold coffin kisses, fames was condimentum optimum. And it was by the merest ill luck that I missed inheriting her wealth—that damned slave who peached about the poison I had bought!