BOOK III. XXIII. 23-28
What do you mean by "praise"? "Cry out to me, 'Bravo!' or 'Marvellous!'" All right, I'll say it. But if praise is some one of those things which the philosophers put in the category of the good, what praise can I give you? If it is a good thing to speak correctly, teach me and I will praise you. 25What then? Ought one to take no pleasure in listening to such efforts? Far from it. I do not fail to take pleasure in listening to a citharoede; surely I am not bound for that reason to stand and sing to my own accompaniment on the harp, am I? Listen, what does Socrates say? "Nor would it be seemly for me, O men of Athens, at my time of life to appear before you like some lad, and weave a cunning discourse."[1] "Like some lad," he says. For it is indeed a dainty thing, this small art of selecting trivial phrases and putting them together, and of coming forward and reading or reciting them gracefully, and then in the midst of the delivery shouting out, "There are not many people who can follow this, by your lives, I swear it!"
Does a philosopher invite people to a lecture?—Is it not rather the case that, as the sun draws its own sustenance to itself,[2] so he also draws to himself those to whom he is to do good? What physician ever invites a patient to come and be healed by him? Although I am told that in these days the physicians in Rome do advertise; however, in my time they were called in[3] by their patients. "I invite you to
- ↑ Plato, Apology, 17 C.
- ↑ According to Stoic doctrine the so-called "rays" of the sun were thought to be lines of vapour drawn to the sun in order to feed its fires. Zeno, frag. 35; Cleanthes, frag. 501; Chrysippus, frags. 579, 652, 658-663, all in Von Arnim's Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta.
- ↑ The three slightly varying translations for παρακαλεῖν, "invite," "advertize," and "call in," seem to be required by our idiom.
