perfect article of all—Virtue personified. Who wants to be the only man who knows everything?
Cust. What do you mean?
Merc. I mean that here you have the only wise man, the only handsome man, the only righteous man, the true and only king, general, orator, legislator, and everything else there is.[1]
Cust. The true and only cook then, I conclude, and cobbler, and carpenter, and so forth?
Merc. I conclude so too.
Cust. Come then, my good fellow—if I'm to purchase you, tell me all about yourself; and first let me ask, with all these wonderful qualifications, are you not mortified at being put up for sale here as a slave?
Chrysippus. Not at all: such things are external to ourselves, and whatever is external to ourselves, it follows must he matters of indifference to us.
[The Stoic proceeds to explain his tenets, in the technical jargon of his school—which his listener declares to be utterly incomprehensible, and on which modern readers would pronounce much the same judg-
- ↑ Lucian had evidently in his mind the humorous sketch of the Stoic given by Horace, Sat. i. 3:—
"What though the wise ne'er shoe or slipper made,
The wise is still a brother of the trade,—
Just as Hermogenes, when silent, still
Remains a singer of consummate skill—
As sly Alfenius, when he had let drop
His implements of art and shut up shop,
Was still a barber,—so the wise is best
In every craft, a king's among the rest."—(Conington.)
