Cust. I'll have you off to the grinding-house,[1] sir, and make you feel I'm your master by very tangible proofs.
Pyrrh. Stay—I should like to argue that point a little.
[The doubting philosopher is hurried off, still unconvinced, by Mercury and his new owner, and the sale is adjourned to the next day, when Mercury promises the public that he shall have some cheaper bargains to offer. The whole scene reads like a passage from the old Arislophanic comedy; and though some of the allusions must necessarily lose much of their pungency from our comparative ignorance of the popular philosophy of Lucian's day, the humour of it is still sufficiently entertaining.]
The professors of the various Schools of Philosophy may well be supposed to have been loud in their indignation at this caricature, and in their denunciation of the author. Or at least it suited Lucian's purpose to assume that they were so, and to make the wrath of the solemn fraternity, real or imagined, the subject of a Dialogue which follows by way of sequel to the first. Possibly, also, he desired to guard against any misconception of his purpose in the satire, and to make it clear that it was not against true philosophy or sound science that he directed his wit, but against shallow and conceited pretenders. This second Dialogue—"The Resuscitated Professors"—presents the author flying for his life, pursued by a body of irate philosophers of all sects,
- ↑ Slaves who misbehaved were sent there, as the hardest work.
