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CALLIDEMUS. Then what, in the name of Bacchus, do you make him say? SPEUSIPPUS. You shall hear; and, if it be not in the very style of Euripides, call me a fool. CALLIDEMUS. That is a liberty which I shall venture to take, whether it be or no. But go on. SPEUSIPPUS. Prometheus begins thus:
CALLIDEMUS. You have more reason to fear Aristophanes than any fool living. You would console him for the loss of Cleon. SPEUSIPPUS. No, no. I may perhaps figure at the dramatic representations before long; but in a very different way. CALLIDEMUS. What do you mean? SPEUSIPPUS. What say you to a tragedy? CALLIDEMUS. A tragedy of yours? SPEUSIPPUS. Even so. CALLIDEMUS. Oh Hercules! Oh Bacchus!
CALLIDEMUS. Nicias, poor honest man, might just as well have sate still; his speaking did but little good. The loss of your oration is, doubtless, an irreparable public calamity. SPEUSIPPUS. Why, not so; I intend to introduce it at the next assembly; it will suit any subject. CALLIDEMUS. That is to say, it will suit none.
CALLIDEMUS. And what have you chosen? SPEUSIPPUS. You know there is a law which permits any modern poet to retouch a play of Aeschylus, and bring it forward as his own composition. And, as there is an absurd prejudice, among the vulgar, in favour of his extravagant pieces, I have selected one of them, and altered it. CALLIDEMUS. Which of them?
SPEUSIPPUS. Nay: talk rationally. CALLIDEMUS. Rationally! You audacious young sophist! I will talk rationally. Do you know that I am your father? What quibble can you make upon that? SPEUSIPPUS. Do I know that you are my father? Let us take the question to pieces, as Melesigenes would say. First, then, we must inquire what is knowledge? Secondly, what is a father? SPEUSIPPUS. All fiction!
A precious assembly you will meet at his house, no doubt. SPEUSIPPUS. The first men in Athens, probably. CALLIDEMUS. Whom do you mean by the first men in Athens? SPEUSIPPUS. Callicles. CALLIDEMUS. A sacrilegious, impious, unfeeling ruffian! SPEUSIPPUS. Hippomachus. CALLIDEMUS. A fool, who can talk of nothing but his travels through Persia and Egypt. Go, go.
SPEUSIPPUS. You are deceived. My friends SPEUSIPPUS. There are other means of support. CALLIDEMUS. What! Well! that is a task for which your studies under the sophists may have fitted you. SPEUSIPPUS. You are wide of the mark. CALLIDEMUS. Then what, in the name of Juno, is your scheme?
Well, I allow that will be striking; I did not think you capable of that idea. Why do you laugh? SPEUSIPPUS. Do you seriously suppose that one who has studied the plays of that great man, Euripides, would ever begin a tragedy in such a ranting style? CALLIDEMUS. What, does not your play open with the speech of Prometheus? SPEUSIPPUS. No doubt.
That cursed Sicilian expedition! Look to it; a day of reckoning will come. As to Alcibiades himself SPEUSIPPUS. What can you say against him? His enemies themselves acknowledge his merit. CALLIDEMUS. They acknowledge that he is clever, and handsome, and that he was crowned at the Olympic games. And what other merits do his friends claim for him?
SPEUSIPPUS. Now, by Neptune, who delights in horses CALLIDEMUS. If Neptune delights in horses, he does not resemble me. You must ride at the Panathenaea on a horse fit for the great king: four acres of my best vines went for that folly. You must retrench, or you will have nothing to eat. Does not Anaxagoras mention, among his other discoveries, that when a man has nothing to eat he dies?
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