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Updated: May 12, 2025
They tell us it is not only the mad dog that inflicts hydrophobia: his human victim's bite is as deadly as his own, and communicates the evil as surely. You, it seems, have been bitten with many bites by the liar Eucrates, and have passed it on to me; no otherwise can I explain the demoniacal poison that runs in my veins. Tyc. What matter, friend?
It is not for ten Ajaxes or Achilleses that he prays; no, Troy would have been taken long ago, if he had had in his host ten men like that old sponger. Idomeneus, of Zeus's own kindred, is also represented in the same relation to Agamemnon. Tyc. I know the passages; but I do not feel sure of the sense in which they were spongers. Si. Well, recall the lines in which Agamemnon addresses Idomeneus.
Ordinary people, free and slaves alike, have some trade or profession that enables them to benefit themselves and others; you seem to be an exception. Si. I do not quite see what you mean, Tychiades; put it a little clearer. Tyc. I want to know whether you have a profession of any sort; for instance, are you a musician? Si. Certainly not. Tyc. A doctor? Si. No. Tyc. A mathematician? Si. No. Tyc.
To illustrate: there is one and only one Arithmetic; twice two is four whether here or in Persia; Greeks and barbarians have no quarrel over that; but philosophies are many and various, agreed neither upon their beginnings nor their ends. Tyc. Perfectly true; they call Philosophy one, but they make it many. Si.
The name will be more welcome to me than 'statuary' to Phidias; I am as proud of my profession as Phidias of his Zeus. Tyc. Ha, ha, ha! Excuse me just a particular that occurred to me. Si. Namely ? Tyc. Think of the address of your letters Simon the Sponger! Si. Simon the Sponger, Dion the Philosopher. I shall like mine as well as he his. Tyc.
Why, in some cases there is no lack of motives for lying, motives of self-interest. Tyc. Ah, but that is neither here nor there. I am not speaking of men who lie with an object. There is some excuse for that: indeed, it is sometimes to their credit, when they deceive their country's enemies, for instance, or when mendacity is but the medicine to heal their sickness.
Si. What an awful reproach! Tyc. What! you do not blush to call yourself a sponger? Si. On the contrary, I should be ashamed of not calling myself so. Tyc. And when we want to distinguish you for the benefit of any one who does not know you, but has occasion to find you out, we must say 'the sponger, naturally? Si.
You must have heard this before; it was common talk not only at Athens, but in Thrace and Scythia, whence the creature was derived. Tyc. Yes, I know all that. But then these are orators, trained to speak, not to fight. But the philosophers; you cannot say the same of them. Si.
But why deal in conjecture when there are facts to hand? I make the simple statement that in war, of all the rhetoricians and philosophers who ever lived, most never ventured outside the city walls, and the few who did, under compulsion, take their places in the ranks left their posts and went home. Tyc. A bold extravagant assertion. Well, prove it. Si. Rhetoricians, then.
Very well, then, sponging is neither the negative of art, nor is it a quality; but it is a body of perceptions regularly employed. So it emerges from the present discussion an art. Tyc. That seems to be the upshot. But now proceed to give us a good definition of your art. Si. Well thought of.
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