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home:texts_and_library:essays:apology-for-dependent-scholar [2019/07/07 21:45] – created frank | home:texts_and_library:essays:apology-for-dependent-scholar [2019/07/07 21:52] (current) – frank | ||
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Dear Sabinus, | Dear Sabinus, | ||
- | I have been guessing how you are likely to have expressed yourself upon reading my essay about dependants. I feel prettysure | + | I have been guessing how you are likely to have expressed yourself upon reading my essay about dependants. I feel pretty sure you read it all and had a laugh over it; but it is your running and general comment in words that I am trying to piece on to it. If I am any good at divination, this is the sort of thing: //To think that a man can set down such a scathing indictment |
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- | Such, I imagine, were your inward remarks. And I dare say you will give me some overt advice to the same effect; well, itwill | + | Such, I imagine, were your inward remarks. And I dare say you will give me some overt advice to the same effect; well, it will not be ill-timed; it will illustrate your friendship, and do you credit as a good man and a philosopher. If I render your part respectably for you, that will do, and we will pay our homage to the God of words; if I fail, you will fill in the deficiency for yourself. There, the stage is ready; I am to hold my tongue, and submit to any necessary |
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- | My dear friend, this treatise of yours has quite rightly been earning you a fine reputation, from its first deliverybefore | + | My dear friend, this treatise of yours has quite rightly been earning you a fine reputation, from its first delivery before |
Give me but gain, I’ll turn from free to slave. | Give me but gain, I’ll turn from free to slave. | ||
- | Let none hear the lecture from you again, then; see to it that no copy of it comes under the eyes of any one aware ofyour | + | Let none hear the lecture from you again, then; see to it that no copy of it comes under the eyes of anyone |
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- | They will say with some plausibility: | + | They will say with some plausibility: |
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Wisdom begins at home; no wisdom, else. | Wisdom begins at home; no wisdom, else. | ||
- | And your censors will find no lack of illustrations against you; some will compare you to the tragic actor; on the stagehe | + | And your censors will find no lack of illustrations against you; some will compare you to the tragic actor; on the stage he is Agamemnon or Creon or great Heracles; but off it, stripped of his mask, he is just Polus or Aristodemus, |
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- | You, they will say, are the author (for ‘actor’ would understate the case) who has laid down the laws of noble conduct;and no sooner is the lump of figs presented than the monkey is revealed; your lips are the lips of a philosopher, | + | You, they will say, are the author (for ‘actor’ would understate the case) who has laid down the laws of noble conduct; and no sooner is the lump of figs presented than the monkey is revealed; your lips are the lips of a philosopher, |
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- | Now I want you to imagine a rhetorician writing on the theme that Aeschines, after his indictment of Timarchus, | + | Now I want you to imagine a rhetorician writing on the theme that Aeschines, after his indictment of Timarchus, |
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- | Yes, Sabinus, and there is plenty more of the same sort for an accuser like you to urge; the subject is all handles; | + | Yes, Sabinus, and there is plenty more of the same sort for an accuser like you to urge; the subject is all handles; |
No mortal man e’er yet escaped his fate; | No mortal man e’er yet escaped his fate; | ||
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- | On the other hand, I might avoid that plea as wanting in plausibility, | + | On the other hand, I might avoid that plea as wanting in plausibility, |
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- | Both these pleas, then, being excluded, what is left me but to confess that I have no sound defence to make? I haveindeed | + | Both these pleas, then, being excluded, what is left me but to confess that I have no sound defence to make? I have indeed |
Too well I know how monstrous is the deed; My poverty, but not my will, consents. | Too well I know how monstrous is the deed; My poverty, but not my will, consents. | ||
- | And every one knows the place in Theognis, whether I quote it or not, where he approves of people’s flinging | + | And everyone |
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- | That about exhausts the obvious lines of defence; and none of them is very promising. But never fear, my friend, I am notgoing | + | That about exhausts the obvious lines of defence; and none of them is very promising. But never fear, my friend, I am not going to try any of them. May never Argos be so hard put to it that Cyllarabis must be sown! nor ever I be in such straits for a tolerable defence as to be driven upon these evasions! No, I only ask you to consider the vast difference |
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- | It is all a mistake; I never said that all drawers of salaries lived a degraded life; I only pitied those domestic | + | It is all a mistake; I never said that all drawers of salaries lived a degraded life; I only pitied those domestic |
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- | Accordingly I am now going to throw off reserve, come to grips with the charge against me, and prove my case //afortiori//. I tell you that nobody does anything for nothing; you may point to people in high places — as high as youlike; the Emperor himself is paid. I am not referring to the taxes and tribute which flow in annually from subjects; | + | Accordingly I am now going to throw off reserve, come to grips with the charge against me, and prove my case //a fortiori//. I tell you that nobody does anything for nothing; you may point to people in high places — as high as you like; the Emperor himself is paid. I am not referring to the taxes and tribute which flow in annually from subjects; |
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- | If the law I laid down had been that no one should do anything, I might fairly have been accused of transgressing it; butas my book contains nothing of the sort, and as goodness consists in doing good, what better use can you make of yourselfthan | + | If the law I laid down had been that no one should do anything, I might fairly have been accused of transgressing it; but as my book contains nothing of the sort, and as goodness consists in doing good, what better use can you make of yourself than if you join forces with your friends in the cause of progress, come out into the open, and let men see that you are loyal and zealous and careful of your trust, not what Homer calls a vain cumberer of the earth? |
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- | But before all, my critics are to remember that in me they will be criticizing not a wise man (if indeed there is such aperson | + | But before all, my critics are to remember that in me they will be criticizing not a wise man (if indeed there is such a person |
home/texts_and_library/essays/apology-for-dependent-scholar.1562553918.txt.gz · Last modified: 2019/07/07 21:45 by frank