23–25
Lycinus
But you pass me by, and feast others. I ought not to be surprised; you have not acquired the power of distinguishing merit; you have no apprehensive imagination. I know whence the blow comes; it 1s from your precious philosophers, Zenothemis and The Labyrinth, whose mouths (though I would not boast) I could stop with a single syllogism. Let either of them tell me, What is Philosophy? or, not to go beyond the merest elements, how does condition differ from constitution? for I will not resort to real puzzles, as the Horns, the Sorites, or the ReaperSee Puzzles in Notes.. Well, I wish you joy of their company. As for me, holding as I do that nothing is good but what is right, I shall get over a slight like this.
You will be kind enough not to resort later to the well-worn excuse of having forgotten in the bustle of your engagements; I have spoken to you twice to-day, in the morning at your house, and later when you were sacrificing at the Anaceum. This is to let your guests know the rights of the case.
If you think it is the dinner I care about, reflect upon the story of Oeneus; you will observe that, when he omitted Artemis alone from the Gods to whom he offered sacrifice, she resented it. Homer’s account of it states that he Forgot or ne’er bethought bim—woeful blindness! Euripides’s begins, This land of Calydon, across the gulf From Pelops land, with all its fertile plains—; and Sophocles’s, Upon the tilth of Oeneus Leto’s child, Far-darting Goddess, loosed a monstrous boar.
