6–7
BUYER
You have explained everything duly and sacerdotally. Come, strip, for I want to see you unclothed. Heracles! His thigh is of gold! He seems to be a god and not a mortal, so I shall certainly buy him. (Yo Hermes.) What price do you sell him for?
5
BUYER
I'll take him at that figure.
ZEUS
Write down the buyer’s name and where he comes from.
HERMES
He appears to be an Italian, Zeus, one of those who live in the neighbourhood of Croton and Tarentum and the Greek settlements in that quarter of the world. But there is more than one buyer; about three hundred have bought him in shares.A reference to the brotherhood founded by Pythagoras in Magna Grecia, which wielded great political power until it was extirpated in a general revolt about fifty years after the death of Pythagoras.
ZEUS
Let them take him away; let us bring on another.
10
HERMES
Do you want the dirty one over yonder, from the Black Sea?Diogenes, chief of the Cynics, came from Sinope.
HERMES
You there with the wallet slung about you, you with the sleeveless shirt, come and walk about the room. I offer for sale a manly philosophy, a noble philosophy, a free philosophy; who'll buy?
BUYER
Crier, what’s that you say? Are you selling someone who is free?
BUYER
Then aren’t you afraid he may have the law on you for kidnapping or even summon you to the Areopagus?
HERMES
He doesn’t mind being sold, for he thinks that he is free anyhow.
