22–23
Chrysippus
Plato, none of us will conduct the prosecution better than you. Your thoughts are heaven-high, your style the perfect Attic; grace and persuasion, insight and subtlety, the cogency of welltordered proof—all these are gathered in you. Take the spokesman’s office and say what is fitting on our behalf. Call to memory and roll in one all that ever you said against Gorgias, Polus, Hippias, Prodicus; you have now to do with a worse than them. Let him taste your irony; ply him with your keen incessant questions; and if you will, perorate with the mighty Zeus charioting his winged car through Heaven, and grudging if this fellow get not his deserts.
Platonists
Nay, nay; choose one of more strenuous temper—
Diogenes
Antisthenes, Crates, or yourself, Chrysippus. It is no time now for beauty or literary skill; controversial and forensic resource is what we want. This Parrhesiades is an orator.
Let me be accuser; no need for long speeches here. Moreover, I was the worst treated of all; threepence was my price the other day.
