DIOGENES
So such, my friends, were your companions on the journey; for my part, I came down with Blepsias, the money-lender from the Piraeus, Lampis, the free-lance officer from Acarnania, and Damis, the rich man from Corinth. Damis had been poisoned by his son, Lampis had committed suicide out of love for Myrtium, the courtesan, while Blepsias, poor fellow, was said to have starved to death, and you could see quite clearly that he was pale in the extreme and completely wasted away. I knew how they died, but I asked just the same. Then, when Damis railed at his son, I said to him, “But your treatment at his hands was quite just, if you, who had a thousand talents in all, and lived a life of pleasure at ninety, wouldn’t allow your eighteen-year-old son any more than fourpence. And you, the gentleman from Acarnania” (for he was groaning too, and cursing Myrtium) “why do you blame Love instead of yourself as you should? Though you never showed fear in the face of the enemy, but would always court danger and fight in front of the others, yet, for all your courage, you admitted defeat to a quite ordinary wench with her artificial tears and lamentations.” As for Blepsias, he was the first to accuse himself of great folly in hoarding his money for heirs who were unrelated, thinking in his folly that he would live for ever. But they afforded me uncommon pleasure by their lamentations on that occasion.
