44–45
PHILOSOPHY
Stop your bickering! You Cynics, do not jostle one another or strike each other with your staves. You were asked here for a different purpose, let me assure you! And now I, Philosophy, and Virtue here and Truth will decide who are the genuine philosophers. Then all who are found to be living by our rules shall be pronounced superior and will be happy ever after, but as for the cheats and all those who have nothing in common with us, we shall put the wretches to a wretched end, so that they may not claim any part in things that are over their heads, false pretenders that they are! What is this? Are you running away? By Heaven, they are, most of them jumping over the cliffs! The Acropolis is empty except for these few who have remained because they did not fear the trial.
Attendants, pick up the bag which the Cynic threw away in the rout. Come, let me see what is in it; probably lupines, or a book, or some whole-wheat bread.
ATTENDANT
No! gold—see here!—perfume, a razor, a mirror, and a set of dice!
PHILOSOPHY
Good for you, my fine fellow! Were these your instruments for the mortification of the flesh, and did’ _ you think that with the aid of these you could abuse all mankind and instruct the rest of the world?
FRANKNESS
Well, there you see what they are like. You must consider how all this is to stop going on unobserved, and how those who come into contact with them are to tell which of them are the good and which, on the contrary, the followers of thte other life.
