Read Ebook: A few days in Athens being the translation of a Greek manuscript discovered in Herculaneum by Wright Frances

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Ebook has 614 lines and 47628 words, and 13 pages

"I was thinking," replied Theon, "what a loss for man that you are not teacher in the gardens in place of the son of Neocles."

"Do you know the son of Neocles?" asked the sage.

"The gods forbid that I should know him more than by report! No, venerable stranger; wrong me not so much as to think I have entered the gardens of Epicurus. It is not long that I have been in Athens, but I hope, if I should henceforth live my life here, I should never be seduced by the advocate of vice."

"From my soul I hope the same. But you say you have not long been in Athens--You are come here to study philosophy."

"Yes; my father was a scholar of Xenocrates; but when he sent me from Corinth, he bade me attend all the schools, and fix with that which should give me the highest views of virtue."

"And you have found it to be that of Zeno."

"I think I have: but I was one day nearly gained by a young Pythagorean, and have been often in danger of becoming one of the academy."

"I believe you say true."

"How so?"

"Nay, were I to explain, you would not now credit me: No man can see his own prejudices; no, though a philosopher should point at them. But patience, patience! Time and opportunity shall right all things. Why, you did not think," he resumed after a short pause, "you did not really think you were without prejudices? Eighteen, not more, if I may judge by complexion, and without prejudices! Why, I should hardly dare to assert I was myself without them, and I believe I have fought harder and somewhat longer against them than you can have done."

"What would you have me do?" asked the youth, timidly.

"Have you do?--Why, I would have you do a very odd thing--No other than to take a turn or two in Epicurus's garden."

"Epicurus's garden! Oh! Jupiter!"

"Very true, by Juno!"

"What! To hear the laws of virtue confounded and denied?--To hear vice exculpated, advocated, panegyrized?--Impiety and atheism professed and inculcated?--To witness the nocturnal orgies of vice and debauchery?--Ye gods, what horrors has Timocrates revealed!"

"Horrors, in truth, somewhat appalling, my young friend; but I should apprehend Timocrates to be a little mistaken. That the laws of virtue were ever confounded and denied, or vice advocated and panegyrized, by any professed teacher, I incline to doubt. And were I really to hear such things, I should simply conclude the speaker mad, or otherwise that he was amusing himself by shifting the meaning of words, and that by the term virtue he understood vice, and so by the contrary. As to the inculcating of impiety and atheism, this may be exaggerated or misunderstood. Many are called impious, not for having a worse, but a different religion from their neighbors; and many atheistical, not for the denying of God, but for thinking somewhat peculiarly concerning him. Upon the nocturnal orgies of vice and debauchery I can say nothing; I am too profoundly ignorant of these matters, either to exculpate or condemn them. Such things may be, and I never hear of them. All things are possible. Yes," turning his benignant face full upon the youth, "even that Timocrates should lie."

"This possibility had indeed not occurred to me."

"But, if I may ask, do you think well of Epicurus?"

"I meant not to make an apology for Epicurus, only to give a caution against Timocrates--but see, we are in the city; and fortunately so, for it is pretty nigh dark. I have a party of young friends awaiting me, and, but that you may be apprehensive of nocturnal orgies, I would ask you to join us."

"I shall not fear them where I have such a conductor," replied the youth, laughing.

"I do not think it quite so impossible, however, as you seem to do," said the sage, laughing in his turn, with much humor, and entering a house as he spoke; then throwing open with one arm a door, and with the other gently drawing the youth along with him, "I am Epicurus!"

The astonished, the affrighted Theon started from the arm of the sage, and, staggering backwards, was saved, probably, from falling, by a statue that stood against the wall on one side of the door: he leaned against it, pale and almost fainting. He knew not what to do, scarcely what to feel, and was totally blind to all the objects around him. His conductor, who had possibly expected his confusion, did not turn to observe it, but advanced in such a manner as to cover him from the view of the company, and, still to give time for recollection, stood receiving and returning salutations.

"Well met, my sons! and I suppose you say well met, also. Are you starving, or am I to be starved? Have you ate up the supper, or only sat longing for it, cursing my delay?"

"The latter, only the latter," cried a lively youth, hurrying to meet his master. Another and another advanced, and in a moment he was locked in a close circle.

"Mercy! mercy!" cried the philosopher, "drive me a step further and you will overturn a couple of statues." Then, looking over his shoulder, "I have brought you, if he has not run away, a very pleasant young Corinthian, for whom, until he gain his own tongue, I shall demand reception." He held out his hand with a look of bewitching encouragement, and the yet faltering Theon advanced. The mist had now passed from his eyes, and the singing from his ears, and both room and company stood revealed before him. Perhaps, had it not been for this motion, and still more this look of the sage, he had just now made a retreat instead of an advance. "In the hall of Epicurus--in that hall where Timocrates had beheld"--oh! horrid imagination! "And he a disciple of Zeno, the friend of Cleanthes--the son of a follower of Plato--had he crossed the threshhold of vice, the threshhold of the impious Gargettian!" Yes; he had certainly fled, but for that extended hand, and that bewitching smile. These however conquered. He advanced, and with an effort at composure, met the offered hand. The circle made way, and Epicurus presented "a friend." "His name you must learn from himself, I am only acquainted with his heart, and that, on a knowledge of two hours, I pronounce myself in love with."

"Then he shall be my brother," cried the lively youth who had before spoken, and he ran to the embrace of Theon.

"When shall we use our own eyes, ears, and understandings?" said the sage, gently stroking his scholar's head. "See! our new friend knows not how to meet your premature affection."

"He waits," returned the youth archly, "to receive the same commendation of me that I have of him. Let the master say he is in love with my heart, and he too will open his arms to a brother."

"I hope he is not such a fool," gaily replied the sage. Then with an accent more serious, but still sweeter, "I hope he will judge all things, and all people, with his own understanding, and not with that of Epicurus, or yet of a wiser man. When may I hope this of Sofron," smiling and shaking his head, "can Sofron tell me?"

"No, indeed he cannot," rejoined the scholar, smiling and shaking his head also, as in mimicry of his master.

"Go, go, you rogue! and show us to our supper: I more than half suspect you have devoured it." He turned, and familiarly taking Theon by the shoulder, walked up the room, or rather gallery, and entered a spacious rotunda.

A lamp, suspended from the centre of the ceiling, lighted a table spread beneath it with a simple but elegant repast. Round the walls, in niches at equal distances, stood twelve statues, the work of the best masters; on either hand of these burned a lamp on a small tripod. Beside one of the lamps, a female figure was reclining on a couch, reading with earnest study from a book that lay upon her knee. Her head was so much bowed forward as to conceal her face, besides that it was shadowed by her hand, which, the elbow supported on an arm of the couch, was spread above her brows as a relief from the glare of the light. At her feet was seated a young girl, by whose side lay a small cithara, silent, and forgotten by its mistress. Crete might have lent those eyes their sparkling jet, but all the soul of tenderness that breathed from them was pure Ionian. The full and ruddy lips, half parted, showed two rows of pearls which Thetis might have envied. Still a vulgar eye would not have rested on the countenance: the features wanted the Doric harmony, and the complexion was tinged as by an Afric sun. Theon, however, saw not this, as his eyes fell on those of the girl, uplifted to the countenance of her studious companion. Never was a book read more earnestly than was that face by the fond and gentle eyes which seemed to worship as they gazed. The sound of approaching feet caught the ear of the maiden. She rose, blushed, half returned the salute of the master, and timidly drew back some paces. The student was still intent upon the scroll over which she hung, when the sage advanced towards her, and laying a finger on her shoulder, "What read you, my daughter?" She dropped her hand, and looked up in his face. What a countenance was then revealed! It was not the beauty of blooming, blushing youth, courting love and desire. It was the self-possessed dignity of ripened womanhood, and the noble majesty of mind, that asked respect and promised delight and instruction. The features were not those of Venus, but Minerva. The eye looked deep and steady from beneath two even brows, that sense, not years, had slightly knit in the centre of the forehead, which else was uniformly smooth and polished as marble. The nose was rather Roman than Grecian, yet perfectly regular, and though not masculine, would have been severe in expression, but for a mouth where all that was lovely and graceful habited. The chin was elegantly rounded, and turned in the Greek manner. The color of the cheeks was of the softest and palest rose, so pale, indeed, as scarcely to be discernible until deepened by emotion. It was so at this moment: startled by the address of the sage, a bright flush passed over her face. She rolled up the book, dropped it on the couch, and rose. Her stature was much above the female standard, but every limb and every motion was symmetry and harmony. "A treatise of Theophrastus;--eloquent, ingenious and chimerical. I have a fancy to answer it." Her voice was full and deep, like the tones of a harp when its chords are struck by the hand of a master.

"No one could do it better," replied the sage. "But I should have guessed the aged Peripatetic already silenced by the most acute, elegant, and subtle pen of Athens." She bowed to the compliment.

"Is that then the famous Leontium?" muttered Theon. "Timocrates must be a liar."

"I know not," resumed Leontium, "that I should this evening have so frequently thought Theophrastus wrong, if he had not made me so continually feel that he thought himself right. Must I seek the cause of this in the writer's or the reader's vanity?"

"Perhaps," said the master, smiling, "you will find that it lies in both."

"I believe you have it," returned Leontium. "Theophrastus, in betraying his self-love, hurt mine. He who is about to prove that his own way of thinking is right, must bear in mind that he is about also to prove that all other ways of thinking are wrong. And if this should make him slow to enter on the undertaking, it should make him yet more careful, when he does enter on it, to do it with becoming modesty. We are surely imperiously called upon to make a sacrifice of our own vanity, before we call upon others to make a sacrifice of theirs. But I would not particularize Theophrastus for sometimes forgetting this, as I have never known but one who always remembers it. Gentleness and modesty are qualities at once the most indispensable to a teacher, and the most rarely possessed by him. It was these that won the ears of the Athenian youth to Socrates, and it is these," inclining to the Master, "that will secure them to Epicurus."

"Could I accept your praise, my daughter, I should have no doubt of the truth of your prophecy. For, indeed, the mode of delivering a truth makes, for the most part, as much impression on the mind of the listener as the truth itself. It is as hard to receive the words of wisdom from the ungentle, as it is to love, or even to recognize virtue in the austere." He drew near the table as he spoke. Often during supper were the eyes of Theon riveted on the face of this female disciple. Such grace! such majesty! More than all, such intellect! And this--this was the Leontium Timocrates had called a prostitute without shame or measure! And this was the Epicurus he had blasted with names too vile and horrible to repeat even in thought! And these--continuing his inward soliloquy as he looked round the board--these were the devoted victims of the vice of an impious master.

"You arrived most seasonably this evening," cried Sofron, addressing the Philosopher; "most seasonably for the lungs of two of your scholars."

"And for the ears of a third," interrupted Leontium. "I was fairly driven into exile."

"What was the subject?" asked Epicurus.

"Whether the vicious were more justly objects of indignation or of contempt: Metrodorus argued for the first, and I for the latter. Let the master decide."

"He will give his opinion certainly; but that is not decision."

"Neither."

"Neither! I had no idea the question had more than two sides."

"It has yet a third; and I hardly ever heard a question that had not. Had I regarded the vicious with indignation, I had never gained one to virtue. Had I viewed them with contempt, I had never sought to gain one."

"How is it," said Leontium, "that the scholars are so little familiar with the temper of their master? When did Epicurus look on the vicious with other than compassion?"

"True," said Metrodorus. "I know not how I forgot this, when perhaps it is the only point which I have more than once, presumed to argue with him: and upon which I have persisted in retaining a different opinion."

"Talk not of presumption, my son. Who has not a right to think for himself? Or who is he whose voice is infallible, and worthy to silence those of his fellow-men? And remember, that your remaining unconvinced by my arguments on one occasion, can only tend to make your conviction more flattering to me upon others. Yet, on the point in question, were I anxious to bring you over to my opinion, I know one, whose argument, better and more forcible than mine, will ere long most effectually do so."

"Who mean you?"

"I am the last," said Metrodorus, a crimson blush spreading over his face, "who should object to my master his clemency towards the offending. But there are vices, different from those he saved me from, which, if not more unworthy, are perhaps more unpardonable, because committed with less temptation; and more revolting, as springing less from thoughtless ignorance than calculating depravity."

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