Page:Lucian (IA lucianlucas00collrich).pdf/118

108 find him," says the auctioneer, "moderate, upright, consistent in his life—and what makes him yet more valuable is that in him you are really buying two men." "How do you make that out?" asks the customer. "Because," explains Mercury, "he appears to be one person outside and another inside; and remember, if you buy him, you must call one esoteric and the other 'exoteric. With such recommendations, the Peripatetic finds a ready purchaser for the large sum of twenty minæ. Last comes the Sceptic, Pyrrho, who figures, by a slight change of name, as Pyrrhia, a common appellation for a barbarian slave. The intending purchaser asks him a few questions.]

Cust. Tell me, now, what do you know?

Pyrrhia. Nothing.

Cust. What do you mean?

Pyrrh. That nothing seems to me certain.

Cust. Are we ourselves nothing?

Pyrrh. Well, that is what I am not sure of.

Cust. Don't you know whether you are anything yourself?

Pyrrh. That is what I am still more in doubt about.

Cust. What a creature of doubts it is! And what are those scales for, pray?

Pyrrh. I weigh arguments in them, and balance them one against another; and then, when I find them precisely equal and of the same weight, why, I find it impossible to tell which of them is true.

Cust. Well, is there anything you can do in any other line of business?