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Rh habits, with long beards, who ought to have known, but they have always misdirected him. He has seen, too, a flaunting woman, affecting to represent her, whose hail of audience was thronged with visitors; but he had soon detected her as a mere impostor.

Plato agrees with him, that the dwelling of Philosophy is hard to find, nor is her door open to all idle comers. But while they are speaking, they meet her walking in the portico; and to her, by consent of both parties, the prisoner's case is referred. Virtue, and Temperance, and Justice, and Education, who are walking in her company, shall be her assessors in the court; and Truth, "a colourless form, all but imperceptible"—of whom Lucian himself has but a dim glimpse—who brings with her Liberty and Free-speech. The court is held in the temple of Minerva. The aggrieved parties have to choose one of their number as formal accuser; and Chrysippus, in words of high eulogy which may fairly be taken to express the serious opinion of the author himself, suggests Plato as the fittest for that office. The "marvellous sublimity of thought, the Attic sweetness of diction, the persuasive grace, and sagacity, and accuracy, and apposite illustrations; the delicate irony and rapid interrogation," which are here attributed to the great philosopher, are all too genuine characteristics to have been introduced ironically. Bub Plato declines the office, and the Cynic Diogenes undertakes it, readily enough, disgusted as he is at having been valued at no more than two oboli at the late "Sale." He accuses Lucian of endeavouring to bring all philosophy into contempt.