anything palatable that tasted
so salt. Salt, in fact, is not suited to all creatures! Men born far
from the sea do not relish oysters, while I, being a gourmand, even
prefer to open them myself so that they may be perfectly fresh, and mix
their liquor with my wine."

"I do not like any very salt dish, and am glad to leave the opening of
all marine produce to my servants," answered Publius. "Thereby I save
both time and unnecessary trouble."

"Oh! I know!" cried Euergetes. "You keep Greek slaves, who must even
read and write for you. Pray is there a market where I may purchase men,
who, after a night of carousing, will bear our headache for us? By the
shores of the Tiber you love many things better than learning."

"And thereby," added Aristarchus, "deprive yourselves of the noblest and
subtlest of pleasures, for the purest enjoyment is ever that which we
earn at the cost of some pains and effort."

"But all that you earn by this kind of labor," returned Publius, "is
petty and unimportant. It puts me in mind of a man who removes a block
of stone in the sweat of his brow only to lay it on a sparrow's feather
in order that it may not be carried away by the wind."

"And what is great--and what is small?" asked Aristarchus. "Very
opposite opinions on that subject may be equally true, since it depends
solely on us and our feelings how things appear to us--whether cold or
warm; lovely or repulsive--and when Protagoras says that 'man is the
measure of all things,' that is the most acceptable of all the maxims
of the Sophists; moreover the smallest matter--as you will fully
appreciate--acquires an importance all the greater in proportion as the
thing is perfect, of which it forms a part. If you slit the ear of a
cart-horse, what does it signify? but suppose the same thing were to
happen to a thoroughbred horse, a charger that you ride on to battle!

"A wrinkle or a tooth more or less in the face of a peasant woman
matters little, or not at all, but it is quite different in a celebrated
beauty. If you scrawl all over the face with which the coarse finger of
the potter has decorated a water-jar, the injury to the wretched pot is
but small, but if you scratch, only with a needle's point, that gem
with the portraits of Ptolemy and Arsinoe, which clasps Cleopatra's robe
round her fair throat, the richest queen will grieve as though she had
suffered some serious loss.

"Now, what is there more perfect or more worthy to be tre