n as Valeria's
"house-philosopher."

His condition was infinitely unsatisfactory for a variety of reasons.
The good lady wished him to be at her elbow, ready to read from the
philosophers or have on hand a talk on ethics or metaphysics to
deliver extempore. Besides, though not a slave or freedman, he fared
in the household much worse sometimes than they. A slave stole the
dainties, and drained a beaker of costly wine on the sly. Pisander,
like Thales, who was so intent looking at the stars that he fell into
a well, "was so eager to know what was going on in heaven that he
could not see what was before his feet."[66] And consequently the poor
pedant dined on the remnants left after his employer and her husband
had cleared the board; and had rancid oil and sour wine given him,
when they enjoyed the best. The slaves had snubbed him and made fun of
him; the freedmen regarded him with absolute disdain; Valeria's
regular visitors treated him as a nonentity. Besides, all his
standards of ethical righteousness were outraged by the round of life
which he was compelled daily to witness. The worthy man would long
before have ceased from a vassalage so disgraceful, had he possessed
any other means of support. Once he meditated suicide, but was scared
out of it by the thought that his bones would moulder in those huge
pits on the Esquiline--far from friend or native land--where artisans,
slaves, and cattle, creatures alike without means of decent burial,
were left under circumstances unspeakably revolting to moulder away to
dust.

[66] See Plato's "Theaetetus," 174.

The day of Agias's misfortune, Pisander sat in his corner of the
boudoir, after Valeria had left it, in a very unphilosophical rage,
gnawing his beard and cursing inwardly his mistress, Pratinas, and the
world in general.

Arsinoe with a pale, strained face was moving about, replacing the
bottles of cosmetics and perfumery in cabinets and caskets. Pisander
had been kind to Arsinoe, and had taught her to read; and there was a
fairly firm friendship between the slave and the luckless man, who
felt himself degraded by an equal bondage.

"Poor Agias," muttered Pisander.

"Poor Agias," repeated Arsinoe, mournfully; then in some scorn, "Come,
Master Pisander, now is the time to console yourself with your
philosophy. Call out everything,--your Zeno, or Parmenides, or
Heraclitus, or others of the thousand nobodies I've heard you praise
to Valeria,--and make thereby m