thee awhile on each of these matters, first inquiring of thee whether
the axiom is Socratic, that it is never becoming to get drunk,
_unless_ in the solemnities of Bacchus?

_Plato._ This god was the discoverer of the vine and of its uses.

_Diogenes._ Is drunkenness one of its uses, or the discovery of a god?
If Pallas or Jupiter hath given us reason, we should sacrifice our
reason with more propriety to Jupiter or Pallas. To Bacchus is due a
libation of wine; the same being his gift, as thou preachest.

Another and a graver question.

Did Socrates teach thee that 'slaves are to be scourged, and by no
means admonished as though they were the children of the master'?

_Plato._ He did not argue upon government.

_Diogenes._ He argued upon humanity, whereon all government is
founded: whatever is beside it is usurpation.

_Plato._ Are slaves then never to be scourged, whatever be their
transgressions and enormities?

_Diogenes._ Whatever they be, they are less than his who reduced them
to this condition.

_Plato._ What! though they murder his whole family?

_Diogenes._ Ay, and poison the public fountain of the city.

What am I saying? and to whom? Horrible as is this crime, and next in
atrocity to parricide, thou deemest it a lighter one than stealing a
fig or grape. The stealer of these is scourged by thee; the sentence
on the poisoner is to cleanse out the receptacle. There is, however, a
kind of poisoning which, to do thee justice, comes before thee with
all its horrors, and which thou wouldst punish capitally, even in such
a sacred personage as an aruspex or diviner: I mean the poisoning by
incantation. I, and my whole family, my whole race, my whole city, may
bite the dust in agony from a truss of henbane in the well; and little
harm done forsooth! Let an idle fool set an image of me in wax before
the fire, and whistle and caper to it, and purr and pray, and chant a
hymn to Hecate while it melts, entreating and imploring her that I may
melt as easily--and thou wouldst, in thy equity and holiness, strangle
him at the first stave of his psalmody.

_Plato._ If this is an absurdity, can you find another?

_Diogenes._ Truly, in reading thy book, I doubted at first, and for a
long continuance, whether thou couldst have been serious; and whether
it were not rather a satire on those busy-bodies who are incessantly
intermeddling in other people's affairs. It was only on the
protestation of thy intimate friends t