She wanted to be cured of unrequited love." "Didst thou cure her ?" "I did more, lord.

I gave her an amulet which secures mutuality.

In Paphos, on the island of Cyprus, is a temple, O lord, in which is preserved a zone of Venus.

I gave her two threads from that zone, enclosed in an almond shell." "And didst thou make her pay well for them ?" "One can never pay enough for mutuality, and I, who lack two fingers on my right hand, am collecting money to buy a slave copyist to write down my thoughts, and preserve my wisdom for mankind." "Of what school art thou, divine sage ?" "I am a Cynic, lord, because I wear a tattered mantle; I am a Stoic, because I bear poverty patiently; I am a Peripatetic, for, not owning a litter, I go on foot from one wine-shop to another, and on the way teach those who promise to pay for a pitcher of wine." "And at the pitcher thou dost become a rhetor ?" "Heraclitus declares that 'all is fluid,' and canst thou deny, lord, that wine is fluid ?" "And he declared that fire is a divinity; divinity, therefore, is blushing in thy nose." "But the divine Diogenes from Apollonia declared that air is the essence of things, and the warmer the air the more perfect the beings it makes, and from the warmest come the souls of sages.

And since the autumns are cold, a genuine sage should warm his soul with wine; and wouldst thou hinder, O lord, a pitcher of even the stuff produced in Capua or Telesia from bearing heat to all the bones of a perishable human body ?" "Chilo Chilonides, where is thy birthplace ?" "On the Euxine Pontus.