“My dear Lucius,” replied Pratinas, “in cases of that kind there is a line from the Hippolytus of the immortal tragedian Euripides, which indicates the correct attitude for a philosopher and a man of discretion to assume.  It runs thus,—­

  “‘My tongue an oath took, but my mind’s unsworn.’

Not an inelegant sentiment, as you must see.”

III

We left the excellent man of learning, Pisander, in no happy frame of mind, after Agias had been dragged away, presumably to speedy doom.  And indeed for many days the shadow of Valeria’s crime, for it was nothing else, plunged him in deep melancholy.  Pisander was not a fool, only amongst his many good qualities he did not possess that of being able to make a success in life.  He had been tutor to a young Asiatic prince, and had lost his position by a local revolution; then he had drifted to Alexandria, and finally Rome, where he had struggled first to teach philosophy, and found no pupils to listen to his lectures; then to conduct an elementary school, but his scholars’ parents were backward in paying even the modest fees he charged.  Finally, in sheer despair, to keep from starving, he accepted the position 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.