Caesar.—­I had rather have been thrown down the Tarpeian Rock than have retired, as you did, to the obscurity of a village, after acting the first part on the greatest theatre of the world.

Scipio.—­A usurper exalted on the highest throne of the universe is not so glorious as I was in that obscure retirement.  I hear, indeed, that you, Caesar, have been deified by the flattery of some of your successors.  But the impartial judgment of history has consecrated my name, and ranks me in the first class of heroes and patriots; whereas, the highest praise her records, even under the dominion usurped by your family, have given to you, is, that your courage and talents were equal to the object your ambition aspired to, the empire of the world; and that you exercised a sovereignty unjustly acquired with a magnanimous clemency.  But it would have been better for your country, and better for mankind, if you had never existed.

DIALOGUE XXX.

PLATO—­DIOGENES.

Diogenes.—­Plato, stand off.  A true philosopher as I was, is no company for a courtier of the tyrant of Syracuse.  I would avoid you as one infected with the most noisome of plagues—­the plague of slavery.

Plato.—­He who can mistake a brutal pride and savage indecency of manners for freedom may naturally think that the being in a court (however virtuous one’s conduct, however free one’s language there) is slavery.  But I was taught by my great master, the incomparable Socrates, that the business of true philosophy is to consult and promote the happiness of society.  She must not, therefore, be confined to a tub or a cell.  Her sphere is in senates or the cabinets of kings.  While your sect is employed in snarling at the great or buffooning with the vulgar, she is counselling those who govern nations, infusing into their minds humanity, justice, temperance, and the love of true glory, resisting their passions when they transport them beyond the bounds of virtue, and fortifying their reason by the antidotes she administers against the poison of flattery.

Diogenes.—­You mean to have me understand that you went to the court of the Younger Dionysius to give him antidotes against the poison of flattery.  But I say he sent for you only to sweeten the cup, by mixing it more agreeably, and rendering the flavour more delicate.  His vanity was too nice for the nauseous common draught; but your seasoning gave it a relish which made it go down most delightfully, and intoxicated him more than ever.  Oh, there is no flatterer half so dangerous to a prince as a fawning philosopher!

Plato.—­If you call it fawning that I did not treat him with such unmannerly rudeness as you did Alexander the Great when he visited you at Athens, I have nothing to say.  But, in truth, I made my company agreeable to him, not for any mean ends which regarded only myself, but that I might be useful both to him and to his people.  I endeavoured to give a right turn to his vanity; and know, Diogenes, that whosoever will serve mankind, but more especially princes, must compound with their weaknesses, and take as much pains to gain them over to virtue, by an honest and prudent complaisance, as others do to seduce them from it by a criminal adulation.