Hermodorus.  It is true, Zenothemis, that the soul is nourished on ecstasy, as the cicada is nourished on dew.  But we may even say more:  the mind alone is capable of perfect rapture.  For man is of a threefold nature, composed of material body, of a soul which is more subtle, but also material, and of an incorruptible mind.  When, emerging from the body as from a palace suddenly given over to silence and solitude and flying through the gardens of the soul, the mind diffuses itself in God, it tastes the delights of an anticipated death, or rather of a future life, for to die is to live; and in that condition, partaking of divine purity, it possesses both infinite joy and complete knowledge.  It enters into the unity which is All.  It is perfected.

Nicias.  That is very fine; but, to say the truth, Hermodorus, I do not see much difference between All and Nothing.  Words even seem to fail to make the distinction.  Infinity is terribly like nothingness—­they are both inconceivable to the mind.  In my opinion perfection costs too dear; we pay for it with all our being, and to possess it must cease to exist.  That is a calamity from which God Himself is not free, for the philosophers are doing their best to perfect Him.  After all, if we do not know what it is not to be, we are equally ignorant what it is to be.  We know nothing.  It is said that it is impossible for men to agree on this question.  I believe—­in spite of our noisy disputes—­that it is, on the contrary, impossible for men not to become some day all at unity buried under the mass of contradictions, a Pelion on Ossa, which they themselves have raised.

Cotta.  I am very fond of philosophy, and study it in my leisure time.  But I never understand it well, except in Cicero’s books.  Slaves, pour out the honeyed wine!

Callicrates.  It is a singular thing, but when I am hungry I think of the time when the tragic poets sat at the boards of good tyrants, and my mouth waters.  But when I have tasted the excellent wine that you give us so abundantly, generous Lucius, I dream of nothing but civil wars and heroic combats.  I blush to live in such inglorious times; I invoke the goddess of Liberty; and I pour out my blood—­in imagination—­with the last Romans on the field of Philippi.

Cotta.  In the days of the decline of the Republic my ancestors died with Brutus—­for liberty.  But there is reason to suspect that what the Roman people called liberty was only in reality the right to govern themselves.  I do not deny that liberty is the greatest boon a nation can have.  But the longer I live the more I am persuaded that only a strong government can bestow it on the citizens.  For forty years I have filled high positions in the State, and my long experience has shown me that when the ruling power is weak the people are oppressed.  Those, therefore, who—­like the great majority of rhetoricians—­try to weaken the government, commit an abominable crime.  An autocrat, who governs by his single will, may sometimes cause most deplorable results; but if he governs by popular consent there is no remedy possible.  Before the majesty of the Roman arms had bestowed peace upon all the world, the only nations which were happy were those which were ruled over by intelligent despots.