No More Learning

JUST DISCOURSE (_to Unjust Discourse_). Evil be unto you, if you touch
him.

CHORUS. A truce to your quarrellings and abuse! But expound, you, what
you taught us formerly, and you, your new doctrine. Thus, after hearing
each of you argue, he will be able to choose betwixt the two schools.

JUST DISCOURSE. I am quite agreeable.

UNJUST DISCOURSE. And I too.

CHORUS. Who is to speak first?

UNJUST DISCOURSE. Let it be my opponent, he has my full consent; then I
will follow upon the very ground he shall have chosen and shall shatter
him with a hail of new ideas and subtle fancies; if after that he dares
to breathe another word, I shall sting him in the face and in the eyes
with our maxims, which are as keen as the sting of a wasp, and he will
die.

CHORUS.
Here are two rivals confident in their powers of oratory and in
the thoughts over which they have pondered so long. Let us see which will
come triumphant out of the contest. This wisdom, for which my friends
maintain such a persistent fight, is in great danger. Come then, you, who
crowned men of other days with so many virtues, plead the cause dear to
you, make yourself known to us.

JUST DISCOURSE. Very well, I will tell you what was the old education,
when I used to teach justice with so much success and when modesty was
held in veneration. Firstly, it was required of a child, that it should
not utter a word. In the street, when they went to the music-school, all
the youths of the same district marched lightly clad and ranged in good
order, even when the snow was falling in great flakes. At the master's
house they had to stand, their legs apart, and they were taught to sing
either, "Pallas, the Terrible, who overturneth cities," or "A noise
resounded from afar"[550] in the solemn tones of the ancient harmony. If
anyone indulged in buffoonery or lent his voice any of the soft
inflexions, like those which to-day the disciples of Phrynis[551] take so
much pains to form, he was treated as an enemy of the Muses and
belaboured with blows. In the wrestling school they would sit with
outstretched legs and without display of any indecency to the curious.
When they rose, they would smooth over the sand, so as to leave no trace
to excite obscene thoughts. Never was a child rubbed with oil below the
belt; the rest of their bodies thus retained its fresh bloom and down,
like a velvety peach. They were not to be seen approaching a lover and
themselves rousing his passion by soft modulation of the voice and
lustful gaze. At table, they would not have dared, before those older
than themselves, to have taken a radish, an aniseed or a leaf of parsley,
and much less eat fish or thrushes or cross their legs.

UNJUST DISCOURSE.