[45]
Such was the thesis maintained by Antisthenes. “So help me Hera,” commented Callias, “among the numerous reasons I find for congratulating you on your wealth, one is that the government does not lay its commands on you and treat you as a slave, another is that people do not feel resentful at your not making them a loan.”“Do not be congratulating him,” said Niceratus; “because I am about to go and get him to make me a loan—of his contentment with his lot, schooled as I am by Homer to count“Seven pots unfired, ten talents' weight of gold, A score of gleaming cauldrons, chargers twelve,” Hom. Iliad 9.122 f., 264 f. weighing and calculating until I am never done with yearning for vast riches; as a result, some people perhaps regard me as just a bit fond of lucre.”A burst of laughter from the whole company greeted this admission; for they considered that he had told nothing more than the truth.
Xenophon. Xenophon in Seven Volumes, 4. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA; William Heinemann, Ltd., London. 1979.
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