Tiresias: The Ancient Mediterranean Religions Source Database

7516

Lucian, Hermotimus, Or Sects, 77
nan LYCINUS: I am glad you do not palter with the truth. But what are your hopes in pursuing philosophy, then? You see that neither your own teacher, nor his, nor his again, and so on to the tenth generation, has been absolutely wise and so attained Happiness. It will not serve you to say that it is enough to get near Happiness; that is no good; a person on the doorstep is just as much outside and in the air as another a long way off, though with the difference that the former is tantalized by a nearer view. So it is to get into the neighbourhood of Happiness - I will grant you so much - that you toil like this, wearing yourself away, letting this great portion of your life slip from you, while you are sunk in dullness and wakeful weariness; and you are to go on with it for twenty more years at the least, you tell me, to take your place when you are eighty - always assuming someone to assure you that length of days - in the ranks of the not yet Happy. Or perhaps you reckon on being the exception; you are to crown your pursuit by attaining what many a good man before you, swifter far, has pursued and never overtaken.
nan Ly . I am glad you do not palter with the truth. But what are your hopes in pursuing philosophy, then? You see that neither your own teacher, nor his, nor his again, and so on to the tenth generation, has been absolutely wise and so attained Happiness. It will not serve you to say that it is enough to get near Happiness; that is no good; a person on the doorstep is just as much outside and in the air as another a long way off, though with the difference that the former is tantalized by a nearer view. So it is to get into the neighbourhood of Happiness - I will grant you so much - that you toil like this, wearing yourself away, letting this great portion of your life slip from you, while you are sunk in dullness and wakeful weariness; and you are to go on with it for twenty more years at the least, you tell me, to take your place when you are eighty - always assuming someone to assure you that length of days - in the ranks of the not yet Happy. Or perhaps you reckon on being the exception; you are to crown your pursuit by attaining what many a good man before you, swifter far, has pursued and never overtaken.

Intertexts (texts cited often on the same page as the searched text):

7 results
1. Anaximenes of Lampsacus, Rhetoric To Alexander, 11 (4th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
2. Demetrius, Style, 285, 38, 52, 283 (1st cent. BCE
3. Josephus Flavius, Against Apion, 1.41 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE) 1.41. It is true, our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time;
4. Mishnah, Avot, 1 (1st cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
5. Pliny The Elder, Natural History, 30.4 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
6. Hermogenes, Rhetorical Exercises, 4 (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
7. Lucian, Hermotimus, Or Sects, 86, 2 (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE) 2. Ly . A glorious prize, indeed! however, you cannot be far off it now, if one may judge by the time you have given to philosophy, and the extraordinary vigour of your long pursuit. For twenty years now, I should say, I have watched you perpetually going to your professors, generally bent over a book taking notes of past lectures, pale with thought and emaciated in body. I suspect you find no release even in your dreams, you are so wrapped up in the thing. With all this you must surely get hold of Happiness soon, if indeed you have not found it long ago without telling us.Her . Alas, Lycinus, I am only just beginning to get an inkling of the right way. Very far off dwells Virtue, as Hesiod says, and long and steep and rough is the way thither, and travellers must bedew it with sweat.Ly . And you have not yet sweated and travelled enough?Her . Surely not; else should I have been on the summit, with nothing left between me and bliss; but I am only starting yet, Lycinus.

Subjects of this text:

subject	book bibliographic info
age	Rothschold, Blanton and Calhoun, The History of Religions School Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts (2014) 264
alexander polyhistor	Bickerman and Tropper, Studies in Jewish and Christian History (2007) 536
antigonus of socho	Bickerman and Tropper, Studies in Jewish and Christian History (2007) 536
clothing	Rothschold, Blanton and Calhoun, The History of Religions School Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts (2014) 264
ethics, morality	Rothschold, Blanton and Calhoun, The History of Religions School Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts (2014) 264
king, emperor, marcus aurelius	Rothschold, Blanton and Calhoun, The History of Religions School Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts (2014) 264
lists	Bickerman and Tropper, Studies in Jewish and Christian History (2007) 536
pharisees, pairs	Bickerman and Tropper, Studies in Jewish and Christian History (2007) 536
pharisees	Bickerman and Tropper, Studies in Jewish and Christian History (2007) 536
philosophers	Bickerman and Tropper, Studies in Jewish and Christian History (2007) 536
philosophy	Rothschold, Blanton and Calhoun, The History of Religions School Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts (2014) 264
praise	Rothschold, Blanton and Calhoun, The History of Religions School Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts (2014) 264
rhetoric, allusion	Rothschold, Blanton and Calhoun, The History of Religions School Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts (2014) 264
rhetoric, deliberative	Rothschold, Blanton and Calhoun, The History of Religions School Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts (2014) 264
rhetoric, dialogue	Rothschold, Blanton and Calhoun, The History of Religions School Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts (2014) 264
rhetoric, emphasis	Rothschold, Blanton and Calhoun, The History of Religions School Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts (2014) 264
rhetoric, figure, trope	Rothschold, Blanton and Calhoun, The History of Religions School Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts (2014) 264
rhetoric, hyperbole	Rothschold, Blanton and Calhoun, The History of Religions School Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts (2014) 264
rhetoric, imagery	Rothschold, Blanton and Calhoun, The History of Religions School Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts (2014) 264
rhetoric, irony	Rothschold, Blanton and Calhoun, The History of Religions School Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts (2014) 264
rhetoric, metaphor	Rothschold, Blanton and Calhoun, The History of Religions School Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts (2014) 264
rhetoric, satire	Rothschold, Blanton and Calhoun, The History of Religions School Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts (2014) 264
rhetoric	Rothschold, Blanton and Calhoun, The History of Religions School Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts (2014) 264
schools	Bickerman and Tropper, Studies in Jewish and Christian History (2007) 536
shechemites	Bickerman and Tropper, Studies in Jewish and Christian History (2007) 536
sirach	Bickerman and Tropper, Studies in Jewish and Christian History (2007) 536
theater, comedy	Rothschold, Blanton and Calhoun, The History of Religions School Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts (2014) 264
wisdom	Rothschold, Blanton and Calhoun, The History of Religions School Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts (2014) 264
zoroaster'	Bickerman and Tropper, Studies in Jewish and Christian History (2007) 536