Soph. So also those who drank from the cup of Circe would be unwilling to yield and return to their human nature and condition, having once lost their reason, and having degenerated into the nature of beasts!
Agri. But what do all these do when they go home, and with what actions do they occupy themselves to pass the time, at least?
Leisure Time—Flattery
Soph. The most of them do nothing more serious than what you now observe them doing, and then their leisure is for them the parent and nurse of many vices. Some play at dice, cards, the gaming-board, at disputations; others pass the afternoon hours in secret slander and artful calumny, that is to what they degenerate at home. Many also are wonderfully taken up with buffoons and jugglers, towards whom those who are at other times niggardly and sordid, to them they are most lavish. But the chief corruption of the court is the flattery of each to all the others, and, what is still worse, towards himself. This brings it about that no one ever hears salutary truths either from himself nor from his companions unless when at strife. And though he receives then all too little of truth, he takes it as insult.
Holo. This employment is now by far the most profitable. You may hunger and thirst after the love of speaking and truth. I have become rich by my smiling, blandishments, and by approving and praising everything.
Agri. Could not the kings alter these unsatisfactory matters?
Soph. Very easily, if they only wished to do so! But these fashions are pleasing; they are similar to their own. Others are precluded by their preoccupations, on account of which they never have leisure for doing anything which is right or thinking anything which is sane. There are also not lacking those who, with indulgent minds and careless themselves, don’t think the morality of their own homes, and that of their dependants, any concern of theirs. And those things trouble them less than the private home of each of us troubles any of us.