This article by Christopher Buckley in the New York Times (May 22, 2010) is a very clever piece of satire on the debt crisis in Europe. Would that we all could be so clever.
The Debt of Socrates
By Christopher Buckley
Why the long face? I asked.
He replied that his wife, a hairdresser, had just been informed by the Assembly that because of the recent calamities in the Treasury, the state will no longer recompense her an additional sum on top of her regular fee for dying her ladies’ locks with Egyptian henna.
It leaves her hands much stained, he said. Is this the action of a just state, that it should abrogate the Handling of Possibly Dangerous Substances clause in the Hairdressers Guild Contract ... said to date to the time of the Titans?
Amid the general murmuring, Cephalus, a Retiree, began to curse so vehemently as to make Hera turn the color of pomegranate, saying that he too had been ill used by the Assembly.
Now they tell me, he said, that I may no longer have free passage aboard the state inter-island trireme for my visits to Mykonos, where I make sacrifice to Apollo Suntan Oil. Am I to pay for transport out of my own purse? Did I not give Athens a lifetime of service, a full ten years, licensing and dispensing the monthly bonuses to Thessalonian olive inspectors?
Indeed you did, I replied, but did the Assembly not recompense you an additional portion for knowing how to operate the bonus-tabulating counting apparatus, and another portion for speaking Phoenician?
Why should I not receive a little extra? he replied hotly. Are the foresters not paid an extra portion for working in the forest?
Very well, I said, but let me ask you, Should a fisherman be paid extra for fishing?
Glaucon replied, Yes, that would be only fair inasmuch as fish, though beloved of Poseidon, are slimy and often stink. Nor is catching them a pleasant business, for one must rise and take to the boat even before Helios’ chariot has climbed in the East.
Mischievous Adeimantus interjected, I suppose, Socrates, you will now ask if a philosopher should be paid extra to corrupt the youth of Athens? This occasioned a great slapping of thighs.
I replied, Before you would increase the philosopher’s salary, Adeimantus, you must first give him a salary. Look at my cloak. It is not nearly as fine as that of our companion Niceratus, who as collector of fees at the Temple of Athena on the Acropolis is paid a higher hourly wage than Herakles received for cleaning out the Augean Stables. And he gets an extra portion merely for showing up on time. No wonder the state money-house looks as though it has been visited by the Furies. Tell me this, Did brave Achilles demand extra compensation for slaying Hector?
He should have, asserted Cleitophon. Under Rule 17 of the Warriors’ Guild Standard Contract, anyone volunteering for single combat during a siege more than 100 miles from Athens and lasting not less than one year is eligible for triple pay, plus retirement on full salary with payments to be continued after one’s death to female descendants up to and including the third generation. To say nothing of lifetime trireme privileges, and thrice-annual consultations with the Oracle at Delphi.
A pretty package indeed, I said. I may volunteer for single combat myself. But let me ask you, Glaucon, Polemarchus and you other wise fellows: who shall pay for all these handsome emoluments, while the wind howls through the emptied Siphnian Treasury?
They murmured among themselves. At length Thrasymachus said, Let us ask the gods. Surely they would not leave us to the mercies of austere Brussels and flighty Euro.
By all means, I said, make your entreaties to Olympus. But remember ... whom the gods would destroy, first they make pensioners at 40.
