One observation, however, he made before they parted.
"You swore that Dumnorix should get into no trouble.

May it not prove expensive to keep him out of difficulty ?" "My dear Lucius," replied Pratinas, "in cases of that kind there is a line from the Hippolytus of the immortal tragedian Euripides, which indicates the correct attitude for a philosopher and a man of discretion to assume.

It runs thus,-- "'My tongue an oath took, but my mind's unsworn.' Not an inelegant sentiment, as you must see." III We left the excellent man of learning, Pisander, in no happy frame of mind, after Agias had been dragged away, presumably to speedy doom.
And indeed for many days the shadow of Valeria's crime, for it was nothing else, plunged him in deep melancholy.

Pisander was not a fool, only amongst his many good qualities he did not possess that of being able to make a success in life.

He had been tutor to a young Asiatic prince, and had lost his position by a local revolution; then he had drifted to Alexandria, and finally Rome, where he had struggled first to teach philosophy, and found no pupils to listen to his lectures; then to conduct an elementary school, but his scholars' parents were backward in paying even the modest fees he charged.