I. Having spoken to this effect, Quintus, before any one [Sidenote: 548 B] replied—we had just reached the far end of the colonnade—Epicurus took himself off. We stopped our walk for a while, in silent surprise at the oddness of the man, then glanced at one another, turned back, and resumed it. Patrocleas was the first to speak: ‘Which is it to be,’ he said, ‘are you for dropping the inquiry, or shall we answer the argument as though the speaker of it were present, though he is not present?’ Timon interposed: ‘Well, suppose he had thrown a spear and gone away, it would not do quietly to let it lie. Brasidas,[201] we are [Sidenote: C] given to believe, drew the spear out of his wound, and with it struck and slew the thrower. Now perhaps it is no business of ours to punish those who have discharged a monstrous or a false argument at us; enough if we eject it from ourselves before it has taken hold.’ ‘Then what is it’, I asked, ‘which has moved you most, in what he said? for there were a number of things, a disorderly mass, which the man drew from all quarters, to let them off against Divine Providence in his rage and fury.’ II. Then Patrocleas: ‘The slowness and procrastination of Divine Justice in the punishment of wicked men appears to [Sidenote: D] me especially terrible. At the present moment, after what we have just heard, I seem to come “all fresh and new” to this (Epicurean) view; but long ago I used to feel indignant when I heard Euripides[202] telling how _The Gods delay, the Gods are ever slow._