Vegetarian script with a green sprout on an arm

The lamb you asked after is not for sale, and neither is the boy who keeps it. I have told the market women so twice now, and they laugh as if I were a child refusing sweets. Phanes says the old philosopher by the harbour gate has a whole school of followers now, men who will not touch meat, not even the broth the slaves make on feast days. They eat lentils and cabbage and bread sour enough to make you wince, and they call it purity.

Yesterday I went to see for myself. The school meets in a courtyard with a fig tree leaning over the wall, and the teacher, a thin man with ink on his fingers, pressed a young shoot into my hand and told me to look at the two leaves unfolding from its stem. "The plant asks nothing of anyone but sun and rain," he said. "Ask the same of yourself." I told him my father had kept our table full of mutton for forty years and I had never gone hungry. He only smiled and said hunger was not what he meant.

I am writing because I cannot decide whether he is a fool or the only sane man in the city. I have bought a basket of sprouts for my own table, which the cook thinks mad. Come home before the autumn sacrifices and tell me what you make of it. Bring the good oil.

Your brother, Demetrios