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When Megabyzus the Persian came into the shop of Apelles, and began to ask some impertinent questions concerning his art, the famous painter checked him into silence with this reprimand: As long as thou didst hold thy peace, thou didst appear to be a man of condition, and I paid a deference to the eclat of thy purple and the lustre of thy gold; but now, since thou art frivolous, thou exposest thyself to the laughter even of my boys that mix the colors. Some think the Stoics very childish, when they hear them affirm that the wise man must not only deserve that appellation for his prudence, be of exact justice and great fortitude, but must likewise have all the flowers of a rhetorician and the conduct of a general, must have the elegancies of a poet, be very wealthy, and called a king; but these good men claim all these titles for themselves, and if they do not receive them, they grow peevish and are presently out of temper. But the qualifications of the Gods themselves are different; for the one is styled the deity of war, another of the oracle, a third of traffic; and Jupiter makes Venus preside over marriages and be goddess of the nuptial bed, the delicacy of her sex being unapt for martial affairs.
