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The elder Dionysius Cf. Moralia, 334 c, and Nachstädt’s references ad loc. was not content with being the greatest tyrant of his age, but because he could not sing verses better than the poet Philoxenus or get the better of Plato in dialectic, enraged and embittered, he cast Philoxenus into the stone-quarries, and, sending Plato to Aegina, sold him into slavery. Alexander Ibid. 58 f. was not of this temper, but when Crison, the famous sprinter, ran a race with him and appeared to slacken his pace deliberately, Alexander was very indignant. And when the Homeric Achilles Il., xviii. 105-106. had first said, Of the bronze-clad Achaeans none is a match for me, he did well to add, In war; but in speaking others are better than I. But when Megabyzus the Persian carne up to the studio of Apelles Cf. Moralia, 58 d; Zeuxis, according to Aelian, Varia Historia, ii. 2. and attempted to chatter about art, Apelles shut his mouth by saying, As long as you kept still, you seemed to be somebody because of your gold and purple; but now even these lads who grind the pigments are laughing at your nonsense.
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But some think that the StoicsVon Arnim, Stoic. Vet. Frag., iii. p. 164, Frag. 655. Cf. Moralia, 58 e; Horace, Sermones, i. 3. 124 ff. See also Siefert, op. cit., p. 54, note 2. are jesting when they hear that in their sect the wise man is termed not only prudent and just and brave, but also an orator, a poet, a general, a rich man, and a king; and then they count themselves worthy of all these titles, and if they fail to get them, are vexed. Yet even among the gods different gods hold different powers: one bears the epithet War-like, another Prophetic, another Gain-bringing; and Zeus Cf. Homer, Il., v. 428 ff. dispatches Aphrodite to marriages and nuptial chambers, on the ground that she has no part in deeds of war.
