30
“But although that is what they are, they look with scorn on all mankind and they tell absurd stories about the gods; collecting lads who are easy to hoodwink, they rant about their far-famed Virtue’ and teach them their insoluble fallacies; and in the presence of their disciples they always sing the praise of restraint and) temperance and self-suflicieney and spit at wealth and pleasure, but when they are all by themselves, how can one describe how much they cat, how much they indulge their passions and how they lick the filth off pennies? “Worst of all, though they themselves do no goéd either in public or in private life but are uscless and superfluous, Neither in war nor in council of any account, Iliad2, 202. nevertheless they accuse everyone clse; they amass biting phrases and school themselves in novel terms of abuse, and then they censure and reproach their fellow-men; and whoever of them is the most noisy and impudent and reckless in calling names is held to be the champion.
31
But if you were to ask the very man who is straining his lungs and bawling and accusing everybody else: ‘How about yourself? What do you really do, and what in Heaven’s name do you contribute’ to the world?’ he would say, if he were willing to say what was right and true: ¢1 hold it unnecessary to be a merchant or a farmer or a soldier or to follow'y trade; I shout, go dirty, take cold baths, walk abeut barefoot in winter, wear a filthy mantle and like Momus carp at everything the others do. If some rich man or other has made an extravagant outlay on a dinner or keeps a mistress, I make it my affair and get hot about it; but if one of my friends or associates is ill abed and needs relief and attendance, I ignore it.’
31
“That is what these whelps are like, gods.
