4
You expect to make up for all that now by one single expedient—by getting many books. On that theory, collect and keep all those manuscripts of Demosthenes that the orator wrote with his own hand, and those of Thucydides that were found to have been copied, likewise by Demosthenes, eight times over, and even all the books that Sulla sent from Athens to Italy.Of the copies of his own works and those of Thucydides written by Demosthenes we have no other notice; Sulla took to Italy what was reported to have been the library of Aristotle: Plut. Sulla 26. What would you gain by it in the way of learning, even if you should put them under your pillow and sleep on them or should glue them together and walk about dressed in them? “A monkey is always a monkey,” says the proverb, “even if he has birthtokens of gold.”These were trinkets put in the cradle or the clothing of a child when it was abandoned, as proof of good birth and as a possible means of identification later. Hyginus (187) calls them insignia ingenwitatis. Although you have a book in your hand and read all the time, you do not understand a single thing that you read, but you are like the donkey that listens to the lyre and wags his ears.
4
If possessing books made their owner learned, they would indeed be a possession of great price, and only rich men like you would have them, since you could buy them at auction, as it were, outbidding us poor men. In that case, however, who could rival the dealers and booksellers for learning, who possess and sell so many books? But if you care to look into the matter, you will see that they are not much superior to you in that point; they are barbarous of speech and obtuse in mind like you—just what one would expect people to be who have no conception of what is good and bad. Yet you have only two or three books which they themselves have sold you, while they handle books night and day.
