5
“However, why need I look for a new charge against you when that splendid tragedy says: ‘I hate a wiseacre who’s not wise for himself.’ Your accusers will find plenty more examples to quote against you. Some will compare you to tragic actors, on stage each an Agamemnon, Creon, or Heracles himself, but with their masks off a Polus or Aristodemus, playing a part for money, hissed and whistled off the stage, and sometimes some of them are flogged, if the audience wishes. Others will say you are like the monkey which they say the famous Cleopatra owned; it was trained to dance most elegantly and in time, and was much admired as it kept up a part, behaving in a seemly fashion as it accompanied the singers and flautists of the bridal procession. But when he saw a fig, I suppose, or an almond some way off on the ground, then good-bye to flutes and rhythms and dances! he grabbed and ate it up after pulling off his mask and even tearing it up.
6
You then, they would say, were not a mere actor, but a poet of the noblest sentiments and a lawgiver; but when this fig appeared you were shown up a monkey, with philosophy on your lips, ‘hiding one thing in your heart, while saying another.’ Hom., Il. ix, 313. So it may be fairly said against you that what you say and the matters for which you ask to be praised ‘wet your lips, but leave the palate dry.’ Homer, Il. xxiii, 495. So retribution has followed close. You rushed headlong to attack human needs, then a little later forswore your freedom in what was almost a public proclamation. If Adrasteia Nemesis. stood behind you when your accusations were winning your reputation, she must have laughed, knowing as a god would what a turncoat you were going to be; you couldn’t have spat in your bosom, To avert nemesis. she would think, before thinking fit to accuse those who were driven to do this sort of thing by fortune’s fickleness.
