19
When Demetrius, the Cynic, while in Corinth, saw an ignorant fellow reading a beautiful book (it was the Bacchae of Euripides, I dare say, and he was at the place where the messenger reports the fate of Pentheus and the deed of Agave),1041 ff. he snatched it away and tore it up, saying: “It is better for Pentheus to be torn to tatters by me once for all than by you repeatedly.”
19
Though I am continually asking myself the question, I have never yet been able to discover why you have shown so much zeal in the purchase of books. Nobody who knows you in the least would think that you do it on account of their helpfulness or use, any more than a bald man would buy a comb, or a blind man a mirror, or a deaf-mute a flute-player, or an eunuch a concubine, or a landsman an oar, or a seaman a plough. But perhaps you regard the matter as a display of wealth and wish to show everyone that out of your vast surplus you spepd money even for things of no use to you? Come now, as far as I know—and I too am a SyrianThe implication is: “And therefore ought to know about your circumstances, if anyone knows.” —if you had not smuggled yourself into that old man’s will with all speed, you would be starving to death by now, and would be putting up your books at auction!
20
The only remaining reason is that you have been convinced by your toadies that you are not only handsome and charming but a scholar and an orator and a writer without peer, and you buy the books to prove their praises true. They say that you hold forth to them at dinner, and that they, like stranded frogs, make a clamour because they are thirsty, or else they get nothing to drink if they do not burst themselves shouting.
