22
And certainly Greece as well as Italy is completely filled with-your doings, and your reputation for them, and I wish you joy of your fame! . Consequently, to those who marvel at what you are now doing in Ephesus, I say (and it is true as can be) that they would not wonder if they knew your early performances. Yet you have learned something new here having to do with women.
23
Does it not, then, fit such a man to a hair to call him nefandous? But why in the name of Zeus should you take it upon yourselfto kiss us after such performances? In so doing you behave very offensively, especially to those who ought least of all to be so treated, your pupils, for whom it would have been enough to get only those other horrid boons from your lips—barbarity of language, harshness of voice, indistinctness, confusedness, complete tunelessness, and the like, but to kiss you—forfend it, Averter of Ill! Better kiss an asp or a viper; then the risk is a bite and a pain which the doctor cures when you call him. But from the venom of your kiss, who could approach victims or altars? What god would listen to one’s prayer? How many bowls of holy water, how many rivers are required?
