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regions, so as not to pollute either Olmeios or Hippocrene, whose waters only thirsty flocks or the clean lips of shepherds may drink.

No matter how shameless you are and how courageous in such matters, you would never dare to say that you have had an education, or that you ever troubled yourself to associate intimately with books, or that So-and-so was your teacher and you went to school with So-and-so. 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.^[1] 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.”^[2] 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.

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