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have one, no matter what), should ask what orator or historian or poet it was by, and you, knowing from the title, should easily answer that question; and if then—for such topics often spin themselves out to some length in conversation—he should either com- mend or criticise something in its contents, and you should be at a loss and have nothing to say? Would you not then pray for the earth to open and swallow you for getting yourself into trouble like Bellerophon by carrying your book about?^[1]

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),^[2] 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.”

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 spend money even for things of no use to you? Come now, as far as I know—and I too am a Syrian^[3]—if you had not