Attack the young man with your biting sarcasm.
Once, when a young man was arguing against him with more boldness than usual, he said, “Will no one stop his mouth with the knout?”[36] And to a man who lay under the general imputation of low debauchery, and who argued with him that one thing was not greater than another, he asked him whether a cup holding two pints was not larger than one which held only one. There was a certain Chian named Hemon, exceedingly ugly, but who fancied himself good looking, and always went about in fine clothes; this man asked him one day, “If he thought that a wise man could feel attachment to him;” “Why should he not,” said he, “when they love even those who are less handsome than you, and not so well-dressed either?” and when the man, though one of the vilest characters possible, said to Arcesilaus as if he were addressing a very rigid man:—
O, noble man, may I a question put,
Or must I hold my tongue?
Arcesilaus replied:—
O wretched woman, why do you thus roughen
Your voice, not speaking in your usual manner?
And once, when he was plagued by a chattering fellow of low extraction, he said:—
The sons of slaves are always talking vilely.[37]