III. Now Menedemus appears to have been a very severe and rigid man, on which account Crates, parodying a description, speaks of him thus:—
And Asclepiades the sage of Phlius,
And the Eretrian bull.
And Timon mentions him thus:—
Rise up, you frowning, bristling, frothy sage.
And he was a man of such excessive rigour of principle, that when Eurylochus, of Cassandrea, had been invited by Antigonus, to come to him in company with Cleippides, a youth of Cyzicus, he refused to go, for he was afraid lest Menedemus should hear of it; for he was very severe in his reproofs, and very free spoken. Accordingly, when a young man behaved with boldness towards him, he did not say a word, but took a bit of stick and drew on the floor an insulting picture; until the young man, perceiving the insult that was meant in the presence of numbers of people, went away. And when Hierocles, the governor of the Piræus, attacked him in the temple of Amphiaraus, and said a great deal about the taking of Eretria, he made no other reply beyond asking him what Antigonus’s object was in treating him as he did.
On another occasion, he said to a profligate man who was giving himself airs, “Do not you know that the cabbage is not the only plant that has a pleasant juice, but that radishes have it also?” And once, hearing a young man talk very loudly, he said, “See whom you have behind you.” When Antigonus consulted him whether he should go to a certain revel, he made no answer beyond desiring those who brought him the message, to tell him that he was the son of a king. When a stupid fellow once said something at random to him, he asked him whether he had a farm; and when he said that he had, and a large stock of cattle, he said, “Go then and look after them; lest, if you neglect them, you lose them, and that elegant rusticity of yours with them.” He was once asked whether a good man should marry, and his reply was, “Do I seem to you to be a good man, or not?” and when the other said he did; “Well,” said he, “and I am married.” On one occasion a person said that there were a great many good things, so he asked him how many; and whether he thought that there were more than a hundred. And as he could not bear the extravagance of one man who used frequently to invite him to dinner, once when he was invited he did not say a single word, but admonished him of his extravagance in silence, by eating nothing but olives.
IV. On account then of the great freedom of speech in which he indulged, he was very near while in Cyprus, at the court of Nicocreon, being in great danger with his friend Asclepiades. For when the king was celebrating a festival at the beginning of the month, and had invited them as he did all the other philosophers; Menedemus said, “If the assemblage of such men as are met here to-day is good, a festival like this ought to be celebrated every day: but if it is not good, even once is too often.” And as the tyrant made answer to this speech, “that he kept this festival in order to have leisure in it to listen to the philosophers,” he behaved with even more austerity than usual, arguing, even while the feast was going on, that it was right on every occasion to listen to philosophers; and he went on in this way till, if a flute-player had not interrupted their discussion, they would have been put to death. In reference to which, when they were overtaken by a storm in a ship, they say that Asclepiades said, “that the fine playing of a flute-player had saved them, but the freedom of speech of Menedemus had ruined them.”
V. But he was, they say, inclined to depart a good deal from the usual habits and discipline of a school, so that he never regarded any order, nor were the seats arranged around properly, but every one listened to him while lecturing, standing up or sitting down, just as he might chance to be at the moment, Menedemus himself setting the example of this irregular conduct.
VI. But in other respects, it is said that he was a nervous man, and very fond of glory; so that, as previously he and Asclepiades had been fellow journeymen of a builder, when Asclepiades was naked on the roof carrying mortar, Menedemus would stand in front of him to screen him when he saw any one coming.