[119] Felices errore suo, &c., i. 459.
[120] Scrutabitur scholas nostras, et obiiciet philosophis congiaria, amicas, gulam: ostendet mihi alium in adulterio, alium in popina, alium in aula.—Seneca: Epist., i. 29.
[121] Philostratus, i. 7. The quaint turn of the version in the text is from Blount’s 1681 translation of the Life of Apollonius.
[122] Dion: Oratio 32, pp. 402-3 (Dindorf).
[123] See Dion: De Cognitione Dei (pp. 213-4) for an interesting comparison between the owl and the philosopher on the one hand, and the sophist and the peacock on the other. (Cf. Ad Alexandrinos, p. 406, where the sufferings of the faithful philosopher are in implied contrast to the rewards that await the brilliant sophist.)
[124] Iliad, ix. 312-3 (Chapman’s translation). This actual text is quoted in Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists (i. 25) as a criticism on some of the false and fantastic exercises of the Sophists. The “distant lapse” referred to in the text is constantly evident in the dramas of the best Athenian period. And history shows that there was a strong tendency in the Hellenic character agreeing with that indicated by the evidence of the dramatists, notwithstanding the outcry raised when Euripides summed up the whole matter in his famous line in the Hippolytus (Hipp. 612).
[125] Philostratus: Vitæ Sophistarum, lib. i. sec. 24.
[126] E.g., De Stoic. Repug., 1033 A, B; De Audiendo, 43 F.
[127] See frequent passages in Seneca’s letters to Lucilius, e.g. Ep. i. 16, 20. Cf. De Vita Beata, cap. 18, where Seneca defends himself and other philosophers against the charge “aliter loqueris: aliter vivis.” He will not be deterred from the pursuit of virtue by any truth human weakness may have to admit in the charge.
This note is well marked in both Aurelius and Epictetus (ii. 19. Cf. Aulus Gellius, xvii. 19). The praise of Ulysses at the end of the De Deo Socratis of Apuleius is couched in the same strain.