wriggling after glory as made him not only to disown his masters and scuffle about syllables and accents with his fellow-pedant Democritus (whose doctrines he stole verbatim), and to tell his disciples there never was a wise man in the world besides himself, but also to put it in writing how Colotes performed adoration to him, as he was one day philosophizing, by touching his knees, and that his own brother Neocles was used from a child to say, “There neither is, nor ever was in the world, a wiser man than Epicurus,” and that his mother had just so many atoms within her as, when they came together, must have produced a complete wise man? May not a man then—as Callicratidas once said of the Athenian admiral Conon, that he whored the sea—as well say of Epicurus that he basely and covertly forces and ravishes Fame, by not enjoying her publicly but ruffling and debauching her in a corner? For as men’s bodies are oft necessitated by famine, for want of other food, to prey against nature upon themselves, a like mischief to this does vain-glory create in men’s minds, forcing them, when they hunger after praise and cannot obtain it from other men, at last to commend themselves. 19. And do not they then that stand so well affected towards applause and fame themselves own they cast away very extraordinary pleasures, when they decline magistrature, public offices, and the favor and confidences of princes, from whom Democritus once said the grandest blessings of human life are derived? For he will never induce any mortal to believe, that he that could so highly value and please himself with the attestation of his brother Neocles and the adoration of his friend Colotes would not, were he clapped by all the Greeks at the Olympiads, go quite out of his wits and even hollow for joy, or rather indeed be elated in the manner spoken of by Sophocles, Puffed like the down of a gray-headed thistle.