In short, if you believe yourselves superior to the beasts in fortitude, why do your poets call those that behave themselves most valiantly against their enemies wolf-breasted, lion-hearted, and compare them to wild boars; but never call the courage of lions man-like, or resemble the strength of a wild boar to that of a man? But as they call the swift wind-footed, and the beautiful Godlike-formed, hyperbolizing in their similes; so when they extol the gallantry of the stout in battle, they derive their comparisons from the superior in bravery. The reason is, because courage is as it were the tincture and edge of fortitude; which the beasts make use of unmixed in their combats, but in you being mixed with reason, like wine diluted with water, it gives way to danger and loses the opportunity. And some of you there are who deny that courage is requisite in battle, and therefore laying it aside make use of sober reason; which they do well for their preservation, but are shamefully beside the cushion, in point of strength and revenge. How absurd is it therefore for you to complain of Nature, because she did not furnish your bodies with goads and teeth and crooked claws to defend yourselves, when at the same time you would disarm the soul of her natural weapons? 5. ULYSSES. In good truth, Gryllus, you are grown, in my conceit, a notable sophister, to discourse at this rate out of a hog’s snout, and yet to handle your argument so strenuously. But why have you not all this while spoke a word of temperance? GRYLLUS. Because I thought you would have contradicted first what I have already said. But you are in haste to hear what I have to say concerning temperance, because that, being the husband of a most temperate and chaste wife, you believe you have set us an example of temperance by abstaining from Circe’s embraces. And yet in this you differ nothing from all the beasts; for neither do they desire to approach their superiors, but they pursue their pleasures and amours among those of their own tribe. No wonder is it then, if—like the Mendesian goat in Egypt, which is reported to have been shut up with several most beautiful women, yet never to have offered copulation with them, but when he was at liberty, with a lustful fury flew upon the she-goats—so thou, though a man addicted greatly to venereal pleasures, yet being a man, hast no desire to sleep with a goddess. And for the chastity of thy Penelope, the ten thousand rooks and daws that chatter it abroad do but make it ridiculous and expose it to contempt, their being not one of those birds but, if she looses her mate, continues a widow, not for a small time, but for nine ages of men; so that there is not one of those female rooks that does not surpass in chastity thy fair Penelope above nine times.