Euripides says, in his Cretan Women. For they wish to eat and drink everything, never considering what the divine Plato says in his Protagoras, "That disputing about poetry, is like banquets of low and insignificant persons. For they, because they are unable in their drinking parties to amuse one another by their own talents, and by their own voices and conversation, by reason of their ignorance and stupidity, make female flute-players of great consequence, hiring at a high price sounds which they cannot utter themselves, I mean the music of flutes, and by means of this music they are able to get on with one another. But where the guests are gentlemanly, and accomplished, and well educated, you will not see any flute-playing women, or dancing women, or female harpers, but they are able themselves to pass the time with one another agreeably, without all this nonsense and trifling, by means of their own voices, speaking and hearing one another in turn with all decency, even if they drink a great deal of wine." And this is what all you Cynics do, O Cynulcus; you drink, or rather you get drunk, and then, like flute-players and dancing-women, you prevent all the pleasure of conversation: "living," to use the words of the same Plato, which he utters in his Philebus, "not the life of a man, but of some mollusk, or of some other marine animal which has life in a shell-encased body." 52. And Cynulcus, being very angry, said,--You glutton of a man, whose god is your belly, you know nothing else yourself, nor are you able to keep up an uninterrupted conversation, nor to recollect any history, nor to begin anything which may tend to throw a charm on any discussion. But you have been wasting all the time with questions of this sort, "Is there such and such a statement? Is there not? Has such and such a thing been said? Has it not been said?" And you attack and examine closely everything which occurs in anything which is said, collecting all your thorns--living continually As if among thistles, or plants of rough borage--