θεούς,(709) ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς ὦν(710) ἐστιν ἡ πόλις πλήρης; ἡδονὴ δὲ πολλὴ καὶ χάριτες, ὁποίας ἄν τις εὐφραίνοιτο διηνεκῶς καρπούμενος, [D] ὁρῶν ὀρχουμένους ἄνδρας καὶ παιδάρια καὶ γύναια πολλά. (See there I am again, busy with my usual phrase‐making! I do not even allow myself to speak out at random fearlessly and freely, but with my usual awkwardness I am laying information against myself. It is thus and in words like these that one ought to address men who want to be free not only with respect to those who govern them but to the gods also, in order that one may be considered well‐disposed towards them, “like an indulgent father,”(711) even though one is by nature an ill‐conditioned person like myself: “Bear with them then, when they hate and abuse you in secret or even openly, since you thought that those who applauded you with one accord in the temples were only flattering you. For surely you did not suppose that you would be in harmony with the pursuits or the lives or the temperaments of these men. I grant that. But who will bear with this other habit of yours? You always sleep alone at night, and there is no way of softening your savage and uncivilised temper—since all avenues are closed to anything that might sweeten your disposition,—and the worst of all these evils is that you delight in living that sort of life and have laid pleasure under a general ban. Then can you feel aggrieved if you hear yourself spoken of in such terms? No, you ought to feel grateful to those who out of kindness of heart admonish you wittily in anapaestic verse to shave your cheeks smooth, and then, beginning with yourself, first to show to this laughter‐loving people all sorts of fine spectacles, mimes, dancers, shameless women, boys who in their beauty emulate women, and men who have not only their jaws shaved smooth but their whole bodies too, so that those who meet them may think them smoother than women; yes and feasts too and general festivals, not, by Zeus, the sacred ones at which one is bound to behave with sobriety. No, we have had enough of those, like the oak tree in the proverb;(712) we are completely surfeited with them. The Emperor sacrificed once in the temple of Zeus, then in the temple of Fortune; he visited the temple of Demeter three times in succession.” (I have in fact forgotten how many times I entered the shrine of Daphne, which had been first abandoned owing to the carelessness of its guardians, and then destroyed by the audacious acts of godless men.(713)) “The Syrian New Year arrived, and again the Emperor went to the temple of Zeus the Friendly One. Then came the general festival, and the Emperor went to the shrine of Fortune. Then, after refraining on the forbidden day,(714) again he goes to the temple of Zeus the Friendly One, and offers up prayers according to the custom of our ancestors. Now who could put up with an Emperor who goes to the temples so often, when it is in his power