dizzards, fools, asses, madmen, so full of absurd and ridiculous tenets,
and brain-sick positions, that to his thinking never any old woman or sick
person doted worse. [200]Democritus took all from Leucippus, and left,
saith he, "the inheritance of his folly to Epicurus," [201]_insanienti dum
sapientiae_, &c. The like he holds of Plato, Aristippus, and the rest,
making no difference [202]"betwixt them and beasts, saving that they could
speak." [203]Theodoret in his tract, _De cur. grec. affect._ manifestly
evinces as much of Socrates, whom though that Oracle of Apollo confirmed to
be the wisest man then living, and saved him from plague, whom 2000 years
have admired, of whom some will as soon speak evil as of Christ, yet _re
vera_, he was an illiterate idiot, as [204]Aristophanes calls him,
_irriscor et ambitiosus_, as his master Aristotle terms him, _scurra
Atticus_, as Zeno, an [205]enemy to all arts and sciences, as Athaeneus, to
philosophers and travellers, an opiniative ass, a caviller, a kind of
pedant; for his manners, as Theod. Cyrensis describes him, a [206]
sodomite, an atheist, (so convict by Anytus) _iracundus et ebrius, dicax_,
&c. a pot-companion, by [207]Plato's own confession, a sturdy drinker; and
that of all others he was most sottish, a very madman in his actions and
opinions. Pythagoras was part philosopher, part magician, or part witch. If
you desire to hear more of Apollonius, a great wise man, sometime
paralleled by Julian the apostate to Christ, I refer you to that learned
tract of Eusebius against Hierocles, and for them all to Lucian's
_Piscator, Icaromenippus, Necyomantia_: their actions, opinions in general
were so prodigious, absurd, ridiculous, which they broached and maintained,
their books and elaborate treatises were full of dotage, which Tully _ad
Atticum_ long since observed, _delirant plerumque scriptores in libris
suis_, their lives being opposite to their words, they commended poverty to
others, and were most covetous themselves, extolled love and peace, and yet
persecuted one another with virulent hate and malice. They could give
precepts for verse and prose, but not a man of them (as [208]Seneca tells