Timon, he retire into some desert and there enjoy his wisdom to himself.

But, to return to my design, what power was it that drew those stony,
oaken, and wild people into cities but flattery? For nothing else is
signified by Amphion and Orpheus' harp. What was it that, when the common
people of Rome were like to have destroyed all by their mutiny, reduced
them to obedience? Was it a philosophical oration? Least. But a
ridiculous and childish fable of the belly and the rest of the members.
And as good success had Themistocles in his of the fox and hedgehog. What
wise man's oration could ever have done so much with the people as
Sertorius' invention of his white hind? Or his ridiculous emblem of
pulling off a horse's tail hair by hair? Or as Lycurgus his example of
his two whelps? To say nothing of Minos and Numa, both which ruled their
foolish multitudes with fabulous inventions; with which kind of toys that
great and powerful beast, the people, are led anyway. Again what city
ever received Plato's or Aristotle's laws, or Socrates' precepts? But, on
the contrary, what made the Decii devote themselves to the infernal gods,
or Q. Curtius to leap into the gulf, but an empty vainglory, a most
bewitching siren? And yet 'tis strange it should be so condemned by those
wise philosophers. For what is more foolish, say they, than for a
suppliant suitor to flatter the people, to buy their favor with gifts, to
court the applauses of so many fools, to please himself with their
acclamations, to be carried on the people's shoulders as in triumph, and
have a brazen statue in the marketplace? Add to this the adoption of
names and surnames, those divine honors given to a man of no reputation,
and the deification of the most wicked tyrants with public ceremonies;
most foolish things, and such as one Democritus is too little to laugh
at. Who denies it? And yet from this root sprang all the great acts of
the heroes which the pens of so many eloquent men have extolled to the
skies. In a word, this folly is that that laid the foundation of cities;