The Defense

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 as Catullus says, after the filthy fashion in vogue among the Iberians.

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 What is there so lascivious in all my verses compared with that one line? I will say nothing of the writings of Diogenes the Cynic, of Zeno the founde

 Now let me read you the others also which they read last as being the most intemperate in expression.

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 There is another poem by Plato dealing conjointly with the boys Alexis and Phaedrus:

 Without citing any further examples I will conclude by quoting a line addressed by Plato to Dion of Syracuse:

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 The divine Hadrian, when he honoured the tomb of his friend the poet Voconius with an inscription in verse from his own pen, wrote thus:

 words which he would never have written had he regarded verse of somewhat too lively a wit as proving their author to be a man of immoral life. I reme

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 The lines which follow are so wonderful, that had you read them you would envy me my wallet even more than you envy me my marriage with Pudentilla.

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 But you who take such exception to fish attribute far different instruments to magicians, charms not to be torn from new-born foreheads, but to be cut

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 Similarly in another passage he says:

 But never in the works of Homer did Proteus anoint his face nor Ulysses his magic trench, nor Aeolus his windbags, nor Helen her mixing bowl, nor Circ

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 He glorified many fish in other verses, stating where each was to be found and whether they were best fried or stewed, and yet he is not blamed for it

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 These words, which I have quoted in Greek, have been selected by Rufinus and separated from their context. He has taken them round as a confession on

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39

What do you think? Is it disgraceful for a philosopher who is no rude and unlearned person of the reckless Cynic type, but who remembers that he is a disciple of Plato, is it disgraceful for such an one to know and care for such learning or to be ignorant and indifferent? To know how far such things reveal the workings of providence, or to swallow all the tales his father and mother told him of the immortal gods?

Quintus Ennius wrote a poem on dainties: he there enumerates countless species of fish, which of course he had carefully studied. I remember a few lines and will recite them:

Clipea's sea-weasels are of all the best,

for 'mice' the place is Aenus; oysters rough

in greatest plenty from Abydos come.

The sea-comb's found at Mitylene and

Ambracian Charadrus, and I praise

Brundisian sargus: take him, if he's big.

Know that Tarentum's small sea-boar is prime;

the sword-fish at Surrentum thou shouldst buy;

Blue fish at Cumae. What! Have I passed by

Scarus? The brain of Jove is not less sweet.

You catch them large and good off Nestor's home.

Have I passed by the black-tail and the 'thrush',

the sea-merle and the shadow of the sea?

Best to Corcyra go for cuttle-fish,

for the acarne and the fat sea-skull

the purple-fish, the little murex too,

mice of the sea and the sea-urchin sweet.