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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41

'You dissected a fish,' he says. Who can call this a crime in a philosopher which would be no crime in a butcher or cook? 'You dissected a fish.' Perhaps you object to the fact that it was raw. You would not regard it as criminal if I had explored its stomach and cut up its delicate liver after it was cooked, as you teach the boy Sicinius Pudens to do with his own fish at meals. And yet it is a greater crime for a philosopher to eat fish than to inspect them. Are augurs to be allowed to explore the livers of victims and may not a philosopher look at them too, a philosopher who knows that he can draw omens from every animal, that he is the high-priest of every god? Do you bring that as a reproach against me which is one of the reasons for the admiration with which Maximus and myself regard Aristotle? Unless you drive his works from the libraries and snatch them from the hands of students you cannot accuse me. But enough! I have said almost more on this subject than I ought.

See, too, how they contradict themselves. They say that I sought my wife in marriage with the help of the black art and charms drawn from the sea at the very time when they acknowledge me to have been in the midmost mountains of Gaetulia, where, I suppose, Deucalion's deluge has made it possible to find fish! I am, however, glad that they do not know that I have read Theophrastus' 'On beasts that bite and sting' and Nicander 'On the bites of wild animals'; otherwise they would have accused me of poisoning as well! As a matter of fact I have acquired a knowledge of these subjects thanks to my reading of Aristotle and my desire to emulate him. I owe something also to the advice of my master Plato, who rays that those who make such investigations as these 'pursue a delightful form of amusement which they will never regret.'