For what sort of things are your teachings too? Who would not scoff at your public festivals, which, celebrated on the pretext of wicked demons, turn men toward disgrace? I have often seen a certain person, and having seen, I marveled, and after marveling I despised him—how within he is one thing, but outwardly counterfeits what he is not; mincing exceedingly and contorting himself in every way, now flashing with his eyes, now bending both hands, raving through a clay-painted face, and becoming now Aphrodite, now Apollo—a single accuser of all the gods, an epitome of superstition, a slanderer of heroic deeds, an actor of murders, a recorder of adulteries, a treasury of madness, an instructor of catamites, an occasion for the condemned—and such a man praised by all. But I declined him as one wholly lying, both his godlessness and his practices and the man himself. And you are led off as plunder by these, and you revile those who do not share in your dealings. I do not wish to gape after many singers, and I do not wish to be in sympathy with the man who nods and moves contrary to nature. What marvelous or excellent thing is done among you? They pipe through their nostrils shameful things, and they move in motions that ought not to be, and your daughters and your sons watch those who play the sophist on stage as to how one ought to commit adultery. Fine are your lecture-halls, proclaiming everything that is wickedly transacted by night, and delighting the hearers with the utterances of shameful words. And fine too are your poets, the liars, who through figures deceive their hearers.