Nor could I approve of Heraclitus, who said "I searched out myself," because he was self-taught and arrogant. Nor would I praise him for hiding his poem in the temple of Artemis, so that mysteriously its publication might come about later; for those who concern themselves with these matters say that the tragic poet Euripides, going down and reading it, gradually committed to memory and diligently handed down the obscurity of Heraclitus. But death exposed his ignorance; for, seized with dropsy and practicing medicine as he had philosophy, he smeared himself with cow-dung, and when the dung had hardened and produced convulsions of the whole body, he died in spasms. As for Zeno, who declares through his doctrine of conflagration that the same persons rise again to do the same things—I mean Anytus and Meletus to accuse, Busiris to murder his guests, and Heracles again to perform his labors—he must be rejected; in his account of the conflagration he introduces more wicked men than righteous, since there have been but few such as Socrates and Heracles and certain others, and not many. For the bad will be found far more numerous than the good. And on his view God will be shown to be a maker of evils, dwelling in drains and worms and unspeakable things. The boastfulness of Empedocles the eruptions of fire in Sicily exposed, since, not being a god, he falsely claimed all but to be one. I laugh too at the old-wives' tales of Pherecydes, and at the inheritance of doctrine in Pythagoras, and at Plato's imitation of it, even though some are unwilling to admit it. For who would testify in favor of the dog-marriage of Crates, and would not rather, renouncing such men's conceited verbosity, turn toward seeking what is truly earnest? Therefore let not the festive throngs of philosophers and non-philosophers sweep you away, who lay down doctrines contradictory to themselves, each blurting out whatever comes into his head. There are many clashes even among themselves: one hates the other; they hold opposing opinions and, out of vainglory, claim for themselves the foremost places. It would have been fitting neither to fawn upon kings with prejudice nor to flatter rulers, but to wait until the great men come to them.