Truly, what you are now doing is the reverse ot
what you are aiming to do. You expect to get a
reputation for learning by zealously buying up the
finest books, but the thing goes by opposites and in
a way becomes proof of your ignorance. Indeed,
you do not buy the finest ; you rely upon men who
bestow their praise hit-and-miss, you are a godsend to the people that tell such lies about books,
and a treasure-trove ready to hand to those who
traffic in them. Why, how can you tell what books
are old and highly valuable, and what are worthless
and simply in wretched repair Not old, though they look old. — unless you judge
them by the extent to which they are eaten into and
cut up, calling the book-worms into counsel to settle
the question ? As to their correctness and freedom
from mistakes, what judgement have you, and what
is it worth ?

 

Yet suppose I grant you that you have selected the
very éditions de luxe that were prepared by Callinus
or by the famous Atticus with the utmost care. Both Atticus and Callinus are mentioned again as scribes in this piece (24) ; Callinus is not elsewhere mentioned, but Atticus is supposed to be the “publisher” of the Atticiana, editions which had great repute in antiquity. It is hardly likely that he is Cicero’s friend. 



 

What good, you strange person, will it do you to own
them, when you do not understand their beauty and
will never make use of it one whit more than a blind
man would enjoy beauty in favourites? To be sure you
look at your books with your eyes open and quite as
much as you like, and you read some of them aloud
with great fluency, keeping your eyes in advance of
your lips; but I do not consider that enough, unless
you know the merits and defects of each passage in
their contents, unless you understand what every
sentence means, how to construe the words, what
expressions have been accurately turned by the
writer in accordance with the canon of good use, and
what are false, illegitimate, and counterfeit.

 

Come now, do you maintain that without instruction you know as much as we? How can you,
unless, like the shepherd of old, Hesiod : see the Theogony29 ff. you once received a
branch of laurel from the Muses? Helicon, which the
goddesses are said to haunt, you never even heard of,
I take it, and your haunts in your boyhood were not
the same as ours. That you should even mention
the Muses is impious. They would not have shrunk
from showing themselves to a shepherd, a hardbitten, hairy man displaying rich tan on his body,
but as for the like of you—in the name of your lady
of Lebanon Aphrodite, perhaps, or Astarte; in later times there was a notorious cult of Aphrodite on Lebanon: Eusebius, Vit. Constantini 3, 53. dispense me for the present from giving
a full description of you in plain language !—they
would never have deigned, I am sure, to come near
you, but instead of giving you laurel they would have
scourged you with myrtle or sprays of mallow and
would have made you keep your distance from those



 

regions, so as not to pollute either Olmeios or
Hippocrene, whose waters only thirsty flocks or the
clean lips of shepherds may drink. 
No matter how shameless you are and how
courageous in such matters, you would never dare to
say that you have had an education, or that you ever
troubled yourself to associate intimately with books,
or that So-and-so was your teacher and you went to
school with So-and-so.

 

You expect to make up for
all that now by one single expedient—by getting
many books. On that theory, collect and keep all
those manuscripts of Demosthenes that the orator
wrote with his own hand, and those of Thucydides
that were found to have been copied, likewise by
Demosthenes, eight times over, and even all the
books that Sulla sent from Athens to Italy. Of the copies of his own works and those of Thucydides written by Demosthenes we have no other notice; Sulla took to Italy what was reported to have been the library of Aristotle : Plut. Sulla 26. What
would you gain by it in the way of learning, even if
you should put them under your pillow and sleep
on them or should glue them together and walk
about dressed in them? “A monkey is always a
monkey,” says the proverb, “even if he has birthtokens of gold.” These were trinkets put in the cradle or the clothing of a child when it was abandoned, as proof of good birth and as a possible means of identification later. Hyginus (187) calls them insignia ingenwitatis. Although you have a book in
your hand and read all the time, you do not understand a single thing that you read, but you are like
the donkey that listens to the lyre and wags his ears. 
If possessing books made their owner learned, they
would indeed be a possession of great price, and only
rich men like you would have them, since you could
buy them at auction, as it were, outbidding us poor




 

men. In that case, however, who could rival the
dealers and booksellers for learning, who possess and
sell so many books? But if you care to look into
the matter, you will see that they are not much
superior to you in that point; they are barbarous of
speech and obtuse in mind like you—just what one
would expect people to be who have no conception
of what is good and bad. Yet you have only two or
three books which they themselves have sold you,
while they handle books night and day.

 

What good,
then, does it do you to buy them—unless you think
that even the book-cases are learned because they
contain so many of the works of the ancients ! 
Answer me this question, if you will—or better,
as you are unable to answer, nod or shake your
head inreply. If a man who did not know how to
play the flute should buy the instrument of Timotheus
or that of Ismenias, Famous Theban flute-players of the fourth century B.c. for Timotheus, see also Lucian’s Harmonides. for which [smenias paid seven
talents in Corinth, would that make him able to play,
or would it do him no good to own it since he did
not know how to use it as a musician would? You
did well to shake your head. Even if he obtained the
flute of Marsyas or Olympus, he could not play without previous instruction. And what if a man should
get the bow of Heracles without being a Philoctetes
so as to be able to draw it and shoot straight ? What
do you think about him? That he would make any
showing worthy of an archer? You shake your head
at this, too. So, of course, with a man who does not
know how to steer, and one who has not practised
riding ; if the one should take the helm of a fine
vessel, finely constructed in every detail both for
beauty and for seaworthiness, and the other should


 

get an Arab or a “Centaur” or a “Koppa-brand,” The “Centaur” horses probably came from Thessaly, the home of the Centaurs and a land of good horses. The “Koppa-brand” were marked ϙ, which in the alphabet of Corinth corresponded to K, and was used (on coins, for instance) as the abbreviation for Korinthos. 
each would give proof, I have no doubt, that he did
not know what to do with his property. Do you
assent to this? Take my advice, now, and assent to
this also; if an ignorant man like you should buy
many books, would he not give rise to gibes at himself for his ignorance? Why do you shrink from
assenting to this also? To do so is a clear giveaway, I maintain, and everybody who sees it at once
quotes that very obvious proverb: “What has a dog
to do with a bath ?”