The Ignorant Book Collector (11-15)

It would not be out of place to tell you another story about something that happened in Lesbos long ago. They say that when the women of Thrace tore Orpheus to pieces, his head and his lyre fell into the Hebrus, and were carried out into the Aegean Sea; and that the head floated along on the lyre, singing a dirge (so the story goes) over Orpheus,

In after time, however, Neanthus, the son of Pittacus the tyrant, heard how the lyre charmed animals and plants and stones, and made music even after the death of Orpheus without anyone’s touching it; so he fell in love with the thing, ‘tampered with the priest, and by means of a generous bribe prevailed upon him to substitute another similar lyre, and give him the one of Orpheus. After securing it, he did not think it safe to play it in the city by day, but went out into the suburbs at night with it under his cloak, and then, taking it in hand, struck and jangled the strings, untrained and unmusical lad that he was, expecting that under his touch the lyre would make wonderful music with which he could charm and enchant everybody, and indeed that he would become immortal, inheriting the musical genius of Orpheus. At length the dogs (there were many of them there), brought together by the noise, tore him to pieces; so his fate, at least, was like that of Orpheus, and only the dogs answered his call. By that it became very apparent that it was not the lyre which had wrought the spell, but the skill and the singing of Orpheus, the only distinctive gifts that he had from his mother; while the lyre was just a piece of property, no better than any other stringed instrument.

But why do I talk to you of Orpheus and Neanthus, when even in our own time there was and still is, I think, a man who paid three thousand drachmas for the earthenware lamp of Epictetus the Stoic: He thought, I suppose, that if he should read by — that lamp at night, he would forthwith acquire the wisdom of Epictetus in his dreams and would be just like that marvellous old man.

And only a day or two ago another man paid a talent for the staff which Proteus the Cynic laid aside before leaping into the fire;[*] and he keeps this treasure and displays it just as the Tegeans do the skin of the Calydonian boar, the Thebans the bones of Geryon, and the Memphites the tresses of Isis. Yet the original owner of this marvellous possession surpassed even you yourself in ignorance and indecency. You see what a wretched state the collector is in: in all conscience he needs a staff—on his pate.

They say that Dionysius[*] used to write tragedy in a very feeble and ridiculous style, so that Philoxenus[*] was often thrown into the quarries on account of it, not being able to control his laughter. Well, when he discovered that he was being laughed at, he took great pains to procure the wax-tablets on which Aeschylus used to write, thinking that he too would be inspired and possessed with divine frenzy in virtue of the tablets. But for all that, what he wrote on those very tablets was far more ridiculous than what he had written before: for example,

Doris, the wife of Dionysius,

Is dead—

Alackaday, a right good wife I’ve lost!

'Tis of themselves alone that fools make sport.[*]