I should like to tell you some of the responses
that were given to Rutilianus. Asking about his
son by a former marriage, who was then in the full
bloom of youth, he enquired who should be appointed
his tutor in his studies, The reply was:

 Be it Pythagoras; aye, and the good bard, master
of warfare. 

Then after a few days the boy died, and Alexander
was at his wit’s end, with nothing to say to his critics,
as the oracle had been shown up so obviously. But
Rutilianus himself, good soul, made haste to defend
the oracle by saying that the god had predicted precisely this outcome, and on account of it had bidden
him to select as his tutor nobody then alive, but
rather Pythagoras and Homer, who died long ago,
with whom, no doubt, the lad was then studying

 

in Hades. What fault, then, should we find with
Alexander if he thought fit to amuse himself at the
expense of such homunculi?