Book 4
9.63
His voice was extremely powerful, so that the keeper of the gymnasium sent to him and requested him not to shout so loud. To which he replied, Then give me something by which to regulate my voice. Thereupon by a happy hit the man replied in the words, You have a regulator in your audience. His talent for criticizing opponents was remarkable, and he was a formidable controversialist. And for the reasons already given he further declined invitations to dine out. One of his pupils was Mentor the Bithynian, who tried to ingratiate himself with a concubine of Carneades; so on one occasion (according to Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History), when Mentor came to lecture, Carneades in the course of his remarks let fall these lines by way of parody at his expense:
9.64
Hither comes an old man of the sea, infallible, like to Mentor in person and in voice.Carneades applies two lines from the Odyssey, namely iv. 384 and (with a change to the masculine participle) ii. 268 or 401. Him I proclaim to have been banished from this school. Thereupon the other got up and replied: Those on their part made proclamation, and these speedily assembled.Hom. Il. ii. 52.
