FRANKNESS
When I saw, however, that many were not in love with Philosophy, but simply coveted the reputation of the thing, and that although in all the obvious, commonplace matters which anyone can easily copy they were very like worthy men (in beard, I mean, and walk and garb), in their life and actions, however, they contradicted their outward appearance and reversed your practice and sullied the dignity of the profession, I became angry. The case seemed to me to be as if some actor in tragedy who was soft and womanish should act the part of Achilles or Theseus, or even Heracles himself, without either walking or speaking as a hero should, but showing off airs and graces in a mask of such dignity. Even Helen or Polyxena would never suffer such a man to resemble them too closely, let alone Heracles, the conquering hero, who, in my opinion, would very soon smash both man and mask with a few strokes of his club for making him out so disgracefully effeminate.
Just so with me; when I saw you so treated by those others, I could not brook the shame, of their impersonation when they made bold, though but apes, to wear heroic masks, or to copy the ass of Cumae who put on a lion’s skin and claimed to be himself a lion, braying in a very harsh and fearsome way at the ignorant Cumaeans, until at length a foreigner, who had often seen lions and asses, exposed him and chased him away by beating him with sticks.
