18
Furthermore, would it not be discreditable if someone, on seeing you with a book in your hand(youalways have one, no matter what), should ask what orator or historian or poet it was by, and you, knowing from the title, should easily answer that question; and if then—for such topics often spin themselves out to some length in conversation—he should either commend or criticise something in its contents, and you should be at a loss and have nothing to say? Would you not then pray for the earth to open and swallow you for getting yourself into trouble like Bellerophon by carrying your book about?The letter that Bellerophon carried to the King of Lycia contained a request that he be put to death: Iliad 6, 155-195.
19
When Demetrius, the Cynic, while in Corinth, saw an ignorant fellow reading a beautiful book (it was the Bacchae of Euripides, I dare say, and he was at the place where the messenger reports the fate of Pentheus and the deed of Agave),1041 ff. he snatched it away and tore it up, saying: “It is better for Pentheus to be torn to tatters by me once for all than by you repeatedly.”
