Kitap 5
6.89
Again, he has a sort of intermediate style of conversation which he employs when philosophers, generals and statesmen converse with each other. Furthermore, he wrote geometrical and dialectical works, and is, besides, everywhere versatile and lofty in diction, and a great adept at charming the reader’s mind.
6.89
It seems that he delivered his native city from oppressions by assassinating its ruler, as is stated in his work on Men of the Same Name by Demetrius of Magnesia, who also tells the following story about him: As a boy, and when he grew up, he kept a pet snake, and, being at the point of death, he ordered a trusted attendant to conceal the corpse but to place the snake on his bier, that he might seem to have departed to the gods.
6.90
All this was done. But while the citizens were in the very midst of the procession and were loud in his praise, the snake, hearing the uproar, popped up out of the shroud, creating widespread confusion. Subsequently, however, all was revealed, and they saw Heraclides, not as he appeared, but as he really was.
6.90
I have written of him as followsAnth. Pal. vii. 104.: You wished, Heraclides, to leave to all mankind a reputation that after death you lived as a snake.Or, reading ἄπαρτι for ἄπασι, wished to leave a report behind you that immediately after death you became a living snake. But you were deceived, you sophist, for the snake was really a brute beast, and you were detected as more of a beast than a sage. Hippobotus too has this tale.
