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All this is not so bad, perhaps. But if Divesf himself has a turn for writing poetry or prose and recites his own compositions at dinner, then you must certainly split yourself applauding and flattering him and excogitating new styles of praise. Some of them wish to be admired for their beauty also, and they must hear themselves called an Adonis or a Hyacinthus, although sometimes they have a yard of nose. If you withhold your praise, off you go at once to the quarries of Dionysius because you are jealous and are plotting against your master. They must be philosophers and rhetoricians, too, and if they happen to commit a solecism, precisely on that account their language must seem full of the flavour of Attica and of Hymettus, and it must be the law to speak that way in future.
