History of Monsters, page 166

There is no shortage of aphorisms criticizing human vices. Aristonymus, for instance, likened human life to a theater, where the worst individuals almost always secure the leading roles. Archytas used to say that just as even with the greatest care one cannot find a fish entirely free of bones, so too it is impossible to find a person without some measure of deceit mixed into their character. Thus, Erasmus quite rightly declared that humans are more inclined toward pleasure than virtue. He also noted that a person devoid of philosophy is useless for any function in life; he compared such a man to a vessel, whose integrity is only truly known when liquid is poured in—similarly, a man’s true nature is revealed when power is entrusted to him.

Diogenes, according to Laërtius, compared men who squander their fortunes on cooks, harlots, and flatterers to trees growing upon precipices, whose fruit is eaten not by humans, but by vultures and crows; he meant to signify that those who are slaves to their pleasures and their gullets are in no way truly human. This same Diogenes, once spotting a young man whose dress and gestures were insufficiently masculine, remarked: "Are you not ashamed to reject what nature has granted you? She made you a man, yet you fashion yourself into a woman."

Diogenes was also famous for carrying a lit lantern even at midday, claiming to be "searching for a man," because he judged the public morals of the city to be scarcely worthy of a human being. On another occasion, returning from the Olympic games, he was asked if he had seen a great crowd there; he replied that there was a vast crowd indeed, but very few men. Standing in the marketplace surrounded by a throng of people, he once cried out, "Come here, men!" When those standing around grew indignant and said, "Look, we are here," Diogenes drove them away with his staff, shouting even louder: "I called for men, not filth!" He was implying that the name "man" is hardly suitable for those who do not live according to reason.

According to Laërtius, when Stilpo was seen in a great crowd of people, someone remarked, "These men are gathering to see you as if you were a beast." Stilpo replied, "No, they come to see me as a true man," for people are accustomed to staring at strange beasts as a spectacle, whereas common men admire no one; in this way, he subtly insulted the interloper as someone who was not a "true man" himself. Anacharsis, recorded by Stobaeus, when asked what was most harmful to men, replied: "They are to themselves." Cato the Elder, after Lentulus had spat in his face, immediately wiped it clean and said: "I shall affirm to everyone, Lentulus, that those who say you have no mouth are mistaken." Thus, he wittily noted such great impudence.

King Canute of England checked a flatterer who claimed that everything turned at the King's whim with a famous gesture. He ordered his seat to be placed on the seashore, and when he had sat upon it, he spoke to the sea: "You are under my dominion, and the land where I sit is mine; I command you, therefore, not to rise onto my land, nor to wet the robes of your master." Meanwhile, the sea, according to its custom, soaked the King’s feet with its waves without any reverence. Then the King, leaping back, said: "Let all who inhabit the world know that the power of kings is vain, and that no one is worthy of the name of King except Him whose whim governs Heaven, Earth, and Sea." From then on, he never placed the crown upon his head again. Cyrus, according to Plutarch, used to say that those men who were unwilling to benefit themselves ought to be compelled to serve others; he meant that those born with a servile mind, useless to themselves, should be driven by authority to serve the convenience of others.

There also remain several aphorisms regarding the vices of women, especially the wicked ones. Secundus the Philosopher, when once asked what a wicked woman was, replied: "The shipwreck of man, the tempest of the home, the hindrance of peace, the captivity of life, a daily loss, a voluntary battle, a costly war, a suspicious anxiety, a clinging lioness, a decorated Scylla, a malicious animal, and a necessary evil."

When the Emperor Theophilus was looking for a wife, he summoned many girls of chosen beauty from all over. Seeing the virgin Icasia, who excelled in the gifts of beauty, he is said to have remarked: "From woman have flowed all evils." But she, not at all overcome with a blush, replied: "From woman also come forth better things." Diogenes, seeing talkative women conversing, once pronounced this judgment: "The asp borrows its poison from the viper."

When Democritus was asked why, being a man of great stature, he had married such a small wife, he is said to have re