Miscellanies 6.2.5

I shall pass over in silence the doctrines of philosophy, since those who divide themselves into the schools acknowledge in writing, so as not to be convicted of ingratitude, that they received the most important of their doctrines from Socrates. Using the testimonies of a few men who are much talked about and of good repute among the Greeks, and exposing their thieving kind, without regard to the order of their dates, I shall turn to what follows. Well then, when Orpheus composed: “So there was nothing more shameless or more chilling than a woman,” Homer says outright: “So there is nothing more dreadful or more shameless than a woman.” And when Musaeus wrote: “For skill is always much better than strength,” Homer says: “By skill the woodcutter prevails rather than by force.” Again, when Musaeus composed: “And so too the grain-giving field grows leaves: some wither on the ash trees, and others it grows; so too it whirls round the generation and race of men,” Homer rewrites it: “Of the leaves, the wind pours some on the ground, but the flourishing forest grows others, and the season of spring comes on: so of the generation of men, one grows, another ceases.” Again, when Homer said: “It is not holy to boast over slain men,” Archilochus and Cratinus write, the one: “For it is not noble to jeer at men who have died,” and Cratinus in the Laconians: “This again is fearful for men, to boast greatly over slain warriors.”