Selecta ex Aeliano

before he went out, nor did anyone who had business with him enter, until the servant had called this out to him three times each day. He would say to him: "Philip, you are a man."

XXXII. (Book 9, 24.)

Smindyridas the Sybarite went to such an extent of luxury (for it was the habit of all Sybarites to live in luxury and dissolve their lives in pleasure; but Smindyridas more so) that, having rested upon rose petals and slept on them, he rose saying he had blisters from the bed. He would hardly have laid himself down on a pallet, or a straw bed, or on grass growing on a slope, or on a bull's hide as Diomedes did, which is fitting for a hardened and noble soldier:

Underneath he spread the hide of an ox that lives in the field.

XXXIII. (Book 9, 29.)

Late at night, Socrates was returning from a dinner. Certain profligate youths, having learned of his route, lay in ambush, holding lit torches and wearing masks of the Erinnyes Furies. It was their custom to play jokes on others because of their idleness, which tended toward the worse. Seeing them, Socrates was not disturbed. Instead, he stopped and asked them questions, just as he did with others in the Lyceum or the Academy.

Because Alcibiades was ambitious to send many gifts to Socrates, Xanthippe was astonished by what was sent and demanded that he take them. He said: