Stoicism - College of Stoic Philosophers

PROFESSIONAL MORALISTS AT ROME. 125vanity of the public speaker who forgot awhile thegraver interests committed to his chargein the wishto dazzle those who heard him. The dialectic subtletyand the pedantry of logical parade which weresometimes encouraged in the Stoic schools had adangerous effect upon unbalanced minds, which, onthe strength of a few sophistic puzzles and sometechnicalities of mood and figure, thrust themselvesforward in the assurance of half-educated pride. Onesuch Aulus Gellius describes at length as dogmatisingmost offensively in the cultivated circle which wasgathered in the hospitable seat of Herodes Atticus,at Cephissia. The braggart paraded his glib phrasesand pretensions of omniscience in language bristlingwith the terms of logic ;but at last, to the relief ofall concerned, he was silenced by their host, who hadthe Table-talk of Epictetus brought to him, and readan appropriate passage, which distinguished in causticstyle the features of the true student and of the falsepretender to philosophy.^We have already spoken of the Cynic vagrants whodonned the sage's mantle and often in their coarseeffrontery dragged high professions through the mud.One such we read of as pushing rudely in among thefriends who were on a visit to Herodes, demandingalms of right, and grumbling because he was not recognisedas a compeer. "A beard and staff, indeed, Isee," was the"retort ; but no philosopher."Such abuses were apparent on the surface, and'Aulus Gellius, i. 2.