en, only a short while ago, at the commencement of the
indictment, you heard them say, 'He, whom we accuse in your court, is
a philosopher of the most elegant appearance and a master of eloquence
not merely in Latin but also in Greek!' What a damning insinuation!
Unless I am mistaken, those were the very words with which Tannonius
Pudens, whom no one could accuse of being a master of eloquence, began
the indictment. I wish that these serious reproaches of beauty and
eloquence had been true. It would have been easy to answer in the
words, with which Homer makes Paris reply to Hector:--

[Greek: ou toi apoblet' esti theon erikudea dora.
hossa ken autoi dosin, hekon d' ouk an tis heloito].--

which I may interpret thus: 'The most glorious gifts of the gods are
in no wise to be despised; but the things which they are wont to give
are withheld from many that would gladly possess them.' Such would
have been my reply. I should have added that philosophers are not
forbidden to possess a handsome face. Pythagoras, the first to take
the name of 'philosopher', was the handsomest man of his day. Zeno
also, the ancient philosopher of Velia, who was the first to discover
that most ingenious device of refuting hypotheses by the method of
self-inconsistency, that same Zeno was--so Plato asserts--by far the
most striking in appearance of all the men of his generation. It is
further recorded of many other philosophers that they were comely of
countenance and added fresh charm to their personal beauty by their
beauty of character. But such a defence is, as I have already said,
far from me. Not only has nature given me but a commonplace
appearance, but continued literary labour has swept away such charm as
my person ever possessed, has reduced me to a lean habit of body,
sucked away all the freshness of life, destroyed my complexion and
impaired my vigour. As to my hair, which they with unblushing
mendacity declare I have allowed to grow long as an enhancement to my
personal attractions, you can judge of its elegance and beauty. As you
see, it is tangled, twisted and unkempt like a lump of tow, shaggy and
irregular in length, so knotted and matted that the tangle is past the
art of man to unravel. This is due not to mere carelessness in the
tiring of my hair, but to the fact that I never so much as comb or
part it. I think this is a sufficient refutation of the accusations
concerning my hair which they hurl against me as though