Letters

He is an enemy to his own parents but a friend to Pausanias the whoremonger, and though he swaggers like a man he allows himself to be used like a woman. He lords it over his own father but submits to degenerates. He regales his fancy with things by which all are disgusted, with foul language and with stories by which his hearers are pained; yet he never ceases to talk, as if he were a simple fellow and the soul of frankness.[*](Blass, who is inclined to reject this letter, calls attention to the Gorgianic antitheses in the preceding passage.)

I would not have written this had I not wished to stir in you the recollection of the vices that attach to him. For many terrible and shameful things, which a man would shrink from telling and would guard against mentioning in writing and, as I think, would be disgusted to hear of, each one of you, reminded by these words, knows to attach to this man, so that nothing indecent has been uttered by me and this man upon sight is a reminder to all of his own vices. Farewell.