Oration to the Greeks 2

For what noble thing have you produced by your philosophy? And which of your most serious men has been free of boasting? Diogenes, who prided himself on his self-sufficiency with the boast of his tub, was seized with an intestinal blockage from eating a raw octopus and died of his intemperance. Aristippus, walking about in purple, lived a dissolute life, true to his teaching. Plato, philosopher though he was, was sold by Dionysius because of his gluttony. And Aristotle, who ignorantly set a limit to providence and confined happiness to the things he himself liked, flattered Alexander most boorishly, forgetting that he was a mere youth; and Alexander, quite in the Aristotelian manner, shut up his own friend because he would not do obeisance to him, and carried him about like a bear or a leopard. He certainly obeyed his teacher's doctrines, displaying his courage and virtue at banquets, running through with his spear his intimate and very dear friend, and then weeping and starving himself on the pretext of grief, so as not to be hated by his own people. I would laugh too at those who to this day make use of Aristotle's doctrines: they say that the things beneath the moon are without providence, yet they themselves, who are nearer the earth than the moon and below its course, act as providence for what has none; and those who have neither beauty nor wealth nor bodily strength nor noble birth have, according to Aristotle, no happiness. Let such men do the philosophizing!