The Essays and Hymns of Synesius of Cyrene, Vol. 2

the most fearless of wild beasts. These fingers of mine have been rubbed against shovels and hunting-spears rather than pens—unless by "reed" you should mean the reed that is an arrow, instead of the author's.

5So now it is not to be wondered at if my fingers have clung to that tool. I shall never disgrace my ancestral rusticity, nor shall I come on the scene rounding off little sentences, forewords, and preludes or the like. I shall pursue what I consider the best course, 10even for the nature of a rustic, by setting the naked expressions of thought in full view. I shall fight with facts as weapons, only by turning the pitch of my voice from argument to vehemence, from the Dorian note, as they say, to the Phrygian. Musical modes in ancient Greece associated with different emotional states; Dorian being stable, Phrygian being more intense or emotional. But I need breath adequate to my undertakings—breath which, I prophesy, my heart will provide me in abundance.

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155. My argument, then, will posit that of all men, the man who is bald has the least reason to feel ashamed. For what does it matter if his head is bald, so long as his mind is shaggy, as was the case with the descendant of Aeacus A reference to Achilles, who was a descendant of Aeacus., whom poetry sang of? This man cared little enough for his locks of hair, which, actually, he 20presented to a corpse; they are, indeed, a sort of corpse—a lifeless portion attached to living beings. Original: Iliad, xxiii. 141 ff. Thus, those animals that are the most deprived of intelligence are clothed with hair all over their bodies, whereas man, inasmuch as his lot in life is more brilliant, is the most bare of this natural burden. But so that 25he may not boast of having no taint of fellowship with what is mortal, he is covered with hair in a few places. He, therefore, who has no hair anywhere is to the normal man what man is to the brute. And just as man is the most intelligent and at the same time the least hairy of earthly creatures, conversely it is admitted 30that of all domestic animals the sheep is the stupidest, and that this is why it puts forth its hair with no discrimination, but