E P I S T O L A

i Book 26, chapter 21. war, as if consecrated to Apollo, they will fear to kick back. Whose successors today (as Caelius Rhodiginus says) almost lick at the truth with their own words, overwhelm the sparks of reason with Cyclopean barbarism, and, as if in the grass, smother the first flower of an ingenuous sowing. It is their policy to fight against common opinion with some reasoning, whether true or false, to affirm nothing, in the manner of the Academics, and to invade suddenly and from ambush things that have been sufficiently and skillfully instructed and composed by others, to create ruins, and, as if in the despair of certain knowledge, to follow only that which seems likely. But it is time that we eventually understand that this Thrasonical boastful, after the character Thraso in Terence's Eunuchus and ambitious ostentation of vain science is of no moment; nor should we again be terrified by empty noise if someone throws those vain stalks, even if he does so with no less confidence than if he were hurling thunderbolts from heaven. But so that all the study of our