Romans. He added a story of one of our learned men, whose life had been blameless and whose teaching had been of the One True God. "Yet," said the Epicurean, "what befell this teacher of truth in his old age? His god delivered him into the hands of persecutors, who placed his tongue between the teeth of a dog which had been made exceeding fierce with hunger; and so the dog bit off the tongue of the pious teacher, even that tongue which had ever spoken words of truth. What say we then? If there be a god, then he suffered this wickedness (for without him is naught); and therefore he is wicked. But if there be no god, then at least we are delivered from the constraint to believe that the Supreme Governor of the world is worse than the worst of men."
The people, who had been on the side of the Epicurean from the first, in despite of the interruptions of the Stoic, now loudly applauded; and when it fell to the Stoic to speak, he had little to say. If he discoursed of oracles as proofs of the divine foreknowledge, then the Epicurean asked who had ever been profited by oracles, bringing forward many dark sayings of the gods, which had led men to destruction; and other sayings that savored of manifest folly; adding thereto jests and flouts of oracles drawn from the plays of the comedians. When the Stoic spake of a life after death, and alleged apparitions of the dead, then his adversary answered that the said apparitions were mere unsubstantial phantasms, such as appear to madmen and drunkards when they see all things twofold. Lastly, when the Stoic spake of judgment after death, and a final consumption of the world by fire, then the Epicurean demanded proof hereof; and he laughed at the stories of Minos and Rhadamanthus as nursery fables and bugbears to frighten babes withal. He also compared the Supreme Being of the Stoics burning up the
