I never as yet knew any poet (and I was very intimate with Aquinius), who did not appear to himself to be very admirable.

The case is this: you are pleased with your own works; I like mine.

But to return to Dionysius.
He debarred himself from all civil and polite conversation, and spent his life among fugitives, bondmen, and barbarians; for he was persuaded that no one could be his friend who was worthy of liberty, or had the least desire of being free.
XXIII.

Shall I not, then, prefer the life of Plato and Archytas, manifestly wise and learned men, to his, than which nothing can possibly be more horrid, or miserable, or detestable?
I will present you with an humble and obscure mathematician of the same city, called Archimedes, who lived many years after; whose tomb, overgrown with shrubs and briers, I in my quaestorship discovered, when the Syracusans knew nothing of it, and even denied that there was any such thing remaining; for I remembered some verses, which I had been informed were engraved on his monument, and these set forth that on the top of the tomb there was placed a sphere with a cylinder.

When I had carefully examined all the monuments (for there are a great many tombs at the gate Achradinae), I observed a small column standing out a little above the briers, with the figure of a sphere and a cylinder upon it; whereupon I immediately said to the Syracusans--for there were some of their principal men with me there--that I imagined that was what I was inquiring for.