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THE IGNORANT BOOK-COLLECTOR

This too is a diatribe, an excellent illustration of that sort of diatribe which made the word to us moderns synonymous with invective. It is far from a school exercise, but was directed against a real person, a Syrian (§ 19), evidently well enough known to Lucian's auditors. A scholiast (probably Bishop Arethas, who was himself a book-collector) remarks : " If 1 may guess, Lucian, you asked him for the loan of a book, and when you did not get it, requited him with this handsome token of your esteem !" [t was written after the death of Peregrinus Proteus and during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, about 170 a.d.