Page 80 [80]
OCR
The Praise of Folly 49 To say nothing of Minos and Numa, both which ruld their foolish multitudes with Fabulous Inventions; with which kind of Toyes that great and powerful beast, the People, are led any way. Again what City ever receiv’d Plato’s or Aristotle’s Laws, or Socrates’s Precepts? But, on the contrary, what made the Decii devote themselves to the Infernal Gods, or Q. Curtius to leap into the Gulph, but an empty vain glory, a most bewitching Sirene? And yet ’tis strange it should be so condemn’d by those wise Philosophers. For what is more foolish, say they, than for a Suppliant Suiter to flatter the people, to buy their favour with gifts, to court the applauses of so many fools, to please himself with their Acclamations, to be carri’d on the people’s shoulders as in triumph, and have a brazen Statue in the Market place? Add to this the adoption of Names and Sirnames ; those Divine Honours given to a man of no Reputation, and the Deification of the most wicked Tyrants with publicque Ceremonies ; most foolish things, and such as one Democritus is too little to laugh at. Who denies it? And yet from this root sprang all the great Acts of 1507 E
