In his treatise The Cure of Greek Maladies, Theodoret plainly demonstrates as much about Socrates. Apollo’s oracle declared him the wisest man alive and saved him from the plague; two thousand years have admired him, and some would as readily speak ill of Christ as of him. Yet “in truth” he was an uneducated idiot, as Aristophanes calls him; “a mocker and an ambitious man,” as his master Aristotle calls him; “an Attic buffoon,” according to Zeno; an enemy of all arts and sciences, according to Athenaeus, and of philosophers and travellers; an opinionated ass, a quibbler, a sort of pedant. As for his conduct, Theodoret of Cyrrhus describes him as a sodomite and an atheist—convicted as such by Anytus—“angry, drunken, sharp-tongued,” and so on; a drinking companion, a mighty drinker by Plato’s own admission; the most foolish of all, thoroughly mad in his actions and opinions.

Pythagoras was part philosopher, part magician—or part witch. If you want to hear more about Apollonius, a great sage whom Julian the Apostate once compared with Christ, I refer you to Eusebius’s learned treatise against Hierocles; and for all of them, to Lucian’s The Fisherman, Icaromenippus, and Necyomancy. Their actions and the opinions they put forward and defended were generally so monstrous, absurd, and ridiculous; their books and elaborate treatises were full of delusion. Cicero observed this long ago in his letters to Atticus: “Writers generally rave in their books.” Their lives contradicted their words: they recommended poverty to others while being supremely greedy themselves, praised love and peace, yet persecuted one another with bitter hatred and malice.

They could give rules for verse and prose, but not one of them—as Seneca tells them bluntly—could control his feelings. Their music taught us “plaintive melodies,” and how to rise and fall, yet they could not restrain themselves from striking a lamentable note in adversity. They measure land by geometry, mark boundaries, divide and subdivide, yet cannot determine “how much is enough for a person,” or keep within the bounds of reason and judgement. They can square circles, but do not understand the condition of their own souls; draw straight and crooked lines, but do not know what is right in life: “they do not know what is right in life.” So, as the poet said, I wonder whether reason would allot them all Anticyra. I think all the Anticyras will not bring them to their senses;

if these men, who possessed Xenodotus’s heart, Crates’s liver, and Epictetus’s lamp, were so foolish, with no more brains than so many beetles, what should we think of ordinary people? What of everyone else?

Yes, but you will object: that is true of pagans when compared with Christians. First Corinthians 3:19: “The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God”—“earthly and devilish,” as James calls it, 3:15. “Their thinking became futile, and their foolish hearts were filled with darkness,” Romans 1:21–22. “Professing themselves wise, they became fools.” Their ingenious works are admired here on earth while their souls are tormented in hellfire.

In one sense, “Christians are Crassians”—Christians are dullards—and, compared with that wisdom, no better than fools. “Who is wise? God alone,” Pythagoras replies. “God alone is wise,” Paul declares in Romans 16; alone good, as Augustine rightly argues; “and no living person can be justified in his sight.” “God looked down from heaven upon humankind to see whether anyone understood,” Psalm 53:2–3; but all are corrupt and go astray. Romans 3:12: “No one does good, not even one.” Job intensifies this, 4:18: “Look: he found no constancy in his servants, and charged his angels with folly,” and verse 19: “How much more those who dwell in houses of clay?” In this sense we are all fools, and Scripture alone is “Minerva’s citadel”; we and our writings are shallow and imperfect.

But that is not all I mean: even in our everyday dealings, we are no better than fools. All our actions, as Pliny told Trajan, reproach us for our folly; the whole course of our lives is material for laughter. We lack sober judgement. The world itself, which should at least have grown wise with age, as Hugo de Prato Florido maintains, “keeps acting foolishly”: it grows more foolish every day; the more it is whipped, the worse it becomes, and like a child it still wants a crown of roses and flowers. We play the ape in it, “two-legged asses,” and everywhere is full “of Apuleiuses turned upside down”—transformed, two-legged asses—“of reversed Silenuses,” childish, “like a two-year-old child sleeping in his father’s rocking arm.”

In his dialogue Antonius, Giovanni Pontano presents some people laughing at an old man whose age had made him a little foolish. But, as he warns there, “Do not wonder, my guest, at this old man”—do not marvel at him alone, for “this whole city is delirium”: our whole town is equally deluded. We are a company of fools. Do not ask, with the character in the poet, “Do ghosts, frenzy, and madness torment this old man?” What madness haunts this old man? Ask what madness haunts us all. For we are “every last one of us” mad; “we have all been mad once”—not once, but always, “once, and together, and always”, continually and collectively as bad as he is. Do not say “an old man is twice a child” or “a doting old woman,” but say of us all, “always children”: young and old are all deluded, as Lactantius demonstrates from Seneca;

there is no difference between us and children except that “we play bigger games, and with bigger dolls.” They play with rag dolls and such toys; we amuse ourselves with larger dolls. We cannot accuse or condemn one another when we are at fault ourselves: “You talk nonsense”—you talk foolishly—or, as Micio reproached Demea, “You are mad; go away.” We are just as mad ourselves, and it is hard to say who is worst. Indeed, this holds everywhere: “Fortune governs life, not wisdom.”