than the joke Epicurus took the liberty of making on Plato and the
Platonists; he called them Dionysiokolakes. In its original sense,
and on the face of it, the word signifies "Flatterers of
Dionysius"--consequently, tyrants' accessories and lick-spittles;
besides this, however, it is as much as to say, "They are all ACTORS,
there is nothing genuine about them" (for Dionysiokolax was a popular
name for an actor). And the latter is really the malignant reproach that
Epicurus cast upon Plato: he was annoyed by the grandiose manner, the
mise en scene style of which Plato and his scholars were masters--of
which Epicurus was not a master! He, the old school-teacher of Samos,
who sat concealed in his little garden at Athens, and wrote three
hundred books, perhaps out of rage and ambitious envy of Plato, who
knows! Greece took a hundred years to find out who the garden-god
Epicurus really was. Did she ever find out?