Smoke and Lightning

Another part of my “smoke,” which you often laugh at, is my pretending, as you say, to know what I do not know, and the parade I make of great teachers to deceive common and ignorant people. You, of course, are a man not of smoke but of flame, or rather of lightning. You hurl thunderbolts when you speak; you cannot hold in the flames that have been conceived in your mouth. Bar Kokhba, the leader of the revolt of the Jews, used to hold a lighted straw in his mouth and blow on it, so as to seem to breathe out flame. So you too, like a second Salmoneus, light up the whole path you tread, and mock us as mere men of smoke, to whom perhaps the words might be applied, “You touch the hills, and they smoke.” You do not understand what the prophet means when he speaks of the smoke of the locusts. No doubt it is the beauty of your eyes that makes it impossible for you to bear the sting of our smoke. [a]