Would do well to end their lives, every grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless boys, for that they have driven out Hermodorus, the worthiest man among them, saying, ' We will have none who is worthiest among us ; or if there be any such, let him go elsewhere and consort with others.'"" And when he was requested by them to make laws, he scorned the request because the state was already in the grip of a bad constitution. He would retire to the temple of Artemis and play at knuckle-bones with the boys ; and when the Ephesians stood round him and looked on, " Why, you rascals," he said, " are you astonished ? Is it not better to do this " than to take part in your civil life ? Finally, he became a hater of his kind and wandered on the mountains, and there he continued to live, making his diet of grass and herbs. However, when this gave him dropsy, he made his way back to the city and put this riddle to the physicians, whether they were competent to create a drought after heavy rain. They could make nothing of this, whereupon he buried himself in a cowshed, expecting that the noxious damp humour would be drawn out of him by the warmth of the manure. But, as even this was of no avail, he died at the age of sixty. There is a piece of my own about him as follows b : Often have I wondered how it came about that Heraclitus endured to live in this miserable fashion and then to die. For a fell disease flooded his body with water, quenched the light in his eyes and brought on darkness. Hermippus, too, says that he asked the doctors whether anyone could by emptying the intestines draw off the moisture ; and when they said it was Fr. 121 D., 114 B. b Anth. Pal. vii. 127.