Fragments from the dialogue titled "Florentius"
...Aristotle, but as it exists long ago transferred into his own constrained language. As a lover of the naturally beautiful, the man came to have a longing to relearn the Greek tongue; and from there, having moved to the Calydonians, he had everything refashioned there—language, beard, clothing, bearing, and character. For he no longer judged that he needed to shave his beard, nor to be clothed in Latin attire while among the Greeks with whom he was about to mingle, a foreign tribe; but rather, that he might not be disbelieved A or suspected by anyone, he even went so far as to darken his robe. From there he moved to a certain Thessalian city, which claimed for itself more wisdom than its neighbors, situated not less than two hundred stadia from Athens and Attica. Having waited there for a significant time, he came into a clearer habit of the Greek language... B And he, through this acquisition of the Greek language, having climbed high, thought himself to be a great man and pregnant with all wisdom; and he was looking down upon others as if from a watchtower, as they wallowed in some base and lowly life. But when he heard that Athens, the mother-city of all wisdom, was being feebly administered at that time regarding discourse, due to the misfortune involving Metrodorus and Nicagoras, and the oblivion and silence that had long ago been passed upon it, he was the more moved toward a more rash way of reasoning. He thought he finally had the opportunity, with no one opposing him, to depart for Athens C and become a claimant of the popular glory. Driven by this hope as if on a raft, he hastened toward Athens, being able to perceive nothing moderate or unworthy concerning himself.
But as he came, in the dark robe as we have said, his immediate business was to walk around the markets and festivals, promising an exhibition of a certain great wisdom, and if anyone wished to become wise according to him, it was easy to make him so in a short time, receiving a small sum of money, and indeed much less than its value. (He was a man of memory, and all that he had previously read he would recite in sequence from memory as if from a book, especially the interpreters of the Aristotelians; but by his "barbarizing" in the flow of his words, it was clear D that he was a Latin, for he was no longer recognizable by his beard.)
Toward these things, Nicagoras smiled slightly and said: "Come now, best Xenophanes, tell us what kind of wisdom you have come to demonstrate."
"All-encompassing and varied, Nicagoras, and sufficient for all things, as many and as varied as one might wish to ask."
"Well, let us try, so that they may know, both you with you, and you with these."
But Nicagoras, having judged the magnitude of the promises of Xenophanes, set himself to strike his brow with a certain skill, beginning from the astronomical science. And if he decided to leave aside all the major astronomical hypotheses, whose complex arguments trace out their proofs, and having passed over them, chose to refute him through smaller matters, so that he might be the more put to shame—for the difficulties in the greatest contests do not bring down unadulterated or manifest ridicule, but rather a small and, so to speak, oculary and misty one, and like the gait of Hephaestus, for the most part limping and wavering—but the proofs in the lesser and more ready matters would be a refutation of the ignorance of the bold, very clear and more manifest than the noonday sun. "And how sweet and blessed it is, O Xenophanes," he said, "that you promise to be able to give a demonstration of all wisdom! Come then, take that horoscopic instrument, stand by the sun's ray, and teach us what time it might be at the present moment, so that, having arrived as if from a true point of departure to the finding of the sun and the other stars that happen to be in the zodiac, you may have clear and irrefutable proofs to make of the arguments involved in their motions."
But, alas! That man of the world cannot satisfy even this simple question: he is at a loss at first, and then, recovering himself...