Even the stoutest defender of the Cynic movement, as a whole, feels constrained to admit that the charges against the Cynics were, perhaps, in many cases, true.(1865) It was a movement peculiarly attractive to the lawless, restless hangers-on of society, who found in an open defiance of social restraints and a wandering existence, a field of licence and a chance of gain. Some of the great Cynics, indeed, were interested in physical speculation, and were widely cultivated men.(1866) But the Cynic movement, as a whole, rested on no scientific tradition, and the most serious and effective preacher of its doctrine needed only a firm hold of a few simple truths, with a command of seizing and incisive phrase.(1867) There was no professional barrier to exclude the ignorant and corrupt pretender. For the Cynics, from the very nature of their mission and their aims, never formed an organised school or society. Each went his own way in complete detachment. To the superficial observer, the only common bond and characteristic were the purely external marks of dress and rough bearing and ostentatious contempt for the most ordinary comforts and decencies of life, which could easily be assumed by the knave and the libertine. Hence, as time went on, although good Cynics, like Demonax or Demetrius, acquired a deserved influence, yet the greed, licentiousness, and brutal violence of others brought great discredit on the name. Epictetus, who had a lofty ideal of the Cynic preacher as an ambassador of God, lays bare the coarse vices of the pretender to that high service with an unsparing hand.(1868) It is evident, however, that certain of the gravest imputations, which had been developed by prurient imaginations, were, by an unwholesome tradition, levelled at even the greatest and best of the Cynics.(1869) And S. Augustine, in referring to these foul charges, affirms, with an honourable candour, that they could not be truly made against the Cynics of his own day.(1870) Moreover, the Roman nature never took very kindly, even in some of the cultivated circles, to anything under the name of philosophy.(1871) Even M. Aurelius could not altogether disarm the suspicion with which it was regarded. And the revolt of Avidius Cassius was to some extent an outburst of impatience with the doctrinaire spirit of the _philosopha anicula_, as Cassius dared to call him.(1872) And there were many things in the Cynic movement which specially tended to provoke the ordinary man. It threw down the gauntlet to a materialised age. It preached absolute renunciation of all social ties and duties, and of all the pleasures and refinements with which that society had surrounded itself. In an age which, even on its tomb-stones, bears the stamp of a starched conventionality and adherence to use and wont, the Cynic was a defiant rebel against all social restraints. In an age which was becoming ever more superstitious, he did not shrink from attacking the faith in the gods, the efficacy of the mysteries, the credit of the most ancient oracles.(1873) And, finally, while philosophy in general after Domitian found support and patronage at the imperial court, no emperor gave his countenance to the Cynics till the Syrian dynasty of the third century.(1874) We have here surely a sufficient accumulation of reasons for hesitating to accept the wholesale condemnation of a class of men who, instead of disarming opposition, rather plumed themselves on provoking it.