Heraclitus

'a dry soul is wisest and best' Biographers write that above all men he was a lofty and hubristic spirit. A walking contradiction, he would shout that Homer should be turned out of the lists and beaten, and Archilochus as well, since better to extinguish impertinence, than to put out fire. He felt that men should fight for law as much as for their city. Yet, when requested to make laws for them, he turned them down, by arguing their city already had a faulty constitution. Besides, he had important things to do: a game of dice with children at the Temple. (It was there his magnum opus lay.) Turned misanthrope, he headed for the hills where for years he fed on grass and plants. Only when afflicted with edema would he come back down, asking the physicians if they could bring drought after heavy rain. When they said no, he smeared his trunk and face with ox manure, and dried out in the sun. He was discovered dead the following day, his parched lips now two gates to the sahara, the river in his veins not quite the same.