l am sure then that you will gladly accept this little declamation of mine as a 'memento' of your friend and will also undertake to defend it. It is dedicated to you, so henceforth it is yours, not mine.⁴  There may well be plenty of critical folk rushing in to slander it, some saying that my bit of nonsense is too frivolous for a theologian and others that it has a sarcastic bite which ill becomes Christian decorum. They will clamour that I'm reviving Old Comedy or Lucian, carping and complaining about everything. Well, those who are offended by frivolity and fun in a thesis may kindly consider that mine is not the first example of this; the same thing has often been done by famous authors in the past. Homer amused himself ages ago with his 'Battle of Frogs and Mice', Virgil with his Gnat and Garlic Salad, Ovid with his Nut. Polycrates wrote a mock eulogy of the tyrant Busiris and so did his critic Isocrates; Glauco spoke in favour of injustice and Favorinus of Thersites and the quartan fever; Synesius praised baldness and Lucian the Fly and the Parasite. Seneca was joking in his 'Apotheosis' of the Emperor Claudius, as Plutarch was in his dialogue between Gryllus and Ulysses. Lucian and Apuleius both wrote in fun about an ass, and someone whose name escapes me about the last will and testament of the piglet Grunnius Corocotta: this is mentioned by St. Jerome.⁵