The dull man flutters
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βλὰξ ἄνθρωπος ἐπὶ παντὶ λόγῳ ἐπτοῆσθαι φιλεῖ
A dull man loves to be thrown into a flutter at every word.
Preserved by Plutarch (On Listening to Lectures 40f–41a), where it illustrates the credulous listener who is rattled by every clever speech.
<em>Blax</em> is the slack, soft-witted man — the word carries a sense of flabbiness, of something without tension. Such a person is 'wont to be fluttered at every account': ἐπτοῆσθαι is the perfect of πτοέω, to be scared into a flutter, knocked off balance, set aflutter like a startled bird. Having no fixed measure of his own, he is tossed by each new speech.
φιλεῖ here means 'tends to, is apt to,' but keeps its warmer sense: the fool almost loves the flutter. The point is steadiness. The person who has grasped the <em>logos</em> is not blown about by every clever <em>logos</em> that comes along. Set beside the 'unbelief' of B86, this is the opposite failing — not too little credence but too much, believing all things rather than none. Both miss the one account that holds still.
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