I know of nothing more venomous than the joke Epicurus allowed himself to make against Plato and the Platonists: he called them Dionysiokolakes. The literal and foreground meaning of this word is ‘flatterers of Dionysus’, that is to say, tyrants’ hangers-on and lickspittles; in addition, however, it is as much as to say ‘they are all actors, there is nothing genuine about them’ (for Dionysiokolax was a popular term for an actor).