He subsequently gained a taste for philosophy, and after studying under the Neoplatonists, he took up with the doctrines of the Cynics, which he maintained thenceforward with great ardour.
Simplicius tells us how Sallustius would "lay a red-hot coal upon his thigh, and blow the fire, to try to see how long he was able to undergo the pain.
"[1] He assailed the philosophers of his time with considerable vehemence, to which his powers of ridicule gave additional effect.
[2] He employed his eloquence and wit in attacking the follies or vices of his contemporaries, and he managed to quarrel with Proclus himself.
According to Photius,[3] he pretended to a sort of divination or fortune-telling, professing to be able to tell from the appearance of a person's eyes what kind of death he would die.