momentary gratification, and also in preferring mental pleasures to bodily, as involving memory and hope, and therefore both more enduring and more under our control. Still bodily pleasure is the groundwork and foundation of all other pleasure, as Epicurus says (Diog. x 6) ‘I know not what good means if you deny me the pleasures of the senses;' and Metrodorus 'all good is concerned with the belly' or, as it might be expressed in our own day, 'the summum bonum is a healthy digestion' (Cic. N. D. 1 113). Virtue is not desirable for itself, as an end, but only as the means to attain pleasure. The wise man, i. e. the virtuous man, is happy because he is free from the fear of the Gods and of death, because he has learnt to moderate his passions and desires, because he knows how to estimate and compare pleasures and pains, so as to secure the largest amount of the former with the least of the latter. The distinction between right and wrong rests merely on utility and has nothing mysterious about it. Thus Epicurus says 'Injustice is not in itself evil, but it is rightly shunned because it is always accompanied by the fear of detection and punishment'.' 'Justice is nothing in itself; it is simply an agreement neither to injure or be injured. One chief means of attaining pleasure is the society of friends. To

1 Diog. Χ 151. ἡ ἀδικία οὐ καθ ̓ ἑαυτὴν κακόν, ἀλλ' ἐν τῷ κατὰ τὴν ὑποψίαν φόβῳ, εἰ μὴ λήσει τοὺς ὑπὲρ τῶν τοιούτων ἐφεστηκότας κολαστάς.

2 Diog. x 150. τὸ τῆς φύσεως δίκαιόν ἐστι σύμβολον τοῦ συμφέροντος εἰς τὸ μὴ βλάπτειν ἀλλήλους μηδὲ βλάπτεσθαι. “There is no justice or injustice for animals or for those tribes which have not been able, or have not chosen to make such compacts: ovк v Tɩ καθ ̓ ἑαυτὸ δικαιοσύνη, but a kind of compact in regard to mutual association extending over certain localities.'

enjoy this we should cultivate the feelings of kindness and benevolence. Epicurus does not recognize any claims of a wider society. He considers it folly to take part in public life, and Metrodorus dissuaded his brother from such a course in the words 'it is not our business to seek for crowns by saving the Greeks, but to enjoy ourselves in good eating and drinking' (Plut. Adv. Col. 1125 D.).

What has been said will sufficiently account for the dislike entertained by Cicero and others towards the 'swinish doctrines' of Epicurus. I subjoin a few other quotations from his writings, some of which may help to give a more favourable impression of the man and explain Seneca's admiration for him. 'We think contentment (avráρkeia, self-sufficingness) a great good, not with a view to stint ourselves to a little in all cases, but in order that, if we have not got much, we may content ourselves with little, being fully persuaded that those enjoy luxury most who need it least, and that whatever is natural is easily procured, and only what is matter of vain ostentation is hard to win. Plain dishes give as much pleasure as expensive ones, provided there is enough to remove the pain of hunger; and bread and water are productive of the highest pleasure to one who is really in want. The regular use of a simple inexpensive diet not only keeps a man in perfect health, but it gives him promptness and energy to meet all the requirements of life, while it makes him more capable of enjoying an occasional feast and also renders him fearless of fortune. When we speak then of pleasure as the end, we do not mean the pleasure of the sensualist, as some accuse us of doing: we mean the absence of bodily pain and of mental anxiety'.'

1 From the Epistle of Epicurus to Menoeceus in Diog. X 130.

'Man cannot live pleasantly without living wisely and nobly and justly, nor can he live wisely and nobly and justly without living pleasantly'.'

'The wealth of nature is limited and easily procured, the wealth of vain imagination knows no limit?.?

'Fleshly pleasure, when once the pain of want is removed, admits of no increase, but only of variation".'

'Great pain cannot last long, lasting pain is never violent. In chronic diseases the bodily state is on the whole more pleasurable than painful*.’

So far we may recognize a genuine Epicurean sentiment. In the two quotations which follow there is an imitation of Stoic bravado.

Epistle to Idomeneus. 'I write this to you on the last day of my life, a happy day in spite of the agonizing pain of my disease, for I oppose to all my pain the mental pleasure arising from the memory of our former discussions. My last request is that you will befriend the children of Metrodorus in a manner worthy of your life-long devotion to me and to philosophy".'

Even in the bull of Phalaris the wise man would retain his happiness".'

'Courage does not come by nature, but by calculation of expediency".

'Friendship exists for the sake of advantage. But we

1 From the kúpia dóžai Diog. X 140.

2 lb. 8 144.

3 lbid.

♦ Diog. x 140, Plut. Aud. Poet. 36 B.; Cic. Fin. II 22, si gravis brevis, si longus levis.

Diog. X 22, Cic. Fin. 11 96.

• Cic. Tusc. II 17, Diog. X 118 7 Diog. X 120.

must be willing to take the initiative, just as we must begin by sowing, in order to reap afterwards'.'

'The wise man will dogmatize and not raise sceptical objections (ἀπορήσειν).

'The wise man will not fall in love, nor will he marry or beget children except under special circumstances, for many are the inconveniences of marriage".'

I add one more quotation to illustrate not so much the doctrines of Epicurus, as the grandeur and the gloom of one who was a Roman and a poet before he was an Epicurean.

666

"Now no more shall thy home receive thee with glad welcome, nor wife and children run to be the first to snatch kisses and touch thy heart with a silent joy. One disastrous day has taken from thee, luckless man, all the many prizes of life." This do men say, but add not thereto "and now no longer does any craving for these things beset thee withal." For thus they ought rather to think "Thou, even as now thou art, sunk in the sleep of death, shalt continue so for ever, freed from all distress; but we with a sorrow that would not be sated, wept for thee, when close by, thou didst turn to an ashen hue on the appalling funeral pile, and no length of days shall pluck from our hearts our ever

1 Diog. X 121. Seneca Ep. 9, draws the contrast between the Epicurean view which recommended friendship in order that one might have a friend's help and succour, ut habeat qui sibi aegro assideat, succurrat in vincula conjecto vel inopi, and the Stoic view that he might be useful to others, ut habeat aliquem cui ipse aegro assideat, quem ipse circumventum hostili custodia liberet. But Epicurus allows there may be occasions on which the wise man would die for his friend, ὑπὲρ φίλου ποτὲ τεθνήξεσθαι. Diog. 121. 2 Diog. X 121.

Diog. X 119. The last clause is added by Seneca, see Zeller, P. 459, n.

during grief."...Once more, if Nature could suddenly utter a voice and rally any one of us in such words as these, "what reason hast thou, O mortal, for all this exceeding sorrow? why bemoan and bewail death? For, if thy life past and gone has been welcome to thee, why not take thy departure like a guest filled with life, and enter with resignation on untroubled rest? But if all thou hast enjoyed has been squandered and lost and life is a grievance, why seek to add more, to be wasted in its turn and utterly lost without avail? Why not rather make an end of life and travail? for there is nothing more which I can contrive to give thee pleasure: all things are ever the same."... With good reason, methinks, Nature would bring her charge; for old things give way and are supplanted by new,...one thing never ceases to rise out of another, and life is granted to none in feesimple, to all in usufruct...And those things sure enough, which are fabled to be in the deep of Acheron, do all exist for us in this life... Cerberus and the Furies and Tartarus belching forth hideous fires from his throat, these are things which nowhere are, nor sooth to say can be. But there is in life a dread of punishment for evil deeds, signal as the deeds are signal; there is the prison and the hurling from the rock, the scourging and the executioner, the dungeon of the doomed; or should these be wanting, yet the conscience-stricken mind through boding fears applies to itself whips and goads, and sees not what end there can be of evils or what limit at last is set to punishments, and fears lest these very evils be aggravated after death, so that the life of fools becomes at length a hell on earth. Remember too that even worthy Ancus has closed his eyes in darkness, who was