Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
Colotes, the companion of Epicurus, published a book entitled "That According to the Doctrines of the Other Philosophers It Is Not Even Possible to Live." Now whatever occurred to us to say against him on behalf of the philosophers was written down earlier. But since, after our school session broke up, there arose further conversation in the Peripatos concerning the sect, it seemed good to me to take these up as well, if for no other reason than as a demonstration to those who censure others, that one ought to go through the arguments and writings of anyone he refutes not superficially, nor by dragging out phrases from elsewhere and, fastening upon mere words apart from the matters at hand, deceive the inexperienced.
For when we had gone forward into the gymnasium, as we were accustomed to do after our discussion, Zeuxippus said, "To me the argument seems to have been stated much more mildly than the frankness proper to the occasion demanded: the followers of Heraclides go off blaming us, since we, who bear no responsibility, have attacked Epicurus and Metrodorus too boldly." And Theon said, "Then did you not say that, compared with those men, Colotes appears the most decorous of men? For the most shameful words used among men — buffooneries, vulgar theatricalities, boastings, harlotries, murders, heavy-groaning, much-corrupting, thick-headed — they gathered together and poured down upon Aristotle and Socrates and Pythagoras and Protagoras and Theophrastus and Heraclides and Hipparchus — indeed, on which of the eminent men did they not? — so that, even if everything else about them were wise, on account of these slanders and accusations they would be shut out very far from wisdom: 'for envy stands outside the divine chorus,' and jealousy, unable through weakness to conceal its pain."
Then Aristodemus, taking up the point, said, "Heraclides, then, being a grammarian, pays these thanks to Epicurus instead of for poetic tumult, as they say, and for the follies of Homer — or because Metrodorus in so many writings has reviled the poet. But let us leave those men aside, Zeuxippus: as for what was said at the beginning of our discussion against these men, that it is not possible to live according to their views, why should we not rather, now that he has grown weary, carry it through ourselves on our own account, taking Theon along with us as well?"
And Theon said to him, "But this contest has already been completed by others before us. Now let us again, if you think fit, set up a different mark and in some such trial as this pursue the case on behalf of the philosophers against these men: let us attempt to show, if indeed it is possible, that it is not even possible to live pleasantly according to them." "Well well," I said, laughing, "you seem to be leaping at the men's belly, and about to bring on the topic of meats, taking away the pleasure of men who cry out, 'For we are not blameless boxers, nor orators, nor leaders of the people, nor magistrates, but always dear to us is the feast and every delightful motion through the flesh sent up toward some pleasure and joy of the soul.' You seem to me, then, not to be taking away the spring, as they say, but to be taking away life itself from these men, if you will not leave them the living pleasantly."
"What then," said Theon, "if you approve the argument, will you not yourself make use of it now that it is at hand?" "I will make use of it," I said, "as a listener and answerer, if you need me; but I hand over the leadership to you." When Theon had made a brief excuse, Aristodemus said, "How short and smooth a road you have dug for us toward the argument, not allowing the sect first to render an account concerning the good! For it is not easy to drive men who posit pleasure as the end away from living pleasantly; but once they have fallen from the fair and good, they fall at the same time from the pleasant as well, since living pleasantly without living nobly is nonexistent, as they themselves say."
And Theon said, "But this, if it seems good, we shall reserve for later as the argument proceeds; for now let us make use of what is granted by them. They hold that the good lies in the belly and in all the other channels of the flesh, through which pleasure and the absence of pain make their entry; and that all the fine and wise inventions exist for the sake of the pleasure connected with the belly and the good hope concerning it, as the wise Metrodorus has said.
"From the very outset, then, my friend, they appear to be taking as the cause of the good something paltry, rotten, and insecure; and moreover, these channels through which pleasures are introduced are likewise perforated for pains as well — or rather, they admit pleasure in only a few parts but pain in all the parts alike. For every pleasure is confined to the joints and sinews and feet and hands, in which dwell the terrible and grievous afflictions — gout and rheumatism and gangrene and corrosions and putrefactions; whereas if you bring the sweetest of scents and flavors to the body, you will find only a small region in it that is moved altogether smoothly and gently, while the rest is often vexed and indignant; but to fire and iron and biting and to the surgeon's instruments no part is unaffected or insensible to pain, but both heat and cold sink into every part, and fever too; whereas the pleasures, like breezes, spread laughingly over one extremity of the body after another, and their duration is not long, but, like meteors darting past, they take on kindling and quenching together in the flesh.
"One sufficient witness to pain is Aeschylus's Philoctetes: for it was not the serpent, he says, that let go, but implanted a dread growth of mouths to seize upon the foot. May pain slip away that stirs and tickles no such other parts of the body! But just as the seed of alfalfa is many-bent and uneven and takes root in the earth and remains a long time because of its roughness, so pain, scattering hooks and roots and interlacing itself with the flesh and remaining not only days and nights but even for the years and Olympiads of some men's lives, is with difficulty driven out and departs, dislodged as if by other, more violent nails. For who has ever drunk or eaten for as long a time as the feverish thirst or the besieged hunger? And where is there relaxation and fellowship with friends for as long as tyrants punish and rack their victims?
"And this too belongs to the poorness and ineptitude of the body with respect to living pleasantly, that it endures pains rather than pleasures, and has strength and power for the former, while in the latter it is weak and quickly sated. As for living pleasantly, if one lays hold of it, they do not allow us to say much more about it, since they themselves admit that the pleasure of the flesh is small, or rather momentary, if indeed they are not talking empty nonsense and boasting — Metrodorus, on the one hand, saying that 'often we have spat upon the pleasures of the body,' and Epicurus, on the other, saying that 'the wise man often laughs at the extremities of bodily illness when he is suffering.' If, then, the pains of the body are so light and easy for these men, how can there be anything of consequence in the pleasures?
"For even if they do not fall short in duration or magnitude of the pains, still, in respect to their compass they hold pains in common, and Epicurus has set up their common limit as the removal of all that pains, on the view that nature increases pleasure only until it has dissolved the painful, and does not allow it to proceed further in magnitude, but admits certain unnecessary variations once one has reached the state of freedom from pain; and the approach to this, made with desire, being the measure of pleasure, is altogether brief and short-lived.
"Hence, perceiving the paltriness here, as if moving from a barren plot of ground, they transfer the end from the body to the soul, as though there they will possess grazing-grounds and broad meadows of pleasures — 'but in Ithaca there are neither wide race-courses nor any meadow,' nor is the enjoyment concerning this poor bit of flesh smooth, but rough, mixed with much that is alien and throbbing."
Taking this up, Zeuxippus said, "Then do you not think the men do well, beginning from the body, in which coming-into-being first appeared, and then proceeding to the soul as something more secure, and bringing the whole to completion there?" "Well, by Zeus," I said, "and according to nature, if in going to that region they discover something better and more perfect, as the contemplative and political sort of men do. But if you hear them testifying and shouting that by nature it is not possible to rejoice and be at peace over anything that exists except over pleasures of the body, present or expected, and that this is its very good — do they not seem to you to be using the soul as a mere channel for the body, and, as though someone were pouring wine from a bad and unaged vintage, thinking they are doing something more solemn and honorable?
"Do they not, using a vessel that does not hold, pour the pleasure into it and disperse it there? And yet time preserves wine once it has been poured out, and even sweetens it further; but of pleasure the soul, receiving only the memory, as it were a scent, and nothing else, guards it; for having boiled up over the flesh it is quenched, and what is remembered of it is dim and reeking, like the leftovers of what someone has eaten or drunk, when he stores them up and lays by notions within himself and evidently makes use of these when fresh ones are not at hand.
"Observe how much more moderate the Cyrenaics are, even though they have drunk from the same wine-jar as Epicurus: they do not think it right even to have intercourse with the pleasures of Aphrodite by daylight, but set darkness before them, so that the images of the act, being taken up vividly by the mind through sight, may not repeatedly rekindle desire. But those who think the wise man differs chiefly in this — in remembering vividly and holding fast within himself the phantoms and affections and movements connected with pleasures — if they are counseling nothing worthy of wisdom, letting the washings-off of pleasure remain, as it were, in the household of the body, within the soul of the wise man, let us not speak of it; but that it is not possible to live pleasantly from these things is at once self-evident.
"For it is not likely that what is remembered of the pleasure is great, if what was present seemed small; nor that men who were only moderately delighted by things as they occurred should afterward exult over them once they are past — since not even in those who were struck with amazement and wonder at bodily things does the joy remain once it has ceased, but a kind of shadow and dream is left behind in the soul once the pleasure has flown away, like a kindling-material for the desires — just as in sleep the unfulfilled pleasures and enjoyments of one who thirsts or is in love arouse more sharply what is unrestrained in him. So for these men the memory of things once enjoyed is not delightful; rather, out of a dim and empty remainder of pleasure it brings back much of the goading and stinging of vivid desire; nor is it likely that men of moderation and self-control should linger in thinking over such things, nor do what they used to mock Carneades for doing — namely, reckoning up, as though from a diary, how many times he met with Hedeia and Leontion, or where he drank Thasian wine, or on what twentieth-of-the-month feast he dined most extravagantly. For such great revelry of the soul itself toward its memories reveals a terrible and beastly turmoil and frenzy concerning the actual and anticipated works of pleasure.
"Hence these men themselves seem to me, perceiving these absurdities, to take refuge in painlessness and the settled stability of the flesh, on the view that living pleasantly consists in conceiving this state as belonging, in the case of some, to what will be and what has been: 'for the settled condition of the flesh, and the trustworthy hope concerning it, hold the highest and most secure joy for those capable of reasoning it out.' Observe, then, first of all, what they do, shifting this thing — whether one should call it pleasure or painlessness or settled stability — up and down, from the body to the soul, and then again back from the soul to the body, being compelled, since it does not hold but flows away and slips out of the one, to attach it back to its starting point, 'supporting,' as he says, 'the pleasure of the flesh by the joy of the soul,' and again ending from the joy of the soul back to the pleasure of the flesh by way of hope.
"And how is it possible, while the base is being shaken, for what stands upon it not to be shaken together with it; or for hope and joy to be firm and unshaken concerning a thing that has so much tossing and change as the body — subject as it is to many external necessities and blows, while it also has within itself the origins of evils, which reasoning cannot turn aside? For otherwise afflictions of the bladder and dysentery and consumption and dropsy would not have befallen men of sound mind — maladies with which Epicurus himself was afflicted, Polyaenus with others, and which carried off Neocles and Agathobulus. And we do not reproach them for this, knowing that Pherecydes too and Heraclitus fell into grievous illnesses; but we require of them, if they wish to be consistent with their own experiences and not, by brazening it out with empty words and playing to the crowd, incur a charge of boastfulness, either not to take the beginning of all joy to be the settled stability of the flesh, or else not to deny that they rejoice and are outraged when they fall into excessive pains and diseases.
"For a settled condition of the flesh often comes about, but a trustworthy and firm hope concerning the flesh cannot arise in a mind possessed of reason; rather, just as at sea, according to Aeschylus, 'night brings forth labor-pains even for the skillful helmsman when it is calm' — for the future is unclear — so too it is not possible for a soul that is settled in a well-conditioned body, and that places the good in its hopes concerning the body, to pass its course free of fear and free of waves. For the body does not have its storms and squalls only from without, as the sea does, but produces from itself still more and greater disturbances; and one might sooner hope for a calm in winter to abide with him steadfastly than for the flesh's freedom from harm.
"For to call life ephemeral and insecure and unstable, and to liken it to leaves that come into being and wither with the season of the year — what else has furnished this to the poets except the perishable and much-afflicted and disease-prone nature of the flesh, whose very highest good they counsel us to fear and to curtail? 'For extreme good conditions of the body are treacherous,' says Hippocrates; and he who but now flourished in flesh, like a star fallen from heaven, is extinguished, as Euripides says. And they think that the beautiful are harmed by envy and ill-will when they are looked upon, because that which is at its peak most quickly undergoes change of body through weakness.
"And that their affairs are altogether ill-suited for a life free of pain, consider also from what they say to others. They say that those who act unjustly and lawlessly live wretchedly and in constant fear all the time, because, even if they are able to escape detection, it is impossible for them to gain assurance of having escaped detection; hence the ever-present fear of the future does not allow them to rejoice or to feel confident about the present. But in saying this they have failed to notice that they are saying it against themselves as well. For it is possible often to be in a settled and healthy bodily condition, but to gain assurance about its continuing is impossible; there must, then, be turmoil and travail
...always anxious about the future on the body's account, since they can never acquire a trustworthy and firm hope regarding it. And doing no wrong is nothing toward confidence; for it is not suffering justly but suffering itself that is frightening. Nor is it only being involved in one's own wrongdoing that is distressing, while falling victim to the wrongdoing of others is not hard to bear — no, if it is not a greater evil, it is certainly no less — as the harshness of Lachares was to the Athenians, or of Dionysius to the Syracusans, a greater evil to those tyrants themselves than to their victims; for in causing turmoil they were themselves thrown into turmoil, and expected to suffer badly in return for having wronged and injured those they dealt with beforehand. As for the rages of mobs, the cruelty of pirates, the injustices of heirs, and further the plagues in the air and the rough sea under which Epicurus, as he himself writes, very nearly went down while sailing to Lampsacus — what need is there to speak of these? The nature of the flesh itself suffices, since it holds within itself the material of diseases and, like that game of taking straps cut from an ox's hide, draws its pains from the body, making life precarious and fearful alike for the base and for the decent, provided only they have learned to place their rejoicing and confidence in the flesh and in hope concerning the flesh, and in nothing else — as Epicurus has written in many other places, and in these very words, in his work On the End.
So then, they take as the starting point of pleasant living something not only untrustworthy and unstable but altogether contemptible and small, if indeed for them the joy and the good is simply escape from evils, and they say they conceive of nothing else, nor does their account of nature have any place at all to put the good, except only the point from which its evil is driven out — as Metrodorus says in his work Against the Sophists: “So that this very thing is the good: the fleeing of evil. For there is no place to put the good, once nothing painful or distressing any longer withdraws.” And Epicurus says similar things, holding that the nature of the good is generated out of the very flight from evil, together with the memory, the reckoning, and the gratitude that this has happened to him; for, he says, the feeling that produces unsurpassable joy at having escaped from something is itself a great evil, and this is the nature of the good, if one grasps it correctly — and then stands firm, and does not walk about idly babbling about “the good.”
Ah, what great pleasure and blessedness these men enjoy, rejoicing that they suffer no ill, feel no grief, and endure no pain! Is it not fitting, on the strength of this, that they should both think and say what they do say — calling themselves imperishable and equal to the gods, and, through the excess and extremity of their goods, breaking out into shouts and cries of ecstasy under the influence of pleasure, on the ground that, looking down on everyone else, they alone have discovered a divine and great good in having nothing bad? So that they fall short neither of pigs nor of sheep in happiness, counting it blessed to be adequately provided for in flesh, and in soul with regard to the flesh.
Since indeed, for the more refined and graceful among animals, escape from evil is not the end. Rather, once sated, a creature turns to song and delights in swimming and flying, and out of pleasure and high spirits it even attempts, playfully, to imitate all sorts of sounds and noises; and creatures use displays of affection and frolicking toward one another once they have escaped evil, since they are naturally disposed to seek the good — or rather, in general, to thrust away every pain and everything alien to them, as being an obstacle to the pursuit of what is their own and better, a pursuit that belongs to their nature. “For what is merely necessary is not the good; rather, beyond the flight from evils lies what is desirable and choiceworthy and, by Zeus, what is pleasant and akin to us,” as Plato used to say; and he forbade regarding the mere removal of pains and toils as pleasures, calling that instead a kind of sketch-outline, or a mixture of the akin and the alien — as when white and black, moving up from below toward the middle, are, through ignorance of what lies below and above, mistaken for the topmost point and limit by those who do not know better. This is just what Epicurus and Metrodorus suppose, positing that the essence and the summit of the good is the flight from evil, and taking delight in a kind of joy fit for slaves, or for prisoners released from confinement who gladly anoint and bathe themselves after their beatings and their whippings — strangers, untasting and unbeholding, to a joy that is free, pure, unmixed, and unmarked by any scar.
For it is not the case that, if having mangy flesh or bleary eyes is bad, then scratching or wiping them clean is therefore wonderful; nor, if feeling pain and fearing the divine and being disturbed by the terrors of Hades is an evil, is escape from these things therefore blessed and enviable. No — they thereby reveal joy to be a small and meager plot of ground, on which it turns and rolls about, extending no further than the not-being-disturbed by the evils in Hades that come from empty beliefs, and they make this the end of wisdom, a thing that would seem, on the face of it, to belong to creatures without reason anyway. For if, with respect to the body's freedom from pain, it makes no difference whether the body is free from toil through itself or by nature, then likewise, with respect to the soul's freedom from disturbance, it is no greater thing to be undisturbed through the soul's own effort than to be so constituted by nature as not to be disturbed at all. And yet one might reasonably say that the disposition which by nature does not admit disturbance is a sturdier one than that which escapes it only through care and reasoning.
But let it stand that the two are on an equal footing; for even so, they will be shown to have no advantage over the beasts in the matter of not being disturbed by what is said about Hades and about the gods, since the beasts do not even expect pains and griefs as a limit to remove. Epicurus himself, at any rate, having said that “if the suspicions we entertain about celestial phenomena, and those about death and pain, did not trouble us at all, we would never have needed the study of nature,” supposes that this reasoning brings us to the very condition in which the beasts are constituted by nature; for a beast has neither base suspicions about the gods, nor is it troubled by empty opinions about what comes after death, nor does it conceive of anything dreadful in these matters at all, nor does it even know of them. And yet, if they had left providence within their preconception of god, the wise would appear to have the advantage over the beasts, through good hopes, for living pleasantly. But since the goal of their doctrine about the gods was not to fear god but to cease being disturbed, I think this holds more securely for those who have no conception of god at all than for those who have learned to conceive of a god that does no harm; for the latter has not been freed from superstition — rather, he has not even fallen into it in the first place, nor has he laid aside the disturbing notion about the gods, since he never took it up at all.
The same must be said about the things in Hades: neither party has any hope of good from that quarter, but a smaller share of suspecting and fearing what comes after death belongs to those in whom no preconception of death arises at all, than to those who take up the preconception that death is nothing to us — for this holds true of the latter only insofar as they reason and reflect about it, whereas the former are entirely free of any concern for what does not pertain to them; and in fleeing blows, wounds, and violent deaths, a beast fears just that aspect of death which is also fearful to the Epicureans. Such, then, are the things they say they have provided themselves by their wisdom. Let us now consider the things from which they cut themselves off and drive themselves away.
As for the effusions of the soul that arise from bodily well-being, if they are moderate, they contain nothing great or worth mentioning; but if they are excessive, then besides being empty and unstable they appear vulgar and reckless, and one would call them not psychic pleasures or joys at all, but bodily pleasures — mere smirks and simperings, so to speak, of the soul. But the delights and joys that deserve rightly to be so regarded are pure of their opposite, containing no mixed throb of pain, no sting, and no regret; their good is proper to the soul, truly psychic and genuine and not imported from outside, nor irrational, but arises most reasonably from the contemplative and knowledge-loving, or the practical and beauty-loving, part of the mind.
No one, however eager, could manage to go through how many and how great are the pleasures each of these two yields; but let me briefly recall them. History is at hand, offering many delightful pastimes, yet always leaving the desire for truth unsated and insatiable for pleasure; and because of this, even fiction is not without its charm, but in fabrications and poems, even where the element of being believed is absent, there is still something that persuades. “For consider how, feeling the pinch of it, we read Plato's Atlantis-story and the final books of the Iliad, longing for the rest of the tale, as if a temple were closing or a theater emptying. The learning of truth itself is so lovable and longed-for that living and being are bound up with knowing; and the grimmest features of death are forgetting, ignorance, and darkness.”
And, by Zeus, nearly everyone contends against those who would strip the dead of all sensation, on the ground that it is precisely in the sentient and knowing part of the soul that living, being, and rejoicing are located. For even things that distress us can be heard with a certain pleasure; and often, disturbed by what is said and even weeping, we nonetheless bid the speaker go on — as this man does. Yet this seems to be a kind of incontinence in the pleasure of coming to know everything, a flood that overpowers reason by force. But when history and narrative, containing nothing harmful or distressing, deal with fine and great deeds and gain, besides, a style with power and charm — such as Herodotus's account of Greek affairs, or Xenophon's of Persian affairs, or the wondrous things Homer knew and proclaimed, or Eudoxus's Circuits of the Earth, or Aristotle's Foundations and Constitutions, or the Lives of Men that Aristoxenus wrote — then the delight is not only great and abundant but also pure and free of regret. Who, hungry, would eat, or thirsty, would drink among the Phaeacians with more pleasure than he would take in going through Odysseus's tale of his wanderings? Who would be more delighted by resting beside the most beautiful woman than by staying up late over what Xenophon wrote about Pantheia, or Aristobulus about Timocleia, or Theopompus about Thebe?
“But these,” it will be said, “are pleasures of the soul” — and yet they also drive out those that come from the mathematical sciences. And yet, while history offers something simple and smooth, the pleasures deriving from geometry, astronomy, and harmonics have a keen and varied bait that yields to none of the alluring pleasures, drawing men in with their diagrams as if with magic wheels; and whoever has tasted of them, if he has real skill, goes about singing Sophocles's lines: “my mind, music-mad, is driven, biting at its neck; I pray from the lyre, and from the strains that Thamyras wondrously composes” — and, by Zeus, so did Eudoxus, Aristarchus, and Archimedes. For where painters who love their art are so carried away by the plausibility of their works that Nicias, while painting his Nekyia, would often ask his household slaves whether he had had lunch, and when King Ptolemy sent him sixty talents for the finished painting, he neither took the money nor sold the work — what pleasures, and how great, do we suppose Euclid reaped from geometry when writing his Optics, or Philip when demonstrating the shape of the moon, or Archimedes when he discovered, by means of an angle, that the diameter of the sun subtends so large a portion of the greatest circle as is equal to the angle formed by four right angles? Or Apollonius and Aristarchus, who became discoverers of other such things, the contemplation and understanding of which now instills great pleasures and a wonderful pride of mind in those who learn them? And it is in no way fitting to compare those pleasures from the kitchen and the brothel with these, and thereby to disgrace Helicon and the Muses, where no shepherd deigns to pasture his flocks and no iron has yet come; these are truly untouched pastures of bees, while those others are like the itchings of pigs and goats, further defiling the most passion-ridden part of the soul.
Now the love of pleasure is a varied and reckless thing; yet no one, on approaching his beloved, has ever, out of joy, sacrificed an ox, nor has anyone, gorged with delicacies or royal pastries, prayed to die on the spot. But Eudoxus, standing before the sun and having learned the shape, size, and form of that heavenly body, prayed that he might be burned up as Phaethon was; and Pythagoras, upon his discovery, sacrificed an ox, as Apollodorus says: “When Pythagoras discovered that far-famed figure, for the sake of which he led a splendid ox-sacrifice” — whether it concerned the hypotenuse being equal in power to the sides containing the right angle, or a problem about the area of the parabola. As for Archimedes, his attendants would drag him by force from his diagrams and anoint him with oil; but he would go on drawing figures with the scraper on his own oiled belly, and once, while bathing, having conceived from the overflow the way to measure the crown, he leapt up as if possessed or inspired, shouting “Eureka!” and went on repeating this again and again as he walked along. Yet we have never heard of any glutton crying out with such passion, “I have eaten!”, nor of any lover crying, “I have kissed!” — though countless thousands upon thousands of licentious men have lived and do live. On the contrary, we feel disgust at those who recall their dinners with too much passion, as though they were taking excessive delight in small pleasures worth nothing; but we share in the enthusiasm of Eudoxus, Archimedes, and Hipparchus, and we are persuaded by Plato concerning the mathematical sciences — how, though neglected through ignorance and inexperience, they nevertheless grow, by sheer force of their charm.
Yet these men divert and turn away pleasures so great and so many, as though damming an ever-flowing stream, and they do not let those who come near them taste of it; instead they bid them hoist their little sails and flee from these studies. All the men and women of their circle beg and beseech Pythocles, through Epicurus, not to aspire to the education called “liberal”; and, admiring and lavishly embracing a certain Apelles, they write that by abstaining from the mathematical sciences from the very start he kept himself pure. As for history, to pass over their other ignorance, I will cite only the words of Metrodorus, who writes in his work On Poems: “So do not be alarmed at declaring that you do not even know which side Hector was on, or the opening lines of Homer's poem, or again what came in the middle.”
That the pleasures of the body, like the etesian winds, wither and cease after their prime, has not escaped Epicurus's notice. At any rate he raises the question whether the wise man, when old and no longer able to approach the touch of beautiful bodies, still takes delight in and enjoys their caresses — not thinking the same as Sophocles, who gladly escaped this pleasure as though escaping a wild and raging master. But surely the devotees of pleasure ought, seeing that old age withers many of the pleasures, and…
...Aphrodite, as Euripides says, is displeased with old men — and it is above all these pleasures they store up, as though laying by imperishable, unspoiling provisions against a siege; and then they treat the erotic season of life as already past and spend their time, belated celebrants, occupied with histories and poems or with problems of music and geometry. For it would never occur to them to set their minds on those blind, toothless gropings and pouncings of the licentious man, once they have learned, if nothing else, to write about Homer and about Euripides, as Aristotle and Heraclides and Dicaearchus did. But I think that, having taken no thought for such resources, and finding the rest of their own occupation joyless and dry — as they themselves say virtue is — while wanting above all to feel pleasure, and the body refusing them, they confess to doing shameful and unseasonable things, reminding themselves of earlier pleasures and using their old ones, for lack of fresh ones, as though they were salted meats, and stirring up again, against nature, other pleasures now dead and buried, as it were in cold ashes, rekindling them in the flesh, since they have nothing native and pleasant, nothing worthy of joy, laid up ready in the soul.
"And yet," he says, "we have spoken of the rest as they occurred to us; but as for music, how many pleasures and graces of what kind it brings, which they turn away from and flee — no one seeking the reason could forget it, given the strangeness of what Epicurus says." He declares the wise man, in his Difficulties, to be a lover of spectacle and to take more delight than anyone else in performances and Dionysiac shows, yet he gives no room, even over wine, to musical problems or to the learned inquiries of critics; indeed he even urges music-loving kings to put up with soldiers' tales and vulgar buffoonery at their symposia rather than with discourses on musical and poetic questions carried through to their conclusion. This is what he had the audacity to write in his book On Kingship — as though writing for Sardanapalus, or for Nanarus who governed Babylon as satrap. For not even Hiero, nor Attalus, nor Archelaus would have been persuaded to rouse Euripides and Simonides and Melanippides and the Crateses and Diodotuses from their couches at table in order to recline instead with Cardacians and Agrianians, and buffoons like Callias, and certain Thrasonideses and Thrasyleons, making them howl and clap uproariously. And if Ptolemy, the first man to gather together the Museum, had come upon these fine, royal precepts, would he not have said, "Muse, what grudge do we bear the Samians?" For it befits no Athenian to be so hostile to the Muses and to make war on them — those whom Zeus has not loved shudder to hear the cry of the Pierides ringing in their ears.
What do you say, Epicurus? You go off to the theater at dawn to listen to lyre-players and flute-players, yet at a dinner party, when Theophrastus discusses concords, or Aristoxenus discusses modulations, or Aristotle discusses Homer, will you clap your hands over your ears in disgust and revulsion? Then do they not more fittingly display the Scythian Ateas, who, when the flute-player Ismenias was taken captive and played the flute over wine, swore he would rather listen to his horse neighing? Do they not thereby confess to waging implacable, unheralded war on the beautiful? And if there is no pleasure in it, what solemn and pure thing, in heaven's name, do they embrace and love? Would it not have been more reasonable, for the sake of living pleasantly, to be revolted by perfumes and incense like dung-beetles and vultures, than to loathe and flee the talk of critics and musicians?
For what flute, or lyre tuned to song, or chorus sending forth a wide-voiced strain, breaking clear and skillful from many mouths, ever so delighted Epicurus and Metrodorus as the discourses on choruses and productions, and the problems of flutes and rhythms and harmonies, delighted Aristotle and Theophrastus and Dicaearchus and Hieronymus? Such questions as: why, among flutes of equal length, does the narrower sound the deeper note? And why, when the reed of the pipe is drawn upward, does it sharpen in every note, but when it is lowered, it deepens again — and when the pipes are drawn together they sound deeper, when pulled apart, sharper? And why, whenever you scatter chaff or dust over the orchestra of the theaters, does the audience find its hearing dulled? And why did the craftsman not allow the bronze statue of Alexander at Pella to be set up on the proscenium, since it would ruin the actors' voices? And why does the chromatic genus diffuse the sound, while the harmonic mode draws it together? The characters of poets, and their fictions, and the differences of style, and the resolutions of difficulties — possessing, in what is fitting and polished, both what is proper to them and what is persuasive — seem to me like that saying of Xenophon's, and to make the lover forget himself, so much do they master him with pleasure.
"In which pleasure these men have no share, and, as they themselves say, do not even wish to share; instead, straining their contemplative faculty down toward the body and dragging it, as with leaden weights, by the desires of the flesh, they leave nothing to distinguish themselves from grooms or shepherds who toss down hay or straw or some grass, as though it were fitting for their charges to graze and chew on such things. Do they not, in fact, expect the soul to wallow in the body's pleasures no less than a pig in its sty, hoping for something concerning the flesh, or experiencing it, or recalling it with delight, while allowing it to take or seek nothing proper or sweet or pleasant from itself? And yet what could be more unreasonable than this: that of the two things of which a human being is composed, body and soul, the soul holding the more governing rank, the body should have some good proper to it, in accordance with its nature and its own, while the soul has none — but instead sits gazing upon the body, smiling along with its passions, sharing its pleasure and rejoicing with it, while the soul itself remains from the start unmoved and unaffected, having nothing at all choiceworthy or desirable or a cause for joy? Either they ought simply to have laid the matter bare and made the whole human being flesh, as some do who do away entirely with the substance of the soul, or, having left two distinct natures within us, they ought to have left each its own good and evil, its own and its alien — just as, indeed, each of the senses is by nature disposed toward some object proper to itself, even though they are all in great sympathy with one another. Now the soul's own organ of perception is the mind, to which nothing proper is supposed to underlie it — no sight, no motion, no experience akin to it in which, when it obtains it, it naturally rejoices — this is of all things the most unreasonable, unless, by Zeus, I have unwittingly been joining in slandering these men."
And I said to him, "Not, at any rate, as far as we are your judges; rather you are released from all charge of malice, so take courage and finish the rest of your argument." "How so?" he said. "Will not Aristodemus take over from us, if you have altogether given up?" "Certainly," said Aristodemus, "whenever you tire, as this man has — but while you are still in your prime, my good friend, make use of yourself, so that you may not seem to be growing soft." "Well then," said Theon, "what remains is quite easy. What is left is to go through how many pleasures the active life affords. They themselves say, surely, that 'doing well is more pleasant than faring well'; and doing well is possible, of course, through words as well, but for the most part and in the greatest degree it lies in action — as the very word 'benefaction' suggests, and as they themselves bear witness. For we heard just a little before, from this man here, what sort of things Epicurus exclaimed, and what sort of letters he sent to his friends, hymning and magnifying Metrodorus, saying, 'How well and youthfully he went down from the city to the sea to help Mithres the Syrian' — and this though Metrodorus had actually done nothing at the time. What, then, are we to suppose were the pleasures of Plato, and how great, when Dion, setting out under his guidance, overthrew Dionysius and freed Sicily? What were those of Aristotle, when he raised up again his fatherland, which lay leveled to the ground, and brought its citizens home? What were those of Theophrastus and Phanias, who cut down the tyrants of their fatherland? For, privately, to how many men they gave aid — not sending them wheat, nor a bushel of barley meal, as Epicurus sent to some — but arranging for exiles to return home, for the imprisoned to be freed, for those bereft of children and wives to recover them — what need to speak precisely to you who already know it well? But it is impossible, even for one willing to pass over it, to let go the man's absurdity: trampling underfoot and belittling the deeds of Themistocles and Miltiades, while writing such things as this about himself to his friends — 'Wonderfully and magnificently have you taken care of us in the matter of the grain supply, and you have shown signs, sky-high, of your goodwill toward me.' So that, if one removed the little bit of grain from the philosopher's letter, the words would give the impression of gratitude such as would be written for one who had freed or saved the whole of Greece, or the people of Athens."
"That nature, then, requires costly provision even for the pleasures of the body, and that the sweetest thing is not found in barley cake and lentils, but that the appetites of the pleasure-lovers seek relishes and Thasian wine and perfumes and pastries and cakes lavishly steeped in the honey of the tawny-winged bee, and, besides these, fair young women such as Leontion and Boidion and Hedeia and Nicidion who fed about the Garden — let us set that aside. Yet it must be granted that beneath the joys of the soul there must lie, admittedly, greatness of action and beauty of noteworthy deeds, if they are to be not empty nor ignoble and girlish, but weighty and steadfast and magnificent. As for exulting over comforts, sailor-fashion, as men busy with love-making do, and priding oneself that 'though sick with the disease of dropsy he gathered certain gatherings of friends for feasting, and did not begrudge the intake of fluid brought on by the dropsy, and, remembering his last words to Neocles, melted with a strange pleasure mixed with tears' — no one in his right mind would call these things true joys or true delights; but if there is such a thing as a Sardonic laughter of the soul too, it is found in these forced grins and this laughing-through-tears. If, then, someone will call these things joys and delights, consider by contrast the surpassing pleasures of those other men: 'By our counsels Sparta shorn of glory,' and 'This is that great star of Rome, O stranger, his country's star,' and 'I wonder whether I should divine you a god or a man.' But whenever I set before my eyes the successes of Thrasybulus and Pelopidas, and Aristides at Plataea or Miltiades at Marathon, then, in the words of Herodotus, I am compelled to declare my judgment: that in the life of action the pleasant exceeds the noble. Epaminondas too bears witness for me, when he said, as they report, that the sweetest thing that ever befell him was to see his parents still living to behold the trophy he himself had set up as general at Leuctra. Let us, then, compare with Epaminondas's mother the mother of Epicurus, rejoicing that she saw her son sunk deep in his little garden, jointly begetting children with Polyaenus on the Cyzicene courtesan."
For how greatly the mother and sister of Metrodorus rejoiced over his marriage and over the letters exchanged with his brother is plain, no doubt, from the books themselves. "But," they cry out, proclaiming that they have lived pleasantly and are bursting with joy and singing hymns to their own life" — why, even household slaves, when they feast at the Cronia or go about the countryside celebrating the Dionysia, you could not endure their whooping and their uproar, doing and shouting such things out of sheer delight and vulgarity as: "Lie down and let us drink; are there not viands here too, poor wretch? Do not grudge yourself." And at once they raised the ululation, and the wine was mixed; someone came bearing a garland and set it on him; there was hymning, disgracefully, of "a fair branch of laurel — Phoebus does not favor such music"; and someone struck up a song for the bastard mistress kept in the stable. Are not the words of Metrodorus, writing to his brother, just like these? "There is no need to save the Greeks, nor to win crowns from them for wisdom, but to eat and drink wine, Timocrates, harmlessly and agreeably to the belly." And again, somewhere in the same letters, he says, "And I rejoiced, and I took courage, because I learned from Epicurus to gratify the belly rightly." And, "For the good, O natural philosopher Timocrates, lies around the belly."
"And, in short, men mark out the magnitude of pleasure, as with a center and a radius, by the belly; and it is impossible for a life that is unpolitical, without civic action, without love of humanity, and without enthusiasm to have a share of that bright and kingly joy — the joy that truly produces greatness of mind and light and a calm poured out over all men — when men take up such a life for the sake of honor and gratitude. For the soul is no mean or small or ignoble thing, nor does it, like the octopus, extend its desires only as far as things edible; rather, the keenest satiety cuts off that appetite, once it has flourished but a brief portion of an hour, but for those impulses toward the noble, and the honor and gratitude that attend the noble, the measure of them is not the span of one's lifetime — rather, laying hold of the whole of eternity, the love of honor and the love of humanity vie with each other in deeds and in acts of grace that carry pleasures beyond reckoning, which even good men, though they flee them, cannot escape, meeting them from every side and being embraced by them, whenever, by their benefactions, they bring joy to many: 'and as he goes through the city they gaze on him as on a god.' For the man who so disposes others that they rejoice and are gladdened and long to touch him and to greet him is plainly, even to a blind man, possessed within himself of great pleasures which he reaps, so that such men do not grow weary in doing good, nor do they give up, but we hear such words spoken of them as: 'Much to mortals does your father beget you worth,' and 'may we never cease from doing good to men.'
And what need is there to speak of those supremely good? For if to one of the moderately mean, about to die, the master — whether god or king — should grant one hour, on condition that, having used it for some noble action or for enjoyment, he must die at once, who, in that span of time, would rather be with Lais and drink Ariusian wine than, by killing Archias, set Thebes free? I, for one, think no one would. Indeed, I observe that even gladiators who are not utterly savage but Greek, when they are about to go in to fight, though many costly dishes are set before them, more gladly, in that time, entrust their women to their friends and set free their household slaves than gratify their bellies. But even if there is something great in bodily pleasures, this surely is shared also by men of action: 'for they too eat bread and drink flaming wine,' and feast with friends — far more eagerly, I think, after their contests and their labors, as did Alexander and Agesilaus and, by Zeus, Phocion and Epaminondas, than men like these, who anoint themselves by the fire and are gently jolted about in their litters; rather, being engaged in those greater pursuits, they hold such things in contempt. What need to speak of Epaminondas, who refused to dine, seeing that the...
the meal, but said to his friend, "I thought you were sacrificing, not committing an outrage?" So too Alexander drove away Ada's cooks, saying that he himself had better chefs for breakfast a night march, and for dinner a light breakfast; and when Philoxenus wrote asking whether he should buy some handsome boys, Alexander very nearly removed him from his position of trust though who had a better right to indulge? But, as Hippocrates says, of two pains the lesser is obscured by the greater, and in the same way the bodily pleasures are blotted out and extinguished by the practical and ambitious pleasures, through the excess and greatness of the joy that accompanies them, in the one who rejoices in his soul.
"If, then, as they say, the remembrance of past goods is of the greatest importance for living pleasantly, not one of us would believe Epicurus when he says that, dying amid the greatest pains and sicknesses, he offset them by the memory of the pleasures he had previously enjoyed. For one could more readily imagine, in a sea stirred up and surging, an image of calm water than a smiling memory of pleasure amid such throbbing and such wrenching of the body. But no one, even if he wished, could banish from himself the memories of his actions. For how, or in what way, could Alexander have forgotten Arbela, or Pelopidas forgotten Leontiades, or Themistocles forgotten Salamis?
The Athenians to this day celebrate the battle of Marathon, the Thebans that of Leuctra, and we ourselves, by Zeus, celebrate the victory of Daiphantus near Hyampolis, as you know, and Phocis is filled with sacrifices and honors for it; and there is not one of us who takes as much pleasure in what he himself has eaten or drunk as in what those men achieved. One may consider, then, how great a gladness and joy and delight lived on together with the very authors of those deeds, a delight which, in more than five hundred years, memory has not cast away.
Moreover, Epicurus himself admitted that certain pleasures arise from reputation. Why, then, would he not himself have been so wildly and frantically aflame and convulsed with desire for reputation, that he not only disowned his own teachers, and quarreled over syllables and accents with Democritus, from whom he had lifted his doctrines word for word, but declared that no one had ever been wise except himself and his pupils and wrote how Colotes fell at his feet in worship of him while he was lecturing on nature, and how his brother Neocles used to declare from childhood that no one had ever been or would be wiser than Epicurus and how his mother had within her so many atoms of such a kind that, coming together, they produced a sage!
Then, just as Callicratidas used to say that Conon committed adultery with the sea, might one not likewise say that Epicurus courted reputation shamefully and secretly, and forced himself upon her, not enjoying her openly but rather being in love with her and straining after her? For just as bodies, when starved of food, are compelled by hunger to feed upon themselves against nature, so love of reputation produces this same evil in souls: when they are starved of praise from others, they praise themselves."
"But those who hold such views about praise and reputation do they not in fact admit that they forgo great pleasures out of weakness or softness, when they avoid positions of power or political careers or the friendships of kings from which, as Democritus said, great and splendid things come into life? For no one could be persuaded by a man who sets such store by and so cherishes the testimony of Neocles and the worship of Colotes, that he would not have gone mad and cried aloud with joy if applauded by the Greeks at Olympia rather he would have been altogether lifted up by delight, like an old thistle-down puffed about, as Sophocles says. If indeed to be well thought of is pleasant, then surely to be ill thought of is painful;
and nothing is more disreputable than friendlessness, inactivity, atheism, self-indulgence, and indifference. And all men, except those very Epicureans themselves, believe that these things belong to their creed. 'Unjustly,' someone will say. But we are examining their reputation, not the truth of the matter. And let us not even mention the books and the abusive decrees of cities that have been written against them, for that would be quarrelsome. But if oracles and divination and the providence of the gods,
and the affection and love of parents for their children, and political life and leadership and rule are things held in honor and glory, then it necessarily follows that those who say, 'one need not save the Greeks, but eat and drink harmlessly and agreeably to one's belly,' are held in low repute and are considered wicked and that, being thought such, they are distressed and live joylessly if indeed they hold that the honorable is pleasant, and that good repute is honorable."
When Theon had said this, it seemed good to break off the walk, and, as was our custom, we sat down on the benches and remained silent for a while in company with what had been said. For Zeuxippus, reflecting on what had been said, spoke up: "Who," he said, "will supply what is still lacking to the argument? For it does not yet have its proper conclusion the points which Zeuxippus himself just now, in mentioning divination and providence, has put forward. For the men themselves say that these things provide them, not least of all, with pleasure and calm and confidence for their life; so something must be said about these matters too."
Aristodemus took up the discussion and said, "But concerning pleasure, it has been said, more or less, that when their doctrine succeeds and prospers it removes a certain fear and superstition, but it does not grant joy and gladness that come from the gods rather it makes them feel toward the gods as we feel toward the Hyrcanians or the Scythians, expecting from them neither anything good nor anything bad. But if something must be added to what has been said, this is the first point I think I would take from them: that in denying the value of grief, tears, and groaning at the deaths of friends,
they fight against those who say, 'the freedom from grief that consists in an absence of feeling comes from a still greater evil namely cruelty or an unrestrained madness for reputation; wherefore it is better to feel something, and to grieve, and, by Zeus, to moisten the eyes and to melt in tears,' and all the other things that men, when moved to passion and writing about it, seem to be tender-hearted and affectionate for saying. Epicurus himself has said such things in many other places
and also concerning the death of Hegesianax, writing to his father Sosytheus and to Pyrson, the brother of the deceased for I recently happened to read through his letters. And I say this in imitation of him: that atheism is no less an evil than cruelty and love of reputation, into which those who take away from god both his favor together with his anger lead us. For it is better that there be present and mingled with our belief about the gods a common feeling of reverence and fear,
than that, in fleeing this, we should be left with neither hope nor gratitude toward ourselves nor confidence in present blessings nor any refuge, when we are in misfortune, toward the divine." Indeed one must, no doubt, remove from our belief about the gods, as one removes rheum from the eye, the element of superstition; but if that is impossible, one must not, along with it, cut out and blind the faith which most people hold about the gods.
This faith is not something fearful or grim, as these men fashion it, slandering providence, as though presenting it to children as a bogey or an avenging Fury, malignant and tragic. But few among men fear god, and for them it would be no better not to fear him for, fearing him as they would a ruler gentle to the good but oppressive to the wicked, by this one fear, through which they do no wrong, they are freed from many of the troubles that come from wrongdoing; and having their wickedness kept quietly in check within themselves, as though withering away, they are less disturbed than those who indulge it and dare to act on it, and then are immediately afraid and change their ways.
But the disposition of the many, ignorant and not altogether wicked, toward god has, to be sure, mingled in it, for the one who reveres and honors him, a certain throbbing fear, and this is called superstition; yet many thousand times greater and stronger than this in them is their hopefulness and their exceeding joy, as they pray for and receive every benefit of good fortune as coming from the gods. This is clear from the strongest evidence: for no pastimes in temples, no festival seasons, no actions, no sights delight us more than those which we see or ourselves perform in connection with the gods,
whether taking part in mystic rites, or dancing in choruses, or attending sacrifices or initiations. For at such times the soul is not, as one might expect if it were consorting with tyrants or harsh punishers, filled with grief and lowliness and despondency rather, where it most believes and imagines the god to be present, there most of all, having driven away griefs and fears and anxious care, it gives itself over to pleasure, even to the point of drunkenness and laughter and play,
in matters of love, as the poet has said: 'both old man and old woman, when they call to mind golden Aphrodite, their dear heart is lifted up'; and in processions and sacrifices not only the old man and the old woman, nor the poor man and the commoner, but even the thick-legged woman grinding at the mill, and household slaves and hired laborers, are carried away by gladness and joy while for the rich and for kings there are always banquets and feasts of every kind available. But the pleasures that come from sacred rites and offerings, and whenever, in their conception, men seem to come nearest to touching the divine with honor and reverence, bring a pleasure and grace far superior. Of this a man who has renounced providence has no share whatsoever. For it is not abundance of wine nor the roasting of meats that gladdens men at festivals, but
good hope as well, and the belief that the god is present, gracious, and receives what is done with favor. For we take away the flute and the garland from other festivals, but when the god is absent from a sacrifice, as though a shrine lacked its host, what remains is godless, unfestive, and without inspiration indeed it is wholly joyless and grievous to the celebrant himself: for he acts out prayers and acts of worship while needing nothing from them, out of fear
of the multitude, and utters words contrary to what he actually believes as a philosopher; and while sacrificing he stands beside the priest who slays the victim as though beside a butcher, but once he has sacrificed he goes away repeating the line of Menander: 'I sacrificed, but the gods pay no attention at all to me.' For this is how Epicurus thinks one ought to conduct oneself, so as not to provoke the ill will and hostility of the multitude, who take pleasure in doing things at which the philosophers themselves feel distaste for, as Evenus says, 'every necessary thing is by nature irksome.'
In this respect they think that the superstitious, too, do not rejoice but rather fear when they engage in sacrifices and rites, and that they themselves differ in no way from such people if indeed they do the same things out of fear, without sharing even as much good hope as the superstitious do, but only fearing and being disturbed lest they be caught out deceiving and cheating the multitude and it is for this purpose that their books about the gods and about piety have been composed convoluted, and containing nothing sound, but entirely wrapped and hidden all around, concealing out of fear the opinions which they actually hold.
And indeed, after considering the wicked and the multitude, let us now, in the third place, examine the finest and most god-beloved class of men, and in what great pleasures they live, associating with pure beliefs about god that he is the leader of all good things and the father of all noble things, and
that it is not lawful for him to do, any more than to suffer, anything base. For he is good, and toward the good no envy attaches to anyone, nor fear, nor anger, nor hatred for it does not belong to what is hot to cool things, but to warm them, just as it does not belong to what is good to harm; whereas anger is opposed to grace, and wrath to kindness, and the malevolent and disturbing is set as far as possible by nature from what is benevolent and kindly disposed. For
the one set belongs to virtue and power, the other to weakness and baseness. The divine, then, is not held together at once by both wraths and graces, since it is its nature to show favor and to help, but it is not its nature to grow angry and to do harm; rather, 'great Zeus in heaven, driving his winged chariot, goes forth first, ordering and caring for all things,' while among the other gods one is
Epidotes, another Meilichios, another Alexikakos, and Apollo, as Pindar says, 'was appointed to be most gentle to mortals.' 'And all things belong to the gods,' as Diogenes says, 'and the goods of friends are held in common, and the good are friends to the gods'; and it is impossible for the one beloved by god not to fare well, or for the temperate and just man not to be beloved by god. Do you think that those who do away with providence need any other punishment,
or that it is not enough that they are cutting away from themselves so great a pleasure and joy as attends those of us who are so disposed toward the divine? Or that for Epicurus, Metrodorus, Polyaenus, and Aristobulus were his sources of encouragement and gladness, most of whom he continued to tend when sick, or to lament when dying while Lycurgus, addressed by the Pythia as
'dear to Zeus and to all who dwell in the Olympian halls,' and Socrates, believing that the divine sign spoke to him personally out of its kindness toward him, and Pindar, on hearing that one of his own songs was being sung by Pan, took a modest delight in it or Phormio believing that he entertained the Dioscuri, or Sophocles believing that he entertained Asclepius himself, and others too holding such beliefs because of a manifestation that had occurred and the opinions Hermogenes held
about the gods deserve to be recalled in his very words: 'For these gods,' he says, 'who know all things and are able to do all things, are so kindly disposed toward me that, because they care for me, I am never unnoticed by them, neither by night nor by day, wherever I set out to go or whatever I intend to do; and because they foreknow what will result from each action, they signal it to me,
sending messengers omens, dreams, and birds.' It is likely, then, that the things which come from the gods are good; but the very fact that they come through the agency of the gods produces great pleasure, and irresistible confidence, and high spirit, and a joy like a beam of light smiling upon good fortune. But those who hold otherwise curtail the sweetest part of good fortune, while to misfortunes
they leave no refuge instead, faring badly, they look to a single haven of escape dissolution and the loss of all sensation as though someone standing by a ship in a storm at sea, trying to encourage the crew, should say that the ship has no helmsman at all, nor will the Dioscuri come to their aid 'to calm the violent sea as it advances, and the swift blasts of the winds' yet that there is nothing terrible in this, except that the ship is on the very point
of being swallowed up by the sea, or of being swiftly dashed to pieces on the rocks after running aground. For this is the Epicurean argument in terrible illnesses and overwhelming pains: 'Do you hope for some good from the gods because of your piety? You are deluded: for what is blessed and imperishable is held together neither by wraths nor by graces. Do you imagine something better than the things of this life, after this life? You have been deceived: for the
...you have deceived yourself: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us." How then, man, do you bid me "eat and rejoice"? Because, by Zeus, for one caught in a storm shipwreck is near, for the excessive suffering will join with death. And yet a passenger cast out of a ship that has broken up rides on some hope of reaching land with his body and swimming to shore; but for the soul, this philosophy of theirs shows no way out "from the gray brine" — it vanishes at once, is scattered, and perishes even before the body does. So the soul, having received this all-wise and divine doctrine, is supposed to rejoice exceedingly that the end of its suffering is to perish, be destroyed, and become nothing.
"But," he said, looking at me, "it is foolish for us to speak about this too, since we recently heard you argue quite sufficiently against those who claim that Epicurus' account makes us calmer and happier in the face of death than Plato's account of the soul." Zeuxippus then took up the point: "Then will the discussion remain incomplete because of him, and shall we be afraid to go on speaking against Epicurus?" "Not at all," I said. "For, as Empedocles says, it is good to hear twice what needs to be said. So we must call on Theon again: I do not think he was absent when this was discussed before, and besides he is young, and need not fear being called to account by the young for forgetting."
Theon, as though compelled, said: "Well, if it is decided that I should do this, I will not imitate you, Aristodemus — for you were afraid to state his arguments, whereas I will use your own. You seemed to me right in dividing mankind into three classes: the unjust and wicked; second, the many and the ordinary; and third, the decent and sensible.
"Now the unjust and wicked, fearing the judgments and punishments in Hades and afraid to do wrong, and for this reason keeping themselves more quiet, will live more pleasantly and with less disturbance — for Epicurus thinks that men should be restrained from injustice by nothing other than fear of punishment. So superstition must actually be heaped upon such people, and the terrors and chasms and fears and suspicions from heaven and earth must be stirred up against them, if they are to be struck with fear and thereby become more decent and gentle. For it profits them more to refrain from injustice out of fear of what comes after death than, by doing wrong, to live their life insecurely and in constant dread.
"But for the majority, even apart from fear about what is in Hades, the hope born of the myth-like notion of eternity, and the longing to exist — which is the oldest and greatest of all desires — surpass in pleasure and sweetness that childish dread. That is why, even when they lose children, wives, and friends, people would rather that the dead still exist somewhere and continue on, suffering hardship, than that they be utterly removed, destroyed, and become nothing at all. And they gladly hear and use the words 'the dying man departs' and 'passes on' and whatever else signifies that death is a change in the soul's condition and not its destruction, and they speak in this way: 'yet even there I will remember my dear companion,' and 'what shall I say to Hector or to your aged husband on your behalf?'
"And from this turn of thought comes the practice of burying with the dead their accustomed weapons, vessels, and clothing, and, as Minos did for Glaucus, Cretan flutes and the limbs of a dappled fawn — burying these along with the dead brings them comfort. And if it seems that the dead ask for or long for something, people are glad to give it, just as Periander burned his wife's jewelry along with her, since she seemed to need it and said she was cold. Figures like Aeacus, Ascalaphus, and the rivers of Acheron do not disturb them very much, since to those who delight in such things people have assigned choruses, theaters, and every kind of music once they have passed on.
"But everyone dreads that face of death which is fearful, grim, and dark — the face of unconsciousness, forgetfulness, and unknowing. They are troubled and cannot bear it when it is said of someone, 'he has perished,' 'he has been destroyed,' 'he is no more' — as though what follows were: 'he will lie in the deep-wooded earth, having no share in banquets, the lyre, or the all-delightful sound of flutes; and a man's soul cannot be seized or captured to come back again, once it has passed the barrier of his teeth.'
"In just this way those who say things like 'we have been born once, and it is not possible to be born twice, and for eternity we must no longer exist' deal themselves a fatal blow in advance. For, disdaining the present as something small — or rather as nothing at all compared with the whole of things — they let it pass by unenjoyed, and they grow careless of virtue and action, becoming despondent and contemptuous of themselves, as if they were creatures of a day, unstable, and born for nothing of any worth.
"For the saying that 'what is dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us' does not remove the fear of death but, as it were, adds a proof of it — for this very thing is what nature fears: the dissolution of the soul into something that neither thinks nor perceives, so that you all become 'water and earth.' And Epicurus, by turning this dissolution into a scattering into void and atoms, cuts off the hope of immortality even more completely. Because of this hope, I would almost say that all men and women are eager to be torn apart by Cerberus and carried into the unfathomable pit, just so that they may remain in existence and not be utterly destroyed.
"And yet, as I said, not very many people fear these particular things, since they are the doctrines and mythical tales of mothers and nurses; and those who do fear them believe, in turn, that certain initiations and purifications help, by which, once purified, they will spend their time in Hades playing and dancing in places that have light, pure air, and sound.
"But it is the deprivation of life itself that troubles both young and old alike; for, as Euripides says, we are shown to be unhappily in love with 'whatever it is that gleams here upon the earth,' nor do we hear without pain and distress the words 'so speaking, the far-shining, immortal face of swift-horsed day left him.' Therefore, along with the belief in immortality, they destroy the sweetest and greatest hopes of most people.
"What then do we suppose is the case for good people who have lived piously and justly, who expect no evil but rather the fairest and most divine things? For in the first place, athletes do not receive the crown while still competing, but after they have competed and won; in the same way, believing that the prizes of victory in life belong to the good only after life, they take a wonderful pride in their virtue in view of those hopes — among which is the hope of seeing those who now behave insolently because of wealth and power, and who foolishly mock their betters, pay a fitting penalty.
"Then too, no one who longs for truth and for the vision of reality has ever satisfied himself with it fully in this life, using as he does a reasoning faculty that is moist and disturbed, as if through a mist or cloud cast by the body; but instead, looking upward like a bird as though about to fly out of the body into something great and bright, they make the soul trim and light, freed from mortal things, by using philosophy as a practice of dying. So great and truly perfect a good do they consider death to be, since there the soul will live a true life, whereas now it lives not in waking reality but experiences things like dreams.
"If, then, 'the memory of a dead friend is sweet from every point of view,' as Epicurus said, one may already grasp how great a joy such people deprive themselves of — supposing that they receive and pursue only phantoms and images of their dead companions, things with neither mind nor sensation, while not expecting truly to be with their beloved father and mother again, or to see a good wife somewhere, and having no hope of that companionship and affection which belongs to those who hold the same beliefs about the soul as Pythagoras, Plato, and Homer.
"Homer has shown what an experience like theirs is: he threw down a phantom of Aeneas amid the fighters as though he were dead, and then later revealed the man himself, 'coming alive and unharmed, possessed of noble might,' to his friends; 'and they rejoiced,' he says, and letting go of the phantom, they embraced him. So too we, when reason shows that it is possible truly to meet with the dead, and for the one who loves to touch and be together with the very thinking and loving part of the beloved, should not remain like those unable even to cast off all the images and outer husks, in which they persist grieving and suffering emptily.
"Apart from this, those who regard death as the beginning of a different, better life take more pleasure even when their present circumstances are good, since they look forward to something greater; and if things here do not turn out as they wish, they are not greatly distressed, but rather their hopes for the good and beautiful things after death, bringing immeasurable pleasures and expectations, erase and wipe away every deficiency and every setback of the soul — as though the soul, on a journey, or rather on a brief detour from its journey, bore what it encountered easily and with moderation.
"But for those for whom life ends in unconsciousness and dissolution, death, bringing not a change from evils but also a loss of goods, is painful to both kinds of people — yet more so to the fortunate than to those who live in hardship; for from the latter it cuts off only the uncertain hope of faring better, but from the former it takes away a sure good, namely living pleasantly. And just as, I think, drugs that are not beneficial but merely necessary, while not relieving the sick, wear down and harm the healthy, so too the doctrine of Epicurus, to those who live wretchedly, promises the dissolution and destruction of the soul as no fortunate end; while for the wise and prudent, teeming with good things, it altogether cuts short their good cheer, turning their existence from a blessed life into not living and not being at all.
"It is clear at once, then, that the very thought of the loss of goods is naturally painful, in proportion as sure hopes and present enjoyments give pleasure.
"Nevertheless, they also say that the removal of the suspicion of endless and unending evils leaves them the surest and sweetest good — namely, the very thought of having been released; and that this is what Epicurus' doctrine does, fixing the fear of death upon the dissolution of the soul. If, then, release from the expectation of unending evils is most pleasant, how is it not painful to be deprived of the hope of eternal goods and to lose the highest happiness? For not-being is a good to neither kind of person, but is contrary to nature and alien to all existing things; but those from whom death's evil removes the evils of life have, as it were, unconsciousness itself as a comfort, as if they were escaping something; whereas, on the contrary, those for whom the change is from good things to nothing see the most fearful of ends, one in which their happiness will cease.
"For nature does not fear unconsciousness as the beginning of something else, but because it is a deprivation of present goods; for that which becomes 'nothing to us' only by the removal of everything that is ours is, by the very conception, already something to us. And unconsciousness does not pain those who no longer exist at that later time, but rather those who now exist, as they are being plunged by it into non-existence and yet, even so, are unwilling to be extinguished.
"That is why it was not Cerberus or Cocytus that made the fear of death boundless, but the threat of not existing, which offers those who have perished no possibility of changing back into existence — 'for it is not possible to be born twice, and for eternity one must not be,' as Epicurus says. For if not-being is the limit of being, and this limit is itself unending and unchangeable, then the deprivation of good things turns out to be an eternal evil — an unconsciousness that will never cease.
"And Herodotus was wiser when he said that 'god, having given life a taste of sweetness, shows himself to be envious in it' — especially to those who seem to be happy, for whom pleasure is a bait of pain, since they taste what they will be deprived of. For what joy or enjoyment or exuberance would not be knocked down and brought low by the thought, constantly recurring, of the soul pouring itself out, as it were, into the vast, boundless sea — for those who place the good and blessed life in pleasure? And if, indeed, as Epicurus himself thinks, most people happen to perish in pain, then the fear of death is altogether beyond consolation, leading through evils to the deprivation of good things."
"And against these points they will not tire of fighting and forcing all people to consider the avoidance of evils a good, but to no longer regard the deprivation of goods as an evil; yet this much they admit: that death holds no hope and no joy, but that all that is pleasant and good has been cut off — at just the time when those who think the soul is imperishable and indestructible expect many fine, great, and divine things, or expect the soul to circle through long periods of time, now on earth, now in heaven, until it is dissolved together with the cosmos, kindled into intelligent fire along with the sun and moon.
"Such a vast region of so many pleasures Epicurus cuts away; and, since the hopes and favors coming from the gods have been removed, as has been said, blinding the love of learning that belongs to the contemplative part and the love of honor that belongs to the practical part, he has compressed and cast down our nature into something altogether narrow and not even pure — the soul's rejoicing that is fixed on the flesh — as though it had no greater good than the mere avoidance of evil."