If then the remembering of former good things (as
they affirm) be that which most contributes to a pleasurable living, not one of us will then credit Epicurus when
he tells us that, while he was dying away in the midst of
the strongest agonies and distempers, he yet bore himself
up with the memory of the pleasures he formerly enjoyed.
For a man may better see the resemblance of his own face
in a troubled deep or a storm, than a smooth and smiling
remembrance of past pleasure in a body tortured with
such lancing and rending pains. But now the memories
of past actions no man can put from him that would.
For did Alexander, think you, (or indeed could he possibly) forget the fight at Arbela ? Or Pelopidas the tyrant
Leontiadas ? Or Themistocles the engagement at Salamis?
For the Athenians to this very day keep an annual festival
for the battle at Marathon, and the Thebans for that at
Leuctra; and so, by Jove, do we ourselves (as you very
well know) for that which Daiphantus gained at Hyampolis, and all Phocis is filled with sacrifices and public
honors. Nor is there any of us that is better satisfied
with what himself hath either eaten or drunk than he
is with what they have achieved. It is very easy then to
imagine what great content, satisfaction, and joy accompanied the authors of these actions in their lifetime, when
the very memory of them hath not yet after five hundred
years and more lost its rejoicing power. The truth is,
Epicurus himself allows there are some pleasures derived
from fame. And indeed why should he not, when he himself had such a furious lechery and wriggling after glory
as made him not only to disown his masters and scuffle
about syllables and accents with his fellow-pedant Democritus
[p. 187]
(whose doctrines he stole verbatim), and to tell his
disciples there never was a wise man in the world besides
himself, but also to put it in writing how Colotes performed adoration to him, as he was one day philosophizing,
by touching his knees, and that his own brother Neocles
was used from a child to say, ‘There neither is, nor ever
was in the world, a wiser man than Epicurus,’ and that
his mother had just so many atoms within her as, when
they came together, must have produced a complete wise
man? May not a man then—as Callicratidas once said
of the Athenian admiral Conon, that he whored the sea—
as well say of Epicurus that he basely and covertly forces
and ravishes Fame, by not enjoying her publicly but ruffling and debauching her in a corner? For as men's bodies
are oft necessitated by famine, for want of other food, to
prey against nature upon themselves, a like mischief to this
does vain-glory create in men's minds, forcing them, when
they hunger after praise and cannot obtain it from other
men, at last to commend themselves.
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