We will now forbear to mention that Nature requires
very large and chargeable provisions to be made for accomplishing the pleasures of the body; nor can the height
of delicacy be had in barley bread and lentil pottage. But
voluptuous and sensual appetites expect costly dishes, Thasian wines, perfumed unguents, and varieties of pastry
works,
And cakes by female hands wrought artfully,
Well steep'd in th' liquor of the gold-wing'd bee;
1
and besides all this. handsome young lassies too, such as
Leontion, Boidion, Hedia, and Nicedion, that were wont
to roam about in Epicurus's philosophic garden. But now
such joys as suit the mind must undoubtedly be grounded
[p. 182]
upon a grandeur of actions and a splendor of worthy deeds,
if men would not seem little, ungenerous, and puerile, but
on the contrary, bulky, firm, and brave. But for a man to
be elated with pleasures, as Epicurus is, like tarpaulins
upon the festivals of Venus, and to vaunt himself that,
when he was sick of an ascites, he notwithstanding called
his friends together to certain collations and grudged not
his dropsy the satisfaction of good liquors, and that, when
he called to remembrance the last words of Neocles, he
was melted with a peculiar sort of joy intermixed with
tears,—no man in his right senses would call these true
joys or satisfactions. Nay, I will be bold to say that, if
such a thing as that they call a sardonic or grinning laughter can happen to the mind, it is to be found in these forcings and crying laughters. But if any will needs have them
still called by the name of joys and satisfactions, let him
but yet think how far they are exceeded by the pleasures
that here ensue:
Our counsels have proud Sparta's glory clipt;
and
Stranger, this is his country Rome's great star;
and again this,
I know not which to guess thee, man or God.
Now when I set before my eyes the brave achievements of
Thrasybulus and Pelopidas, of Aristides engaged at Plataea
and Miltiades at Marathon, I am here constrained with
Herodotus to declare it my opinion, that in an active state
of life the pleasure far exceeds the glory. And Epaminondas herein bears me witness also, when he saith (as is
reported of him), that the greatest satisfaction he ever received in his life was that his father and mother had lived
to see the trophy set up at Leuctra when himself was general. Let us then compare with Epaminondas's Epicurus's
mother, rejoicing that she had lived to see her son cooping
himself up in a little garden, and getting children in common
[p. 183]
with Polyaenus upon the strumpet of Cyzicus. As
for Metrodorus's mother and sister, how extravagantly rejoiced they were at his nuptials appears by the letters he
wrote to his brother in answer to his; that is, out of his own
books. Nay, they tell us bellowing that they have not
only lived a life of pleasure, but also exult and sing hymns
in the praise of their own living. Now, when our servants
celebrate the festivals of Saturn or go in procession at the
time of the rural bacchanals, you would scarcely brook the
hollowing and din they make, should the intemperateness
of their joy and their insensibleness of decorum make them
act and speak such things as these:
Lean down, boy ! why dost sit! let's tope like mad !
Here's belly-timber store; ne'er spare it, lad.
Straight these huzza like wild. One fills up drink;
Another plaits a wreath, and crowns the brink
O' th' teeming bowl. Then to the verdant bays
All chant rude carols in Apollo's praise;
While one his door with drunken fury smites,
Till he from bed his pretty consort frights.
And are not Metrodorus's words something like to these
when he writes to his brother thus: It is none of our business to preserve the Greeks, or to get them to bestow garlands upon us for our wit, but to eat well and drink good
wine, Timocrates, so as not to offend but pleasure our
stomachs. And he saith again, in some other place in the
same epistles: How gay and how assured was I, when I
had once learned of Epicurus the true way of gratifying
my stomach; for, believe me, philosopher Timocrates, our
prime good lies at the stomach.
