Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum
Goodwin, Ed.

Here Ammonius began to speak, saying: In my opinion, Theophrastus was in the right, and spoke like a philosopher and a divine; for whoever shall deny what he alleges must also reject many things which may happen, though we understand not the reasons why they do so. And granting what he offers to be true, it carries with it many things called impossible and unreal. But as to what I have heard the Epicureans allege against the Daemons which Empedocles brings in,—as, that it is impossible they can be happy and long-lived if they be bad and viciously affected, because vice in its own nature is blind and naturally precipitates itself into such mischiefs as destroy life, —that, I must tell you, is vain and idle. For if this [p. 26] reasoning be good, it will then follow that Epicurus was a worse man than Gorgias the sophister, and Metrodorus than Alexis the comic actor; for Alexis lived twice as long as Metrodorus, and Gorgias a third longer than Epicurus. For it is in another regard we say virtue is strong and vice weak. not in reference to the continuance or dissolution of the body; for we know there are many animals which are dull, slow, and heavy, and many disorderly and lustful, which live longer than those that are more sagacious and quicker of sense. And therefore they are much in the wrong in saying the divine nature is immortal because it avoideth the things which are ill and mischievous; for they should have supposed the divine nature free from all possibility of falling into corruption and alteration. But perhaps it will be thought not fair to dispute against those that are absent; I would have therefore Cleombrotus to resume his discourse touching the vanishing and transmigration of Daemons from one place to another.