Epicureans

Again — do the Epicureans cease to write at their own discretion on the very subjects on which Epicurus and the ancients had already written?

And as for the question often raised, why there are so many Epicureans — there are other causes too, but what most attracts the multitude is this:

There are, however, some of our school who would hand these matters down more subtly, and who deny that it is enough to judge by sense what is good or evil, but hold that this can also be grasped by the mind and by reason — that pleasure itself is to be sought for its own sake and pain itself to be shunned for its own sake.

I have known Epicureans who worship every little image.

Zeno, whom our Philo used to call the coryphaeus of the Epicureans, I often heard when I was at Athens, and indeed at Philo's own bidding — I believe so that I might judge more easily how well those doctrines could be refuted, having learned from the chief of the Epicureans how they were stated.

Yet how does all that semblance of things arise out of indivisible bodies?

Throngs of those who argue the contrary come against us — and not only the Epicureans, whom I for my part do not despise, but somehow each most learned man — and most sharply of all my favourite, Dicaearchus, has argued against this immortality.

In this place many things are disputed by the Epicureans, and those pleasures are extenuated one by one, whose kinds they do not despise, yet do not seek their abundance.

Yet it was permitted to the Epicureans to decree a certain truth of pleasure — that is, equanimity of mind.

on the contrary, the Epicureans hold him idle and unemployed, and, so to speak, no one as regards human affairs;

The Epicureans more consistently defend a truth equal to all and perpetual, but by another road.

the Epicureans, a diminution of the animal spirit;

On the other side, that other man, having summoned out of his little gardens a crowd of drunkards to his aid, like the rout of Bacchus—a crowd that nonetheless looks for someone whom, raving with unkempt nails and savage mouth, they may tear to pieces—heaping up the name of pleasure as sweetness and repose with the people for witness, presses on fiercely, so that no one seems able to be happy unless by that.

should I hold out against the Epicureans, so many of my friends, men so good, so loving toward one another;

More acutely did Carneades, who taught that the Epicureans could defend their cause without this fictitious swerve.

so that ‘Philoctetes will be wounded’ was true through all the ages before, and ‘He will not be wounded’ was false—unless perhaps we wish to follow the opinion of the Epicureans, who say that such propositions are neither true nor false, or, when they are ashamed of that, nonetheless say what is more shameless still:

the Epicureans too say that there are certain secret things even of his, and that they do not permit all to come upon these writings.

In the writings of the Epicureans there was laid down a precept continually to call to mind one of the men of old who practised virtue.

1 In this part we have a battle with the Epicureans, that soft and shadow-loving throng who philosophize over their banquet, in whose eyes virtue is the handmaid of pleasures, obeys them, is their slave, sees them above herself.

So this very sect of pleasure is itself engaged in action.

On this very question two schools above all are at variance, the Epicureans and the Stoics, but each sends us to leisure by a different road.

And that the soul should be said to perish is observed from the Epicureans;