EPICURES.
All your affairs at random by mere chance?
I think it must be so: for else, what deity
Who bears a Grecian heart, would ever choose
To see Greeks by each other thus despoil'd,
And falling dead in ghastly heaps of corpses,
When she might see them sportive, gay, and jesting,
Drinking full cups, and singing to the flute?
Tell me, my friend, I pray, and put to shame
This most unpolish'd clownish fortune.
And, presently afterwards, he says—
Does not a life like this deserve the name
Of godlike?—Think how far more pleasant all
Affairs would be in all the towns of Greece
Than now they are, if we were but to change
Our fashions, and our habits, and our principles
One little bit. Why should we not proclaim,
"Whoe'er is more than thirty years of age,
Let him come forth and drink. Let all the cavalry
Go to a feast at Corinth, for ten days,
Crown'd with chaplets, and perfumed most sweetly.
Let all who radishes have got to sell
Come in the morning here from Megara.
Bid all th' allies now hasten to the bath,
And mix in cups the rich Eubœan wine?"—
Sure this is real luxury and life,
But we are slaves to a most clownish fortune.
14. The poets say that that ancient hero, Tantalus, was also greatly devoted to pleasure. At all events, the author of the book called The Return of the Atridæ says "that he, when he had arrived among the gods, and had begun to live among them, had leave given him by Jupiter to ask for whatever he wished; and that he, being a man quite insatiable in the gratification of his appetites, asked that it might be granted to him to indulge them to their full extent, and to live in the same manner as the gods. And that Jupiter was indignant at this request, and, according to his promise, fulfilled his prayer; but still, that he might not enjoy what he had before him, but be everlastingly tormented, he hung a stone over his head, on account of which he should be unable to get at any of the things which he had before him." Some of the Stoics also were addicted to this kind of pleasure. At all events, Eratosthenes the Cyrenean, who was a pupil of Ariston the Chian, who was one of the sect of the Stoics, in his treatise which is entitled Ariston, represents his master as subsequently being much addicted to luxury, speaking as follows:
