impossible to assent to that which appears false, and to turn away from that which is true, so it is impossible to abstain from that which appears good. But wealth is a good thing, and certainly most efficient in producing pleasure. Why will you not acquire wealth? And why should we not corrupt our neighbor's wife, if we can do it without detection? and if the husband foolishly prates about the matter, why not pitch him out of the house? If you would be a philosopher such as you ought to be, if a perfect philosopher, if consistent with your own doctrines, [you must act thus]. If you would not, you will not differ at all from us who are called Stoics; for we also say one thing, but we do another: we talk of the things which are beautiful (good), but we do what is base. But you will be perverse in the contrary way, teaching what is bad, practising what is good.[1]
In the name of God,[2] are you thinking of a city of Epicureans? [One man says], 'I do not marry.'—'Nor I, for a man ought not to marry; nor ought we to beget children, nor engage in public matters.' What then will happen? whence will the citizens come? who will bring them up? who will be governor of the youth, who preside over gymnastic exercises? and in what also will the teacher instruct them? will he teach them what the Lacedaemonians were taught, or what the Athenians were taught? Come take a young man, bring him up according to your doctrines. The doctrines are bad, subversive of a state, pernicious to families, and not becoming to women. Dismiss them, man. You live in a chief city: it is your duty to be a magistrate, to judge justly, to abstain from that which belongs to others; no woman ought to seem beautiful to you except your own
- ↑ The MSS., with one exception, have δογματίζων τὰ καλὰ, ποιῶν τὰ αἴσχρα, but it was properly corrected by Wolf, as Upton remarks, who shows from Cicero, de Fin., ii. 25 and 31, that the MSS. are wrong. In the second passage Cicero says, 'nihil in hac praeclara epistola scriptum ab Epicuro congruens et conveniens decretis ejus reperietis. Ita redarguitur ipse a sese, vincunturque scripta ejus probitate ipsius ao moribus.' See Epictetus, ii. 18.
- ↑ Upton compares the passage (v. 333) in the Cyclops of Euripides, who speaks like an Epicurean. Not to marry and not to engage in public affairs were Epicurean doctrines. See Epictetus, i. 23, 3 and 6.
