clearness. After quoting suo more a certain nobilis sententia of Epicurus, he says: "You must not regard these expressions as peculiar to Epicurus; they are common property. The practice which obtains in the Senate should, I think, be adopted in Philosophy. When a speaker says something with which I partly agree, I ask him to compromise, and then I go with him."[1] Anything in the whole gathered wealth of the Past which promised support to a man in his efforts to regulate his life in accordance with the dictates of reason and virtue was welcomed and made available for the uses of morality by the selective power of Philosophy. Hence Plutarch levies contributions on philosophers, poets, legislators; on Hellenic and Barbarian Religions; on Mysteries, Oracles, private utterances; on the whole complex civilization of the Græco-Roman world, and the civilizations which it had absorbed or dominated; on everything, in fact, which, from its antiquity, or its possession of national or individual authority, could be made available for establishing the practice of virtue on the sanction of an ancient and
- ↑ Seneca: Epist. ad Lucilium, i. 21. Here are a few of the egregia dicta which Seneca takes from the teachings of Epicurus, or Metrodorus, or alicujus ex illa officina.—"Honesta res est læta paupertas," "Satis magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus," "Philosophiæ servias oportet ut tibi contingat vera libertas," "Si cui sua non videntur amplissima, licet totius mundi dominus sit, tamen miser est," "Quid est turpius, quam senex vivere incipiens?" "Is maxime divitiis fruitur, qui minime divitiis indiget," "Immodica ira gignit insaniam," "Sic fac omnia, tanquam spectet Epicurus," "Initium est salutis, notitia peccati," &c. Yet Seneca was the acerrimus Stoicus of Lactantius (Div. Inst., i. 5).
