EPICURUS
I shall not address you at length, gentlemen of the jury, for I myself do not need many words. If Pleasure had used charms or philtres to constrain Dionysius, whom Stoa claims to be her lover, to desert Stoa and to centre his regard upon her, she might fairly have been held a sorceress and might have been found guilty of using undue influence upon the lovers of others. But suppose a free man in a free city, unstopped by the laws, hating the tedium of life with her and thinking that the happiness which comes, she says, as the consummation of pain is stuff and nonsense, made his escape from her thorny, labyrinthine reasonings and ran away to Pleasure of his own free will, cutting the meshes of her logic as if they weré bonds, because he had the spirit of a human being, not of a clod, and thought pain painful, as indeed it is, and pleasure pleasant, in that case would it have been right to bar him out, plunging him head over ears into a sea of pain when he was swimming from a wreck to a haven and yearned for calm water—to put the poor fellow at the mercy of her dilemmas in spite of the fact that he was seeking asylum with Pleasure like a suppliant at the Altar of Mercy—in order that he might climb “the steep” with copious sweat, cast eyes upon that famous Virtue,
1
and then, after toiling painfully his whole life long, be happy when life is over?
Who should be considered a better judge than this man himself, who knew the teachings of Stoa if ever a man did, and formerly thought that only what was right was good, but now has learnt that pain is bad, and so has chosen what he has determined to be the better? He saw, no doubt, that her set make a great deal of talk about fortitude and endurance of pain, but privately pay court to Pleasure; that they are bold as brass in the lecture-room, but live under the laws of Pleasure at home; that they are ashamed, of course, to let themselves be seen “lowering their pitch” and playing false to their tenets, but suffer the tortures of Tantalus, poor fellows, so that wherever they think they will be unobserved and can transgress their laws with safety, they eagerly glut themselves with pleasure. In fact, if they should be given the ring of Gyges, so that they could put it on and be unseen, or the Cap of Darkness, without a doubt they would bid good-bye to pain for ever and would go crowding after Pleasure, one and all, imitating Dionysius who, until he was ill, expected to get some benefit from their discourses about fortitude, but when he encountered suffering and illness, and pain came closer home to him, he perceived that his body was contradicting Stoa and maintaining the opposite side. So he put more trust in it than in her set, decided that he was ‘aman, with the body of a man, and thenceforward treated it otherwise than as if it were a statue, well. aware that whoever maintains any other view and accuses Pleasure
Doth like to talk, but thinks as others do!
Euripides, Phoenissae360.
I have done. Cast your ballots with this understanding of the case.
I shall not address you at length, gentlemen of the jury, for I myself do not need many words. If Pleasure had used charms or philtres to constrain Dionysius, whom Stoa claims to be her lover, to desert Stoa and to centre his regard upon her, she might fairly have been held a sorceress and might have been found guilty of using undue influence upon the lovers of others. But suppose a free man in a free city, unstopped by the laws, hating the tedium of life with her and thinking that the happiness which comes, she says, as the consummation of pain is stuff and nonsense, made his escape from her thorny, labyrinthine reasonings and ran away to Pleasure of his own free will, cutting the meshes of her logic as if they weré bonds, because he had the spirit of a human being, not of a clod, and thought pain painful, as indeed it is, and pleasure pleasant, in that case would it have been right to bar him out, plunging him head over ears into a sea of pain when he was swimming from a wreck to a haven and yearned for calm water—to put the poor fellow at the mercy of her dilemmas in spite of the fact that he was seeking asylum with Pleasure like a suppliant at the Altar of Mercy—in order that he might climb “the steep” with copious sweat, cast eyes upon that famous Virtue,
1
and then, after toiling painfully his whole life long, be happy when life is over?
Who should be considered a better judge than this man himself, who knew the teachings of Stoa if ever a man did, and formerly thought that only what was right was good, but now has learnt that pain is bad, and so has chosen what he has determined to be the better? He saw, no doubt, that her set make a great deal of talk about fortitude and endurance of pain, but privately pay court to Pleasure; that they are bold as brass in the lecture-room, but live under the laws of Pleasure at home; that they are ashamed, of course, to let themselves be seen “lowering their pitch” and playing false to their tenets, but suffer the tortures of Tantalus, poor fellows, so that wherever they think they will be unobserved and can transgress their laws with safety, they eagerly glut themselves with pleasure. In fact, if they should be given the ring of Gyges, so that they could put it on and be unseen, or the Cap of Darkness, without a doubt they would bid good-bye to pain for ever and would go crowding after Pleasure, one and all, imitating Dionysius who, until he was ill, expected to get some benefit from their discourses about fortitude, but when he encountered suffering and illness, and pain came closer home to him, he perceived that his body was contradicting Stoa and maintaining the opposite side. So he put more trust in it than in her set, decided that he was ‘aman, with the body of a man, and thenceforward treated it otherwise than as if it were a statue, well. aware that whoever maintains any other view and accuses Pleasure
Euripides, Phoenissae360.
I have done. Cast your ballots with this understanding of the case.
Doth like to talk, but thinks as others do!
Bis accusatus sive tribunalia. Lucian of Samosata. Austin Morris Harmon (Translator). United States. Perseus 5.0.
Funding provided by National Endowment for the Humanities.