I do but slightly touch upon all these particulars of the slavery of
greatness; I shake but a few of their outward chains; their anger,
hatred, jealousy, fear, envy, grief, and all the _et cetera_ of their
passions, which are the secret but constant tyrants and torturers of
their life. I omit here, because though they be symptoms most frequent
and violent in this disease, yet they are common too in some degree to
the epidemical disease of life itself. But the ambitious man, though he
be so many ways a slave (_O toties servus_!), yet he bears it bravely and
heroically; he struts and looks big upon the stage, he thinks himself a
real prince in his masking habit, and deceives too all the foolish part
of his spectators. He’s a slave in _Saturnalibus_. The covetous man is
a downright servant, a draught horse without bells or feathers; _ad
metalla damnatus_, a man condemned to work in mines, which is the lowest
and hardest condition of servitude; and, to increase his misery, a worker
there for he knows not whom. He heapeth up riches and knows not who
shall enjoy them; ’tis only that he himself neither shall nor can enjoy
them. He is an indigent needy slave, he will hardly allow himself
clothes and board wages; _Unciatim vix demenso de suo suum defraudans
Genium comparsit niser_. He defrauds not only other men, but his own
genius. He cheats himself for money. But the servile and miserable
condition of this wretch is so apparent, that I leave it, as evident to
every man’s sight, as well as judgment. It seems a more difficult work
to prove that the voluptuous man too is but a servant. What can be more
the life of a freeman, or, as we say ordinarily, of a gentleman, than to
follow nothing but his own pleasures? Why, I’ll tell you who is that
true freeman and that true gentleman; not he who blindly follows all his
pleasures (the very name of follower is servile), but he who rationally
guides them, and is not hindered by outward impediments in the conduct
and enjoyment of them. If I want skill or force to restrain the beast
that I ride upon, though I bought it, and call it my own, yet in the
truth of the matter I am at that time rather his man than he my horse.
The voluptuous men (whom we are fallen upon) may be divided, I think,
into the lustful and luxurious, who are both servants of the belly; the
other whom we spoke of before, the ambitious and the covetous, were κακὰ
θηρία, evil wild beasts; these are Γαστέρες ἀργαί, slow bellies, as our
translation renders it; but the word Ἀργαί (which is a fantastical word
with two directly opposite significations) will bear as well the
translation of quick or diligent bellies, and both interpretations may be
applied to these men. Metrodorus said, “That he had learnt Ἀληθως γαστρὶ
χαρίζεσθαι, to give his belly just thanks for all his pleasures.” This
by the calumniators of Epicurus his philosophy was objected as one of the
most scandalous of all their sayings, which, according to my charitable
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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