Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 2 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"Plutarch
Philosophy
Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 2 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"
Plutarch
Classical literature; Essays; Ethics; Philosophy
Whether it was that by which he showed that the [square of the] line
that regards the right angle in a triangle is equivalent to the
[squares of the] two lines that contain that angle, or the problem
about the area of the parabolic section of a cone. And Archimedes’s
servants were forced to hale him away from his draughts, to be anointed
in the bath; but he notwithstanding drew the lines upon his belly with
his strigil. And when, as he was washing (as the story goes of him), he
thought of a manner of computing the proportion of gold in King Hiero’s
crown by seeing the water flowing over the bathing-stool, he leaped up
as one possessed or inspired, crying, “I have found it” (εὕρηκα); which
after he had several times repeated, he went his way. But we never yet
heard of a glutton that exclaimed with such vehemence, “I have eaten,”
or of an amorous gallant that ever cried, “I have kissed,” among the
many millions of dissolute debauchees that both this and preceding
ages have produced. Yea, we abominate those that make mention of their
great suppers with too luscious a gust, as men overmuch taken with mean
and abject delights. But we find ourselves in one and the same ecstasy
with Eudoxus, Archimedes, and Hipparchus; and we readily give assent
to Plato when he saith of the mathematics, that while ignorance and
unskilledness make men despise them, they still thrive notwithstanding
by reason of their charmingness, in despite of contempt.
12. These then so great and so many pleasures, that run like perpetual
springs and rills, these men decline and avoid; nor will they permit
those that put in among them so much as to take a taste of them, but
bid them hoist up the little sails of their paltry cock-boats and fly
from them. Nay, they all, both he and she philosophers, beg and entreat
Pythocles, for dear Epicurus’s sake, not to affect or make such account
of the sciences called liberal. And when they cry up and defend one
Apelles, they write of him that he kept himself clean by refraining
himself all along from the mathematics. But as to history—to pass
over their aversedness to other kinds of compositions—I shall only
present you with the words of Metrodorus, who in his treatise of the
Poets writes thus: Wherefore let it never disturb you, if you know not
either what side Hector was of, or the first verses in Homer’s Poem, or
again what is in its middle. But that the pleasures of the body spend
themselves like the winds called Etesian or Anniversary, and utterly
determine when once age is past its vigor, Epicurus himself was not
insensible; and therefore he makes it a problematic question, whether
a sage philosopher, when he is an old man and disabled for enjoyment,
may not still be recreated with having handsome girls to feel and grope
him, being not, it seems, of the mind of old Sophocles, who thanked God
he had at length escaped from this kind of pleasure, as from an untame
and furious master. But, in my opinion, it would be more advisable for
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