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
aye, and entertain themselves with their friends, and perhaps with
a greater relish too, after their engagements and hard services,—as
did Alexander and Agesilaus, and (by Jove) Phocion and Epaminondas
too,—than these gentlemen who anoint themselves by the fireside, and
are gingerly rocked about the streets in sedans. Yea, those make but
small account of such pleasures as these, as being comprised in those
greater ones. For why should a man mention Epaminondas’s denying to
sup with one, when he saw the preparations made were above the man’s
estate, but frankly telling his friend, “I thought you had intended
a sacrifice and not a debauch,” when Alexander himself refused Queen
Ada’s cooks, telling her he had better ones of his own, to wit,
travelling by night for his dinner, and a light dinner for his supper,
and when Philoxenus writing to him about some handsome boys, and
desiring to know of him whether he would have him buy them for him,
was within a small matter of being discharged his office for it? And
yet who might better have them than he? But as Hippocrates saith that
of two pains the lesser is obscured by the greater, so the pleasures
that accrue from action and the love of glory, while they cheer and
refresh the mind, do by their transcendency and grandeur obliterate and
extinguish the inferior satisfactions of the body.
18. If then the remembering of former good things (as they affirm) be
that which most contributes to a pleasurable living, not one of us will
then credit Epicurus when he tells us that, while he was dying away in
the midst of the strongest agonies and distempers, he yet bore himself
up with the memory of the pleasures he formerly enjoyed. For a man
may better see the resemblance of his own face in a troubled deep or
a storm, than a smooth and smiling remembrance of past pleasure in a
body tortured with such lancing and rending pains. But now the memories
of past actions no man can put from him that would. For did Alexander,
think you, (or indeed could he possibly) forget the fight at Arbela?
Or Pelopidas the tyrant Leontiadas? Or Themistocles the engagement at
Salamis? For the Athenians to this very day keep an annual festival
for the battle at Marathon, and the Thebans for that at Leuctra;
and so, by Jove, do we ourselves (as you very well know) for that
which Daiphantus gained at Hyampolis, and all Phocis is filled with
sacrifices and public honors. Nor is there any of us that is better
satisfied with what himself hath either eaten or drunk than he is with
what they have achieved. It is very easy then to imagine what great
content, satisfaction, and joy accompanied the authors of these actions
in their lifetime, when the very memory of them hath not yet after five
hundred years and more lost its rejoicing power. The truth is, Epicurus
himself allows there are some pleasures derived from fame. And indeed
why should he not, when he himself had such a furious lechery and
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