what would be the remaining good if they should exclude from
consideration all these pleasures, unless they meant to give us nothing
but words. I could never learn anything from them; and unless they
choose that all virtue and wisdom should vanish and come to nothing,
they must say with me that the only road to happiness lies through
those pleasures which I mentioned above." What follows is much the
same, and his whole book on the chief good everywhere abounds with the
same opinions. Will you, then, invite Telamon to this kind of life to
ease his grief? And should you observe any one of your friends under
affliction, would you rather prescribe him a sturgeon than a treatise
of Socrates? or advise him to listen to the music of a water organ
rather than to Plato? or lay before him the beauty and variety of some
garden, put a nosegay to his nose, burn perfumes before him, and bid
him crown himself with a garland of roses and woodbines? Should you add
one thing more, you would certainly wipe out all his grief.

XIX. Epicurus must admit these arguments, or he must take out of his
book what I just now said was a literal translation; or, rather, he
must destroy his whole book, for it is crammed full of pleasures. We
must inquire, then, how we can ease him of his grief who speaks in this
manner:

My present state proceeds from fortune's stings;
By birth I boast of a descent from kings;
Hence may you see from what a noble height
I'm sunk by fortune to this abject plight.

What! to ease his grief, must we mix him a cup of sweet wine, or
something of that kind? Lo! the same poet presents us with another
sentiment somewhere else:

I, Hector, once so great, now claim your aid.

We should assist her, for she looks out for help:

Where shall I now apply, where seek support?
Where hence betake me, or to whom resort?"
No means remain of comfort or of joy,
In flames my palace, and in ruins Troy;
Each wall, so late superb, deformed nods,
And not an altar's left t' appease the Gods.

You know what should follow, and particularly this:

Of father, country, and of friends bereft,
Not one of all these sumptuous temples left;
Which, while the fortune of our house did stand,
With rich wrought ceilings spoke the artist's hand.

O excellent poet! though despised by those who sing the verses of
Euphorion. He is sensible that all things which come on a sudden are
harder to be