Garden afforded a true and spiritual
refuge. For, almost as much as Diogenes, Epicurus had obliterated the
stamp on the conventional currency. The values of the world no longer
held good after you had passed the wicket gate of the Garden, and spoken
with the Deliverer.

The Epicureans lived simply. They took neither flesh nor wine, and there
is a letter extant, asking some one to send them a present of 'potted
cheese'[108:1] as a special luxury. Their enemies, who were numerous and
lively, make the obvious accusations about the hetairae, and cite an
alleged letter of the Master to Leontion. 'Lord Paean, my dear little
Leontion, your note fills me with such a bubble of excitement!'[108:2]
The problem of this letter well illustrates the difficulty of forming
clear judgements about the details of ancient life. Probably the letter
is a forgery: we are definitely informed that there was a collection of
such forgeries, made in order to damage Epicurus. But, if genuine, would
it have seemed to a fair-minded contemporary a permissible or an
impermissible letter for a philosopher to write? By modern standards it
would be about the border-line. And again, suppose it is a definite
love-letter, what means have we of deciding whether Epicurus--or for
that matter Zeno or Plato or any unconventional philosopher of this
period--would have thought it blameworthy, or would merely have called
our attention to the legal difficulties of contracting marriage with one
who had been a Hetaira, and asked us how we expect men and women to
live. Curiously enough, we happen to have the recorded sayings of
Epicurus himself: 'The wise man will not fall in love', and 'Physical
union of the sexes never did good; it is much if it does not do harm.'

This philosophy is often unjustly criticized. It is called selfish; but
that it is certainly not. It is always aiming at the deliverance of
mankind[109:1] and it bases its happiness on +philia+, Friendship or
Affection, just as the early Christians based it on +agape+, a word no
whit stronger than +philia+, though it is conventionally translated
'Love'. By this conception it becomes at once more human than the Stoa,
to which, as to a Christian monk, human affection was merely a weakness
of the flesh which might often conflict with the soul's duty towards
God. Epicurus passionately protested against this unnatural 'apathy'. It
was also human in that it recognized degrees of good or bad, of virtue
or error. T