Venus and Bacchus; according to the precepts of their
sect, that require the perfect sage to be as expert and intelligent in
the use of natural pleasures as in all other duties of life:

"Cui cor sapiat, ei et sapiat palatus."

Relaxation and facility, methinks, wonderfully honour and best become a
strong and generous soul. Epaminondas did not think that to take part,
and that heartily, in songs and sports and dances with the young men of
his city, were things that in any way derogated from the honour of his
glorious victories and the perfect purity of manners that was in him.
And amongst so many admirable actions of Scipio the grandfather, a person
worthy to be reputed of a heavenly extraction, there is nothing that
gives him a greater grace than to see him carelessly and childishly
trifling at gathering and selecting cockle shells, and playing at quoits,

[This game, as the "Dictionnaire de Trevoux" describes it, is one
wherein two persons contend which of them shall soonest pick up some
object.]

amusing and tickling himself in representing by writing in comedies the
meanest and most popular actions of men. And his head full of that
wonderful enterprise of Hannibal and Africa, visiting the schools in
Sicily, and attending philosophical lectures, to the extent of arming the
blind envy of his enemies at Rome. Nor is there anything more remarkable
in Socrates than that, old as he was, he found time to make himself
taught dancing and playing upon instruments, and thought it time well
spent. This same man was seen in an ecstasy, standing upon his feet a
whole day and a night together, in the presence of all the Grecian army,
surprised and absorbed by some profound thought. He was the first,
amongst so many valiant men of the army, to run to the relief of
Alcibiades, oppressed with the enemy, to shield him with his own body,
and disengage him from the crowd by absolute force of arms. It was he
who, in the Delian battle, raised and saved Xenophon when fallen from his
horse; and who, amongst all the people of Athens, enraged as he was at so
unworthy a spectacle, first presented himself to rescue Theramenes, whom
the thirty tyrants were leading to execution by their satellites, and
desisted not from his bold enterprise but at the remonstrance of
Theramenes himself, though he was only followed by two more in all. He
was seen, when courted by a beauty with whom he was in love, to maintain