his country Rome's great star;

and again this,

I know not which to guess thee, man or god.

Now when I set before my eyes the brave achievements of Thrasybulus and
Pelopidas, of Aristides engaged at Platea and Miltiades at Marathon, I
am here constrained with Herodotus to declare it my opinion, that in an
active state of life the pleasure far exceeds the glory. And Epaminondas
herein bears me witness also, when he saith (as is reported of him),
that the greatest satisfaction he ever received in his life was that
his father and mother had lived to see the trophy set up at Leuctra when
himself was general. Let us then compare with Epaminondas's Epicurus's
mother, rejoicing that she had lived to see her son cooping himself up
in a little garden, and getting children in common with Polyaenus upon
the strumpet of Cyzicus. As for Metrodorus's mother and sister, how
extravagantly rejoiced they were at his nuptials appears by the letters
he wrote to his brother in answer to his; that is, out of his own books.
Nay, they tell us bellowing that they have not only lived a life of
pleasure, but also exult and sing hymns in the praise of their own
living. Though, when our servants celebrate the festivals of Saturn or
go in procession at the time of the rural bacchanals, you would scarcely
brook the hollowing and din they make, if the intemperateness of their
joy and their insensibleness of decorum should make them act and speak
such things as these:--

Lean down, boy! why dost sit I let's tope like mad!
Here's belly-timber store; ne'er spare it, lad.
Straight these huzza like wild. One fills up drink;
Another plaits a wreath, and crowns the brink
O' th' teeming bowl. Then to the verdant bays
All chant rude carols in Apollo's praise;
While one the door with drunken fury smites,
Till he from bed his loving consort frights.

And are not Metrodorus's words something like to these when he writes to
his brother thus: It is none of our business to preserve the Greeks, or
to get them to bestow garlands upon us for our wit, but to eat well
and drink good wine, Timocrates, so as not to offend but pleasure our
stomachs. And he saith again, in some other place in the same epistles:
How gay and how assured was I, when I had once learned of Epicurus
the true way of gratifying my stomach; for, believe me, philosopher
Timocrates, our prime good lies at the stomach.

In brief, these men draw o