Book 10
1.6
It is added that he corresponded with many courtesans, and especially with Leontion, of whom Metrodorus also was enamoured. It is observed too that in his treatise On the Ethical End he writes in these termsCf. Athen. xii. 546 e, who cites the concluding words more fully thus: καὶ τὰς διὰ μορφῆς κατ’ ὄψιν ἡδείας κινήσεις· also vii. 280 a and, for a shorter version than that of D. L., vii. 278 f. Cf. also Cic. Tusc. Disp. iii. 41. The last words have been taken to refer especially to the pleasures afforded by music and again by painting and the plastic arts. But perhaps Epicurus is merely citing typical examples of intense pleasures under the heads of the four senses: (i.) taste; (ii.) touch; (iii.) hearing; (iv.) seeing. The omission of pleasant odours is curious; cf. Plato, Phil. 51 e θεῖον γένος ἡδονῶν.: I know not how to conceive the good, apart from the pleasures of taste, sexual pleasures, the pleasures of sound and the pleasures of beautiful form. And in his letter to Pythocles: Hoist all sail, my dear boy, and steer clear of all culture. Epictetus calls him preacher of effeminacy and showers abuse on him.
1.6
Again there was Timocrates, the brother of Metrodorus, who was his disciple and then left the school. He in the book entitled Merriment asserts that Epicurus vomited twice a day from over-indulgence, and goes on to say that he himself had much ado to escape from those notorious midnight philosophizings and the confraternity with all its secrets;
