Book 10
1.7
further, that Epicurus’s acquaintance with philosophy was small and his acquaintance with life even smaller; that his bodily health was pitiful,Cf. Aelian, Fr. 39 (De Epicuro eiusque discipulis). According to him the three brothers of Epicurus were all victims of disease. Plutarch (Non posse suaviter, etc., 1097 e) mentions the dropsy. However much his ailments were exaggerated by his enemies, they do not seem to have hindered him from literary work. so much so that for many years he was unable to rise from his chair; and that he spent a whole mina daily on his table, as he himself says in his letter to Leontion and in that to the philosophers at Mitylene. Also that among other courtesans who consorted with him and Metrodorus were Mammarion and Hedia and Erotion and Nikidion. He alleges too that in his thirtyseven books On Nature Epicurus uses much repetition and writes largely in sheer opposition to others, especially to Nausiphanes, and here are his own words: Nay, let them go hang: for, when labouring with an idea, he too had the sophist’s off-hand boast-fulness like many another servile soul; besides, he himself in his letters says of Nausiphanes: This so maddened him that he abused me and called me pedagogue.
