46
That man, then, was thus dealt with. Moreover, if in any case, when men were called up in the order of their applications (which took place the day before the prophecies were given out) and the herald enquired: “Has he a prophecy for So-and-so,” the reply came from within: “To the ravens,” nobody would ever again receive such a person under his roof or give him fire or water, but he had to be harried from country to country as an impious man, an atheist, and an Epicurean—which, indeed, was their strongest term of abuse.
47
One of Alexander’s acts in this connection was most comical. Hitting upon the “Established Beliefs’ of Epicurus, which is the finest of his books, as you know, and contains in summary the articles of the man’s philosophic creed,Quis enim vostrum non edidicit Epicuri κυρίας δόξας, id est, quasi maxume ratas, quia gravissumae sint ad beate vivendum breviter enuntiatae sententiae? Cicero, de Fin. Bon, et Mal., ii, 7, 20. he brought it into the middle of the market-place, burned it on fagots of fig-wood just as if he were burning the man in person, and threw the ashes into the sea, even adding an oracle also: Burn with fire, I command you, the creed of a purblind dotard! But the scoundrel had no idea what blessings that book creates for its readers and what peace, tranquillity, and freedom it engenders in them, liberating them as it does from terrors and apparitions and portents, from vain hopes and extravagant cravings, developing in them intelligence and truth, and truly purifying their understanding, not with torches and squills and that sort of foolery, but with straight thinking, truthfulness and frankness.
