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Now when Myrtilus had uttered all this with extreme volubility, he added:—May no such disaster befal you, O philosophers, who even before the rise of the sect called Voluptuaries, yourselves broke down the wall of pleasure, as Eratosthenes somewhere or other expresses it. And indeed I have now quoted enough of the smart sayings of the courtesans, and I will pass on to another topic. And first of all, I will speak of that most devoted lover of truth, Epicurus, who, never having been initiated into the encyclic series of learning, used to say that those were well off who applied themselves to philosophy in the same way in which he did himself; and these were his words—“I praise and congratulate you, my young man, because you have come over to the study of philosophy unimbued with any system.” On which account Timon styles him—
The most unlettered schoolmaster alive.

Now, had not this very Epicurus Leontium for his mistress, her, I mean, who was so celebrated as a courtesan? But she did not cease to live as a prostitute when she began to learn philosophy, but still prostituted herself to the whole sect of Epicureans in the gardens, and to Epicurus himself, in the most open manner; so that this great philosopher was exceedingly fond of her, though he mentions this fact in his epistles to Hermarchus.

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