But this Archestratus was so devoted to luxury, that he travelled over every country and every sea, with great diligence, wishing, as it seems to me, to seek out very carefully whatever related to his stomach; and, as men do who write Itineraries and Books of Voyages, so he wishes to relate everything with the greatest accuracy, and to tell where every kind of eatable is to be got in the greatest perfection; for this is what he professes himself, in the preface to his admirable Book of Precepts, which he addresses to his companions, Moschus and Cleander; enjoining them, as the Pythian priestess says, to seek
A horse from Thessaly, a wife from Sparta,And Chrysippus, a man who was a genuine philosopher, and a thorough man at all points, says that he was the teacher of [p. 438] Epicurus, and of all those who follow his rules, in everything which belongs to pleasure, which is the ruin of everything. For Epicurus says, without any concealment, but speaking with a loud voice, as it were, “For I am not able to distinguish what is good if you once take away the pleasure arising from sweet flavours, and if you also take away amatory pleasures.” For this wise man thinks that even the life of the intemperate man is an unimpeachable one, if he enjoys an immunity from fear, and also mirth. On which account also the comic poets, running down the Epicureans, attack them as mere servants and ministers of pleasure and intemperance.
And men who drink at Arethusa's fount.
