of all Greece or of the commons of Athens.

We will now forbear to mention that Nature requires very large and
chargeable provisions to be made for accomplishing the pleasures
of the body; nor can the height of delicacy be had in black bread
and lentil pottage. But voluptuous and sensual appetites expect
costly dishes, Thasian wines, perfumed unguents, and varieties of
pastry works,

And cakes by female hands wrought artfully,
Well steep'd in th' liquor of the gold-wing'd bee;

and besides all this, handsome young lassies too, such as Leontion, Boidion, Hedia, and Nicedion, that were wont to roam about in Epicurus's philosophic garden. But now such joys as suit the mind must undoubtedly be grounded upon a grandeur of actions and a splendor of worthy deeds, if men would not seem little, ungenerous, and puerile, but on the contrary, bulky, firm, and brave. But for a man to be elated by happiness, as Epicurus is, like sailors upon the festivals of Venus, and to vaunt himself that, when he was sick of an ascites, he notwithstanding called his friends together to certain collations and grudged not his dropsy the addition of good liquor, and that, when he called to remembrance the last words of Neocles, he was melted with a peculiar sort of joy intermixed with tears,--no man in his right senses would call these true joys or satisfactions. Nay, I will be bold to say that, if such a thing as that they call a sardonic or grinning laughter can happen to the mind, it is to be found in these artificial and crying laughters. But if any will needs have them still called by the name of joys and satisfactions, let him but yet think how far they are exceeded by the pleasures that here ensue:--

Our counsels have proud Sparta's glory clipt;
and
Stranger, this is his country Rome's great star;

and again this,

I know not which to guess thee, man or god.

Now when I set before my eyes the brave achievements of Thrasybulus
and Pelopidas, of Aristides engaged at Platea and Miltiades at
Marathon, I am here constrained with Herodotus to declare it my
opinion, that in an active state of life the pleasure far exceeds
the glory. And Epaminondas herein bears me witness also, when he
saith (as is reported of him), that the greatest satisfaction he
ever received in his life was that his father and mother had lived
to see the trophy set up at Leuctra when himself was general.