Iphicrates

“ The Paeonian and Illyrian chieftains also made alliance with Athens in 356.↑ "to Euboea". See Speech for Megalopolitans, Sec. 14 n.↑ "to Haliartus". in 395, when Athens sent a force to aid the Thebans against the Spartans under Lysander. (For other allusions see Introd. to the Speech.) ↑ "paper-armies" ( [Greek: epistolimaious ... dynameis] ) : lit. 'armies existing in dispatches.'↑ "Athens once maintained", &c. The reference is to the Corinthian war of 394-387 B.C. The Athenian general Iphicrates organized a mercenary force of peltasts in support of Corinth, and did great damage to Sparta ”

“ Then brave Iphicles, eager, methought, to help him, stumbled and fell to earth ere he might reach him, nor could he stand upright again, but lay helpless, like a weak old man, whom joyless age constrains to fall when he would not; so he lieth on the ground as he fell, till one passing by lift him up by the hand, regarding the ancient reverence for his hoary beard. Thus lay on the earth Iphicles, wielder of the shield. ”

“ From Pythagoras Plato derived the immortality of the soul; and he from the Egyptians. And many of the Platonists composed books, in which they show that the Stoics, as we said in the beginning, and Aristotle, took the most and principal of their dogmas from Plato. Epicurus also pilfered his leading dogmas from Democritus. Let these things then be so. For life would fail me, were I to undertake to go over the subject in detail, to expose the selfish plagiarism of the Greeks, and how they claim the discovery of the best of their doctrines, which they have received from us. ”

“ Not one of us will assert, “I know all the doctrines of Epicurus,” or will be confident that he knows all those of Plato, in the knowledge of the fact that so many differences of opinion exist among the expositors of these systems. For who is so daring as to say that he knows all the opinions of the Stoics or of the Peripatetics? ”

“ I will conclude with a reference to the two great systems that dominated the Roman world after Plato and Aristotle had turned philosophy into an ethical channel—I mean those of the Stoics and of the Epicureans, who mapped out human character with a clearness that makes them our teachers to the present day. Not that{244} they avoided speculating on the nature of the universe. The physics of Epicurus, borrowed from Democritus, are among the most difficult of studies, and the Stoics embraced in their view as the motive of action of their wise man all the harmony of the universe. ”

“ But take your own case, Epicurus; what more masterful faculty do you yourself possess? What is that thing within you which takes counsel, which examines into all things severally, which, after examining the flesh itself, decides that it is the principal matter? And why do you light a lamp and toil in our behalf, and write such quantities of books? Is it that we may not fail to know the truth? Who are we? ”

“ I have shown elsewhere that these opinions were shared by Hippocrates, who lived much earlier than Aristotle. In fact, all those known to us who have been both physicians and philosophers Hippocrates was the first who took in hand to demonstrate that there are, in all, four mutually interacting qualities, and that to the operation of these is due the genesis and destruction of all things that come into and pass out of being. ”

“ Epictetus, a celebrated Stoic philosopher of the 1st century, originally a slave; lived and taught at Rome, but after the expulsion of the philosophers retired to Nicopolis, in Epirus; was lame, and lived in poverty; his conversations were collected by Arrian, and his philosophy in a short manual under the Greek name of “Enchiridion of Epictetus,” written, as is alleged, in utter obliviousness of the fact that “the end of man is an action, not a thought.”
Epicureans, a sect of philosophers who derived their name from Epicurus, and who divided the empire of philosophy with the Stoics (q. v.) ”

“ And now, having concluded my review of these Books of Epidemics, I will venture to affirm, without fear of contradiction, that when we look to the importance and rarity of the matters contained in them, the work, even at the present day, is perfectly unrivalled. That the books are the composition of different hands must be admitted, but altogether the contents of them bear the imprint of the mind and spirit of Hippocrates, and evince a talent for the cultivation of medicine which has never been surpassed. What a noble people the Greeks must have been in the days of Themistocles and Pericles! ”

“ Epicurus accepted the philosophy of Democritus concerning the nature of atoms and based his physics upon this theory. The Epicurean philosophy may be summed up in four canons:
" (1) Sense is never deceived; and therefore every sensation and every perception of an appearance is true. (2) Opinion follows upon sense and is superadded to sensation, and capable of truth or falsehood, (3) All opinion attested, or not contradicted by the evidence of sense, is true. (4) An opinion contradicted, or not attested by the evidence of sense, is false." ”

“ Epicurus, a Greek philosopher, born at Samos, of Athenian origin; settled at Athens in his thirty-sixth year, and founded a philosophical school there, where he taught a philosophy in opposition to that of the Stoics; philosophy he defined as “an activity which realises a happy life through ideas and arguments,” summing itself up “in ethics, which are to teach us how to attain a life of felicity” ”

“ Wholly ignorant of the share which had fallen to herself in attracting the young philosopher down to this region, she but heard of him vaguely, as the Chief of a great Grecian sect, who had been led, by either curiosity or accident, to expose himself to the first trials of Initiation, and whom the priests, she saw, were endeavouring to ensnare in their toils, by every art and skill with which their science of darkness had gifted them.
[pg 197] “To her mind, the image of a philosopher, such as Alciphron had been represented to her, came associated with ideas of age and reverence ”

“ Some ancient and modern philosophers have been bold enough to assume experience and reason for their guides, and to shake off the chains of superstition. Democritus, Epicurus, and other Greeks presumed to tear away the veil of prejudice, and to deliver philosophy from theological shackles. But their systems, too simple, too sensible, and too free from the marvellous, for imaginations enamoured with chimeras, were obliged to yield to the fabulous conjectures of such men as Plato and Socrates. ”

“ Ask, "What, then, is God, and what is an external impression? And what is nature in the individual and nature in the universe?" You already have a lengthy statement. If Epicurus should come and say that the good ought to be in the flesh, again the explanation becomes lengthy, and you must be told what is the principal faculty within us, and what our substantial, and what our essential, nature is. Since it is not probable that the good of a snail lies in its shell, is it, then, probable that the good of man lies in his flesh? ”

“ Again, at the very starting-point of Greek philosophy a man of most virtuous conduct, gifted likewise with great powers of attraction, had sought to realise in a society the philosophic life. And we have seen this conception of the mode of propagating truth to lie at the bottom of Greek teaching, and to have been pursued by Plato, by Aristotle, by Zeno, by Epicurus, to have been the original and even the only form of teaching which they recognised. ”

“ We might learn more than one lesson from these men. There are none poverty-stricken and helpless among them; they live together as brethren and sisters,—and most of all now, when their obstinacy has forced me to chastise them. These Galileans, you must know, have something in their hearts which I could greatly desire that you should emulate. You call yourselves followers of Socrates, of Plato, of Diogenes. Is there one of you who would face death with ecstasy for Plato’s sake? Would our Priscus sacrifice his left hand for Socrates? ”

“ Materialist philosophers, Greek thinkers, the great men of Rome became famous in the world, each one of them having specialized in one branch of learning only. Thus Galen and Hippocrates became celebrated in medicine, Aristotle in logic and reasoning, and Plato in ethics and theology. How is it that a shepherd could acquire all of this knowledge? It is beyond doubt that He must have been assisted by an omnipotent power. ”

“ Among the Greeks, the scholars of the Egyptians, all the higher ideas and severer doctrines on the Divinity, his Sovereign Nature and Infinite Might, the Eternal Wisdom and Providence that conducts and directs all things to their proper end, the Infinite Mind and Supreme Intelligence that created all things, and is raised far above external nature,—all these loftier ideas and nobler doctrines were expounded more or less perfectly by Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, and Socrates, and developed in the most beautiful and luminous manner by Plato, and the philosophers that succeeded him. ”

“ But Epicurus is in this wiser and more learned than Plato, that he calls them all equally ENTIA,—to wit, the impalable voidness, the solid and resisting body, the principles, and the things composed of them,—and thinks that the eternal participates of the common substance with that which is generated, the immortal with the corruptible, and the natures that are impassible, perdurable, unchangeable, and that can never fall from their being, with those which have their essence in suffering and changing, and can never continue in one and the same state. ”

“ And who transgress it more than ye, who set forth such doctrines?
4. What, then, was it that roused up Epicurus from his sleep, and compelled him to write the things he wrote? What else than Nature, the mightiest of all powers in humanity? Nature, that drags the man, reluctant and groaning, to her will. For, saith she, since it seems to thee that there is no fellowship among men, write this down, and deliver it to others, and watch and wake for this, and be thyself by thine own deed the accuser of thine own opinions. ”

“ Passing on to the second book of the treatise, we hear the advocate of the counter-doctrine. Why, exclaims the Stoic, introduce Pleasure to the councils of Virtue? Why uphold a theory so dangerous in practice? Your Epicurean soon turns Epicure, and a class of men start up who have never seen the sun rise or set, who squander fortunes on cooks and perfumers, on costly plate and gorgeous rooms, and ransack sea and land for delicacies to supply their feasts. Epicurus gives his disciples a dangerous discretion in their choice. ”

“ The life of Epicurus is a lesson of wisdom. It is by example, even more than precept, that he guides his disciples. Without issuing commands, he rules despotically. His wishes are divined, and obeyed as laws; his opinions are repeated as oracles; his doctrines adopted as demonstrated truths. All is unanimity in the Garden. We are a family of brothers, of which Epicurus is the father. And I say not this in the praise of the scholars, but the Master. Many of us have had bad habits, many of us evil propensities, many of us violent passions. ”

“ Philosophers calling themselves Platonic, Peripatetic, Sceptic, Stoic, Epicurean, or these in various mixtures, were to be found at the various seats of learning, Athens, Rhodes, Alexandria, for instance, or at Rome as the seat of empire, or travelling like wandering stars over her vast territory, but these scattered, nebular, and disjointed luminaries shone with a varying as well as a feeble light, which rather confused than satisfied human reason. They were utterly powerless to transfer their doctrine into any number of human hearts living in accordance therein. ”

“ In the same way, when some people have seen a philosopher and heard someone speaking like Euphrates [6] (though, indeed, who can speak like him?) , they wish to be philosophers themselves. Man, consider first what the business is, and then your own natural ability, what you can bear. If you wish to be a wrestler, look to your shoulders, your thighs, your loins. 10For one man has a natural talent for one thing, another for another. Do you suppose that you can do the things you do now, and yet be a philosopher? ”

“ Otherwise, do not approach; don't act like a child—now a philosopher, later on a tax-gatherer, then a rhetorician, then a procurator of Caesar. These things do not go together. You must be one person, either good or bad; you must labour to improve either your own governing principle or externals; you must work hard either on the inner man, or on things outside; that is, play the rôle of a philosopher, or else that of a layman. ”

“ To a Greek philosopher the interest of conforming his life to any system arose in a great measure from the freedom and exercise thereby afforded to his intellect. Thus Epicurus, in denying the power of luxury to give happiness, says,—'These are not the things which form the life of pleasure,'—' ἀλλὰ νήφων λογισμὸς καὶ τὰς αἰτίας ἐξερευνῶν πάσης αἱρέσεως καὶ φυγῆς, καὶ τὰς δόξας ἐξελαύνων, ἀφ' ὧν πλεῖστος τὰς ψυχὰς καταλαμβάνει θόρυβος 2.' To a Roman, on the other hand, [page 359] such a scheme of life was recommended by the new power which was thus imparted to the will. ”

“ I was led to this belief, not only by reason and argument, but by the pre-eminent authority of the greatest philosophers. I learned that Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, almost our fellow-countrymen, [95] who used to be called Italian philosophers, never doubted that we had souls that emanated from the universal divine mind. I was impressed, also, by what Socrates, whom the oracle of Apollo pronounced the wisest of men, taught with regard to the immortality of souls, on the last day of his life. ”