Vitae philosophorum

Furthermore that he extolled Idomeneus, Herodotus, and Timocrates, who had published his esoteric doctrines, and flattered them for that very reason. Also that in his letters he wrote to Leontion, O Lord Apollo, my dear little Leontion, with what tumultuous applause we were inspired as we read your letter. Then again to Themista, the wife of Leonteus: I am quite ready, if you do not come to see me, to spin thrice on my own axis and be propelled to any place that you, including Themista, agree upon; and to the beautiful Pythocles he writes: I will sit down and await thy divine advent, my heart’s desire. And, as Theodorus says in the fourth book of his work, Against Epicurus, in another letter to Themista he thinks he preaches to her.[*](A perplexing passage. (1) As παραινετική is for the Stoics that branch of ethics which makes personal application of moral principles, the mss. may be right. (2) By changing αὐτῇ to αὐτήν, a little more sting is given to this tame remark: he thinks that she preaches. (3)If this is one of the fifty scandalous letters alluded to in § 3, Froben’s αὐτὴν περαίνειν, which Bignone and Apelt adopt, may be right. (4) If emend we must, a rude remark is quite as probable as a compliment,cf.§ 8. Hence νομίζει αὐτὴν παρακινεῖν, he deems her mad, if she says or thinks so-and-so, would be in the master’s blunt manner, and Themista (to use the language of Phaedrus, 249 d)νουθετεῖται ὡς παρακινοῦσα.)

It is added that he corresponded with many courtesans, and especially with Leontion, of whom Metrodorus also was enamoured. It is observed too that in his treatise On the Ethical End he writes in these

Again there was Timocrates, the brother of Metrodorus, who was his disciple and then left the school. He in the book entitled Merriment asserts that Epicurus vomited twice a day from over-indulgence, and goes on to say that he himself had much ado to escape from those notorious midnight philosophizings and the confraternity with all its secrets;