exander,
think you, (or indeed could he possibly) forget the fight at Arbela?
Or Pelopidas the tyrant Leontiadas? Or Themistocles the engagement at
Salamis? For the Athenians to this very day keep an annual festival for
the battle at Marathon, and the Thebans for that at Leuctra; and so, by
Jove, do we ourselves (as you very well know) for that which Daiphantus
gained at Hyampolis, and all Phocis is filled with sacrifices and
public honors. Nor is there any of us that is better satisfied with
what himself hath either eaten or drunk than he is with what they
have achieved. It is very easy then to imagine what great content,
satisfaction, and joy accompanied the authors of these actions in their
lifetime, when the very memory of them hath not yet after five hundred
years and more lost its rejoicing power. The truth is, Epicurus himself
allows there are some pleasures derived from fame. And indeed why should
he not, when he himself had such a furious lechery and wriggling after
glory as made him not only to disown his masters and scuffle about
syllables and accents with his fellow-pedant Democritus (whose
principles he stole verbatim), and to tell his disciples there never was
a wise man in the world besides himself, but also to put it in
writing how Colotes performed adoration to him, as he was one day
philosophizing, by touching his knees, and that his own brother Neocles
was used from a child to say, "There neither is, nor ever was in the
world, a wiser man than Epicurus," and that his mother had just so many
atoms within her as, when coming together, must have produced a complete
wise man? May not a man then--as Callicratidas once said of the Athenian
admiral Conon, that he whored the sea as well say of Epicurus that
he basely and covertly forces and ravishes Fame, by not enjoying her
publicly but ruffling and debauching her in a corner? For as men's
bodies are oft necessitated by famine, for want of other food, to prey
against nature upon themselves, a like mischief to this does vainglory
create in men's minds, forcing them, when they hunger after praise and
cannot obtain it from other men, at last to commend themselves.

And do not they then that stand so well affected towards applause and
fame themselves own they cast away very extraordinary pleasures,
when they decline, magistrature, public offices, and the favor and
confidences of princes, from whom Democritus once said the grandest
blessings of human life are der