understood, distinguished pleasure from joy. I have already said
above, that a contraction of the mind can never be right, but that an
elation of it may; for the joy of Hector in Naevius is one thing,--

'Tis joy indeed to hear my praises sung
By you, who are the theme of honour's tongue:

but that of the character in Trabea another:--"The kind procuress, allured
by my money, will observe my nod, will watch my desires, and study my
will. If I but move the door with my little finger, instantly it flies
open; and if Chrysis should unexpectedly discover me, she will run with
joy to meet me, and throw herself into my arms."

Now he will tell you how excellent he thinks this:--

Not even fortune herself is so fortunate.

XXXII. Any one who attends the least to the subject will be convinced how
unbecoming this joy is. And as they are very shameful who are immoderately
delighted with the enjoyment of venereal pleasures, so are they very
scandalous who lust vehemently after them. And all that which is commonly
called love (and, believe me, I can find out no other name to call it by)
is of such a trivial nature that nothing, I think, is to be compared to
it: of which Caecilius says--

I hold the man of every sense bereaved,
Who grants not Love to be of Gods the chief:
Whose mighty power whate'er is good effects,
Who gives to each his beauty and defects:
Hence, health and sickness; wit and folly, hence,
The God that love and hatred doth dispense!

An excellent corrector of life this same poetry, which thinks that love,
the promoter of debauchery and vanity, should have a place in the council
of the Gods! I am speaking of comedy, which could not subsist at all
without our approving of these debaucheries. But what said that chief of
the Argonauts in tragedy?--

My life I owe to honour less than love

What, then, are we to say of this love of Medea?--what a train of miseries
did it occasion! and yet the same woman has the assurance to say to her
father, in another poet, that she had a husband--

Dearer by love than ever fathers were.

XXXIII. However, we may allow the poets to trifle, in whose fables we see
Jupiter himself engaged in these debaucheries: but let us apply to the
masters of virtue,--the philosophers who deny love to be anything carnal;
and in this they differ from Epicurus, who, I think, is not much mistaken.
For what is that lore of friendsh