t Epicurus, indeed, says such things that it should seem that his
design was only to make people laugh; for he affirms somewhere, that if a
wise man were to be burned, or put to the torture,--you expect, perhaps,
that he is going to say he would bear it, he would support himself under
it with resolution! he would not yield to it, and that, by Hercules! would
he very commendable, and worthy of that very Hercules whom I have just
invoked: but even this will not satisfy Epicurus, that robust and hardy
man! No; his wise man, even if he were in Phalaris's bull, would say, How
sweet it is! how little do I regard it! What sweet? is it not sufficient,
if it is not disagreeable? But those very men who deny pain to be an evil,
are not in the habit of saying that it is agreeable to any one to be
tormented; they rather say, that it is cruel, or hard to bear, afflicting,
unnatural, but still not an evil: while this man who says that it is the
only evil, and the very worst of all evils, yet thinks that a wise man
would pronounce it sweet. I do not require of you to speak of pain in the
same words which Epicurus uses--a man, as you know, devoted to pleasure: he
may make no difference, if he pleases, between Phalaris's bull, and his
own bed: but I cannot allow the wise man to be so indifferent about pain.
If he bears it with courage, it is sufficient; that he should rejoice in
it, I do not expect; for pain is, beyond all question, sharp, bitter,
against nature, hard to submit to, and to bear. Observe Philoctetes: We
may allow him to lament, for he saw Hercules himself groaning loudly
through extremity of pain on mount OEta: the arrows with which Hercules
presented him, were then no consolation to him, when

The viper's bite, impregnating his veins
With poison, rack'd him with its bitter pains.

And therefore he cries out, desiring help, and wishing to die,

Oh! that some friendly hand its aid would lend,
My body from this rock's vast height to send
Into the briny deep! I'm all on fire,
And by this fatal wound must soon expire.

It is hard to say that the man who was obliged to cry out in this manner,
was not oppressed with evil, and great evil too.

VIII. But let us observe Hercules himself, who was subdued by pain at the
very time when he was on the point of attaining immortality by death. What
words does Sophocles here put in his mouth, in his Trachiniae? who, when
Deianira had put upon him a tunic