1. Cicero, On The Ends of Good And Evil, 2.75 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 2.75. Verum esto: verbum ipsum voluptatis non habet dignitatem, nec nos fortasse intellegimus. hoc enim identidem dicitis, non intellegere nos quam dicatis voluptatem. rem videlicet videlicet P. Man. vides difficilem et obscuram! individua cum dicitis et intermundia, quae nec sunt ulla nec possunt esse, intellegimus, voluptas, quae passeribus omnibus nota est, nota est omnibus A a nobis intellegi non potest? quid, si efficio ut fateare me non modo quid sit voluptas scire—est enim iucundus motus in sensu—, sed etiam quid eam tu velis velis tu eam BE esse? tum enim eam ipsam vis, quam modo ego dixi, dixi ego BE et nomen inponis, in motu ut sit et faciat aliquam varietatem, tum aliam quandam summam voluptatem, quo quo ARN qua BE cui V Mdv. ('quo et qua orta puto ex quoi') addi nihil possit; eam tum adesse, cum dolor omnis absit; eam stabilem appellas. | 2.75. "But let us grant your position. The actual word 'pleasure' has not a lofty sound; and perhaps we do not understand its significance: you are always repeating that we do not understand what you mean by pleasure. As though it were a difficult or recondite notion! If we understand you when you talk of 'indivisible atoms' and 'cosmic interspaces,' things that don't exist and never can exist, is our intelligence incapable of grasping the meaning of pleasure, a feeling known to every sparrow? What if I force you to admit that I do know not only what pleasure really is (it is an agreeable activity of the sense), but also what you mean by it? For at one moment you mean by it the feeling that I have just defined, and this you entitle 'kinetic' pleasure, as producing a definite change of feeling, but at another moment you say it is quite a different feeling, which is the acme and climax of pleasure, but yet consists merely in the complete absence of pain; this you call 'static' pleasure. |
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2. Cicero, On The Nature of The Gods, 1.18 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 1.18. Hereupon Velleius began, in the confident manner (I need not say) that is customary with Epicureans, afraid of nothing so much as lest he should appear to have doubts about anything. One would have supposed he had just come down from the assembly of the gods in the intermundane spaces of Epicurus! "I am not going to expound to you doctrines that are mere baseless figments of the imagination, such as the artisan deity and world-builder of Plato's Timaeus, or that old hag of a fortune-teller, the Pronoia (which we may render 'Providence') of the Stoics; nor yet a world endowed with a mind and senses of its own, a spherical, rotatory god of burning fire; these are the marvels and monstrosities of philosophers who do not reason but dream. |
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3. Lucretius Carus, On The Nature of Things, 2.1122-2.1143, 3.23-3.24, 5.1177-5.1187, 5.1194-5.1195 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
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4. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 7.3.5 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
| 7.3.5. For the man who denies that god is a spirit permeating all things, assuredly asserts that the epithet "divine" is falsely applied to his nature, like Epicurus, who gives him a human form and makes him reside in the intermundane space. While both use the same term god, both have to employ conjecture to decide which of the two meanings is consistent with fact. |
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5. Seneca The Younger, De Beneficiis, 4.4.19 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
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6. Epicurus, Letter To Herodotus, 48
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7. Epicurus, Letters, 89
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8. Epicurus, Letters, 89
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