United States or Libya ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
COLOTES, whom Epicurus was wont diminutively and by way of familiarity or fondness to call Colotaras and Colotarion, composed, O Saturninus, and published a little book which he entitled, "That according to the opinions of the other philosophers one cannot so much as live." This was dedicated to King Ptolemy.
It is not, O Colotes, a great and dangerous scandal not to call any man good, or not to say ten thousand horsemen; but not to call God God, and not to believe him to be God, as you and the rest do, who will not confess that there is a Jupiter presiding over generation, or a Ceres giving laws, or a Neptune nourishing the plants, it is this separation of names that is pernicious, and fills our life with audaciousness and an atheistical contempt of the gods.
I do not see that Colotes has brought so many false accusations against the other philosophers as he has alleged and advanced true ones against the writings and doctrines of Epicurus. For he would never have used the name of God in such a merry, jesting manner, though Plato in that book makes Socrates several times to talk with great boasting and arrogance, as he does now.
Colotes, then, having got rid of the old philosophers, turns to those of his own time, but without naming any of them; though he would have done better either to have reproved by name these moderns, as he did the ancients, or else to have named neither of them.
After the death of Pheidias his methods were carried on in a way by the sculptors who had worked under him and become subject to his influence; but as years went on, with less and less to remind us of the supreme perfection of the master. Among these pupils of Pheidias were Agoracritos and Colotes in Athens, Paionios, and Alcamenes.
Him, then, does Colotes accuse of having broached and set abroad certain shameful and villanous sophistries; and yet by these his sophisms he has neither rendered friendship less honorable, nor voluptuousness or the desire of pleasures more audacious and unbridled.
Epicurus's great confidant and familiar, Colotes, set forth a book with this title to it, that according to the tenets of the other philosophers it is impossible to live. Now what occurred to me then to say against him, in the defence of those philosophers, hath been already put into writing by me.
For this, therefore, thanks to Colotes, and to every one who declares that the academic doctrine was from a higher times derived to Arcesilaus.
For it is sufficient that in what is necessary and commodious for use there is nothing better. But as for the science and knowledge which the soul of a philosopher desires to have concerning everything, the senses have it not. But as to this, Colotes will farther give us occasion to speak of it hereafter, for he brings this objection against several others.
For it is not likely that bread appeared bread and hay hay to Colotes, because he had read those holy rules of Epicurus which came down from heaven, while Socrates on account of his vanity imagined that hay was bread and bread hay.
Word Of The Day