Alciphron, Letters, Letters of the Courtesans: Leontion to Lamia (Fictional Epistle)

Charles can you post a link or description of the source of that? Thanks!

I am not sure I have ever even heard of him! Thanks Charles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alciphron

Here is another translation: Alciphron, Letter of Courtesans, Letter 17, “Leontium to Lamia” (Allen Rogers Benner trans.)

Nothing is harder to please, it seems, than an old man just beginning to play at being a boy again. How that Epicures tries to manage me, scolding me for everything, suspicious of everything, writing me, well-sealed letters, chasing me out of his school garden! I swear by Aphrodite, that if he were an Adonis – he's already nearly eighty – I would not put up with him, a louse-ridden valetudinarian all wrapped up in fleeces in place of woolens. How long is a girl to endure this “philosopher”? Let him keep his Principal Doctrines about Nature and his distorted Canons, and let him allow me to be mistress of myself, as Nature intended, the object, neither of his anger nor his insolence. Such is the graybeard who is laying siege to me: I find him a real besieger, but not like your Demetrius, my Lamia: indeed, because of him it is possible to lead a virtuous life? He wants to be a Socrates, and to talk on and on and to feign ignorance, and he regards his his Pythocles an Alcibiades and counts on making me his Xanthippe.

And the end will be that I shall leave for some destination or other and flee from land to land rather than put up with his interminable letters. And now he has ventured upon the most terrible and intolerable conduct of all, and it is because I want advice as to what I ought to do that I have written to you.

You know that handsome Timarchus of the deme Cephisia.

I do not deny that my relations with the young man have been familiar for a long time – to you, Lamia, I must write the truth – and almost the first lesson in love, that I had was from him; for I lived next-door to him, and it he who robbed me of my virginity. From that time on, he has never ceased sending me all the good things, clothes, jewelry, Indian maidservants, Indian menservants. Of the rest, I say nothing. But even in the matter of the smallest delicacies, he anticipates the seasons, so that nobody may taste them before I do. So that's the kind of lover about whom our philosopher says, "Shut him out; don't let him come near you." And what sort of names do you think he calls the boy? –speaking, neither like a citizen of Athens nor like like a philosopher, but like a clown of… Cappadocia, the first that ever entered Greece. As for me, if the whole city of Athens were made up wholly of Epicuruses, by the goddess Artemis, I would not reckon them in the scales as balancing to Timarchus' arm, no, not even his finger.

What do you say, Lamia? Is it not all true? Am I not right? And do not, I beg of you by Aphrodite, do not let his answer enter your mind: "But he is a philosopher, he is distinguished, he has a host of friends." Let him take what I have to say, say, I: but let him save his lectures for other people. "Reputation" does not warm my heart at all: no, Demeter, give me what I want – Timarchus.

Furthermore, because of me, the lad has been compelled to abandon everything – the Lyceum, and his own youth, his young comrades, and his club life – and to live with the Master, and flatter him, and sing the praise of his windy Doctrines. But this Atreus says "Get out of my preserve and don't go near Leonion": as if Timarchus could not say, with better right, "On the contrary, don't you come near my girl.” And he, though still a youth, puts up with his rival, the latecomer, an old man, but the latter cannot abide the man with the juster claim.

What shall I do, Lamia? In heaven's name, I employ you. I swear by the Mysteries, as I hope for release from these calamities, that at the very thought of separation from Timarchus, I have at this moment, turned cold, and my hands and feet have begun to sweat, and my heart has turned upside down. I beg you, take me into your home for a few days, and I will make this dotard realize how great his blessings were when he had me in his house. And I'm sure he can no longer stand his suffering, he will promptly send ambassadors to me – Metrodorus and Hermarchus and Polyaenus. How often do you think, Lamia, I have gone to him privately and said, "What are you doing, Epicurus? Don't you know that you are being ridiculed for this by Timocrates, the brother of Metrodorus, in the Assembly, in the theater, in the company of other sophists?" But what can be done with him? He is shameless in his passion. Well, I shall be just about as shameless as he is, I shall not let my Timarchus go. Farewell.

What do you make of that Bryan?

Reliable? Totally False? Totally made up? Partly made up? Evidence that Epicurus was never an ascetic?

It is ancient but fictional. Alciphron's fictional letters take inspiration from human nature and "fun-facts." I have never seen anybody try to be definitive about when Alciphron was writing -- it could be that he was even a contemporary of Epicurus, but he was probably a later writer.

If it was not ancient I would totally ignore it. It is funny to think somebody would have to "flee from land to land" just to avoid Epicurus' letters and his "Principal Doctrines about Nature" -- a messed up title for further comedic effect.

Of course, as you well know and correctly argue, Epicurus was not an ascetic. (Philodemus, On Wealth P.Herc. 163) "Among the followers of Epicurus, there are those who argue that poverty is fundamentally bad, employing specific arguments to this effect. Epicurus himself declares poverty is in numerous ways a form of evil, emphasizing that when it intersects with other adversities, it becomes intolerable."

This is an interesting document. The whole document seems to turn on the question of just and honorable authority. First, there is the connection between the names Timocrates and Timarchus.

τιμή- "Honor"

-κρατία "Power, Rule"

-ἀρχός "Ruler, leader, Prince"

In the story, Leontion shuns Epicurus for Timarchus, 'honorable ruler'. Timocrates, 'honorable power', comes to their defense. Epicurus, by contrast, is called Atreus, a king from a cursed royal House descended from the damned king Tantalus and reaching its climax in the aftermath of the Trojan war with Agamemnon, his wife Clytemnestra, and their children; among whom were Orestes and Iphiginia.

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The House of Atreus begins with Tantalus. Tantalus, the son of Zeus and the nymph Plouto, enjoyed cordial relations with the gods until he decided to slay his son Pelops and feed him to the gods as a test of their omniscience.

Tantalus' crime was partly murder, but also partly impiety. His punishment was to be vexed forever by terrible hunger and thirst.

Leontion calls upon Demeter to give her over to Timarchus. She chose the right goddess for the job, as Demeter, distracted as she was by the kidnapping of her daughter by Hades, was the only one at the table to consume a part of Pelops.

Atreus himself then repeats the evil deed;

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Atreus then learned of Thyestes' and Aerope's adultery and plotted revenge. He killed Thyestes' sons and cooked them, save their hands and feet. He tricked Thyestes into eating the flesh of his own sons and then taunted him with their hands and feet.

So Epicurus is a stand-in for a bad ruler, from a cursed lineage of rulers, and a rival to Timarchus, 'honorable ruler', who has as she says the "juster claim".

And then we have the comparison of Epicurus and Pythocles to Socrates and Alcibiades;

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Plato presents Alcibiades as a youthful student and lover of Socrates who would, in time to come, be the ruin of Athens through his change of allegiance in war.[6] Because of the high level of esteem for the community in ancient Greece, Alcibiades’ betrayal of his fellow soldiers ensures that he is looked down upon in all of Plato’s writings.

In summary, Epicurus is an immoral and hedonistic ruler from a foul and accursed lineage, a lice-ridden and itchy lecher and pederast, a tyrant with his pupils, a threat as well as a laughingstock to the people of Athens, and a dotard who speaks neither like a citizen nor like a philosopher, but like a clown.

He is, in short, all bad things to all people. As satire goes this is a job well done, and Alciphron has been compared with Lucian on that front.

Since the letter is fictional and satirical, we can dismiss without evidence what has been asserted without evidence.