1. You appear to me, my good friend Timocrates, to be a man of Cyrene, according to the Tyndareus of Alexis—
For there if any man invites another
To any banquet, eighteen others come;
Ten chariots, and fifteen pairs of horses,
And for all these you must provide the food,
So that 'twere better to invite nobody
And it would be better for me also to hold my tongue, and not to add anything more to all that has been said already; but since you ask me very earnestly for a discussion on those men who have been notorious for luxury, and on their effeminate practices, you must be gratified.
2. For enjoyment is connected, in the first instance, with appetite; and in the second place, with pleasure. And Sophocles the poet, being a man fond of enjoyment, in order to avoid accusing old age, attributed his impotence in amatory pleasures to his temperance, saying that he was glad to be released from them as from some hard master. But I say that the Judgment of Paris is a tale originally invented by the ancients, as a comparison between pleasure and virtue. Accordingly, when Venus, that is to say pleasure, was preferred, everything was thrown into confusion. And that excellent writer Xenophon seems to me to have invented his fable about Hercules and Virtue on the same principle. For according to Empedocles—
Mars was no god to them, nor gallant War,
Nor Jupiter the king, nor Saturn old,
Nor Neptune; Venus was their only queen.
Her they propitiate and duly worship
With pious images, with beauteous figures
Skilfully carved; with fragrant incenses,
And holy offerings of unmix'd myrrh,
And sweetly smelling frankincense; and many
A pure libation of fresh golden honey
They pour'd along the floor.
