TWO:And by my side stood officers and soldiers raging and cursing. To them came the returning men, blood running along their faces from insignificant wounds, and they bawled and bellowed, and thundered with a thousand curses that they wanted to go back and try again. How ghastly they rolled their eyes in frenzied excitement! Some pointing at me asked the officer who I was, and he explained. Then I had to listen to endless imprecations against the civilian population of Belgium, who, according to them, consisted entirely of francs-tireurs, who all of them deserved to be shot, and to have their61 houses burned down. To repeat the coarse words which they sputtered out in their rage would only cause disgust.We have now to see how, granting Epicurus his conception of painlessness as the supreme good, he proceeds to evolve from it a whole ethical, theological, and physical system. For reasons already mentioned, the ethical development must be studied first. We shall therefore begin with an analysis of the particular virtues. Temperance, as the great self-regarding duty, obviously takes precedence of the others. In dealing with this branch of his subject, there was nothing to prevent Epicurus from profiting by the labours of his predecessors, and more especially of the naturalistic school from Prodicus down. So far as moderation is concerned, there need be little difference between a theory of conduct based exclusively on the interests of the individual, and a theory which regards him chiefly as a portion of some larger whole. Accordingly, we find that our philosopher, in his praises of frugality, closely approximated to the Cynic and Stoic standardsso much so, indeed, that his expressions on the subject are repeatedly quoted by Seneca as the best that could be found. Perhaps the Roman moralist valued them less for their own sake than as being, to some extent, the admissions of an opponent. But, in truth, he was only reclaiming what the principles of his own sect had originally inspired. To be content with the barest necessaries was a part of that Nature-worship against which Greek humanism, with its hedonistic and idealistic offshoots, had begun by vigorously protesting. Hence many passages in Lucretius express exactly the same sentiments as those which are most characteristic of Latin literature at a time when it is completely dominated by Stoic influences.
