terms a : "I know not how to conceive the good, apart from the pleasures of taste, sexual pleasures, the pleasures of sound and the pleasures of beautiful form." And in his letter to Pythocles : " Hoist all sail, my dear boy, and steer clear of all culture." Epictetus calls him preacher of effeminacy and showers abuse on him. Again there was Timocrates, the brother of Metrodorus, who was his disciple and then left the school. He in the book entitled Merriment asserts that Epicurus vomited twice a day from over-indulgence, and goes on to say that he himself had much ado to escape from those notorious midnight philosophizings and the confraternity with all its secrets ; further, that Epicurus 's acquaintance with philosophy was small and his acquaintance with life even smaller ; that his bodily health was pitiful, 6 so much so that for many years he was unable to rise from his chair ; and that he spent a whole mina daily on his table, as he himself savs in his letter to Leontion and in that to the philosophers at Mitylene. Also that among other courtesans who consorted with him and Metrodorus were Mammarion and Hedia and Erotion and Nikidion. He alleges too that in his thirtyseven books On Nature Epicurus uses much repetition and writes largely in sheer opposition to others, intense pleasures under the heads of the four senses : (i.) taste ; (ii.) touch ; (iii.) hearing ; (iv.) seeing. The omission of pleasant odours is curious; cf. Plato, Phil. 51 e delov yevos i)dovu)i>. b Cf. Aelian, Fr. 39 (De Epicure eiusque disciptdis). According to him the three brothers of Epicurus were all victims of disease. Plutarch (Non posse suae iter, etc., 1097 e) mentions the dropsy. However much his ailments were exaggerated by his enemies, they do not seem to have hindered him from literary work.