Plut. Mor., Against Colotes 34 — Against Colotes, the Disciple and Favorite of Epicurus

Plut. Mor., Against Colotes 34 — Against Colotes, the Disciple and Favorite of Epicurus, Plutarch; served verbatim

But that they made war not against the lawgivers but against the laws themselves, one may hear and understand from Epicurus. For in his questions, he asks himself, whether a wise man, being assured that it will not be known, will do any thing that the laws forbid. To which he answers: That is not so easy to determine simply, — that is, I will do it indeed, but I am not willing to confess it. And again, I suppose, writing to Idomeneus, he exhorts him not to make his life a slave to the laws or to the opinions of men, unless it be to avoid the trouble they prepare, by the scourge and chastisement, so near at hand. If then those who abolish the laws, governments, and policies of men subvert and destroy human life, and if Metrodorus and Epicurus do this, by dehorting and withdrawing their friends from concerning themselves in public affairs, by hating those who intermeddle in them, by reviling the first most wise lawgivers, and by advising contempt of the laws provided there is no fear and danger of the whip and punishment, 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.

The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.

← Plut. Mor., Against Colotes 33 contents

Filed here — the addresses this episode attests; counted by the house’s first pass

Colotes — a candidate entry Epicurus — a candidate entry Metrodorus — a candidate entry

Against Colotes, the Disciple and Favorite of Epicurus, Plutarch — translated by A. G. (rev. W. W. Goodwin), 1874
Apparatus shelf + pinned Perseus TEI — Plutarch's Morals (the Moralia), ed. William W. Goodwin, five volumes · 'Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by William W. Goodwin, Ph. D.', with an introduction by R. W. Emerson; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1874 (five volumes; a minority of the TEI transcriptions were keyed from the same publisher's 1878 reprint)
license: public-domain (US: the Goodwin edition is an 1874 Boston publication of a 1684-1694 translation — title pages verified on all five shelf scans at acquisition; Perseus digital editions CC BY-SA 4.0, attribution recorded per ops/corpus-staging/SOURCES.md pattern)