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The Epicurean: A Tale

Chapter 23: Footnotes
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About This Book

The narrative follows a youthful head of an Epicurean school who presides over sumptuous festivals and cultivated pleasures within elaborately tended gardens, where conversation, song, and dance mingle with literary refinement. It traces the tension between the sect's original temperate doctrine and its contemporary decadence, showing how luxury and social display reshape philosophical ideals. The discovery of an ancient manuscript and encounters in eastern monastic settings introduce exotic rituals and antiquarian curiosities that complicate the protagonist's pursuits. Scenes of banquets, music, and ceremonial spectacle are balanced with reflections on pleasure, habit, and the fragile boundary between cultivated taste and moral decline.


Footnotes

1.
The description, here alluded to, may also be found, copied verbatim from Sethos, in the “Voyages d’Anténor.”“In that philosophical romance, called ‘La Vie de Séthos,’ ” says Warburton, “we find a much juster account of old Egyptian wisdom, than in all the pretended ‘Histoire du Ciel.’ ” Div. Leg. book 4. sect. 14.
2.
A cross was, among the Egyptians, the emblem of a future life.
3.
“On s’étoit même avisé, depuis la première construction de ces demeures, de percer en plusieurs endroits jusq’au haut les terres qui les couvroient; non pas, à la vérité, pour tirer un jour qui n’auroit jamais été suffisant, mais pour recevoir un air salutaire, &c.”Sethos.
4.
Osiris.
5.
In the language of Plato, Hierocles, &c. to “restore to the soul its wings,” is the main object both of religion and philosophy.
6.
See an account of this sensitive tree, which bends down its branches to those who approach it, in M. Jomard’s Description of Syene and the Cataracts.
7.
The province of Arsinoë, now Fioum.
8.
In the original the discourses of the Hermit are given much more at length.
9.
A rank, resembling that of Colonel.
10.
“Une de ces couronnes de grain de corail, dont les vierges martyres ornoient leurs cheveaux en allant à la mort.” Les Martyrs.