Let virtue go first, let her bear the standard. We shall nonetheless have pleasure, but we shall be the master and control her; at times we shall yield to her entreaty, never to her constraint. But those who surrender the leadership to pleasure, lack both; for they lose virtue, and yet do not possess pleasure, but are possessed by it, and they are either tortured by the lack of it or strangled by its excess — wretched if it deserts them, more wretched if it overwhelms them — they are like sailors who have been caught in the waters around the Syrtes, [19] and now are left on the dry shore, and again are tossed by the seething waves. But this results from a complete lack of self-control and blind love for an object; for, if one seeks evils instead of goods, success becomes dangerous. As the hunt for wild beasts is fraught with hardship and danger, and even those that are captured are an anxious possession — for many a time they rend their masters — so it is as regards great pleasures; for they turn out to be a great misfortune, and captured pleasures become now the captors. And the more and the greater the pleasures are, the more inferior will that man be whom the crowd calls happy, and the more masters will he have to serve. I wish to dwell still further upon this comparison. Just as the man who tracks wild animals to their lairs, and counts it a great delight
With noose the savage beasts to snare, [20]
and
Around the spreading woods to fling a line of hounds,
in order that he may follow upon their tracks, leaves things that are more worthwhile and forsakes many duties, so he who pursues pleasures makes everything else secondary, and first of all gives up liberty, and he pays this price at the command of his belly; nor does he buy pleasures for himself, but he sells himself to pleasures.