On the Happy Life, Section 13

Seneca — The Senator

I believe — though my fellow Stoics won't like hearing this — that Epicurus taught something honest and even strict. His famous idea of pleasure gets squeezed down to something very small. He actually tells pleasure to follow the same rule we tell virtue to follow: obey nature. But luxury isn't satisfied with what nature needs. What happens next? Someone thinks happiness means being lazy, overeating, and living wildly. That person needs a good excuse for bad behavior. So he becomes an 'Epicurean' because the name sounds appealing. But he doesn't follow the real pleasure that Epicurus taught. He follows the pleasure he already had inside him. Once he thinks his bad habits match this philosophy, he stops hiding them in dark corners. Now he indulges boldly, right out in the open.

Seneca — The Senator Original

I myself believe, though my Stoic comrades would be unwilling to hear me say so, that the teaching of Epicurus was upright and holy, and even, if you examine it narrowly, stern: for this much talked of pleasure is reduced to a very narrow compass, and he bids pleasure submit to the same law which we bid virtue do—I mean, to obey nature. Luxury, however, is not satisfied with what is enough for nature. What is the consequence? Whoever thinks that happiness consists in lazy sloth, and alternations of gluttony and profligacy, requires a good patron for a bad action, and when he has become an Epicurean, having been led to do so by the attractive name of that school, he follows, not the pleasure which he there hears spoken of, but that which he brought thither with him, and, haying learned to think that his vices coincide with the maxims of that philosophy, he indulges in them no longer timidly and in dark corners, but boldly in the face of day.