We have a remarkable example of it in the life of a public man of Cicero's own time, the object of the most envenomed invective that he ever uttered.[182] We cannot believe a tithe of what he says about this man, Calpurnius Piso, consul in 58; but in this particular matter of the damage done him by Epicurean teaching we have independent evidence which confirms it.

Piso, then a young man, made acquaintance with a Greek of this school of thought, learnt from him that pleasure was the sole end of life, and failing to appreciate the true meaning and bearing of the doctrine, fell into the trap.

It was a dangerous doctrine, Cicero says, for a youth of no remarkable intelligence; and the tutor, instead of being the young man's guide to virtue, was used by him as an authority for vice.[183] This Greek was a certain Philodemus, a few of whose poems are preserved in the _Greek Anthology_; and a glance at them will show at once how dangerous such a man would be as the companion of a Roman youth.

He may not himself have been a bad man--Cicero indeed rather suggests the contrary, calling him _vere humanus_--but the air about him was poisonous.

In his pupil, if we can trust in the smallest degree the picture drawn of him by Cicero, we may see a specimen of the young men of the age whose talents might have made them useful in the world, but for the strength of the current that drew them into self-indulgence.
Not only the pursuit of pleasure, but its correlative, the avoidance of work and duty, can be abundantly illustrated in this age; and this too may have had a subtle connexion with Epicurean teaching, which had always discouraged the individual from distraction in the service of the State, as disturbing to the free development of his own virtue.
Sulla did much hard work, but made the serious blunder of retiring to enjoy himself just when his new constitutional machinery needed the most careful watching and tending.