Twin Jugs of Lesbian Wine

L'Apéritif or "The Appetizer" (1908) by Raoul Dufy

"Then, in the Murderer (Ό ἀνδροφόνος), Bato adds sex to the 'Epicurean' vice of drinking by day. After an unidentified character ridicules an unnamed 'decent' philosopher (in some lines that Athenaeus does not record), he continues,

ἐξὸν γυναῖκ’ ἔχοντα κατακεῖσθαι καλὴν καὶ Λεσβίου χυτρῖδε λαμβάνειν δύο· ὁ φρόνιμός ἐστι <τοῦτο,> τοῦτο τἀγαθόν. Έπίκουρος ἔλεγε ταῦθ’ ἃ νῦν ἐγὼ λέγω. εἰ τοῦτον ἔζων πάντες ὃν ἐγὼ ζῶ βίον, οὔτ’ ἄτοπος ἦν ἂν οὔτε μοιχὸς οὐδὲ εἷς.

(Ath. 7.279 c–d)

[When he can lie down with a beautiful woman and take twin jugs of Lesbian wine—This is a wise man. This is the good. Epicurus used to say the things I am saying now. If everybody lived the life that I live, not a single man would be wicked or an adulterer.]

Unfortunately, without further clues about the specific context, it is hard to tell whether the character is claiming that wicked people would not exist in an Epicurean world or whether the character means to assert that no one would be called wicked. Perhaps the sense is that a man who can drink with a woman out in the open has no need for wicked love affairs that require stealth and decep- tion.16 Is this hedonist the murderer of the title? Could the Epicurean be the victim? e comic Epicureans seem generally to have been hilariously decadent, rather than sinister, but certainty is impossible." (Pamela Gordon, The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus 22)