Epicurus does not sound like a hedonist but perhaps a discrete voluptuary. Rejecting the Stoic moral duty, he is free to pursue the course of least resistance, like the character in Oscar Wilde’s “Portrait of Dorian Gray” who gets rid of temptation by yielding to it. With no sense of morals, Epicurus cannot complain about fortune or pain, of course, hence the pursuit of pleasure, but mildly. He admonishes a young man’s sexual passions but owns: “Follow your inclination as you will, provided only that you neither violate the laws, disturb well-established customs, harm any one of your neighbors, injure your own body, nor waste your possessions.” At the same time he notes that this being impossible it is best to leave off sexual passion altogether. But Epicurus would fit at a men’s club or dinner party, the glib amoralist for whom immorality consists of risking pain. This sort of polite decadence is fashionable for society but makes no sense in solitude.