“[p. 169] that he saw at Argos one Arescontes, whose name had been Arescusa; that she had even been married, but presently grew a beard, became a man, and had taken a wife: and that at Smyrna also he had seen a boy who had experienced the same change. I myself in Africa saw Lucius Cossutius, a citizen of Thysdrus, who had been changed into a man on his wedding day and was still living when I wrote this.” Pliny also wrote this in the same book: 1 “There are persons who from birth are bisexual, whom we call 'hermaphrodites'; they were formerly termed androgyni and regarded as prodigies, but now are instruments of pleasure.”
V
[5arg] Diverse views of eminent philosophers as to the nature and character of pleasure; and the words in which the philosopher Hierocles attacked the principles of Epicurus.As to pleasure the philosophers of old expressed varying opinions. Epicurus makes pleasure the highest good, but defines it 2 as σαρκὸς εὐσταθὲς κατάστημα, or “a well-balanced condition of body.” Antisthenes the Socratic calls it the greatest evil; for this is the expression he uses: 3 μανείην μᾶλλον ἢ ἡσθείην; that is to say, “may I go mad rather than feel pleasure.” Speusippus and all the old Academy declare 4 that pleasure and pain are two evils opposed to each other, but that what lay midway between the two was the good. Zeno thought 5 that pleasure was indifferent, that is neutral, neither good nor evil, that,
