Christianity has begun to penetrate the Greco-Roman world as something else, something completely different from Epicurean, Stoic, or Neoplatonic philosophy.
Happy few. joke aside, its royalty,it's politicians. It's epicureans. One of the first sommelier I saw speaking about Louis Treize used to tell me an anecdote.
Crucially for the epicurean thinker that means it will also be easy to avoid the pain of not being able to have something you desire, a pain which would upset your state of ataraxia.
There are those, of course, who would adopt the Epicurean motto of " Eat, drink, and be merry, " but most people would be chastened by the certainty of impending death.
The range of human foods is not just a source of epicurean joy but a reflection of ecological and anthropological variety -- the consequence of tens of thousands of years of parallel yet independent cultural evolution.
This is called, " Are You A Smart Person Without Using Google? " " In modern popular usage, " an epicurean is a connoisseur of the arts of life " and the refinements of sensual pleasures."
As he was far too good an Epicurean to nip the flowers of soul which he gathered for his garden, his friendship was not a disintegrating influence: on the contrary, it forced the young idea to robuster bloom.
In the matter of cooking ducks, I am in violent opposition to the pretendedly Epicurean school of raw bloody duck whisked through a duck press. The advice to " run your duck through a very hot oven" leaves me shuddering.