In one of Titian's paintings of "Venus and Adonis," Venus stood naked, clutching Adonis, who was about to go hunting, as if begging him not to meet his fated death.
This goddess, skilled in the power of enchantment, had even dressed like Artemis, disguising herself as the goddess of the hunt to hunt alongside Adonis.
Yet Adonis, held in Venus's embrace, merely smiled absentmindedly, as though he thought she was making a fuss over nothing.
Georgiana slowly unwound the bandages around his hand.
The military doctors of this era seemed incapable of using any surgical instrument other than a saw. An operating room was little different from a slaughterhouse.
Suppressing her nausea, she removed all the bandages. His hand was completely unharmed.
"Just a sprain." He smiled easily and used his other hand to wipe away her tears.
She was not crying entirely because he had been injured.
In Plato's "Protagoras," it was written:
Apart from pleasure and pain, there was no difference between them, was there? Since there was no other possible way, it was like a man skilled in measurement: if he put pleasure and pain together and weighed them on a scale, he could see which was heavier. When you measured pleasure against pleasure, you would always gain more pleasure. If you measured pleasure against pain, then it could only be done when pleasure outweighed pain.
Plato believed that "the desire for pleasure" was an impulsive desire to seize immediate enjoyment. A person who ate a second piece of cake for the pleasure it brought, even knowing she would later feel miserable and regret gaining weight, was acting on that desire.
A person who resisted immediate temptation for the sake of long-term pleasure was not simply ruled by her craving for pleasure. She was making her hedonistic