Acarnanian porkers
To My Achievements And Attributes from Folly Speaks

'Plump', 'sleek' and 'glossy' are words used by Horace of himself (Epistles, I, 4, 15-16) when he presents himself as a pig from the herd of Epicurus. The Acarnanian pigs are also mentioned in the Adages. In the Renaissance Epicurus was usually taxed with denying the immortality of the soul and his followers were not unusually referred to as pigs from his herd. His view that man's final end was pleasure could be taken in a severe and almost, Stoic sense, as Seneca interpreted it, or as something altogether less lofty, which explains something of the ambiguity of the Renaissance attitude towards him. In the seventeenth century, Gassendi produced a full-scale Christian version of his philosophy.