person
Pylades
also: Pylade
In Greek myth the devoted friend of Orestes, son of Strophius of Phocis. In the play staged by Pacuvius he offers to die in Orestes' place, each insisting he is the real Orestes; Laelius cites the scene as a famous emblem of self-sacrificing friendship.
Reading notes
- On the Ends of Good and Evil §2.79 if you were Pylades, will you declare yourself Orestes
In the Orestes legend, the friends Pylades and Orestes each claimed to be Orestes before the Tauric king so as to die in the other's place, a stock example of self-sacrificing friendship dramatized in Pacuvius's Chryses. Cicero presses whether Epicurean theory can account for such loyalty.