Book 2

Neoptolemus, indeed, in Ennius says that he must needs philosophize, but only a little, for he had no liking for it altogether. As for me, Brutus, I judge that I must philosophize — for what better thing can I do, especially now that I have nothing to do? — but not a little, like him. For it is difficult in philosophy to know a few things and not either most or all; since neither can a few things be chosen except out of many, nor will one who has grasped a few not pursue the rest with the same zeal.

Yet still, in a busy life, and a soldier's, such as Neoptolemus then led, even a few things often profit much and bear fruit — if not so great as can be reaped from philosophy entire, yet at least such fruits as in some part now and then set us free from desire or from distress or from fear. Thus from that disputation lately held by me at my Tusculan villa there seemed to come a great contempt of death, which avails not a little to free the mind from fear. For he who fears that which cannot be avoided can in no way live with a tranquil mind; but he who fears not death — not only because one must die, but also because death holds nothing to be dreaded — has secured for himself a great defence toward a happy life.

And yet I am not unaware that many will be eager to argue against me; which I could in no way avoid, save by writing nothing at all. For if my speeches, which I wished to be approved by the judgement of the multitude — for that faculty is a popular one, and the effect of eloquence is the approval of those who hear — but if there were found some few who would praise nothing save what they were confident they could imitate, who set themselves the same limit in their hope of speaking well as in their power, and who, overwhelmed by the abundance of thoughts and of words, declared they preferred leanness and hunger to richness and plenty — whence had arisen that breed of "Attic" speakers, unknown to those very men who professed to follow it, men who have now fallen silent, laughed almost out of the Forum itself:

what shall we think will happen, when we see that we can least of all now use the people for our helper, as we used it before? For philosophy is content with few judges, of its own purpose shunning the multitude, by it both suspected and hated — so that, should anyone wish to revile philosophy entire, he might do it with the people on his side, or, should he attempt to assail that school which we above all follow, he might find great support in the doctrines of the other philosophers. But I have answered the revilers of philosophy entire in my Hortensius; and as for what was to be said on behalf of the Academy, I think it has been set out accurately enough in the four books of my Academica. Yet so far am I from being unwilling that anything be written against me, that I should even most earnestly wish it. For in Greece itself philosophy would never have been held in such honour, had it not flourished by the contentions and disagreements of the most learned men.

Wherefore I exhort all who can do it to wrest from now-languishing Greece the glory of this kind too, and to carry it over into this city of ours — even as our ancestors, by their zeal and diligence, carried over all the rest that was worth seeking. And whereas the glory of orators, brought up from humble beginnings to its height, has now reached the point — as Nature brings about in nearly all things — of growing old, and seems destined in a short time to come to nothing, let philosophy take its birth in our Latin letters from these times of ours; let us assist it, and let us suffer ourselves to be refuted and confuted. This those bear with an ill grace who are, as it were, bound and consecrated to certain fixed and predetermined opinions, and are constrained by that necessity to defend, for consistency's sake, even what they are not wont to approve. But we, who follow what is probable and cannot advance beyond what presents itself as likely to the truth, are ready both to refute without obstinacy and to be refuted without anger.

But if these studies are once brought over to our countrymen, we shall not even have need of the Greek libraries, in which the multitude of books is boundless, owing to the multitude of those who have written. For the same things are said by many, and so they have crammed their books with everything. This will happen with ours too, if more flock to these studies. But let us, if we can, stir up those who, being liberally educated, and joining to it an elegance of discourse, philosophize by method and by rule.

For there is a certain sort of men who wish to be called philosophers, of whom there are said to be a great many books in Latin — which for my part I do not despise, seeing that I have never read them; but since those very men who write them profess that they write neither with clear distinction nor with orderly arrangement nor with elegance nor with ornament, I neglect a reading that gives no pleasure. For what these men of that school say and think, no one even moderately learned is ignorant of. Wherefore, since they themselves take no pains as to how they say it, why they should be read — except by those of like mind among themselves — I do not understand.

For, just as Plato and the rest of the Socratics, and after them those who proceeded from these, are read by all, even by such as do not approve those teachings or do not pursue them most earnestly, whereas Epicurus and Metrodorus are taken up by scarcely anyone but their own followers, so these Latin writers are read by those alone who think their doctrines rightly stated. But to us it seems that whatever is committed to writing ought to be commended to the reading of all the learned; nor, if we ourselves are less able to attain to this, do we therefore feel that it should the less be done.

And so the practice of the Peripatetics and the Academy, of disputing on every matter for both sides, has always pleased me — not only for this reason, that in no other way can what is likely to the truth in any matter be discovered, but also because it is the greatest exercise in speaking. Aristotle first employed it, and then those who came after him. In our own memory Philo, whom I often heard, made it his rule to deliver at one time the precepts of the rhetoricians, at another those of the philosophers; and to this practice I was brought by my friends at Tusculum, and there I spent what time was given me. And so, after we had given the forenoon to oratory, as we had done the day before, in the afternoon we went down into the Academy. The disputation there held I set forth not as one narrating it, but in nearly the same words in which it was acted and disputed. As we walked, then, this conversation was begun by us in this manner, and started from some such opening as this:

I cannot say how greatly I was delighted, or rather aided, by your disputation of yesterday. For although I am conscious that I was never overly fond of life, yet now and then a certain fear and grief was cast before my mind, when I reflected that there would one day be an end of this light and a loss of all the goods of life. From this kind of trouble I have been so freed, believe me, that I think nothing less to be cared for. — That is no wonder at all;

for this is what philosophy effects: it heals minds, it strips away empty anxieties, it sets us free from desires, it drives out fears. But this power of hers does not avail alike with all; she avails much when she has laid hold of a nature suited to her. For not only does fortune favour the brave, as the old proverb has it, but much more does reason, which by certain precepts, as it were, confirms the strength of fortitude. You, plainly, Nature begot lofty and high-minded and despising of human things; and so my discourse against death, addressed to a brave mind, easily found lodging. But do you think this same discourse avails with those very men, save a very few, by whom such things have been discovered, disputed, and written down? For how rare a philosopher is found so disposed in character, so established in mind and in life, as reason demands — one who counts his teaching not a parade of knowledge, but a law of living; who himself obeys himself, and submits to his own decrees?

One may see some men of such levity and ostentation that it had been better for them not to have learned at all; others greedy of money, some of glory, many the slaves of their lusts — so that their lives are wondrously at war with their words. And this seems to me most disgraceful of all. For just as, if a man professing to be a grammarian should speak barbarously, or if one who would be held a musician should sing out of tune, he is the more disgraced because he errs in the very thing whose knowledge he professes, so a philosopher who errs in the conduct of life is the more disgraced because he stumbles in the duty whose master he would be, and, having professed the art of living, transgresses in his living. — Is it not then to be feared, if it is as you say, that you adorn philosophy with a false glory? For what greater proof is there that it profits nothing, than that certain finished philosophers live disgracefully?

That, indeed, is no proof at all. For as not all fields that are tilled are fruitful — and false is that saying of Accius: "Though seeds of good be sown in poorer soil, / Yet they by their own nature shine forth still" — so not all minds that are cultivated bear fruit. And, to dwell on the same comparison: as a field, however fertile, cannot be fruitful without cultivation, so neither can a mind without instruction; each thing without the other is feeble. But the cultivation of the mind is philosophy; this plucks out vices by the roots and prepares minds to receive sowing, and commits to them and, so to speak, sows what, when grown, may bear the richest fruits. Let us proceed, then, as we have begun. Say, if you please, on what you wish the disputation to turn. —

I hold pain to be the greatest of all evils. — Even greater than disgrace? — That, for my part, I do not dare to say; and I am ashamed to have been so quickly thrown from my opinion. — You would have more cause for shame, were you to persist in it. For what is less worthy than that anything should seem to you worse than dishonour, infamy, baseness? To escape these, what pain is not only not to be refused, but to be sought of one's own accord, taken upon oneself, welcomed? — So indeed I judge. Therefore, granted that pain be not the highest evil, an evil it certainly is. — Do you see, then, how much, on a brief admonition, you have abated of the terror of pain?

I see it plainly; but I want more. — I shall make the attempt; but it is a great matter, and I have need of a mind that does not resist. — That you shall have; for as I did yesterday, so now I shall follow reason wherever it leads me. — First, then, I shall speak of the weakness of many men, and of the various schools of the philosophers. Their chief, both in authority and in antiquity, the Socratic Aristippus, did not hesitate to call pain the highest evil. Then to this nerveless and womanish opinion Epicurus showed himself pupil enough. After him Hieronymus of Rhodes said that to be free of pain was the highest good: so great an evil did he reckon in pain. The rest — save Zeno, Aristo, Pyrrho — say much what you just now said: an evil indeed, but others are worse.

Therefore that which Nature herself, and a certain noble virtue, straightway rejects — namely, that you should call pain the highest evil, and be driven from the opinion by setting disgrace against it — in this philosophy, the teacher of life, persists for so many ages. What duty, what praise, what honour will be worth so much that the man who has persuaded himself that pain is the highest evil would wish to attain it at the cost of bodily pain? What disgrace, what baseness, on the other hand, will a man not endure, to escape pain, if he has decided that pain is the highest evil? And who is not wretched — not only then, when he is pressed by the utmost pains, if in these lies the highest evil, but even when he knows that this can befall him? And who is there to whom it cannot befall? So it comes about that absolutely no one can be happy.

Metrodorus, indeed, thinks that man perfectly happy whose body is well constituted, and who is assured it will ever be so. But who is the man who can have that assurance? Epicurus, in truth, says things that to me at least seem to court ridicule. For he affirms in one place that, if a wise man be burnt, if he be racked — you expect, perhaps, that he will say: he will bear it, he will endure it, he will not give in; great praise, by Hercules, and worthy of that very god by whom I have sworn. But for Epicurus, a harsh and hard man, this is not enough: "If he be in the bull of Phalaris," he will say, "how sweet this is! how I care nothing for it!" Sweet, even? Is it not enough that it be not bitter? Why, this very thing even those who deny that pain is an evil are not wont to say — that to be racked is sweet to anyone: harsh, hard, hateful, contrary to Nature they call it, yet not an evil. But this man, who calls it the one evil and the extreme of all evils, holds that the wise man will call it sweet.

I do not require of you that you treat pain in the same words in which Epicurus, a man, as you know, given to pleasure, treats pleasure. Let him say, by all means, the same thing in the bull of Phalaris that he would say if he were on his little couch; I do not attribute so great a power to wisdom against pain. If a man is brave in enduring it, that suffices for duty; that he should even rejoice, I do not require. For it is a grievous thing, beyond doubt — harsh, bitter, hostile to Nature, hard to suffer and to bear. Look at Philoctetes, to whom one must grant his groaning;

for he had seen Hercules himself upon Oeta crying out at the greatness of his pains. Nothing, then, consoled this man, not even the arrows he had received from Hercules, when "the veins of his inward parts, steeped with venom from the viper's bite, stir up foul torments." And so he cries out, seeking aid, longing to die: "Alas, who will commit me to the briny waves / From the high summit of the cliff! / Now, now I waste away; the force of the wound, / The fire of the ulcer, consumes my soul." It seems hard to say that a man is not in evil — and in great evil too — who is forced so to cry out.

But let us look at Hercules himself, who was broken by pain at the very time when by death itself he was seeking immortality. What words does he utter in Sophocles, in the Trachiniae! When Deianira had put upon him the tunic dyed with the Centaur's blood, and it had cleaved to his flesh, he says: "O things grievous to tell, harsh to endure, / Which, drained out, I have borne in body and in soul! / Neither did Juno's relentless terror, / Nor sullen Eurystheus, bring me so much ill / As one frenzied woman, the child of Oeneus' birth. / She has snared me unawares in a robe of madness, / Which, clinging to my sides, rends my flesh with its bite / And, pressing hard, draws off the breath of my lungs: / Already it has sucked up all my discoloured blood. / Thus my body, consumed by horrible ruin, has wasted away; / I myself, fast bound, am slain by a woven plague. / This neither an enemy's hand, nor the Earth-born / Mass of the Giants, nor the Centaur with his double-formed onset / Inflicted upon my body, / No power of Greece, no barbarian savagery, / No fierce race banished to the ends of the earth, / Through all of which, ranging, I drove out every wildness — / But I, a man, am slain by a woman, by a woman's hand. / O son, lay true claim to this name for your father, / Let not a mother's love prevail over my death. / Snatch her hither to me, torn from those dutiful hands; / Now shall I see whether you hold her or me the dearer.

Go on, dare, my son! weep over your father's torments, / Have pity: nations shall bewail our miseries. / Alas, that I should send forth a maiden's wailing from my mouth, / I whom no one ever saw groaning at any ill! / Effeminate, my virtue, struck down, perishes. / Come near, my son, stand by, look upon the piteous / Disembowelled body of your mangled father! / Behold, all of you, and you, Father of the heavenly ones, / Hurl, I beseech, upon me the flashing force of your thunderbolt! / Now, now the anguished crests of my pains torment me, / Now creeps the burning. O hands once victorious,

O breasts, O back, O muscled brawn of my arms, / Was it by your crushing that once the Nemean lion, / Gnashing, breathed out heavily his last breath? / Did this right hand, with the foul she-serpent slain, / Pacify Lerna? Did this lay low the two-bodied band? / Did this cast down the Erymanthian, the ravaging beast? / Did this draw up from the dark Tartarean region / The three-headed dog, born of the Hydra's brood? / Did this slay, with its manifold coils, / The dragon that guarded with watchful eye the gold-bearing tree? / Many other things has our victorious hand visited, / Nor did anyone take spoils from our glories." Can we, then, despise pain, when we see Hercules himself grieving so beyond endurance?

Let Aeschylus come forward, who was not a poet only, but a Pythagorean too — for so we have been told. How, in him, does Prometheus bear the pain which he undergoes for the theft from Lemnos — "whence fire is famed to have been secretly parcelled out to mortals; the cunning Prometheus stole it by guile, and paid the penalties to Jove by supreme decree"? Paying these penalties, then, fastened to the Caucasus, he says this: "Offspring of the Titans, sharers of our blood, / Begotten of Heaven, behold me bound to the rugged / And fettering rocks, as on a roaring strait / Timid sailors, fearing the night, make fast their ship. / Thus has Saturnian Jupiter fixed me, / And the will of Jove enlisted the hands of Mulciber. / These wedges, driving them in by cruel craft, / He drove through my limbs; whereby, wretched, by such skill / Transfixed, I dwell in this fortress of the Furies.

Now too, on this third dread day, / With grim swoop, tearing me with his hooked talons, / Jove's minion mangles me with savage feeding. / Then, glutted and sated to the full on my rich liver, / He pours forth a vast cry and, soaring on high, / With feathered tail he fawns upon my blood. / But when the gnawed liver is renewed by swelling, / Then again, greedy, he betakes himself to his foul repasts. / Thus I feed this guardian of my mournful torment, / Which fouls me, living, with unending misery. / For, as you see, fettered by Jove's chains, / I cannot keep the dread bird from my breast.

Thus, bereft, I myself receive these anxious plagues, / Seeking in love of death an end to my ill; / But far from death I am driven back by the will of Jove, / And this ancient, doom-laden calamity, heaped up through ages of horror, / Is fixed upon my body; / From which there fall drops melted by the sun's heat, / Which drip without ceasing upon the rocks of Caucasus." We seem, then, scarcely able to say that a man so afflicted is not wretched — and, if now wretched, then surely pain is an evil. — You are still pleading my case; but this I shall see to presently;

meanwhile, whence come those verses? For I do not recognize them. — I shall tell you, by Hercules; and rightly do you ask. Do you see that I abound in leisure? — What of that? — You were often, I suppose, when you were at Athens, in the schools of the philosophers. — Yes, and gladly too. — You noticed, then, that although no one of them was at that time very copious of speech, still verses were mingled by them into their discourse. — Yes, and many indeed by Dionysius the Stoic. — Well said. But he gave them out as if by dictation, with no choice, no elegance: whereas Philo would add both his own and chosen poems, and that in their place. And so, since I came to love this kind of senile declamation, I for my part use our own poets eagerly; but where they have failed me — for I have translated much from the Greek, that Latin discourse might lack no ornament in this kind of disputation. — But do you not see what mischief the poets bring?

They bring on the bravest men lamenting, they soften our minds; then they are so sweet that they are not only read but learned by heart. So, when to a bad domestic training and a shadowed, dainty life there are added the poets too, they unstring all the sinews of virtue. Rightly, then, are they cast out by Plato from that commonwealth which he imagined, when he was inquiring after the best morals and the best ordering of the state. But we, taught forsooth by Greece, read and learn these things from boyhood, and count this a liberal education and learning. — But why are we angry at the poets?

There have been found teachers of virtue, philosophers, who would call pain the highest evil. But you, young man, when a little while ago you had said this seemed so to you, on being asked by me whether it were greater even than disgrace, fell from your opinion at a word. Ask this same question of Epicurus: he will say that a moderate pain is a greater evil than the greatest disgrace; for in disgrace itself there is no evil, unless pains follow upon it. What pain, then, follows Epicurus, when he says this very thing, that pain is the highest evil? No greater disgrace do I look for from a philosopher. Wherefore you have given me enough, in answering that disgrace seemed to you a greater evil than pain. For if you will hold to this very point, you will understand how much pain is to be resisted; nor is it so much to be asked whether pain is an evil, as that the mind is to be steeled for bearing pain. — The Stoics draw up their little arguments to prove that it is not an evil;

as though the dispute were about a word and not about a thing. Why do you deceive me, Zeno? For when you deny altogether that to be an evil which seems to me dreadful, I am caught, and long to know how that which I should reckon most wretched is not even an evil. "Nothing," he says, "is an evil save what is base and vicious." You return to your trifles; for you do not take away the thing that vexed me. I know that pain is not wickedness; cease to teach me that: teach me this — that whether I feel pain or do not feel it makes no difference. "Never," he says, "does it make any difference at least to living happily, which rests in virtue alone; yet it is to be rejected." Why? "It is harsh, contrary to Nature, hard to suffer, sorrowful, cruel."

Here is a wealth of words — that what we all call by the one word "evil" he can express in so many ways. You define pain to me, you do not abolish it, when you say it is harsh, contrary to Nature, scarcely to be borne and endured; nor do you lie; but you ought not to give way in fact while glorying in words. "So long as nothing is good but the honourable, nothing evil but the base" — this is to wish, not to teach; the other view is both better and truer: that all things Nature recoils from are among evils, all she welcomes among goods. Once this is laid down, and the contention about words removed, yet so far will that excel which these men rightly embrace — what we call the honourable, the right, the seemly, which we sometimes embrace too under the name of virtue — that all else besides, which are accounted goods of body and of fortune, will seem exceedingly small and slight; so that it is not even any evil; nor, if all of them were gathered into one place, would they be comparable with the evil of baseness.

Wherefore, if, as you granted at the outset, baseness is worse than pain, pain is plainly nothing. For so long as it shall seem to you base and unworthy of a man to groan, to wail, to lament, to be broken, to be unmanned by pain — so long as honour, as dignity, as decorum is present, and you, looking to these, restrain yourself — pain will surely yield to virtue and grow faint at the soul's resolve. For either there is no virtue, or all pain is to be despised. Will you have prudence to exist, without which not even any virtue can be conceived? What then? Will it suffer you to do anything to no purpose, and labour in vain? Or will temperance allow you to do anything without measure? Or can justice be cultivated by a man who, through the force of pain, betrays what was entrusted to him, gives up his accomplices, abandons many duties? What then? To fortitude and her companions — greatness of soul, gravity, patience, contempt of human things — how will you answer?

Will you, cast down and prostrate and deploring in a piteous voice, be told: "O brave man!"? Nay, in such a state, no one would call you even a man. Either fortitude, then, must be given up, or pain must be buried. — But do you know this, that if you should lose some of your Corinthian bronzes, you can have the rest of your furniture safe, but if you lose one virtue — though virtue cannot be lost; yet if you confess that you lack one, you will have none at all?

Can you, then, call Philoctetes there a brave man, or great-souled, or patient, or grave, or one who despises human things —? But from you I had rather depart; yet he, surely, is not brave, who lies in a dripping cave, "who with his wailing, complaint, groaning, and roaring, makes the mute place re-echo his tearful cries." I do not deny that pain is pain — for why else should fortitude be needed? — but I say it is overcome by endurance, if only there be some endurance; if there is none, why do we deck out philosophy, or why are we proud in her name? Pain pricks, or let it even stab: if you are unarmed, offer your throat; but if you are covered with the arms of Vulcan, that is, with fortitude, resist; for these arms, the guardian of your dignity, will forsake and desert you, unless you do so.

The laws of the Cretans, indeed, which either Jupiter or Minos established (by Jove's decree, as the poets tell), and likewise the toils of Lycurgus, train the youth by hunting, by running, by hunger and thirst, by cold and heat. At Sparta, too, boys are so received with scourges at the altar that much blood flows from their flesh — sometimes even, as I heard when I was there, to the point of death; yet of these not one ever cried out, nor even groaned. What then? Can boys do this, and shall men not be able? Shall custom avail, and reason not avail?

There is some difference between toil and pain. They are altogether neighbours, yet still they differ somewhat. Toil is a certain performance, by mind or body, of a heavier task and duty; pain, on the other hand, is a harsh motion in the body, foreign to the senses. These two the Greeks — whose tongue is more copious than ours — call by one name. And so they call industrious men "lovers of toil," or rather "lovers of pain," while we, more conveniently, call them "painstaking": for it is one thing to toil, another to be in pain. O Greece, sometimes poor in words, though you always think yourself to abound in them! It is one thing, I say, to be in pain, another to toil. When Gaius Marius had his varicose veins cut, he was in pain; when he led his army under a great heat, he toiled. There is, however, a certain likeness between these: for the habit of toils makes the endurance of pains the easier.

And so those who gave Greece the form of her commonwealths wished the bodies of the young to be strengthened by toil; which the Spartans extended even to their women, who in other cities are hidden away in the shade of their walls in the softest manner of living. But these men wished nothing of the kind to be found among the maidens of Sparta, "whose study is rather the wrestling-ground, the Eurotas, the sun, the dust, toil, soldiering, than barbarian fruitfulness." Therefore in these laborious exercises pain too intervenes now and then — they are driven, struck, thrown down, fall — and the very toil draws, as it were, a kind of callus over the pain.

As for soldiering — I mean ours, not the Spartans', whose battle-line advances to measure and to the pipe, nor is any exhortation employed without anapaestic feet — you see, first, whence our armies get their name; then how great is the toil of the march: to carry rations for more than half a month, to carry whatever they may want for use, to carry the stake (for shield, sword, helmet our soldiers count no more part of their burden than their shoulders, arms, hands — for they say arms are the soldier's limbs; and these are borne so aptly that, if there be need, casting off their loads they can fight with their arms ready, as with their limbs). What of the drilling of the legions? What of that running, charging, shouting — how great a toil it is! From this comes that spirit in battle, ready for wounds. Bring up, with equal courage, an unpracticed soldier:

he will seem a woman. Why is there so great a difference between a new army and an old, as we have proved? The age of recruits is generally better, but to bear toil, to despise a wound, custom teaches. Nay, we even often see the wounded carried from the line, and that raw and unpracticed one, at however slight a blow, raising the most shameful wailings; whereas that practiced veteran, and braver for that very reason, only asks for a surgeon to bind him up: "O Patroclus," he says, "coming to you I seek your aid and your hands, before I meet the evil doom dealt by a hostile hand, * * * Nor can the flowing blood by any means be stayed, if by your wisdom death may rather be escaped. For the wounded fill the porticoes of Aesculapius' children; there is no approach." — Surely this is Eurypylus. What a hardy man!

and no less hardy: where so much grief is heaped together, see how unweepingly he answers, and even brings forward a reason why he should bear it with an even mind: "He who prepares destruction for another ought to know that the like ruin is prepared for himself, to share in." Patroclus, I suppose, will lead him away to lay him on a couch, to bind his wound — if indeed he were a man; but I saw nothing less of it. For he asks what has been done: "Speak, speak, how the Argives sustain themselves in the battle." — "It cannot be told in words how great is the toil at hand in deeds." Rest, then, and bind your wound. Even if Eurypylus could, Aesopus could not: "When the fortune of Hector had bent our keen line aslant..." — and the rest he unfolds amid his pain; for so intemperate is the soldier's love of glory in a brave man. Will a veteran soldier, then, be able to do this, and a learned and wise man not be able?

He, surely, will do it better, and not a little better. — But thus far I am speaking of the habit of practice, not yet of reason and wisdom. Old women often endure fasting for two days or three; take away food from an athlete for one day, and he will implore Jupiter, Olympian Jupiter, the very god for whom he trains, and will cry out that he cannot bear it. Great is the force of habit: hunters pass the night in the snow upon the mountains; the Indians suffer themselves to be scorched; boxers, bruised with the cestus, do not even groan.

But why speak of these, to whom a victory at the Olympic games seems like that ancient consulship? Gladiators, either ruined men or barbarians — what blows they bear! How those who are well trained had rather take a blow than basely avoid it! How often it appears that they wish nothing more than to satisfy either their master or the people! Even when worn out with wounds, they send to their masters to ask what they wish: if their master is satisfied, they say they are willing to fall. What mean gladiator ever groaned, ever changed countenance? Which of them not only stood, but even fell, basely? Which, when he had fallen and was bidden take the steel, drew in his neck? So much do practice, training, and habit avail. Therefore a Samnite, a foul fellow, worthy of that life and station, will be able to do this; and shall a man born for glory have any part of his soul so soft that he cannot strengthen it by training and reason? The spectacle of gladiators is wont to seem to some cruel and inhuman, and perhaps it is so, as it is now conducted; but when guilty men fought it out with the sword, there could be, perhaps, many a lesson for the ears, but for the eyes none stronger, against pain and death.

Of practice, habit, and reflection I have spoken. Come now, let us look at reason — unless you have something to say to this. — I, interrupt you? Not even that would I wish: so does your discourse lead me on to belief. — Whether, then, it is an evil to be in pain or not, let the Stoics see to it, who with certain little twisted and minute conclusions, that do not reach down to the senses, wish to prove that pain is not an evil. I, for my part, hold that whatever it is, it is not so great as it seems, and I say that men are moved too vehemently by a false vision and appearance of it, and that all pain is endurable. Whence, then, shall I begin? Shall I touch briefly upon the same things I just now said, that the discourse may the more easily go further?

Among all men, then, both learned and unlearned, this is agreed: that it belongs to brave and great-souled and patient men, who overcome human things, to bear pain with endurance; nor was there ever anyone who did not think a man who so bore it worthy of praise. That, then, which is both demanded of the brave and praised when it is done — to dread it as it comes, or not to bear it when present — is it not base? But take heed: since all right affections of the mind are called virtues, this is not the proper name of them all, but they are all named from that one which excelled the rest. For virtue is named from "man" (vir); and a man's most proper attribute is fortitude, whose two greatest functions are the contempt of death and of pain. These, then, we must use, if we wish to be possessed of virtue, or rather to be men, since virtue has borrowed its name from men. You will ask, perhaps, in what way — and rightly: for such is the medicine that philosophy professes. —

Up comes Epicurus, a man not at all bad, or rather a most excellent man; he advises as much as he understands. "Neglect pain," he says. Who says this? The same man who calls pain the highest evil? Hardly consistently. Let us hear him. "If the pain is extreme," he says, "it must needs be brief." Say that over to me again! For I do not quite understand what you call extreme, what brief. "The extreme is that than which nothing is higher; the brief, that than which nothing is briefer. I despise the greatness of a pain from which the shortness of time will deliver me almost before it has come." But if the pain is as great as that of Philoctetes? "Great enough indeed it seems to me, but yet not extreme; for nothing pains him but his foot: the eyes may pain, the head, sides, lungs — all may. Far, then, is he from the extreme of pain." "Therefore," he says, "long-continued pain has more of gladness than of trouble."

Now I cannot say that so great a man knows nothing, but I think he is laughing at us. I say that the extreme pain — and I call it extreme even though another be greater by ten atoms — is not forthwith brief; and I can name many good men who for several years are tormented by the greatest pains of the gout. But the cunning fellow never fixes any measure either of greatness or of duration, so that I might know what he calls extreme in pain, what brief in time. Let us leave him, then, as one who says nothing at all, and force him to confess that remedies for pain are not to be sought from one who has called pain the greatest of all evils — however brave a face he may put on in his own gripings and stranguary. Elsewhere, then, must medicine be sought, and most of all, if we are seeking what is most consistent, from those to whom what is honourable seems the highest good, what is base the highest evil. In their presence you will surely not dare to groan and toss yourself about;

for through their voice Virtue herself will speak with you: "You — when you have seen boys at Lacedaemon, young men at Olympia, barbarians in the arena, taking the heaviest blows and bearing them in silence — if some pain should chance to twitch you, will you cry out like a woman, and not bear it steadfastly and calmly? It cannot be; Nature does not suffer it." I hear it. The boys bear it, led by glory; others bear it for shame, many through fear; and yet do we doubt whether Nature suffers this which is endured by so many and in so many places? She not only suffers it, but even demands it: for she has nothing more excellent, nothing she more longs for, than honour, than praise, than dignity, than decorum. By these several names I mean to declare one thing, but I use many, that I may signify it as fully as possible. And I mean this: that by far the best thing for man is that which is to be desired for its own sake, proceeding from virtue or seated in virtue itself, praiseworthy of itself — which same I should sooner call the only good than not the highest good. And as of the honourable, so the contrary of the base: nothing so foul, nothing so to be spurned, nothing more unworthy of a man.

But if you are persuaded of this — for at the outset you said that there seemed to you more of evil in disgrace than in pain — it remains for you to command yourself. Although this is said I know not in what manner — as if we were two, that one should command, the other obey! And yet it is not unskillfully said. For the mind is divided into two parts, of which one shares in reason, the other is without it. When, therefore, it is enjoined that we command our own selves, this is enjoined: that reason should curb rashness. There is in the minds of nearly all men by nature something soft, lowly, abject, in some sort nerveless and languid. If there were nothing else, nothing would be more deformed than man. But at hand is reason, the mistress and queen of all, which, striving by itself and advancing further, becomes perfected virtue. That this should command that part of the mind which ought to obey — this it is for a man to see to. In what way, then? you will ask.

As a master commands his slave, or a general his soldier, or a parent his son. If that part of the mind which I have called soft shall behave most basely, if it give itself up to womanish laments and tears, let it be bound and held fast under the guardianship of friends and kinsmen; for we often see men broken by shame whom no reasoning could overcome. These, then, are to be bound, like servants, almost with chains and a guard; but those who shall be firmer, yet not the most robust, these it will be fitting to recall by admonition, like good soldiers, to guard their dignity. In the Niptra that wisest man of Greece does not lament excessively at his wound, or rather only moderately: "Step by step," he says, "go, and with calm effort, lest by a jolting a greater pain seize me." (Pacuvius does this better than Sophocles;

for in him Ulysses laments very tearfully at his wound.) Yet to this man, lightly groaning, those very bearers who carry him wounded, looking to the gravity of his person, do not hesitate to say: "You too, Ulysses, though we see you grievously struck, are almost too soft of soul, you who, wont to spend your days in arms" — the wise poet understands that the habit of bearing pain is no contemptible teacher.

And he, not immoderately, in a great pain: "Hold me, keep me! the ulcer crushes me; / Uncover it! alas, wretched me: I am racked." He begins to faint, then straightway ceases: "Cover me, depart now, now! / Leave off! for by your handling and shaking / You magnify my cruel pain." Do you see how the pain fell silent — not the body's, soothed, but the mind's, chastened? And so at the end of the Niptra he rebukes others too, and that as he dies: "To bewail adverse fortune, not to lament, is fitting; / That is a man's office; weeping is a thing added by a womanish nature."

That softer part of this man's soul obeyed reason as a modest soldier obeys a stern commander. But in him in whom there shall be perfect wisdom — whom hitherto, at least, we have seen no man; but by the opinions of the philosophers it is set forth what such a one will be, if ever there shall be one — he, then, or rather that reason which shall be perfect and complete in him, will so command that lower part as a just parent commands his upright sons; with a nod he will accomplish what he wills, with no toil, no trouble; he will rouse himself, will stir himself up, will equip and arm himself, that he may withstand pain as he would an enemy. What are these arms? Effort, resolution, and inward speech, when he says to himself:

"Beware of anything base, languid, unmanly." Let honourable images come before the mind: let Zeno of Elea be set forth, who endured everything rather than betray those privy to the destruction of the tyranny; let one think of Anaxarchus the follower of Democritus, who, when in Cyprus he had fallen into the hands of King Timocreon, deprecated no kind of torture and refused none. Calanus the Indian, unlearned and barbarian, born at the foot of the Caucasus, was of his own will burned alive; but we, if our foot aches, or a tooth, cannot bear it. For there is a certain effeminate and trifling opinion — no more in pain than the same in pleasure — by which, when we melt and flow away in softness, we cannot bear the sting of a bee without an outcry.

But Gaius Marius, a countryman, yet plainly a man — when his veins were being cut, as I said above — at first forbade himself to be bound; nor is anyone before Marius said to have been cut without being bound. Why, then, did others afterwards? His authority prevailed. Do you see, then, that the evil is of opinion, not of nature? And yet that the bite of pain was sharp, this same Marius showed; for he did not offer the other leg. So he both bore the pain like a man, and like a man refused to bear the greater without necessary cause. The whole matter, then, lies in this: that you command yourself. And I have shown what kind of commanding it is; and this reflection — what is most worthy of patience, of fortitude, of greatness of soul — not only restrains the mind, but also, in some way I know not, makes the very pain milder.

For as it happens in battle, that the cowardly and timid soldier, as soon as he has seen the enemy, throws away his shield and flees as far as he can, and for that cause sometimes perishes even with his body unhurt, while to him who has stood firm no such thing has befallen — so those who cannot bear the appearance of pain throw themselves down and lie thus stricken and lifeless; but those who have resisted very often come off the better. For there are certain likenesses of the mind to the body. As burdens are more easily borne by tensed bodies, but crush those that are slack, in just the same way the mind by its own straining drives off all the pressure of weights,

but by slackening is so oppressed that it cannot raise itself up. And if we seek the truth, in the carrying out of all duties an effort of mind must be applied; that alone is, as it were, the guardian of duty. But this same thing is most of all to be provided for in pain, that we do nothing abjectly, nothing timidly, nothing slothfully, nothing in a slavish or womanish way; and above all let that Philoctetan outcry be refused and rejected. To groan is sometimes granted to a man, and that rarely; wailing is not granted even to a woman; and this, surely, is that "lament" which the Twelve Tables forbade to be employed at funerals.

Nor, indeed, does a brave and wise man ever even groan, save perhaps to brace himself to firmness, as in the stadium runners cry out as loud as they can. Athletes do the same when they train; boxers, indeed, even when they strike their adversary, groan as they hurl their gauntlets — not because they feel pain or give way in spirit, but because, in pouring forth the voice, the whole body is tensed, and the blow comes the harder. What of those who wish to cry out more loudly? Is it enough for them to tense the sides, the throat, the tongue, from which we see the voice drawn out and poured forth? With the whole body and, as the saying is, with every nail they serve the straining of the voice.

By Hercules, I have seen Marcus Antonius, when he was pleading earnestly for himself under the Varian law, touch the ground with his knee. For as catapults of stones, and the other engines for hurling missiles, have the heavier discharges the more strongly they are strained and drawn back, so the voice, so a running, so a blow, is the heavier the more it is sent with strain. Since, then, the force of this straining is so great, if a groan in pain shall avail to brace the mind, we shall use it; but if that groan be lamentable, if feeble, if abject, if tearful, the man who gives himself up to it I should scarcely call a man. And indeed, if such a groan brought any relief, still we might consider what was the part of a brave and spirited man; but since it lessens the pain not at all, why do we choose to be base to no purpose? For what is baser in a man than a womanish weeping?

And this precept, which is given concerning pain, extends more widely: for against all things, not pain alone, we must resist with a like straining of the mind. Anger blazes up, lust is roused: we must flee to the same citadel, the same arms must be taken up. But since we are speaking of pain, let us pass these by. To bear pain, then, calmly and quietly, it avails most to consider with the whole heart, as the saying is, how honourable a thing it is. For we are by nature, as I said before — for it must be said again — most zealous and most desirous of honour; and if we have caught, as it were, some gleam of it, there is nothing we are not ready to bear and to suffer, that we may attain it. From this onrush and impulse of minds toward true praise and honour those perils in battle are faced; brave men do not feel their wounds in the line, or feel them, yet had rather die than be moved but a little from their post of dignity.

The Decii saw the flashing swords of the enemy when they rushed upon their line. To these the nobility of their death and its glory lightened all fear of wounds. Do you think Epaminondas groaned when he felt his life flowing out together with his blood? For he was leaving his country ruling over the Lacedaemonians, which he had received in subjection. These are the consolations, these the soothing remedies of the greatest pains.

You will say: what of peace, what of home, what of one's bed? You call me back to the philosophers, who do not often go out into the battle-line. Of these, a man truly trivial, Dionysius of Heraclea, when he had learned from Zeno to be brave, was untaught by pain. For when he suffered in the kidneys, in his very wailing he kept crying out that those things were false which he himself had formerly held about pain. When his fellow-pupil Cleanthes asked him what reasoning had drawn him from his opinion, he answered: "Because, if, after I had given so little labour to philosophy, I yet could not bear pain, that would be proof enough that pain is an evil. But I have spent very many years in philosophy, and cannot bear it. Pain, therefore, is an evil." Then Cleanthes, they say, striking the ground with his foot, recited a verse from the Epigoni: "Do you hear this, Amphiaraus, hidden beneath the earth?" He meant Zeno, from whom he grieved that the other was degenerating.

But not so our Posidonius; whom I myself often saw, and I will tell what Pompey used to relate: that when he had come to Rhodes on his way from Syria, he wished to hear Posidonius; but when he had heard that he was grievously ill, because his joints were violently afflicted, he wished nevertheless to visit the most noble philosopher. When he had seen and saluted him, and addressed him with words of honour, and had said that he took it ill that he could not hear him lecture, the other said: "But you can; nor will I allow the body's pain to bring it about that so great a man should have come to me in vain." And so he related that Posidonius, lying in bed, disputed gravely and copiously on this very point — that nothing is good but what is honourable — and that, when the firebrands of pain, as it were, were brought near him, he often said:

"You do nothing, pain! However troublesome you are, I will never confess you to be an evil." And altogether all toils that are famous and ennobled forthwith become endurable too. Do we not see that, among peoples where there is great honour in those games which are called gymnastic, no pain is shunned by those who go down into that contest? And among those where the praise of hunting and horsemanship flourishes, those who seek this flee no pain. What shall I say of our own ambitions, what of the lust for offices? Through what flame have those not run who once gathered these votes one by one? And so Africanus always had in his hands the Socratic Xenophon, in whom he chiefly praised this — that he said the same toils are not equally heavy to a general and to a soldier, because the honour itself made the general's toil the lighter.

Yet still it comes about that among the crowd of the foolish the opinion of honour prevails, though they cannot see honour itself. And so they are moved by fame and the judgement of the multitude, when they count that honourable which is praised by most. But you, even if you are in the eyes of the multitude, I should not wish to stand by its judgement, nor to think the same thing most beautiful that it thinks. You must use your own judgement; if, approving the right, you please yourself, then you will not only have conquered yourself — which I was just now enjoining — but all men and all things.

Set this before yourself, then: that greatness of soul, and a certain raising, as it were, of the mind to the loftiest height, which most of all stands forth in the contemning and despising of pains, is the one most beautiful thing of all — and the more beautiful, if it be free of the crowd and, not catching at applause, yet delight in itself. Nay, to me at least all things seem more praiseworthy that are done without ostentation and without the people as witness — not that it is to be shunned, for all good deeds wish to be set in the light, but yet there is no greater theatre for virtue than conscience.

And let us above all reflect on this: that this endurance of pains, which I have so often said is to be strengthened by the straining of the mind, should show itself equal in every kind. For often many men who, either from a desire of victory or of glory, or even to keep their right and liberty, have received wounds bravely and borne them, these same men, when the strain is laid aside, cannot bear the pain of disease; for they had not borne what they easily bore by reason or wisdom, but rather by zeal and glory. And so certain barbarous and savage peoples can fight it out with the sword most fiercely, yet cannot be sick like men. The Greeks, on the other hand, men not courageous enough, yet prudent, so far as men's capacity goes, cannot look the enemy in the face: these same bear diseases tolerably and like men. But the Cimbri and Celtiberians exult in battle, lament in sickness. For nothing can be equable that does not proceed from a fixed principle.

But when you see those who are led on either by zeal or by opinion not broken in pursuing and attaining it by pain, you ought to judge either that pain is not an evil, or that, even if whatever is harsh and foreign to Nature be called an evil, it is yet so very small a thing that it is so overwhelmed by virtue as nowhere to appear. Reflect on these things, I pray, day and night. For this principle will spread more widely and will occupy a somewhat larger place than that of pain alone. For if we do all things for the sake of fleeing baseness and attaining honour, we may despise not only the goads of pain but even the thunderbolts of fortune — especially since that refuge is ready, from yesterday's disputation.

For as, if to one sailing, should pirates pursue him, a god should say, "Cast yourself from the ship; one is at hand to take you up — either a dolphin, as it took up Arion of Methymna, or those Neptunian horses of Pelops, which are said to have whirled their chariots, suspended, across the waves; they will take you up and bear you where you will" — he would lay aside all fear: so, when harsh and hateful pains press hard, if they be so great that they are not to be borne, you see whither one must flee for refuge. — These are about the things I thought should be said at this time. But you, perhaps, persist in your opinion. — Not at all; and I hope that in two days I have been freed from the fear of the two things I most dreaded. — Tomorrow, then, at the water-clock; for so we agreed, and I see that this cannot be denied you. — Just so; and that, indeed, before noon, this at the same hour. — So we shall do, and we shall comply with your most excellent studies.