Book 5

This fifth day, Brutus, will make an end of the Tusculan Disputations, on which day was disputed by us that matter which of all you most approve. For I have perceived, both from that book which you wrote to me with the greatest care, and from many of your conversations, that it pleases you well that virtue is of itself sufficient for living happily. And although this is difficult to prove, on account of the so various and so many torments of fortune, it is yet of such a kind that one must labour at it, that it may the more easily be proved. For there is nothing of all that is handled in philosophy which is spoken more weightily or more magnificently.

For since that cause impelled those who first betook themselves to the study of philosophy, that, all things else being set aside, they should bestow themselves wholly upon the inquiry after the best state of life, surely it was in the hope of living happily that they placed so great a care and labour upon that study. And if by them virtue has been discovered and perfected, and if there is enough of protection in virtue toward living happily, who is there who would not judge that the work of philosophizing was both gloriously laid down by them and gloriously taken up by us? But if virtue, subjected to various and uncertain chances, is the handmaid of fortune, and is not of such great strength as to guard itself, I fear that we must seem to lean toward the hope of living happily not so much by trust in virtue as by making of vows.

For my part, considering with myself those chances by which fortune has vehemently exercised me, I begin sometimes to distrust this opinion and to dread the weakness and fragility of the human race. For I fear lest Nature, when she had given us infirm bodies, and had added to them both incurable diseases and intolerable pains, gave us also minds both attuned to the pains of the body and, separately, entangled in their own anguishes and troubles.

But in this I chastise myself, that from the softness of others, and perhaps of my own, I judge of the strength of virtue, not from virtue itself. For she — if only there is any virtue, which doubt your uncle, Brutus, removed — has beneath her all things that can befall a man, and, despising them, contemns human chances, and, free of all fault, thinks nothing pertains to her save herself. But we, both magnifying by fear all adversities as they come, and by mourning those that are present, choose to condemn the nature of things rather than our own error.

But of this fault, and of our other vices and sins, all correction is to be sought from philosophy. Into whose bosom, since from the first times of our age our will and zeal impelled us, now, tossed by these gravest chances in a great storm, we have fled for refuge to the same harbour from which we had set out. O philosophy, guide of life, O searcher-out of virtue and expeller of vices! What, not only we, but the life of men altogether, could have been without you? You gave birth to cities; you called together scattered men into the fellowship of life; you joined them among themselves, first by dwellings, then by marriages, then by the communion of letters and of speech; you were the inventor of laws, you the teacher of morals and of discipline. To you we flee, from you we seek help, to you we entrust ourselves — as before in great part, so now wholly and entire. But one day well and according to your precepts spent is to be preferred to a sinning immortality.

Whose aid, then, should we use rather than yours, you who both bestowed on us tranquillity of life and took away the terror of death? And philosophy, indeed, is so far from being praised in proportion as it has deserved of the life of men, that by most it is neglected, by many even reviled. Does anyone dare to revile the parent of life, and to stain himself with this parricide, and to be so impiously ungrateful as to accuse her whom he ought to revere, even if he had been less able to grasp her? But this, as I think, is the error, and this the darkness poured over the minds of the unlearned — that they cannot look back so far, and do not think that those by whom the life of men was first equipped were philosophers.

Which thing, though we see it to be most ancient, we yet confess the name to be recent. For who can deny that wisdom itself is ancient, not only in fact, but even in name? Which, by the knowledge of things divine and human, and of the beginnings and causes of each thing, won this most beautiful name among the ancients. And so both those Seven, who were held and named by the Greeks sophoi, by our countrymen sapientes (wise men), and, many ages before, Lycurgus, in whose times Homer too is reported to have lived, before this city was founded, and already in the heroic ages Ulysses and Nestor — we have heard that these both were and were held wise men.

Nor indeed would Atlas be said to bear up the heaven, nor Prometheus to be fastened to the Caucasus, nor starry Cepheus with his wife, his son-in-law, his daughter, unless the divine knowledge of celestial things had carried over their name to the error of fable. From these, in succession, all who placed their zeal in the contemplation of things were both held and named wise; and that name of theirs lasted down to the age of Pythagoras. Who, as Heraclides of Pontus, the hearer of Plato, a man learned among the first, writes, is said to have come to Phlius, and there to have discoursed learnedly and copiously on certain matters with Leon, chief of the Phliasians. And when Leon had admired his talent and eloquence, he asked of him in what art above all he trusted; but he said that he knew no art, but was a philosopher. Leon, wondering at the novelty of the name, asked who these philosophers were, and what difference there was between them and the rest;

and Pythagoras answered that the life of men seemed to him like that fair held with the greatest pomp of games, in the gathering of all Greece; for as there some sought the glory and renown of the crown by exercised bodies, others were led by the gain and profit of buying or selling, but there was a certain kind of men, and that the most freeborn, who sought neither applause nor gain, but came for the sake of looking on, and carefully observed what was done and in what manner — so we, as if from some city to the gathering of a fair, set out from another life and nature into this life: some are slaves to glory, others to money; rare are certain ones who, counting all else as nothing, zealously gaze upon the nature of things. These, he said, he called lovers of wisdom — that is, philosophers; and as there it was most freeborn to look on, acquiring nothing for oneself, so in life the contemplation and knowledge of things far surpasses all other pursuits.

Nor indeed was Pythagoras only the inventor of the name, but also the amplifier of the things themselves. Who, when after this conversation at Phlius he had come into Italy, adorned that Greece which was called Magna, both privately and publicly, with most excellent institutions and arts. Of whose teaching there will perhaps be another time for speaking. But from the ancient philosophy down to Socrates, who had heard Archelaus, the disciple of Anaxagoras, numbers and motions were treated, and whence all things arose and whither they fell back, and the magnitudes, intervals, and courses of the stars were zealously inquired into by them, and all celestial things. But Socrates first called philosophy down from heaven, and set it in the cities, and even brought it into men's homes, and compelled it to inquire about life and morals and things good and evil.

Whose manifold method of disputing, and variety of matters, and greatness of talent, consecrated by the memory and the writings of Plato, produced several kinds of dissenting philosophers; of whom we have followed that one above all which we thought Socrates used — to conceal our own opinion, to relieve others of error, and in every disputation to seek what was most like the truth. Which custom, since Carneades held it most acutely and most copiously, we did both often at other times, and lately at Tusculum, that we should dispute after that manner. And the conversation of four days we have written out and sent to you in the former books; but on the fifth day, when we had sat down in the same place, this was proposed, on which we should dispute:

It does not seem to me that virtue can be sufficient for living happily. — But, by Hercules, to my Brutus it seems so, whose judgement I — by your leave I would say it — far prefer to yours. — I do not doubt — nor is that now the matter — how much you love him, but this, of what sort that is which I have said seems so to me, on which I wish to be disputed by you. — You deny, then, that virtue can be sufficient for living happily? — I deny it entirely. — What? Toward living rightly, honourably, praiseworthily — in fine, toward living well — is there enough protection in virtue? — Surely enough. — Can you, then, either not call wretched the man who lives badly, or deny that he whom you confess to live well lives happily? — Why should I not be able? For even amid torments one can live rightly, honourably, praiseworthily, and for that reason well — provided you understand what I now call "well." For I mean steadfastly, gravely, wisely, bravely.

These things are thrown even on the rack, to which the happy life does not aspire. — What, then? Is the happy life alone, I ask, left outside the door and threshold of the prison, when steadfastness, gravity, fortitude, wisdom, and the rest of the virtues are dragged to the torturer and refuse neither punishment nor pain? — You, if you mean to do anything, must seek out something new; those things move me least of all, not only because they are commonplace, but much more because, just as certain light wines have no force in water, so those sayings of the Stoics delight when tasted rather than when drunk. As that chorus of virtues, set upon the rack, places images before the eyes with the most ample dignity, so that the happy life seems about to go swiftly toward them and not to suffer them to be deserted by it;

but when you have led the mind away from that picture and those images of the virtues to the fact and the truth, this is left bare — whether anyone can be happy as long as he is tortured. Wherefore let us now inquire into this; but do not fear that the virtues will protest and complain that they have been left behind by the happy life. For if no virtue is free of prudence, prudence herself sees this — that not all the good are also happy; and she recalls many things about Marcus Atilius, Quintus Caepio, Manius Aquilius, and prudence herself holds back the happy life, when it tries to go upon the rack — if you prefer to use images rather than the things themselves — and denies that it has anything in common with pain and torment.

I readily allow you to proceed in that fashion, although it is unjust for you to prescribe to me in what manner you wish me to dispute. But I ask whether we think that anything was accomplished on the former days, or nothing. — Accomplished, indeed, and a good deal. — And yet, if it is so, this question is now half-finished and almost brought to its end. — In what manner, pray? — Because turbulent motions and tossings of minds, roused and carried away by inconsiderate impulse, repelling all reason, leave no part of the happy life. For who, fearing death or pain — of which the one is often present, the other ever impends — can be not wretched? What if the same man, as generally happens, fears poverty, ignominy, infamy, if weakness, blindness, if, finally — what has often befallen not single men but powerful peoples — slavery?

Can anyone, fearing these, be happy? What of him who not only fears these as things to come, but even bears and sustains them present — add to these too exile, mourning, bereavements: he who, broken by these things, is crushed by distress, can he at last be not most wretched? But what of that man whom we see inflamed with lusts and raging, ravenously seeking all things with insatiable desire, and the more abundantly he draws pleasures from every side, so much the more heavily and ardently thirsting — would you not rightly call him most wretched? What of that man, carried away by levity and exulting in empty joy and rashly exultant — is he not the more wretched, the happier he seems to himself? Therefore, as these men are wretched, so on the contrary those are happy whom no fears terrify, no distresses eat away, no lusts rouse, no futile exultant joys melt away with languid pleasures. As, then, the tranquillity of the sea is understood when not even the slightest breeze moves the waves, so the quiet and calm state of the mind is discerned when there is no disturbance by which it can be moved. But if there is one who counts the force of fortune, and all human things which can befall anyone, bearable, so that neither fear nor anguish touches him, and the same man, if he covets nothing, is carried away by no empty pleasure of the mind, what reason is there why he should not be happy?

And if these things are effected by virtue, what reason is there why virtue itself, of itself, should not make men happy? — And yet the one cannot but be said, that those who fear nothing, are anguished by nothing, covet nothing, are carried away by no unbridled joy, are happy; and so this I grant you; but the other is no longer entire. For by the former disputations it has been effected that the wise man is free of every disturbance of the mind. — Then doubtless the matter is finished;

for the question seems to have come to its end. — Pretty nearly, indeed. — But yet that is the manner of mathematicians, not of philosophers. For geometers, when they wish to teach something, if anything of what they have taught before pertains to that matter, take it for granted and proved, and only explain that of which nothing has been written before; but philosophers, whatever matter they have in hand, heap into it all things which suit it, even if they have been disputed in another place. For unless it were so, why would a Stoic, if it were asked whether virtue could be sufficient for living happily, say much? To whom it would be enough to answer that he had taught before that nothing is good save what is honourable, this being proved, it follows that the happy life is content with virtue; and as this is consequent on that, so that on this — that, if the happy life is content with virtue, then nothing is good save what is honourable.

But yet they do not so proceed; for there are separate books both on the honourable and on the highest good, and although from this it is effected that there is a great enough force in virtue toward living happily, nonetheless they treat this separately. For each matter must be handled with its own proper arguments and admonitions, especially one so great. For beware lest you think that any voice more glorious was ever uttered in philosophy, or that there is any promise of philosophy richer or greater. For what does she profess? O good gods! That she will bring it about that he who has obeyed her laws shall be ever armed against fortune, shall have all the protections of living well and happily in himself — in fine, shall be ever happy.

But I shall see what she effects; meanwhile this very thing I greatly esteem, that she promises it. For Xerxes, indeed, stuffed with all the prizes and gifts of fortune, content with neither cavalry, nor foot-forces, nor multitude of ships, nor boundless weight of gold, set a prize for him who should discover a new pleasure — with which itself he was not content; for lust will never find an end — I should wish that we could elicit by a prize one who would bring us something whereby we might more firmly believe this.

I should wish that indeed, but I have a little something to ask. For I assent that of the things you have laid down the one is consequent on the other, so that, as, if what is honourable be alone good, it follows that the happy life is made complete by virtue, so, if the happy life be in virtue, that nothing is good save virtue. But your Brutus, on the authority of Aristo and Antiochus, does not think this; for he thinks that there is some good besides virtue. — What then?

Do you think I shall speak against Brutus? — Why, as it seems; for to set bounds beforehand is not mine. — What, then, is consistent for each, in another place. For that disagreement was mine both with Antiochus often, and with Aristo lately, when, as commander, I lodged at his house in Athens. For it did not seem to me that anyone could be happy while in evils; but that the wise man could be in evils, if there were any evils of body or of fortune. These things were said — which Antiochus too wrote in several places — that virtue itself, of itself, could make the happy life, but yet not the happiest; then that most things are named from the greater part, even if some part be absent, as strength, as health, as riches, as office, as glory, which are discerned by kind, not by number; likewise that the happy life, even if in some part it limped, yet from a much greater part keeps its own name.

These things it is not now so necessary to pick out, although they do not seem to me said most consistently. For both, in the case of one who is happy, I do not understand what he should want, that he be happier — for if there is anything lacking, he is not even happy — and as for their saying that each thing is named and regarded from the greater part, there are cases where that holds in that fashion; but since they say there are three kinds of evils, of one who is pressed by all the evils of two kinds, so that all things in fortune are adverse, and his body is oppressed by all things and worn out with pains, shall we say that this man wants but a little toward the happy life, not to say toward the happiest?

This is that which Theophrastus could not sustain. For when he had laid down that scourgings, torments, torturings, the overthrow of one's country, exiles, bereavements have great force toward living badly and wretchedly, he did not dare to speak loftily and amply, since he felt humbly and abjectly. How well, is not the question; consistently, at least, certainly. And so it is not my wont to reprehend the consequences, when you have granted the first points. But here this most elegant of all the philosophers and the most learned is not greatly reprehended when he says there are three kinds of goods, but he is harassed by all, first in that book which he wrote On the Happy Life, in which he disputes much why he who is tortured, who is racked, cannot be happy. In it he is even thought to say that the happy life does not climb onto the wheel — that is, a certain kind of torment among the Greeks. He does not say that anywhere at all, but what he does say comes to the same.

Can I, then, who have granted to him that bodily pains are among evils, that shipwrecks of fortune are among evils — can I be angry with him for saying that not all the good are happy, since on all the good those things can fall which he counts among evils? The same Theophrastus is harassed both in the books and in the schools of all the philosophers, because in his Callisthenes he praised that saying: "Fortune rules life, not wisdom." They say that nothing was ever said by any philosopher more feeble. Rightly, indeed; but I understand that nothing could be said more consistent. For if there are so many goods in the body, so many outside the body in chance and fortune, is it not consonant that fortune, which is the mistress both of external things and of those pertaining to the body, should avail more than counsel?

Or do we prefer to imitate Epicurus? Who often says many things excellently; for how consistently and harmoniously he speaks, he does not trouble. He praises a slender diet. That, indeed, is for a philosopher; but if Socrates or Antisthenes said it, not he who said that the end of goods is pleasure. He denies that anyone can live pleasantly unless he live also honourably, wisely, and justly. Nothing weightier, nothing worthier of philosophy — unless he were referring this very thing, honourably, wisely, justly, to pleasure. What is better than: "Scanty fortune comes upon the wise man"? But does he say this, who, when he has called pain not only the greatest evil, but even the sole evil, can be oppressed in his whole body by the keenest pains at the very time when he most glories against fortune? Which same thing Metrodorus too says, in even better words:

"I have forestalled you, Fortune," he says, "and seized you, and barred all your approaches, so that you could not reach me." Excellently — if Aristo of Chios said it, or the Stoic Zeno, who counted nothing an evil save what was base; but you, Metrodorus, who have hidden every good in the inward parts and the marrow, and have defined the highest good to be contained in a firm disposition of the body and an assured hope of it — you have barred the approaches of Fortune? In what way? For of that good you can be despoiled even now. And yet by such sayings the unskilled are caught, and on account of such opinions the multitude of these men exists;

but it is the part of one disputing acutely to see, not what each man says, but what ought to be said by each. As in that very opinion which we have taken up in this disputation — we hold that all the good are always happy. Whom I shall call good is plain; for those equipped and adorned with all the virtues we call now wise, now good men. Let us see who are to be called happy.

For my part, I think those who are in goods with no evil joined; nor is any other notion subjoined to this word, when we say "happy," save a heaped-up embrace of goods, with all evils set apart. This virtue cannot attain, if there is anything good besides itself. For there will be present a certain crowd of evils, if we count those things evils: poverty, ignobility, lowliness, solitude, the loss of one's own, grave bodily pains, ruined health, weakness, blindness, the destruction of one's country, exile, slavery in fine. In these so many and so great things — and even more can befall — the wise man can be; for these chance brings in, which can fall upon the wise man. But if these are evils, who can guarantee that the wise man will always be happy, since he can be in all of them at one time?

I do not, then, readily grant either to my Brutus, or to our common masters, or to those ancients, Aristotle, Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo, that, since they count among evils the things which I enumerated above, they should also say the wise man is always happy. If this distinguished and beautiful title delights them, most worthy of Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, let them induce their minds to despise those things by whose splendour they are caught — strength, health, beauty, riches, offices, resources, glory — and to count for nothing those things which are contrary to these: then they will be able to profess with the clearest voice that they are terrified neither by the assault of fortune, nor by the opinion of the multitude, nor by pain, nor by poverty, and that all things are placed for them in themselves, and that there is nothing outside their own power which they count among goods.

As it is, both to say these things, which are of some great and lofty man, and at the same time to count, as the crowd does, among evils and goods, can in no way be granted. Moved by which glory, Epicurus comes forward; to whom too — if it please the gods — the wise man seems always happy. He is caught by the dignity of this opinion, but he would never say it, if he listened to himself. For what is there that less agrees than that he who says that pain is either the highest or the sole evil should also think that the wise man will say "how sweet this is!" then, when he is tortured by pain? Philosophers, then, are not to be regarded from single utterances, but from the continuity and consistency of their thought.

You bring me to assent to you. But see lest your own consistency be missed. — In what manner, pray? — Because I lately read your fourth book On the Ends; in it you seemed to me, in disputing against Cato, to wish to show this — which to me at least is approved — that between Zeno and the Peripatetics there is nothing but a novelty of words. And if that is so, what reason is there why, if it be consonant with Zeno's system that there is force great enough in virtue toward living happily, it should not be permitted to the Peripatetics to say the same? For it is the thing, I think, that ought to be regarded, not the words.

You, indeed, deal with me by sealed documents and bear witness to what I once said or wrote. With others proceed in that manner, who dispute under imposed laws: we live for the day; whatever has struck our minds with probability, that we say; and so we alone are free. But yet, since we spoke a little before of consistency, I do not think the question must be raised in this place whether what pleased Zeno and his hearer Aristo be true — that only what is honourable is good — but, if it were so, then whether it were consonant that he should place this whole "living happily" in virtue alone.

Wherefore let us grant this, by all means, to Brutus, that the wise man is always happy — how that agrees with himself, he himself will see; in the glory, indeed, of this opinion who is worthier than that man? — yet let us hold that the same man is the happiest. And although Zeno of Citium, a certain foreigner and ignoble fashioner of words, seems to have insinuated himself into the ancient philosophy, let the weight of this opinion be sought back from the authority of Plato, in whom this saying is often employed — that nothing is called good save virtue. As in the Gorgias Socrates, when it had been asked of him whether he did not think Archelaus the son of Perdiccas, who was then held most fortunate, happy, said: "I do not know;

for I have never conversed with him." — "Do you say so? Can you not know it in any other way?" — "In no way." — "You cannot then say even of the Great King of the Persians whether he be happy?" — "Could I, when I do not know how learned he is, how good a man?" — "What? Do you think the happy life set in that?" — "So entirely I judge: the good happy, the wicked wretched." — "Is Archelaus, then, wretched?" — "Certainly, if unjust."

Does he not seem here to place the whole happy life in virtue alone? But what of this, in the Funeral Oration, how does the same man speak? For "to that man," he says, "to whom all things which bear toward living happily are fitted from himself, and who are not, hanging on others' good or contrary chance, forced to depend on another's events and to wander — to him the manner of living best is prepared. This is that moderate man, this the brave, this the wise; he, both with things born and things falling away, with the other advantages, and most of all with children, will obey and submit to that old precept: for he will never rejoice overmuch nor mourn overmuch, because he will always place all hope of himself in himself." From this, then, as from a certain holy and august fount of Plato, all our discourse will flow. Whence, then, can we more rightly begin than from our common parent, Nature?

Who, whatever she begot — not only the animal, but even that which sprung from the earth so as to rest on its own stalks — willed that each thing should be perfect in its own kind. And so both trees and vines, and those things which are lowlier and cannot raise themselves higher from the earth, some are ever green, others, stripped in winter, warmed in the spring season, put forth leaves; nor is there any which does not so flourish, by a certain inner motion and by the seeds enclosed in each, that it pours forth either flowers or fruits or berries, and all things in all are perfect, so far as in them lies, no force hindering.

But even more easily can the force of nature herself be discerned in the beasts, because to them sense was given by nature. For some beasts she willed to be swimmers, the dwellers of the waters; others, winged, to enjoy the free heaven; some to be creeping, some to be walking; and of these themselves, part solitary-wandering, part gathered together; some savage, but certain ones tame; some hidden and covered by the earth. And each of these, keeping its own function, since it cannot pass over into the life of an unlike living creature, abides in the law of nature. And as to the beasts a different chief thing was given by nature to each, which each retains as its own and does not depart from it, so to man something far more excellent — although those things ought to be called excellent which have some comparison; but the human mind, plucked from the divine mind, can be compared with nothing else save with God himself, if this be lawful to say.

This mind, then, if it has been cultivated, and if its keen edge has been so tended that it be not blinded by errors, becomes a perfect mind, that is, complete reason, which is the same as virtue. And if everything is happy to which nothing is lacking, and which is filled up and heaped full in its own kind, and this is proper to virtue, surely all who are possessed of virtue are happy. And in this, indeed, I agree with Brutus, that is, with Aristotle, Xenocrates, Speusippus, Polemo. But to me they seem even the happiest.

For what is lacking toward living happily to him who trusts in his own goods? Or how can he be happy who distrusts? But he must distrust who divides goods threefold. For how will he be able to trust either in the firmness of the body or in the stability of fortune? And yet, without a stable and fixed and abiding good, no one can be happy. What, then, of theirs is of that kind? So that to me that saying of the Spartan seems to fall upon these men, who, to a certain merchant glorying that he had sent out many ships onto every coast of the sea, said: "Not at all desirable, indeed, is that fortune of yours, that hangs on ropes." Or is there any doubt that nothing is to be held in that class by which the happy life is filled up, if it can be lost? For nothing ought to dry away, nothing to be extinguished, nothing to fall, of those things in which the happy life consists. For he who shall fear lest he lose any of these cannot be happy.

For we wish him who is happy to be safe, impregnable, fenced and fortified, not so that he be endowed with a small fear, but with none. For as he is called innocent (innocens) not who harms lightly, but who harms not at all, so he is to be held without fear, not who fears small things, but who is wholly free of fear. For what other thing is fortitude save an affection of the mind both patient in undergoing danger and in toil and pain, and far from all fear? And these things surely would not be so, unless every good consisted in honour alone.

But that security most longed for and most sought — and by security I now mean a freedom from distress, in which the happy life is set — can anyone have it to whom either a multitude of evils is present or can be present? But how will he be able to be lofty and erect, and counting all the things which can befall a man small — such as we wish the wise man to be — unless he shall judge that all things are placed for him in himself? Did the Lacedaemonians, when Philip threatened them by letter that he would hinder all that they should attempt, ask whether he would hinder them even from dying? Will not the man whom we seek be found of such a spirit much more easily than a whole state? What? To this fortitude of which we speak, temperance being joined, which is the moderatrix of all commotions, what can be lacking toward living happily to him whom fortitude frees from distress and from fear, while temperance both calls him away from lust and does not suffer him to be carried away by insolent alacrity? That virtue effects these things I would show, were they not unfolded on the former days.

And since the disturbances of the mind make misery, but its calmings make the happy life, and since the method of disturbance is twofold — because distress and fear are concerned with imagined evils, but exultant joy and lust with the error of goods, all which fight with counsel and reason — him whom you shall see free, loosed, liberated from these so grave agitations, and from these things so at variance among themselves and so torn apart, will you doubt to call happy? But the wise man is always so disposed; therefore the wise man is always happy. And moreover every good is a thing to rejoice in; but what is to be rejoiced in is to be proclaimed and displayed; and what is such is also glorious; but if glorious, certainly praiseworthy; but what is praiseworthy is assuredly honourable too;

what is good, then, is honourable. But the things which those men count goods, not even they themselves call honourable; the only good, then, is what is honourable; from which it is effected that the happy life is contained by honour alone. Those things, then, are not to be called or held goods, with which abounding one may be most wretched.

Or do you doubt that one excelling in health, strength, beauty, the keenest and soundest senses — add too, if you please, nimbleness and swiftness; grant riches, honours, commands, resources, glory — if he who has these be unjust, intemperate, timid, of dull wit and none, would you doubt to call him wretched? Of what sort, then, are those goods, which he who has them can be most wretched? Let us see whether, as a heap is made of grains of its own kind, so the happy life ought to be made of parts like itself. And if it is so, the happy man must be made of goods which alone are honourable; but if these shall be mixed of unlike things, nothing honourable can be made of them; and this being taken away, what can be understood to be happy? For indeed, whatever there is that is good is to be sought; but what is to be sought is certainly to be approved; but what you have approved is to be held welcome and acceptable; therefore dignity too is to be attributed to it. And if it is so, it must of necessity be praiseworthy; every good, then, is praiseworthy. From which it is effected that what is honourable is alone good.

And unless we hold thus, there will be many things which we must call goods; I pass over riches — which, since anyone, however unworthy, can have, I do not count among goods; for what is good, not anyone can have — I pass over nobility and popular fame stirred up by the consent of the foolish and the wicked: these things, which are least, must yet of necessity be called goods — little white teeth, charming eyes, a sweet complexion, and those things which Anticlea praises, washing the feet of Ulysses: "the smoothness of his speech, the softness of his body." If we shall count these goods, what will there be in the gravity of the philosopher, rather than in the opinion of the crowd and the throng of the foolish, that could be called either weightier or grander?

But the Stoics call "preferred" or "promoted" the same things which these men call goods. They do, indeed, but they deny that the happy life is filled up by them; these others, however, think that without them there is no happy life at all, or, if it be happy, they at least deny it is the happiest. But we wish it the happiest, and this is confirmed to us by that Socratic conclusion. For thus that chief of philosophy used to argue: that, of whatever sort each man's disposition of mind was, such was the man; but of whatever sort the man himself was, such was his speech; but to his speech his deeds were like, and to his deeds his life. But the disposition of mind in a good man is praiseworthy; therefore the life of the good man too is praiseworthy; and honourable, then, since praiseworthy. From which it is concluded that the life of the good is happy.

For indeed, by the faith of gods and men! was it too little learned in our former disputations, or did we speak for the sake of delight and of spending leisure, that the wise man is always free of every agitation of mind, which I call disturbance, that there is always in his mind the most placid peace? A man, then, temperate, steadfast, without fear, without distress, without futile alacrity, without lust — is he not happy? But the wise man is always such; always, then, happy. And now, how can the good man not refer to that which is praiseworthy all that he does and all that he thinks? But he refers all things to living happily; the happy life, then, is praiseworthy; and nothing is praiseworthy without virtue: the happy life, then, is made complete by virtue.

And this is concluded thus too: neither in a wretched life is there anything to be proclaimed or gloried in, nor in that which is neither wretched nor happy. And there is in some life something to be proclaimed and gloried in and displayed, as in Epaminondas: "By our counsels the glory of the Spartans is shorn"; as in Africanus: "From the rising sun above the Maeotian marshes there is no one who could match me in deeds."

And if it is so, the happy life is to be gloried in and proclaimed and displayed; for there is nothing else which is to be proclaimed and displayed. These things being laid down, you understand what follows. And indeed, unless that life is happy which is the same as honourable, there must of necessity be something better than the happy life; for what shall be honourable, they will certainly confess to be better. So there will be something better than the happy life; than which what can be said more perverse? What? When they confess that there is great enough force in vices toward a wretched life, must they not confess that the same force is in virtue toward the happy life? For of contraries the consequences are contrary.

At which point I ask what force that balance of Critolaus has, who, when he places on the one scale the goods of the mind, on the other those of the body and external things, thinks that scale of the goods of the mind weighs down so much that it would press down earth and seas. What, then, hinders either this man, or even that Xenocrates, the gravest of philosophers, exaggerating virtue so greatly, extenuating and casting away the rest, from placing in virtue not only the happy life, but even the happiest?

Which, unless it be done, the destruction of the virtues will follow. For into whomsoever distress falls, into the same it must of necessity fall to fear (for fear is an anxious expectation of future distress); but into whomsoever fear falls, into the same fall dread, timidity, panic, cowardice; therefore, that the same man be sometimes conquered, and think that that precept of Atreus does not pertain to him: "Accordingly let them so prepare themselves in life that they know not how to be conquered." But this man will be conquered, as I said; and not only will be conquered, but will also be a slave; but we wish virtue ever free, ever unconquered; which, unless they are so, virtue is taken away.

And if there is enough protection in virtue toward living well, there is enough also toward living happily; for there is certainly enough in virtue that we live bravely; if bravely, also that we live with great spirit, and indeed so that we be never terrified by anything and be ever unconquered. It follows that we repent of nothing, lack nothing, are obstructed by nothing; therefore all things flow on absolutely and prosperously, therefore happily. But virtue is sufficient toward living bravely; sufficient, then, also toward living happily.

For indeed, as folly, even though it has attained what it coveted, never thinks it has attained enough, so wisdom is always content with what is present, nor is it ever displeased with itself. Do you think the one consulship of Gaius Laelius was like that — and that too with a repulse (if, when a wise and good man, such as he was, is passed over by the votes, it is the people rather than he that bears the repulse) — but yet, which would you rather, if it were in your power, to be once consul, like Laelius, or four times, like Cinna?

I do not doubt what you will answer; and so I see to whom I am entrusting this. I would not put this same question to anyone whatever; for another would perhaps answer that he preferred not only four consulships to one, but a single day of Cinna to the whole lives of many famous men. Laelius, if he had touched anyone with his finger, would have paid the penalty; but Cinna ordered the head of his colleague the consul Gnaeus Octavius to be cut off, and of Publius Crassus, Lucius Caesar, most noble men, whose virtue had been known at home and in war, of Marcus Antonius, the most eloquent of all whom I have heard, of Gaius Caesar, in whom there seems to me to have been a pattern of humanity, of wit, of charm, of grace. Was he happy, then, who slew these men? To me, on the contrary, he seems wretched, not only because he did these things, but also because he so bore himself that it was permitted him to do them — although to sin is permitted to no one; but we slip by an error of speech; for we say that to be permitted

which is granted to anyone. Which, at last, was the happier — Gaius Marius then, when he shared the glory of the Cimbrian victory with his colleague Catulus, almost a second Laelius (for I count this man most like him) — or, when, victor in the civil war, angry, to Catulus' kinsmen deprecating, he answered not once but often: "Let him die"? In which the more happy is he who obeyed this nefarious voice than he who so wickedly commanded. For since it is better to receive than to do an injury, so it is better to go a little forward to meet death itself now coming on — which Catulus did — than to do as Marius did, to bury his six consulships in the death of such a man and to defile the last time of his life.

For thirty-eight years Dionysius was tyrant of the Syracusans, having seized the dominion when twenty-five years old. With what beauty, with what resources endowed, did he hold a state oppressed by servitude! And yet of this man we have received it thus written by good authorities, that there was in his manner of living the greatest temperance, and that in conducting affairs he was a keen and industrious man, but the same malicious by nature and unjust; from which it must of necessity seem, to all who well behold the truth, that he was most wretched. For those very things which he had coveted he did not attain even then, when he thought he could do all things.

Who, although he was of good parents and born in an honourable station — although that, indeed, one has handed down one way, another another — and abounded both in the familiarities of his equals and in the intimacy of his kinsmen, and had even, after the manner of Greece, certain youths joined to him by love, trusted none of them, but committed the guard of his body to those whom he had chosen as slaves from the families of the wealthy, from whom he himself had stripped the name of slavery, and to certain runaways and fierce barbarians. So, on account of an unjust lust of domination, he had in a manner shut himself up in a prison. Nay, even, that he might not entrust his neck to a barber, he taught his daughters to shave him. So with a sordid and servile craft the royal maidens shaved the beard and hair of their father like little barber-girls. And yet from these very ones, when they were now grown up, he removed the iron, and ordained that they should singe his beard and hair with red-hot walnut-shells.

And since he had two wives, Aristomache his fellow-citizen, and Doris of Locri, he so came to them by night that he spied out and searched everything beforehand. And when he had surrounded his bedroom couch with a broad ditch, and had joined the crossing of that ditch with a little wooden bridge, that very bridge, when he had shut the door of the bedroom, he would turn aside. And the same man, since he did not dare to stand on the common platforms, was wont to address the assembly from a high tower.

And when he wished to play ball — for he zealously did this — and laid aside his tunic, he is said to have handed his sword to a young man whom he loved. When a certain friend said jestingly: "To this man, indeed, you certainly entrust your life," and the young man had smiled, he ordered both to be slain — the one, because he had shown the way of killing him, the other, because he had approved that saying by his laughter. And by that deed he grieved so that he bore nothing more heavily in his life; for he had slain one whom he had vehemently loved. So are the desires of the powerless torn into contrary parts. When you have obeyed the one, the other must be resisted.

And yet this tyrant himself judged how happy he was. For when one of his flatterers, Damocles, recounted in conversation his resources, his wealth, the majesty of his dominion, the abundance of things, the magnificence of the royal halls, and denied that anyone had ever been happier, "Do you wish, then," he said, "O Damocles, since this life delights you, yourself to taste it and to try my fortune?" When that man had said that he desired it, Dionysius ordered the man to be placed on a golden couch, spread with a most beautiful woven coverlet, embroidered with magnificent works, and adorned several sideboards with engraved silver and gold. Then at the table he ordered chosen boys of surpassing beauty to stand, and to wait diligently, watching that man's nod.

There were unguents, garlands; perfumes were burned; the tables were heaped with the most sought-out viands. Damocles seemed to himself fortunate. In the midst of this array, Dionysius ordered a gleaming sword, fastened by a horse-hair, to be let down from the ceiling, so that it hung over the neck of that happy man. And so he neither looked upon those beautiful attendants, nor the silver full of art, nor stretched out his hand to the table; now the very garlands were slipping off; at last he begged the tyrant that he might be allowed to depart, because now he did not wish to be happy. Does Dionysius seem to have declared sufficiently that there is nothing happy for one over whom some terror always impends? And it was not even open to him to return to justice, to render the citizens their liberty and rights; for he, a young man, at an improvident age, had entangled himself in errors and had committed such things that he could not be safe, if he began to be sound.

But how greatly he longed for friendships, whose faithlessness he dreaded, he declared in the case of those two Pythagoreans, of whom, when he had accepted the one as surety for the other's death, the other, to free his surety, had been present at the appointed hour of death: "Would," he said, "that I might be enrolled as a third friend to you!" How wretched it was for this man to lack the intimacy of friends, the fellowship of the table, conversation altogether familiar — especially for a man learned from boyhood and instructed in the liberal arts, and most studious of music; a tragic poet too — how good, nothing to the matter; for in this kind, somehow, more than in others, each man's own seems to him beautiful; hitherto I have known no poet (and I had friendship with Aquinius) who did not seem best to himself; so the matter stands: your own delights you, mine delights me — but, to return to Dionysius: he lacked all human refinement and manner of life; he lived with runaways, with criminals, with barbarians; he thought no one his friend who was either worthy of liberty or wished to be free at all. With this man's life, then — than which I can devise nothing fouler, more wretched, more detestable — I shall not now compare the life of Plato or of Archytas, learned men and plainly wise:

from the same city I shall summon a lowly little man from the dust and the rod, who lived many years afterward, Archimedes. Whose tomb, unknown to the Syracusans — when they denied that it existed at all — I, as quaestor, tracked out, fenced about on every side and clothed with brambles and thickets. For I held certain little verses, which I had heard were inscribed on his monument, which declared that on the top of the tomb a sphere with a cylinder had been placed.

But when I was surveying everything with my eyes — for there is a great throng of tombs at the Agrigentine gates — I noticed a little column standing out not much from the thickets, on which was the figure of a sphere and a cylinder. And I straightway said to the Syracusans — there were leading men with me — that I thought that was the very thing I was seeking. Many sent in with sickles cleared and opened the place.

When the approach to it had been laid open, we came up to the front of the base. There appeared an epigram, with the latter parts of the little verses eaten away, about half gone. So the most noble city of Greece, once indeed the most learned too, would have been ignorant of the monument of its one most acute citizen, had it not learned of it from a man of Arpinum. But let the discourse return whence it wandered: who is there of all who has but any commerce with the Muses, that is, with humanity and with learning, who would not rather be this mathematician than that tyrant? If we seek the manner and the action of life, the mind of the one was nourished by working out and seeking reasonings, with the delight of skill, which is the one sweetest food of minds; that of the other in slaughter and injuries, with both daily and nightly fear. Come, compare Democritus, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras: what kingdoms, what resources will you prefer to their studies and delights?

For indeed, in that which is the best part in man, in that must of necessity be set that best thing which you seek. But what is there in man better than a sagacious and good mind? Its good, then, must be enjoyed, if we wish to be happy; but the good of the mind is virtue; therefore the happy life must of necessity be contained by this. Hence all things which are beautiful, honourable, glorious — as I said above, but the same thing seems to be said a little more fully — are full of joys. And since it is plain that the happy life arises from continuous and full joys, it follows that it arises from honour.

But that we may not touch with words alone the things we wish to show, certain things, as it were, must be set forth that move us, which may turn us more to recognition and understanding. For let there be taken by us a certain excellent man of the best arts, and let him be fashioned for a little while in mind and thought. First, he must of necessity be of exceptional talent; for virtue does not easily accompany slow minds; then, of zeal roused toward investigating the truth. From which that threefold offspring of the mind will arise: one set in the knowledge of things and the unfolding of nature; the second in the discernment of things to be sought and fled, and in the method of living well; the third in judging what is consequent and what repugnant to each thing, in which is all both the subtlety of disputing and the truth of judging.

With what joy, then, must the mind of the wise man be affected, dwelling and passing the night with these cares! As, when he has discerned the motions and revolutions of the whole world, and has seen the innumerable stars clinging to the sky agree with the motion of the sky itself, fixed in their certain seats; seven others each holding their own courses, far distant among themselves either in height or in lowness, whose wandering motions nonetheless mark out the fixed and certain spaces of their own course — the sight of these, doubtless, impelled and admonished those ancients to seek more; thence was born the search after the beginnings, the seeds as it were, whence all things arose, were generated, were compacted; and what was the origin of each kind, whether inanimate or animate, whether mute or speaking; what its life, what its perishing, and what the alternation and change from one thing into another; whence the earth, and by what weights it is balanced, by what hollows the seas are sustained; by what gravity all things, borne down, ever seek the middle place of the world, which is the same as the lowest in a round thing.

To a mind handling these things and pondering them both night and day there arises that knowledge enjoined by the god at Delphi, that the mind should recognize itself and feel itself joined with the divine mind, from which it is filled with an insatiable joy. For the very thought about the power and nature of the gods kindles the zeal of imitating their eternity, nor does it think itself set within the brevity of life, when it sees the causes of things fitted one upon another and bound by necessity, over which, flowing from eternal time into eternity, reason and mind nonetheless presides.

Beholding and looking up at these things, or rather looking around at all the parts and borders, with how great a tranquillity of mind, in turn, does he consider human and nearer things! Hence arises that knowledge of virtue; the kinds and parts of the virtues bloom forth; it is found what it is that Nature regards as the extreme in goods, what the utmost in evils, to what duties are to be referred, what method of passing one's life is to be chosen. And by these and such things, sought out, this above all is effected which we treat in this disputation — that virtue is, of itself, sufficient toward living happily.

There follows the third, which flows and is poured through all the parts of wisdom, which defines a thing, distributes its kinds, joins the consequences, concludes things perfectly, distinguishes the true from the false — the method and science of disputing. From which arises both the highest usefulness toward weighing matters, and a most freeborn delight, worthy of wisdom. But these are of leisure. Let this same wise man pass over to guarding the commonwealth. What can be more excellent than he, when by prudence he discerns the advantage of the citizens, by justice diverts nothing thence into his own house, and uses the rest of his so many and so various virtues? Add the fruit of friendships, in which is placed, for the learned, both counsel for all life, agreeing and almost conspiring together, and the highest pleasantness from daily intercourse and living. What, at last, does this life lack, whereby it may be happier? To which, filled with so many and so great joys, Fortune herself must of necessity yield. But if to rejoice in such goods of the mind, that is, in the virtues, is to be happy, and all the wise enjoy these joys to the full, it must of necessity be confessed that all of them are happy. — Even amid torment and torments?

Or did you think I spoke of being on a violet or on a rose? Or shall it be permitted to Epicurus — who only put on the person of a philosopher and inscribed this name upon himself — to say (which, indeed, as the matter stands, he yet says with my applause) that there is no time for the wise man, even though he be burnt, racked, cut, but that he can cry out: "How I count this for nothing!" — especially when he defines every evil by pain, every good by pleasure, derides these our "honourable" and "base," and says that we, busied about words, pour forth empty sounds, and that nothing pertains to us save what is felt as smooth or harsh in the body — shall it, then, be permitted to him, as I said, not much differing from the judgement of the beasts, to forget himself, and at one time to despise fortune, when both his every good and evil is in the power of fortune, and at another to call himself happy amid the highest torture and torments, when he has laid down that pain is not only the highest evil, but even the sole one?

Nor indeed has he procured for himself those remedies for the enduring of pain — firmness of mind, the shame of baseness, the practice and habit of suffering, the precepts of fortitude, manly hardihood — but he says that he rests by the one recollection of past pleasures: as if someone, sweltering, when he could not easily bear the force of the heat, should wish to recall that he was once surrounded by the cool streams of our Arpinum. For I do not see how past pleasures can calm

present evils — but since he says the wise man is always happy, to whom it would not be permitted to say this, if he wished to be consistent, what is to be done by those who think that nothing is to be sought, nothing to be counted among goods, that lacks honour? On my authority, indeed, let even the Peripatetics and the old Academics at length cease to stammer, and openly and with a clear voice let them dare to say that the happy life will go down into the bull of Phalaris.

For let there be three kinds of goods — that we may now withdraw from the snares of the Stoics, of which I understand I have used more than I am wont — let there be, by all means, those kinds of goods, provided the goods of the body and the external ones lie on the ground, and only because they are to be taken up be called goods, but those divine goods of the mind spread themselves far and wide and touch the heaven; so that, of him who has attained them, why should I say only that he is happy and not also the happiest? But will the wise man dread pain? For that most repels this opinion. For against death — ours and our friends' — and against distress and the remaining disturbances of the mind, we seem armed and prepared enough by the disputations of the former days; pain seems to be the keenest adversary of virtue; it holds out burning torches, it threatens that it will weaken fortitude, greatness of soul, patience.

To this, then, shall virtue give way; to this shall the happy life of the wise and steadfast man yield? How base, O good gods! Spartan boys do not groan, mangled by the pain of the scourge. We ourselves have seen at Lacedaemon troops of young men contending with incredible effort with fists, heels, nails, finally with biting, so that they fainted before they would confess themselves conquered. What barbarian land is wilder than India or more uncouth? Yet in that nation, first, those who are held wise pass their lives naked, and endure the snows of Caucasus and the force of winter without pain, and, when they have applied themselves to the flame, are burned without a groan.

But the women in India, when one of their husbands has died, come into a contest and judgement, whom he most loved — for several wives are wont to belong to single men; and she who is victress, joyful, is placed on the pyre together with her husband, her own people escorting her; she who is conquered departs in sorrow. Never would custom conquer nature; for nature is always unconquered; but we have infected the mind with shades, delights, leisure, languor, sloth, and have softened it, soothed with opinions and bad habit. Who is ignorant of the custom of the Egyptians? Whose minds, steeped in the errors of depravity, would sooner undergo any torture than violate an ibis, or an asp, or a cat, or a dog, or a crocodile; and even if they have done anything unawares, they refuse no penalty.

I speak of men; but what? Do not the beasts endure cold, hunger, mountain-roving and woodland courses and rangings? Do they not so fight for their offspring that they take wounds, dread no assaults, no blows? I pass over what the ambitious endure and suffer for the sake of office, the eager for praise for the sake of glory, those inflamed with love for the sake of desire. Life is full of examples.

But let the discourse keep a measure and return whither it turned aside. The happy life, I say, will give itself to torments, and, having followed justice, temperance, and above all fortitude, greatness of soul, patience, when it has seen the face of the torturer, will halt, and, all the virtues having gone forth to torture without any terror of mind, will stand outside the doors, as I said before, and the threshold of the prison. For what is fouler than it, what more deformed, left alone, separated from that most beautiful company? Which, however, can in no way come about; for neither can the virtues hold together without the happy life, nor that without the virtues.

And so they will not suffer it to turn its back, and will snatch it with them, to whatever pain and torture they themselves shall be led. For it is proper to the wise man to do nothing of which he could repent, nothing against his will, to do all things splendidly, steadfastly, gravely, honourably; to expect nothing as though it would certainly come to pass; to wonder at nothing, when it has happened, as though it had happened unexpected and new; to refer all things to his own judgement, to stand by his own decisions. Than which what can be happier I certainly cannot conceive.

The conclusion of the Stoics, indeed, is easy; who, since they have held that the end of goods is to agree with nature and to live in harmony with it, and since this is set in the wise man not only by duty but even by power, it must of necessity follow that, in whose power the highest good is, in the same man's life the happy life is. So it comes about that the life of the wise man is always happy. — You have what I think can be said most courageously about the happy life, and, as the matter now stands, unless you bring something better, even most truly. — I, indeed, can bring nothing better; but I would gladly obtain this of you, that, if it be not troublesome — since no bonds of any fixed school hinder you, and you take a sip from all, whatever most moves you by the appearance of truth — that which a little before you seemed to exhort the Peripatetics and the old Academy, that without retraction they should freely dare to say that the wise are always happiest, I should like to hear in what manner you think it consonant for these men to say this. For many things have been said by you against that opinion, and concluded by the system of the Stoics.

Let us use, then, the liberty which it is permitted to us alone to use in philosophy, whose discourse itself judges nothing, but is held forth on all sides, so that it can, by itself, of itself, no authority being joined, be judged by others. And since you seem to wish this, that, whatever be the opinion of the dissenting philosophers about the ends, yet virtue have enough of protection toward the happy life — which indeed we have heard Carneades was wont to dispute, but he as against the Stoics, whom he always most zealously refuted, and against whose teaching his talent had blazed up; we, indeed, will deal with that in peace — for if the Stoics have rightly laid down the end of goods, the matter is finished: the wise man must of necessity always be happy —

but let us inquire into each several opinion of the rest, if it can be done, that this glorious, as it were, decree of the happy life may be able to suit the opinions and teachings of all. But these, as I think, are the opinions about the ends that have been held and defended: first, four simple ones — nothing good save the honourable, as the Stoics; nothing good save pleasure, as Epicurus; nothing good save freedom from pain, as Hieronymus; nothing good save to enjoy the first goods of nature, either all or the greatest, as Carneades used to argue against the Stoics.

These, then, are the simple ones; the following, mixed: three kinds of goods, the greatest of the mind, the second of the body, the external the third, as the Peripatetics, and not much otherwise the old Academics; Dinomachus and Callipho coupled pleasure with honour, but Diodorus the Peripatetic joined freedom from pain to honour. These are the opinions that have some stability; for those of Aristo, Pyrrho, Erillus, and certain others have vanished. Let us see what these can maintain, leaving aside the Stoics, whose opinion I seem to have defended sufficiently. And the cause of the Peripatetics, indeed, is unfolded, except for Theophrastus and any who, having followed him, too weakly dread and shrink from pain; the rest, indeed, are permitted to do what they generally do — to exaggerate the gravity and dignity of virtue. Which, when they have raised it to heaven — as eloquent men are wont to do copiously — it is easy by comparison to grind down and despise the rest. For it is not permitted to those who say that praise is to be sought with pain to deny that those are happy who have attained it. For although they be in certain evils, yet this name "happy" extends far and wide.

For as a trade is called profitable, a ploughing fruitful, not if the one is always free of all loss, the other of all calamity of weather, but if in each by a much greater part the gain stands out, so a life can rightly be called happy, not only if it is filled with goods on every side, but if by a much greater and weightier part the goods preponderate.

There will follow, then, by the reasoning of these men, the happy life along with virtue even to punishment, and with it will go down into the bull, on the authority of Aristotle, Xenocrates, Speusippus, Polemo, nor will it, corrupted by threats or blandishments, desert it. The same will be the opinion of Callipho and Diodorus, each of whom so embraces honour that he holds that all things which are without it are to be set far behind. The rest seem to hold themselves more narrowly, yet they swim out — Epicurus, Hieronymus, and any who care to defend that deserted Carneadean end; for there is none of them who does not think the mind the judge of goods, and train it so that it can despise those things which seem good or bad.

For the cause which seems to you Epicurus' will be the same of Hieronymus and Carneades, and, by Hercules, of all the rest. For who is too little prepared against death or pain? Let us begin, if you please, from him whom we call soft, whom we call given to pleasure. What? Does he seem to you to fear death or pain, who calls that day on which he dies happy, and, afflicted with the greatest pains, confutes those very pains by the memory and recollection of his own discoveries? Nor does he do this so that he seems, as it were, to babble off-hand. For of death he so judges, that, the living being dissolved, sense is extinguished, and that what lacks sense he judges pertains nothing to us. Likewise in pain he has fixed things which he follows, whose greatness he consoles by brevity, its long-continuance by lightness.

How, at last, are those grandiloquent ones, against these two things which most cause anguish, better off than Epicurus? Or, as for the rest of the things that are thought evils, do not both Epicurus and the other philosophers seem sufficiently prepared? Who does not dread poverty? Yet not any of the philosophers. But this very man, with how little is he content! No one has said more about a slender diet. For indeed, the things which bring on the desire of money — that for love, for ambition, for daily expenses there may be resources at hand — since he is far from all these things, why should he greatly desire money, or rather why should he trouble about it at all?

Or could Anacharsis the Scythian count money for nothing, and shall our own philosophers not be able to do it? A letter of his is reported in these words: "Anacharsis to Hanno, greeting. My clothing is a Scythian covering, my footwear the hardened sole of my feet, my bed the earth, my relish hunger; I feed on milk, cheese, flesh. Wherefore you may come to me as to a quiet man. But those gifts in which you delight, give either to your fellow-citizens or to the immortal gods." Nearly all the philosophers of all the schools, save those whom a vicious nature had wrenched from right reason, could have been of this same mind.

Socrates, when in a procession a great quantity of gold and silver was being carried, "How many things," he said, "I do not desire!" Xenocrates, when envoys from Alexander had brought him fifty talents — which was the greatest sum of money in those times, especially at Athens — led the envoys to supper in the Academy; he set before them only what was enough, with no array. When the next day they asked him to whom he bade it be paid out, "What?" he said, "did you not understand from yesterday's little supper that I have no need of money?" When he saw them somewhat sadder, he accepted thirty minae, lest he seem to spurn the king's liberality.

But Diogenes, more freely, as a Cynic, to Alexander asking that he should say if he needed anything, "For now, indeed," he said, "a little out of the sun." Alexander had stood in the way of his sunning himself, doubtless. And this man was wont to dispute by how much he surpassed the King of the Persians in life and fortune: that to himself nothing was lacking, to that one nothing would ever be enough; that he did not desire those pleasures of which that one could never be satisfied, while his own that one could in no way attain. You see, I believe, how Epicurus divided the kinds of desires — not too subtly perhaps, yet usefully:

that some are natural and necessary, some natural and not necessary, some neither; that the necessary ones can be satisfied with almost nothing; for the riches of nature are easily got; but the second kind of desires he thinks is neither difficult of attainment nor of doing without; the third — because they were plainly empty, and touched neither necessity nor even nature — he thought must be cast out by the roots.

In this place many things are disputed by the Epicureans, and those pleasures are extenuated one by one, whose kinds they do not despise, yet do not seek their abundance. For they say that even the obscene pleasures, about which much discourse is held by them, are easy, common, set in the midst; and that these, if nature require them, are to be measured not by kind or place or rank, but by form, age, figure; and that to abstain from them is least of all difficult, if either health or duty or fame demand it; and that altogether this kind of pleasures is desirable, if it do no harm, but never profitable.

And this whole matter of pleasure he so lays down, that he thinks pleasure itself, of itself, because it is pleasure, is always to be wished and sought, and by the same reasoning pain, for this very thing, because it is pain, is always to be fled; and so that the wise man will use this compensation, that he both flees pleasure, if it will produce a greater pain, and takes up pain producing a greater pleasure; and that all pleasant things, although they are judged by the sense of the body, are yet referred to the mind.

Wherefore the body rejoices so long as it feels present pleasure, but the mind both perceives the present along with the body, and foresees the coming, nor suffers the past to flow by. So that there will always be in the wise man perpetual and woven-together pleasures, when the expectation of hoped-for pleasures is joined with the memory of those perceived.

And things like these are transferred to diet too, and the magnificence and expense of banquets is extenuated, because nature is content with a small refinement. For who does not see this — that all those things are seasoned by desires? Darius, in flight, when he had drunk water turbid and defiled with corpses, said that he had never drunk more pleasantly. He had never, doubtless, drunk thirsty. Nor had Ptolemy eaten hungry; to whom, when, roaming through Egypt, his companions not having followed, common bread was given in a hut, nothing seemed more pleasant than that bread. They say that Socrates, when he had walked rather vigorously till evening, and it had been asked of him why he did this, answered that he might sup the better — that he was buying up hunger by walking, as a relish.

What? Do we not see the diet of the Lacedaemonians in their common messes? Where, when the tyrant Dionysius had supped, he said that he was not delighted by that black broth which was the chief of the supper. Then he who had cooked it: "No wonder; for the seasonings were lacking." "What, pray?" said he. "Toil in the hunt, sweat, the run to the Eurotas, hunger, thirst. For with these things the feasts of the Lacedaemonians are seasoned." And this can be understood not only from the manner of men, but even from the beasts, which, whatever is thrown to them, provided it be not foreign to nature, are content with that and seek no more.

Certain whole states, taught by custom, delight in frugality, as we said a little before of the Lacedaemonians. The diet of the Persians is set forth by Xenophon, who says they apply nothing to their bread beyond cress. And yet, if nature should desire certain things even sweeter, how many things are begotten from the earth and the trees, both with easy abundance and with surpassing sweetness! Add the dryness which follows this continence in diet, add the soundness of health; compare those sweating, belching, stuffed with banquets like fat oxen:

then you will understand that those who most pursue pleasure least attain it, and that the pleasantness of diet is in desire, not in satiety. They say that Timotheus, a famous man at Athens and a chief of the state, when he had supped at Plato's and had been greatly delighted with that banquet, and had seen him the next day, said: "Your suppers, indeed, are pleasant not only at the time, but even on the next day." What of the fact that we cannot even use our mind rightly, filled with much food and drink? There is a glorious letter of Plato to the kinsmen of Dion, in which it is written nearly in these words: "When I came thither, that happy life, which was talked of, full of Italian and Syracusan tables, in no way pleased me — to be filled twice a day, and never to pass the night alone, and the other things which accompany this life, in which no one will ever be made wise, and a temperate man much less. For what nature can be so wonderfully tempered?"

In what manner, then, can a life be pleasant from which prudence is absent, from which moderation is absent? From which the error of Sardanapalus, the most opulent king of Syria, is recognized, who ordered to be cut on his tomb: "These things I have which I have eaten, and which my sated lust has drained; but those many and glorious things are left lying behind." "What else," said Aristotle, "would you inscribe on the tomb of an ox, not of a king?" He says that he, being dead, has those things which not even living he had longer than while he was enjoying them.

Why, then, should riches be desired, or where does poverty not suffer men to be happy? You are eager, I suppose, for statues, for paintings. If there is anyone who delights in these, do not poor men enjoy them better than those who abound in them? For there is in our city the greatest abundance of all such things in public. Those who have them privately have neither so many, and rarely see them, when they have come to their country estates; and yet something pricks them, when they recollect whence they have them. The day would fail me, if I should wish to defend the cause of poverty. For the matter is plain, and daily Nature herself admonishes us with how few, how small, how cheap things she has need. Shall, then, ignobility or lowliness, or even popular disfavour, hinder the wise man from being happy?

See whether commendation to the crowd, and this glory which is sought, have not more of trouble than of pleasure. Trivial, indeed, was our Demosthenes, who said he was delighted by that whisper of a little woman carrying water — as is the custom in Greece — whispering to another: "This is that famous Demosthenes." What is lighter than this? But how great an orator! Yet he had learned, doubtless, to speak before others, not much with himself.

It must be understood, then, that neither is popular glory to be sought of itself, nor ignobility to be dreaded. "I came to Athens," said Democritus, "and no one there recognized me" — a steadfast and grave man, who glories that he was free of glory! Or shall pipers, and those who use the lyre, regulate their songs and measures by their own, not the multitude's, judgement, and shall the wise man, endowed with a much greater art, seek out, not what is most true, but what the crowd wishes? Or is anything more foolish than to think that those are anything in the mass, whom singly you would despise as labourers and barbarians? But he, indeed, will despise our ambitions and levities, and will reject the honours of the people even offered unasked; but we know not how to despise them before we begin to repent of them. There is in Heraclitus the physicist a saying about Hermodorus, chief of the Ephesians;

he says that all the Ephesians ought to be punished with death, because, when they expelled Hermodorus from the state, they spoke thus: "Let no one of us excel; but if anyone shall stand out, let him be in another place and among others." Does not this happen so in every people? Do they not hate every surpassing of virtue? What? Aristides — for I prefer to bring forward Greek rather than our own examples — was he not expelled from his country for this cause, that he was just beyond measure? From how great troubles, then, are they free who have no dealings at all with the people! For what is sweeter than lettered leisure? — by letters I mean those by which we come to know the infinity of things and of nature, and, in this very world, the heaven, the lands, the seas. Honour, then, being despised, money too being despised, what is left that should be dreaded?

Exile, I suppose, which is counted among the greatest evils. If that is an evil on account of the alien and offended will of the people, how that is to be despised has been said a little before. But if to be away from one's country is wretched, the provinces are full of wretched men, of whom very few return to their country.

"But exiles are fined of their goods." What then? Are too few things said about enduring poverty? But now, exile, if we seek the nature of the thing, not the ignominy of the name, how much, pray, does it differ from a perpetual sojourn abroad? In which the most noble philosophers spent their lives — Xenocrates, Crantor, Arcesilaus, Lacydes, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Antipater, Carneades, Clitomachus, Philo, Antiochus, Panaetius, Posidonius, and innumerable others, who, once having gone out, never returned home. But, you say, without ignominy. Can exile affect the wise man with ignominy? For all this discourse is about the wise man, to whom it cannot justly happen; for one justly exiled ought not to be consoled.

Finally, toward all chances the reasoning of those is easiest who refer to pleasure the things which follow in life, so that, wherever this is supplied, there they can live happily. And so to every reasoning the saying of Teucer can be fitted: "One's country is wherever it is well." Socrates, indeed, when he was asked of what country he said he was, answered "of the world"; for he reckoned himself an inhabitant and citizen of the whole world. What? Did not Titus Albucius, with a most even mind, philosophize as an exile at Athens? To whom, however, that very thing would not have happened, if, keeping quiet in public affairs, he had obeyed the laws of Epicurus.

For how was Epicurus happier, because he lived in his country, than Metrodorus, because he lived at Athens? Or did Plato surpass Xenocrates, or Polemo Arcesilaus, in being happier? Of what worth, indeed, is that state to be esteemed, from which good and wise men are driven? Damaratus, indeed, the father of our King Tarquin, because he could not endure the tyrant Cypselus, fled from Corinth to Tarquinii, and there established his fortunes and begot children. Did he foolishly prefer the liberty of exile to servitude at home?

And now the motions of the mind, the anxieties and distresses, are soothed by forgetfulness, the minds being led over to pleasure. Not without cause, then, did Epicurus dare to say that the wise man is always in the more goods, because he is always in pleasures. From which that man thinks is effected what we seek — that the wise man is always happy.

"Even, if he shall lack the senses of the eyes, of the ears?" Even so; for those very things he despises. For first, that dreadful blindness — of what pleasures, pray, is it deprived? Since some even dispute that the other pleasures dwell in the senses themselves, but those which are perceived by sight are not concerned with any pleasantness of the eyes, just as the things we taste, smell, touch, hear are concerned in that very part where we feel them. In the eyes nothing of the kind happens; the mind receives what we see. But the mind can be delighted in many and various ways, even though sight be not applied. For I speak of a learned and educated man, for whom to live is to think. But the thinking of the wise man does not generally call in the eyes as advocates for investigation.

For indeed, if night does not take away the happy life, why should a day like night take it away? For that saying of Antipater the Cyrenaic is, indeed, a little too obscene, but it is no absurd opinion; whose blindness, when little women lamented, "What are you doing?" he said; "or does there seem to you to be no nocturnal pleasure?" That old Appius, indeed, who was blind for many years, we understand, both from his magistracies and from his deeds, in that misfortune of his failed neither in his private nor in his public duty. We have heard that the house of Gaius Drusus was wont to be filled with those seeking advice; when those whose affair it was did not themselves see their own matters, they took the blind man as their guide. When we were boys, Gnaeus Aufidius, an ex-praetor, both gave his opinion in the senate, and did not fail his friends in their deliberations, and wrote a Greek history, and saw in letters.

Diodotus the Stoic, blind, lived many years in our house. He, indeed — what would scarcely be believable — since he was engaged in philosophy even much more assiduously than before, and used the lyre after the manner of the Pythagoreans, and had books read to him night and day, in which studies he had no need of eyes — then, what scarcely seems possible to be done without eyes, he discharged the function of geometry, teaching his pupils in words from what point to what point they should draw each line. They say that Asclepiades, no ignoble Eretrian philosopher, when someone asked what his blindness had brought him, answered: that he was attended by one boy the more. For as even the utmost poverty would be tolerable, if it were permitted what some Greeks have daily, so blindness could easily be borne, if the supports of health be not lacking.

Democritus, his sight lost, could not, indeed, distinguish white from black; but yet good from bad, just from unjust, honourable from base, useful from useless, great from small he could; and without the variety of colours it was permitted to live happily, but without the knowledge of things it was not. And this man even thought that the keen edge of the mind is hindered by the sight of the eyes, and, while others often did not see what was before their feet, he travelled abroad into all infinity, so that he halted at no extremity. It is handed down too that Homer was blind; but we see his painting, not his poetry. What region, what coast, what place of Greece, what appearance and form of battle, what battle-line, what rowing, what motion of men, of beasts, is not so painted by him that he made us see the things which he himself did not see? What then? Do we think that either Homer or any learned man ever lacked delight of mind and pleasure?

Or, if the matter were not so, would Anaxagoras, or this very Democritus, have left their fields and patrimonies, and given themselves with their whole mind to this divine delight of learning and inquiring? And so the augur Tiresias, whom the poets feign wise, they never bring on deploring his blindness; but Polyphemus, when Homer had feigned him monstrous and savage, he makes even talking with his ram and praising its fortunes, because it could go where it wished and touch what it wished. Rightly here, indeed; for the Cyclops himself was no whit more prudent than that ram.

But in deafness, what evil is there? Marcus Crassus was somewhat deaf, but there was another more troublesome thing — that he heard ill of himself, even if, as it seemed to me, unjustly. Our people generally know not Greek, nor the Greeks Latin. Therefore these in the speech of those, and those in the speech of these, are deaf; and likewise all of us, in those tongues which we do not understand — which are innumerable — are surely deaf. But they do not hear the voice of the lyre-player. Nor even the screech of the saw, when it is sharpened, nor the grunt of a pig, when it is slaughtered, nor, when they wish to rest, the roar of the murmuring sea; and if songs by chance delight them, they ought first to consider that, before these were invented, many wise men lived happily; then that much greater pleasure can be perceived by reading these than by hearing them.

Then, as a little before we led the blind over to the pleasure of the ears, so it is permitted to lead the deaf over to that of the eyes. For indeed, he who can converse with himself will not seek the conversation of another. Let all things be heaped into one, so that the same man be deprived both of eyes and ears, and be pressed besides by the keenest pains of the body. Which first, of themselves, generally make an end of a man; but if by chance, prolonged in length, they yet torture more vehemently than there is cause why they should be borne, what is there, at last, O good gods, that we should labour at? For a harbour is at hand, since death is in the same place, an eternal receptacle of feeling nothing.

Theodorus, to Lysimachus threatening death, said: "A great thing, indeed, you have effected, if you have attained the force of a cantharis-beetle." Paulus, to Perses begging that he not be led in the triumph, said: "That, indeed, is in your own power." Many things on the first day, when we inquired about death itself, not a few too on the next, when we dealt with pain, were said about death, which whoever recalls, there is surely no danger that he will not think death either to be wished, or at least not to be feared. To me, indeed, in the keeping of life that law seems best which obtains at the banquets of the Greeks: "Let him either drink," it says, "or depart." And rightly. For either let one enjoy the pleasure of drinking equally with the rest, or, lest, sober, he fall into the violence of the drunken, let him depart beforehand. So, by fleeing, you would leave behind the injuries of fortune which you cannot bear. These same things which Epicurus says, Hieronymus says in just as many words.

But if to those philosophers whose opinion is that virtue of itself is of no avail, and that everything which we call honourable and praiseworthy is, as they say, a hollow thing decked out with the empty sound of a word — if these men, nonetheless, think the wise man always happy, what, pray, ought to be done by the philosophers who set out from Socrates and Plato? Of whom some say there is such great excellence in the goods of the mind that by them the goods of the body and the external are overwhelmed; but others do not even count these latter goods, and place all in the mind.

Whose controversy Carneades was wont to judge, as it were, an honorary arbiter. For since whatever things seemed goods to the Peripatetics seemed the same advantages to the Stoics, and yet the Peripatetics attributed no more to riches, good health, and the rest of that kind than the Stoics did, since these things were weighed by the fact, not by words, he denied there was cause for disagreeing. Wherefore, in what manner the philosophers of the other schools can maintain this point, let them themselves see; to me, however, it is welcome that they profess something worthy of the voice of philosophers about the wise man's perpetual faculty of living well.

But since in the morning we must go, let us comprehend in memory these disputations of five days. I think, indeed, that I shall even write them out — for where can we better use this leisure, of whatever kind it is? — and we shall send these other five books to our Brutus, by whom we were not only impelled to philosophic writings, but even challenged. In which how much we shall profit the rest, I could not easily say; but for our own most bitter pains, and our various troubles poured around us on every side, no other relief could be found.