Cicero (on the Stoics) · 106–43 BCE
Tusculan Disputations 1 ¶115 — Cicero (on the Stoics)
From “On the Contempt of Death”
Translation by C. D. Yonge (1853)
Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 1 ¶115
M. You take it right; that is the very thing. Shall we give, therefore, any credit to Pauaestius, when he dissents from his master, Plato? whom he everywhere calls divine, the wisest, the holiest of men, the Homer of philosophers, and whom he opposes in nothing except this single opinion of the soul’s immortality: for he maintains what nobody denies, that everything which has been generated will perish, and that even souls are generated, which he thinks appears from their resemblance to those of the men who begot them; for that likeness is as apparent in the turn of their minds as in their bodies. But he brings another reason—that there is nothing which is sensible of pain which is not also liable to disease; but whatever is liable to disease must be liable to death. The soul is sensible of pain, therefore it is liable to perish.
Cite this passage
Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 1 ¶115, tr. C. D. Yonge (1853)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/tusculan-disputations/1.115
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, tr. C. D. Yonge (1853). Text: Standard Ebooks (CC0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesThe speaker reports why the Stoic philosopher Panaetius broke with Plato on the immortality of the soul: souls resemble their parents so they must be generated, and anything that can feel pain can fall ill and therefore die. It is a summary of a philosophical dispute.
Themes and situations
- Death and mortality
- Nature and the cosmos
Quote cards
The opening line of this passage as an image, with its citation — for sharing or keeping.