Tusculan Disputations 1 ¶16–24 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 1 ¶16–24

M. Tell me, I beseech you, are you afraid of the three-headed Cerberus in the shades below, and the roaring waves of Cocytus, and the passage over Acheron, and Tantalus expiring with thirst while the water touches his chin, and Sisyphus, Who sweats with arduous toil in vain The steepy summit of the mount to gain? Perhaps, too, you dread the inexorable judges, Minos and Rhadamanthus, before whom neither L. Crassus nor M. Antonius can defend you, and where, since the cause lies before Grecian judges, you will not even be able to employ Demosthenes, but you must plead for yourself before a very great assembly. These things perhaps you dread, and therefore look on death as an eternal evil. A. Do you take me to be so imbecile as to give credit to such things? M. What, do you not believe them? A. Not in the least. M. I am sorry to hear that. A. Why, I beg? M. Because I could have been very eloquent in speaking against them. A. And who could not on such a subject? or what trouble is it to refute these monstrous inventions of the poets and painters? M. And yet you have books of philosophers full of arguments against these.