Tusculan Disputations 2 ¶21 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 2 ¶21

But Epicurus, indeed, says such things that it should seem that his design was only to make people laugh, for he affirms somewhere that if a wise man were to be burned or put to the torture… you expect, perhaps, that he is going to say he would bear it, he would support himself under it with resolution, he would not yield to it (and that—by Hercules!—would be very commendable, and worthy of that very Hercules whom I have just invoked): but even this will not satisfy Epicurus, that robust and hardy man! No; his wise man, even if he were in Phalaris’s bull, would say: “How sweet it is! how little do I regard it!” What, sweet? Is it not sufficient if it is not disagreeable? But those very men who deny pain to be an evil are not in the habit of saying that it is agreeable to anyone to be tormented. They rather say that it is cruel, or hard to bear, afflicting, unnatural, but still not an evil. While this man who says that it is the only evil, and the very worst of all evils, yet thinks that a wise man would pronounce it sweet. I do not require of you to speak of pain in the same words which Epicurus uses—a man, as you know, devoted to pleasure. He may make no difference, if he pleases, between Phalaris’s bull and his own bed. But I cannot allow the wise man to be so indifferent about pain. If he bears it with courage, it is sufficient; that he should rejoice in it, I do not expect. For pain is, beyond all question, sharp, bitter, against nature, hard to submit to and to bear. Observe Philoctetes: we may allow him to lament, for he saw Hercules himself groaning loudly through extremity of pain on Mount Oeta. The arrows with which Hercules presented him were then no consolation to him, when The viper’s bite, impregnating his veins With poison, rack’d him with its bitter pains. And therefore he cries out, desiring help, and wishing to die, Oh that some friendly hand its aid would lend, My body from this rock’s vast height to send Into the briny deep! I’m all on fire, And by this fatal wound must soon expire.