Tusculan Disputations 4 ¶26 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 4 ¶26

Just as distempers and sickness are bred in the body from the corruption of the blood, and the too great abundance of phlegm and bile, so the mind is deprived of its health, and disordered with sickness, from a confusion of depraved opinions that are in opposition to one another. From these perturbations arise, first, diseases, which they call νοσήματα, and also those feelings which are in opposition to these diseases, and which admit certain faulty distastes or loathings; then come sicknesses, which are called ἀῤῥωστήματα by the Stoics. And these two have their opposite aversions. Here the Stoics, especially Chrysippus, give themselves unnecessary trouble to show the analogy which the diseases of the mind have to those of the body. But, overlooking all that they say as of little consequence, I shall treat only of the thing itself. Let us, then, understand perturbation to imply a restlessness from the variety and confusion of contradictory opinions, and that when this heat and disturbance of the mind is of any standing, and has taken up its residence, as it were, in the veins and marrow, then commence diseases and sickness, and those aversions which are in opposition to these diseases and sicknesses.