Tusculan Disputations 5 ¶30 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 5 ¶30

They say: never did philosopher assert anything so languid. They are right, indeed, in that; but I do not apprehend anything could be more consistent. For if there are so many good things that depend on the body, and so many foreign to it that depend on chance and fortune, is it inconsistent to say that fortune, which governs everything, both what is foreign and what belongs to the body, has greater power than counsel? Or would we rather imitate Epicurus? who is often excellent in many things which he speaks, but quite indifferent how consistent he may be or how much to the purpose he is speaking. He commends spare diet, and in that he speaks as a philosopher, but it is for Socrates or Antisthenes to say so, and not for one who confines all good to pleasure. He denies that anyone can live pleasantly unless he lives honestly, wisely, and justly. Nothing is more dignified than this assertion, nothing more becoming a philosopher, had he not measured this very expression of living honestly, justly, and wisely by pleasure. What could be better than to assert that fortune interferes but little with a wise man? But does he talk thus, who, after he has said that pain is the greatest evil, or the only evil, might himself be afflicted with the sharpest pains all over his body, even at the time he is vaunting himself the most against fortune? And this very thing, too, Metrodorus has said, but in better language: “I have anticipated you, Fortune; I have caught you, and cut off every access, so that you cannot possibly reach me.” This would be excellent in the mouth of Aristo the Chian, or Zeno the Stoic, who held nothing to be an evil but what was base. But for you, Metrodorus, to anticipate the approaches of fortune, who confine all that is good to your bowels and marrow—for you to say so, who define the chief good by a strong constitution of body, and well-assured hope of its continuance—for you to cut off every access of fortune! Why, you may instantly be deprived of that good. Yet the simple are taken with these propositions, and a vast crowd is led away by such sentences to become their followers.