Tusculan Disputations 5 ¶41 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 5 ¶41

A wicked life has nothing which we ought to speak of or glory in, nor has that life which is neither happy nor miserable. But there is a kind of life that admits of being spoken of, and gloried in, and boasted of, as Epaminondas said, The wings of Sparta’s pride my counsels clipt. And Africanus boasts, Who, from beyond Maeotis to the place Where the sun rises, deeds like mine can trace? If, then, there is such a thing as a happy life, it is to be gloried in, spoken of, and commended by the person who enjoys it, for there is nothing excepting that which can be spoken of or gloried in, and when that is once admitted, you know what follows. Now, unless an honorable life is a happy life, there must of course be something preferable to a happy life, for that which is honorable all men will certainly grant to be preferable to anything else. And thus there will be something better than a happy life, but what can be more absurd than such an assertion? What? when they grant vice to be effectual to the rendering life miserable, must they not admit that there is a corresponding power in virtue to make life happy? For contraries follow from contraries. And here I ask what weight they think there is in the balance of Critolaus, who having put the goods of the mind into one scale, and the goods of the body and other external advantages into the other, thought the goods of the mind outweighed the others so far that they would require the whole earth and sea to equalize the scale.