Tusculan Disputations 5 ¶59 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 5 ¶59

These, then, are the opinions, as I think, that are held and defended—the first four are simple ones: “that nothing is good but what is honest,” according to the Stoics; “nothing good but pleasure,” as Epicurus maintains; “nothing good but a freedom from pain,” as Hieronymus asserts; “nothing good but an enjoyment of the principal, or all, or the greatest goods of nature,” as Carneades maintained against the Stoics. These are simple; the others are mixed propositions. Then there are three kinds of goods: the greatest being those of the mind; the next best those of the body; the third are external goods, as the Peripatetics call them, and the Old Academics differ very little from them. Dinomachus and Callipho have coupled pleasure with honesty; but Diodorus the Peripatetic has joined indolence to honesty. These are the opinions that have some footing; for those of Aristo, Pyrrho, Herillus, and of some others, are quite out of date. Now let us see what weight these men have in them, excepting the Stoics, whose opinion I think I have sufficiently defended; and indeed I have explained what the Peripatetics have to say, excepting that Theophrastus, and those who followed him, dread and abhor pain in too weak a manner. The others may go on to exaggerate the gravity and dignity of virtue, as usual, and then, after they have extolled it to the skies, with the usual extravagance of good orators, it is easy to reduce the other topics to nothing by comparison, and to hold them up to contempt. They who think that praise deserves to be sought after, even at the expense of pain, are not at liberty to deny those men to be happy who have obtained it. Though they may be under some evils, yet this name of happy has a very wide application.