Tusculan Disputations 1 ¶122 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 1 ¶122

Mention, therefore, someone who never knew distress, who never received any blow from fortune. The great Metellus had four distinguished sons, but Priam had fifty, seventeen of whom were born to him by his lawful wife. Fortune had the same power over both, though she exercised it but on one: for Metellus was laid on his funeral pile by a great company of sons and daughters, grandsons, and granddaughters; but Priam fell by the hand of an enemy, after having fled to the altar, and having seen himself deprived of all his numerous progeny. Had he died before the death of his sons and the ruin of his kingdom, With all his mighty wealth elate, Under rich canopies of state; would he then have been taken from good or from evil? It would indeed, at that time, have appeared that he was being taken away from good. Yet surely it would have turned out advantageous for him, nor should we have had these mournful verses, Lo! these all perish’d in one flaming pile; The foe old Priam did of life beguile, And with his blood, thy altar, Jove, defile. As if anything better could have happened to him at that time than to lose his life in that manner. But yet, if it had befallen him sooner, it would have prevented all those consequences; but even as it was, it released him from any further sense of them. The case of our friend Pompey was something better: once, when he had been very ill at Naples, the Neapolitans, on his recovery, put crowns on their heads, as did those of Puteoli; the people flocked from the country to congratulate him—it is a Grecian custom, and a foolish one; still it is a sign of good fortune. But the question is, had he died, would he have been taken from good, or from evil? Certainly from evil. He would not have been engaged in a war with his father-in-law; he would not have taken up arms before he was prepared; he would not have left his own house, nor fled from Italy; he would not, after the loss of his army, have fallen unarmed into the hands of slaves, and been put to death by them; his children would not have been destroyed; nor would his whole fortune have come into the possession of the conquerors. Did not he, then, who, if he had died at that time, would have died in all his glory, owe all the great and terrible misfortunes into which he subsequently fell to the prolongation of his life at that time?