Tusculan Disputations 3 ¶24 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 3 ¶24

That descendant of Tantalus, how does he appear to you—he who sprung from Pelops, who formerly stole Hippodamia from her father-in-law, King Oenomaus, and married her by force?—he who was descended from Jupiter himself, how brokenhearted and dispirited does he not seem! Stand off, my friends, nor come within my shade, That no pollutions your sound hearts pervade, So foul a stain my body doth partake. Will you condemn yourself, Thyestes, and deprive yourself of life, on account of the greatness of another’s crime? What do you think of that son of Phoebus? Do you not look upon him as unworthy of his own father’s light? Hollow his eyes, his body worn away, His furrow’d cheeks his frequent tears betray; His beard neglected, and his hoary hairs Rough and uncomb’d, bespeak his bitter cares. O foolish Aeëtes! these are evils which you yourself have been the cause of, and are not occasioned by any accidents with which chance has visited you. And you behaved as you did, even after you had been inured to your distress, and after the first swelling of the mind had subsided!—whereas grief consists (as I shall show) in the notion of some recent evil—but your grief, it is very plain, proceeded from the loss of your kingdom, not of your daughter, for you hated her, and perhaps with reason, but you could not calmly bear to part with your kingdom. But surely it is an impudent grief which preys upon a man for not being able to command those that are free. Dionysius, it is true, the tyrant of Syracuse, when driven from his country, taught a school at Corinth, so incapable was he of living without some authority. But what could be more impudent than Tarquin, who made war upon those who could not bear his tyranny, and, when he could not recover his kingdom by the aid of the forces of the Veientians and the Latins, is said to have betaken himself to Cuma and to have died in that city of old age and grief!