Tusculan Disputations 3 ¶25 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 3 ¶25

Do you, then, think that it can befall a wise man to be oppressed with grief, that is to say, with misery? for, as all perturbation is misery, grief is the rack itself. Lust is attended with heat, exulting joy with levity, fear with meanness, but grief with something greater than these: it consumes, torments, afflicts, and disgraces a man; it tears him, preys upon his mind, and utterly destroys him. If we do not so divest ourselves of it as to throw it completely off, we cannot be free from misery. And it is clear that there must be grief where anything has the appearance of a present sore and oppressing evil. Epicurus is of opinion that grief arises naturally from the imagination of any evil, so that whosoever is eyewitness of any great misfortune, if he conceives that the like may possibly befall himself, becomes sad instantly from such an idea. The Cyrenaics think that grief is not engendered by every kind of evil, but only by unexpected, unforeseen evil; and that circumstance is, indeed, of no small effect on the heightening of grief, for whatsoever comes of a sudden appears more formidable. Hence these lines are deservedly commended: I knew my son, when first he drew his breath, Destined by fate to an untimely death; And when I sent him to defend the Greeks, War was his business, not your sportive freaks.