Tusculan Disputations 3 ¶35 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 3 ¶35

What remains is the opinion of the Cyrenaics, who think that men grieve when anything happens unexpectedly. And that is indeed, as I said before, a great aggravation of a misfortune, and I know that it appeared so to Chrysippus: “Whatever falls out unexpected is so much the heavier.” But the whole question does not turn on this—though the sudden approach of an enemy sometimes occasions more confusion than it would if you had expected him, and a sudden storm at sea throws the sailors into a greater fright than one which they have foreseen, and it is the same in many other cases. But when you carefully consider the nature of what was expected, you will find nothing more than that all things which come on a sudden appear greater, and this upon two accounts: first of all, because you have not time to consider how great the accident is; and secondly, because you are probably persuaded that you could have guarded against it had you foreseen it, and therefore the misfortune, having been seemingly encountered by your own fault, makes your grief the greater. That it is so, time evinces, which, as it advances, brings with it so much mitigation that though the same misfortunes continue, the grief not only becomes the less, but in some cases is entirely removed. Many Carthaginians were slaves at Rome, and many Macedonians, when Perseus their king was taken prisoner. I saw, too, when I was a young man, some Corinthians in the Peloponnesus. They might all have lamented with Andromache, All these I saw…; but they had perhaps given over lamenting themselves, for by their countenances, and speech, and other gestures you might have taken them for Argives or Sicyonians. And I myself was more concerned at the ruined walls of Corinth than the Corinthians themselves were, whose minds by frequent reflection and time had become callous to such sights. I have read a book of Clitomachus, which he sent to his fellow-citizens who were prisoners to comfort them after the destruction of Carthage. There is in it a treatise written by Carneades, which, as Clitomachus says, he had inserted into his book; the subject was, “That it appeared probable that a wise man would grieve at the state of subjection of his country,” and all the arguments which Carneades used against this proposition are set down in the book. There the philosopher applies such a strong medicine to a fresh grief as would be quite unnecessary in one of any continuance. Nor, if this very book had been sent to the captives some years after, would it have found any wounds to cure, but only scars. For grief, by a gentle progress and slow degrees, wears away imperceptibly. Not that the circumstances which gave rise to it are altered, or can be, but that custom teaches what reason should: that those things which before seemed to be of some consequence are of no such great importance after all.