Tusculan Disputations 3 ¶47 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 3 ¶47

Nor is that consolation much to be relied on, though it is frequently practiced and sometimes has some effect, namely, “That you are not alone in this.” It has its effect, as I said, but not always, nor with every person, for some reject it; but much depends on the application of it, for you ought rather to show, not how men in general have been affected with such evils, but how men of sense have borne them. As to Chrysippus’s method, it is certainly founded in truth, but it is difficult to apply it in time of distress. It is a work of no small difficulty to persuade a person in affliction that he grieves merely because he thinks it right so to do. Certainly, then, as in pleadings we do not state all cases alike (if I may adopt the language of lawyers for a moment), but adapt what we have to say to the time to the nature of the subject under debate, and to the person; so too, in alleviating grief, regard should be had to what kind of cure the party to be comforted can admit of. But, somehow or other, we have rambled from what you originally proposed. For your question was concerning a wise man, with whom nothing can have the appearance of evil that is not dishonorable; or at least, anything else would seem so small an evil that by his wisdom he would so overmatch it as to make it wholly disappear; and such a man makes no addition to his grief through opinion, and never conceives it right to torment himself above measure, nor to wear himself out with grief, which is the meanest thing imaginable. Reason, however, it seems, has demonstrated (though it was not directly our object at the moment to inquire whether anything can be called an evil except what is base) that it is in our power to discern that all the evil which there is in affliction has nothing natural in it, but is contracted by our own voluntary judgment of it, and the error of opinion.