Tusculan Disputations 4 ¶20 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 4 ¶20

M. I will, indeed, endeavor to do so. But it well requires great attention, lest, by losing one word, the whole should escape you. What the Greeks call πάθη we choose to name perturbations (or disorders) rather than diseases, in explaining which I shall follow, first, that very old description of Pythagoras, and afterward that of Plato, for they both divide the mind into two parts, and make one of these partake of reason and the other they represent without it. In that which partakes of reason they place tranquillity, that is to say, a placid and undisturbed constancy; to the other they assign the turbid motions of anger and desire, which are contrary and opposite to reason. Let this, then, be our principle, the spring of all our reasonings. But notwithstanding, I shall use the partitions and definitions of the Stoics in describing these perturbations, who seem to me to have shown very great acuteness on this question.