Tusculan Disputations 4 ¶33 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 4 ¶33

For what is not only more miserable, but more base and sordid, than a man afflicted, weakened, and oppressed with grief? And little short of this misery is one who dreads some approaching evil, and who, through faintheartedness, is under continual suspense. The poets, to express the greatness of this evil, imagine a stone to hang over the head of Tantalus, as a punishment for his wickedness, his pride, and his boasting. And this is the common punishment of folly, for there hangs over the head of everyone whose mind revolts from reason some similar fear. And as these perturbations of the mind, grief and fear, are of a most wasting nature, so those two others, though of a more merry cast (I mean lust, which is always coveting something with eagerness, and empty mirth, which is an exulting joy), differ very little from madness. Hence you may understand what sort of person he is whom we call at one time moderate, at another modest or temperate, at another constant and virtuous, while sometimes we include all these names in the word frugality, as the crown of all (for if that word did not include all virtues, it would never have been proverbial to say that a frugal man does everything rightly). But when the Stoics apply this saying to their wise man, they seem to exalt him too much and to speak of him with too much admiration.