Tusculan Disputations 5 ¶15 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 5 ¶15

Note: Spoken by Cicero’s listener (“A.”), not by Cicero — the reply follows in the next passage.

A. You must look out for something new if you would do any good. These things have very little effect on me, not merely from their being common, but principally because, like certain light wines that will not bear water, these arguments of the Stoics are pleasanter to taste than to swallow. As when that assemblage of virtues is committed to the rack, it raises so reverend a spectacle before our eyes that happiness seems to hasten on towards them, and not to suffer them to be deserted by her. But when you take your attention off from this picture and these images of the virtues to the truth and the reality, what remains without disguise is the question whether anyone can be happy in torment? Wherefore let us now examine that point, and not be under any apprehensions, lest the virtues should expostulate and complain that they are forsaken by happiness. For if prudence is connected with every virtue, then prudence itself discovers this: that all good men are not therefore happy; and she recollects many things of Marcus Atilius, Quintus Caepio, Marcus Aquilius; and prudence herself, if these representations are more agreeable to you than the things themselves, restrains happiness when it is endeavoring to throw itself into torments, and denies that it has any connection with pain and torture.