Cicero: Tusculan Disputations II and V: With a Summary of III and IV 0856684333, 9780856684333

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ARIs AND PIlILUPS CLASSICAL TEXTS

CICERO

Tusculan Disputations II & V

A. E. Douglas

Aris & Phillips is an imprint of Oxbow Books First published in the United Kingdom in 1990. Reprinted 2015 by OXBOW BOOKS 10 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford OX1 2EW and in the United States by OXBOW BOOKS 908 Darby Road, Havertown, PA 19083 © A. E. Douglas 1990

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CONTENTS Preface Bibliograpby

v

VI

1

INTRODUCTION Notes to the Introduction

11

TUSCULANS II:

Text & Translation Commentary

15

58

SUMMARY OF TUSCULANS III & IV

77

TUSCULANS V

Text and translation Commentary

79

144

Appendix

166

Index

167

[v

PREFACE

No apology or apologia is nowadays needed for taking a serious and sympathetic interest in Cicero's philosophical writings, so I make no further reference to old unhappy far off things and scholarly battles long ago. What· may call for explanation is the choice for the present edition of Books II and V. The answer is that Book V and Book I are the most important of the five, and, as I believe, the most interesting. However, Book II also provides an attractive sample of Cicero's methods in the intervening three, while the third and fourth, for reasons given in the summary of their contents (pp. 77-8) are of more specialised interest. I am again indebted to Messrs Aris and Philips for much help and encouragement. It saddens me to add that on the day I write this I have learned of the death of John Aris. lowe much to his friendship and wise counsel, and like to think that this latest contribution of mine to Aris and Phillips series of Classical Texts would not be unworthy of his approval. and I dedicate it to his memory. Birmingham, July 1989.

SELECf BIDLIOGRAPHY (Works cited only once are in general cited are included). I.

excluded~

a few relevant works no

Reference works. The most commonly cited are:

ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt, ed. H. Temporin and W. Haase (Berlin/New York, 1973- ). OCD Oxford Classical Dictionary, edd. N.G.L. Hammond and H.H Scullard (2nd edn. Oxford, 1970). OLD The Oxford Latin Dictionary, (Oxford, 1968-1982). Otto A. Otto, S prichworter und sprichwortlichen Redensarten der Rome (Leipzig, 1890).

II. The Greek philosophical background. J.M. Dillon and A.A. Long (edd.) The Question of 'Eclecticisrt (Berkeley and London, 1988). J. Glucker, Antiochus and the later Academy (G6ttingen, 1978). H.B. Gottschalk, I Aristotelian philosophy in the Roman world from it time of Cicero to the end ofthe second century', ANRW 11.36.: 1079-1174. W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridgl 1962-1981). A.A. Long (1) (ed.) Problems in Stoicism (London, 1971). (2) Hellenistic Philosophy (2nd edn., London 1986). A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridgi 1987) (Abbr. Long/Sedley). LM. Rist (1) Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge, 1969). (2) Epicurus: an Introduction (Cambridge, 1972). F .H. Sandbach, The Stoics (London, 1975). M. Schofield and G. Striker, The Norms of Nature (Cambridge and Pari 1985), esp. Part II. (Abbr. 'Norms').

LVll

Ill. Cicero.

A.. Recent editions of Trueulan Disputations.

r.w. Dougan,

Books I and II (Cambridge, 1905), Books III-V completed by R.M. Henry (Cambridge, 1934) (Abbr.DH). M. Pohlenz, Bibl. Teubn. (Leipzig, 1918). I.E. King, Loeb Class.Lib. (London/Cambridge, Mass. 1927, revised 1945). G. Fohien and J. Humbert, ColI. Bude (Paris, 1931 and 1960). A. Grilli, Book II only (Turin 1955) and extensively revised and enlarged (Brescia 1987). O. Gigon, (2nd edn. Munich, 1970). M. Giusta, Corpus Paravianum (Turin, 1984).

B. Editions of other works Cicero,

Academica ed. 1.S. Reid (Cambridge, 1885). De Finibus I-II ed. J.S. Reid (Cambridge, 1925). De Finibus ed. J.N. Madvig (3rd edn. Copenhagen, 1876, repro

Hildesheim, 1965). Ennius, The Tragedies of Ennius ed. H.D. Jocelyn (Cambridge, 1967) (Jocelyn (1)}. Remains of Old Latin (Loeb.Class.Lib.) ed. E.H. Warmington (London/Cambridge, Mass., 1935-1940). Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, ed. H. von Arnim (Leipzig, 1903-1924) (Abbr. SVF). Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta ed. S. Radt (vols. 3 and 4, Gottingen, , 1985 and 1977). Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, most accessible in the Loeb edn. by R.D. Hicks (London/Cambridge Mass., 1925, revised repro 1972) (Abbr. D.L.).

C. Other books, articles, etc. K. Bringmann, Untersuchungen zum spiiten Cicero (Gottingen, 1971). A.E. Douglas (I) 'Platonis aemulus?'. G & R 2nd ser.9 (1962) 41-51. (2) 'Cicero the Philosopher' in Cicero ed. T.A. Dorey (London, 1965) 135-170.

viii 1

(3) New Surveys in the Classics: Cicero (Oxford, 1978). (4) 'Three passages in Cicero, Tusculan Disputations Il LCM (forthcoming) (1990). J. Glucker, 'Cicero's philosophical affiliations' in Dillon and Long (II above) ch.2. M. Griffin and 1. Barnes, Philosophia Togata: essays in philosophy anI Roman Society (Oxford, 1989). Abbr. Griffin/Barnes. H.D. Jocelyn, 'Greek poetry in Cicero's prose writings" YCS 23 (1971 61-111 (Jocelyn (2». S. Lundstrom (1) Vermeintliche Glosseme in den Tusculanen (Uppsala 1964). (2) Zur Textkritik der Tusculanen (Uppsala/Stockholm 1986). (3) 'Falsche Eigennamen in den Tuskulanen', Eranos 5 (1960) 66-79. P. MacKendrick, The philosophical books of Cicero (London, 1989). P. Poncelet, Ciceron traducteur de Platon (Paris, 1957). There is an excellent, full and up-to-date Bibliography by Philippa Smith i GriffinIBarnes (above)

[1

lNTRODUCfION 1. The Tusculan Disputations, though they must have been written at considerable speed, like all Cicero's philosophical writings of the years 45-44 B.C., show evidence of careful structure in their broad outline. The first and last of the five books are clearly the most important, and still perhaps the most attractive, as they are also the longest, together about equal to the intervening three. They deal with the most important issues: first, the great ultimate of death, which confronts everybody, as the other ills discussed in Books II to IV, will certainly not do in equal measure, even affecting some very little or not at all, though pain, the subject of Book II, clearly mattered more than .it has come to do since the arrival of anaesthetics. Secondly, the questions whether those ills - pain, mental distress, and other emotional disturbances - discussed in the middle books can destroy 'happiness', or, in other ancient terms, employed by Cicero, whether the 'wise man', in effect the perfect human being, is always 'happy', were seen as matters of reasonable concern; but they are in a sense included within the great question of Hellenistic thinking and debate, whether virtue is enough for the 'happy' life, so that for the virtuous those human woes were what the Stoics christened 'indifferent'·, and that is the subject of Book V. 2. Those terms in which ancient discussions were frequently couched call for some explanation. What has wisdom to do with 'happiness'? What sense does it make to say that the wise man, and only the wise man, is always happy? Why did some think it important to deny that the wise man even experiences, let alone is seriously affected by, emotional upheavals, or that pain is the greatest of evils? These questions arise because the English, and sometimes the Latin, standard equivalents often have misleading associations but are hard to improve upon. So it often is with the Greek arete, Latin virtus, English 'virtue', and above all with eudaimonia, Latin beata vita, English 'happiness'. For what is meant is not a state of 'feeling good', but simply the perfect or ideal life for a human being, whatever in the light of philosophical enquiry that might prove to be. It is this that underlies the ancient question whether the wise=good man (see below on this identification) could be happy even when undergoing torture 2 , and whether the tyrant, traditionally seen as the type of man who can, and does, do whatever he likes, is really happy3.

2] INTRODUCTION 3. Another, perhaps more fundamental, question may occur to the modern reader. Are some of these problems of human life philosophical at all? Those concerning the emotions have long been the province first of the priest and now of the psychiatrist or physician. Pain again is a medical matter, and should analgesics fail, would anyone go to a philosopher for advice 4 ? But in the ancient world spiritual counsel was not the primary function of priest or priestess: their concern was primarily· to serve some particular god or goddess, especially by maintaining the prescribed rituals. Psychology in the literal sense of the study of the nature of the soul and its activities and experiences was a part of philosophy, especially from Plato onwardss, Tuse .Disp. III and IV contain much Stoic analysis and definition of emotions. Psychiatry, the healing of the soul, was also a function of the philosopher, as Cicero often asserts6 , though there were also physical treatments, notably the drug hellebore, for those recognised as what we should call clinically insane. 4. In sum, ancient philosophy took all aspects of life into account, sometimes at a quite day-to-day level: for example, the technique appropriate for writing letters of condolence (Consolationes) was worked out by a philosopher'. From this practical slant it comes about that to what may now seem a surprising extent it could make the definition and discussion of the perfectly good or happy life its prime objectives, to whiclJ theorising about the nature of knowledge and the Universe could be seeI1 rather as a necessary preliminary than an end in itself. If one consider! the vast amount written about non-ethical concerns by such philosophers a! Plato and Aristotle this statement may seem implausible. Yet it can hardl~ be denied that one of Plato's main concerns, to put it no higher, was t( establish against the scepticism and relativism of others in the moral field ~ firm basis of certain knowledge as the foundation for the good life in stat~ and individual. Aristotle identifies the happy life with the life 01 contemplation, thus bridging any gap between the good life and the pursui of knowledge, and, for reasons which are touched on below, he claims tha the pursuit of knowledge is natural to humanity and therefore right9. Stoil and Epicurean physics is based on the belief that certain knowledge of thi world is possible Plato had looked elsewhere than the world we live iI for his source of true knowledge and (though the linkage in Stoicism ma: be less immediately clear) one need only consider Lucretius' great poen largely devoted to setting out the physics of Epicurus, and ask why he is SI enthusiastic about it, to see that the motive is to enable human beings tt achieve the Epicurean version of the happy life, one free from fear of th gods and of death. At all events it is clear that for most ancient philosophers ethics mu~

I~TTRODUCTIO~

[3

be based on knowledge. It was taken for granted generally, though especially so expressed by the Stoics, that the good life was one lived in narmony with the Universe and Nature. It was therefore essential to know for certain what the Universe was like and to use that knowledge as a guide to practical living, though if with the neo-Academic school to which Cicero had come to adhere 10 one regarded such certainty as unattainable, one would have to be content with the best estimate of what was 'probable'll. But they were unusual in taking this line: to most other schools it seemed absurd to say that there is such a thing as human virtue which we ought to pursue, and yet to be unable to define it by relating it firmly to knowledge of the world in which we find ourselves. Most also believed that the perfect life was attainable, even if by few. The foregoing explains at least in part how knowledge or wisdom could come to be especially associated with virtue, but there is a further consideration which led the Stoics to identify the two. Living in accordance with Nature involves for human beings what manner of life accords with human nature. It is a common feature of Greek thought to concentrate on the distinguishing characteristic of humanity, namely the possession of Reason, which was shared only with the gods. So wisdom is the human virtue, the specifically human excellence 12 and on that view no more is needed for eudaimonia, the perfect human life, and no adverse circumstances can detract from it: the wise=good man can be happy even when undergoing torture. To make their position perfectly clear, the Stoics went on to declare that only Wisdom/Virtue was entitled to the label 'good', and correspondingly they argued that only Vice was bad, and Vice must be Unreason or Foolishness, that is, the vices were a consequence of intellectual failures l3 , and so too was any failure to respond appropriately, i.e. with Stoic disdain, to the mischances and adversities of life. S. Cicero's attitude to Stoicism At the end of De Finibus 14 and at length in Tusculans V, Cicero defends the Stoic view, its attraction being that by ruling out any major role for adversity and mischance in the perfect human life it avoided putting such a life at the mercy of external events and circumstances: otherwise such a life, given the world as it is, might be beyond the reach of anybody, even the wisest, and that would not do at all. Likewise in Tusculans III and IV he accepts the Stoic view that the wrong response to the emotional problems there dealt with results from intellectual error. But as regards pain, in Tusculans 2.29-30 cf. 42 he echoes the common criticism of the Stoic insistence on restricting the use of 'bad' so that pain is not bad, an evil, and in showing how pain is to be confronted (2.47-50) exploits the doct·ine that the 'rational' part of the soul must subdue the

4] INTRODUCTION

'irrational'. The Stoics at least in their early phase had rejectei.

subdivisions of the soul, and Cicero's Stoic treatment of the emotions ir

Tusc. III and IV seems inconsistent with his statement near the beginnin~

of Book IV (§§ 10-11) of the bipartite nature of the soul u . But even il

one can attach a meaning to the terms of such discussion, the practica:

outcome is not significantly different: whether the soul consists of parts 01

is a unity, you must use your reason to react properly to adversity.

6. Cicero and Epicureanism Cicero leaned towards Stoicism in ethics while believing with the Ne'\l Academy that their arguments for their conclusions and not necessarily th~ conclusions themselves were open to attack. His attitude to EpicureanislT was very different: he rarely found anything with which he coul( sympathise in either their beliefs or the arguments with which the~ supported them. Even the conciliatory gestures in Tusc. V (see belov Introd.7) are heavily qualified l 6 • But this does not mean that we nee( question that what he says both in expounding and in criticisinl Epicureanism was said in good faith in accordance with his understandinj of that philosophy. He goes out of his way to display his direct knowledgl of the foundation documents of the creed, and the accuracy of hi translations, remarkable considering the permissive attitude of his times t( paraphrase, abridgement, etc. is confirmed by extant Greek sources for th. originals l1 • He also shows a shrewd understanding of the dogmatil temperament, from the sarcastic and over-confident Velleius in NaLD. I t( the impatient and ill-tempered response (of persons unnamed) to criticisn in Tusc. 3.50-51. Admittedly his patronising tone towards Epicurus - I; decent chap but not too bright'I' was not calculated to be emollient, bu again that does not mean that his arguments are necessarily negligible For, if with a possible exception to be considered below, Cicero present Epicurus1s views accurately, it is difficult to see how the charge 0 inconsistency repeatedly brought by Cicero can be refuted, and it is mor' useful to try to establish how these inconsistencies arose1 9 • In considering the Tusculans in particular there is no need to dea with the notorious problems created by Epicurus's assertion that al pleasure is immediately or ultimately derived from physical pleasure. Th relevant issues are the consequences for pain of the doctrine that pleasur. is the telos, or, as Cicero renders it, the summum bonum. How coull Epicurus maintain that pain is an evil, sometimes the supreme evil, and ye constitute part of the good life20? How could he even go so far as to sa (if he did) that the wise man would find the pain of torture actuall 'sweet I21 , when he obviously was not thinking of masochism? How di, Epicurus reach so vulnerable a position? And what defences did he or hi

Ii~TP~ODUCTI0>-T

~)

:ollowers offer? Epicurus's problems arise because he cannot get free from some basic 3reek presuppositions, and secondly - what may be much the same thing ­ trom certain neat antitheses to Stoic ethics which do not help the Epicurean case. First, he began to look for the summum bonum, that which would ;ecure eudaimonia, the beata vita, the perfectly satisfactory life, and ~xactly like the Stoics and others, thought that the answer must be found by considering human nature. The good life must be that for which human nature is adapted. Again beginning like the Stoics, he started with the !luman infant, and deduced that its first impulse was to seek pleasure, and was led to declare it the ultimate good, or goal of all right action. The Stoics of course developed different ideas from the same starting-point, but these and the considerable problemsz2 which the Stoics found in their turn are not relevant now except that they saw the ultimate good in Virtue and the ultimate evil in Vice. Now the Epicureans seem to have felt a need for a summum malum corresponding to pleasure, and that was pain Zl • It is noticeable that our evidence says surprisingly little about pain, while the definition and analysis of pleasure is fully treated24 , and most modern accounts reflect these proportions. What the evidence does offer is a number of Epicurean attempts to show that a perfectly happy life is possible even given the occurrence of pain within it. Cicero puts forward what were no doubt standard criticisms of these, sometimes because of their alleged intrinsic implausibility, but rarely without a reference to their incompatibility with the doctrine that pain is the summum malum. It is this latter which prevented the Epicureans from saving their logic by :trguing - with the Stoics - but they were not obliged to disagree about everything - that pain was 'indifferent', The most they could say was non't bother about it'zs. Again, Epicurus would argue for the hedonistic ~alculus, the balancing of pleasures against painZ6 with the explicit :onsequence that some pleasures were bad, because of painful :onsequences, and some pains good, because leading to greater pleasuret7 , which was not quite the same thing. It was a paradox which did not escape censure. Nor did the related argument, allegedly drawn from experience, that bad pains were brief and long-lasting ones slight28 , so that with the addition of recollected or anticipated pleasures the balance would always be on the side of pleasure. Finally, if the worst happens, there is llways a remedy in suicide - like the others not a very convincing plea 29 : the suggestion that the typical mythical example Philoctetes with his mppurating wound was not suffering the greatest evil, now defined as total pain, over the whole ten years of the siege of Troy, either because only his

6] I~rrRODUCTION foot hurt or because there were intermissions, smacks of desperation. In fact none of this evades the difficulty of accommodating pain, which cannot be avoided as a sheer fact of life, within an attainable ideal life - the Stoics had no such problem: their summum malum, vice, is obviously excluded from the life of perfect virtue30 • The only solution for the Epicureans would after all have been the Stoic one, to treat pain as 'indifferent' . There is some danger in using the Latin terms summum bonum (malum), the former standing for the Greek telos 31 • For the Stoics virtue was the only good and vice the only bad. It may therefore be significant that only Latin sources, starting with Cicero, make the additional claim that Epicurus held that pain was the only evil 32 , and that he went even further in contradicting his view that pain was the greatest evil by asserting that the wise man undergoing torture, if being burned or in Phalaris' bull would say 'How sweet this is!,33 Diogenes Laertius34 implicitly denies this. According to him, Epicurus believed that the wise man under torture would groan but would still be 'happy'3s. Yet Cicero is emphatic thaI Epicurus said that the wise man would say 'How sweet this is!' somewhere, but that last phrase (quodam loco) contrasts with Cicero's usual precision when he claims to give a rendering of Epicurus's words. But whether we owe these strange utterances to developments within Epicureanism - therE are other sources ranging from Epicurus's associate Metrodorus to Cicero'! near contemporary the Epicurean Zen036 whom Cicero treats as ar authority for Epicurus's own teaching - or to polemical and rhetorica exaggeration by opponents, transmitted as if they were genuinel) Epicurean, cannot be decided. But whoever went so far in trying t( establish parallels with Stoic concepts brought out an underlying problem simply the question whether, and if so, in what sense, pain is the 'opposite of pleasure. The symmetry. was in any case never complete, for b~ defining (with what plausibility or consistency is not relevant at thl moment) the greatest pleasure as the absence of pain Epicurus wa conceding the kind of asymmetry detected by Speusippus (cf. n.23). Ther! may even be some gain in connexion with the difficult concept of thi tel OS37. If pleasure/pain is no longer seen as the logical counterpart 0 virtue/vice, there is no longer a need to worry about the feeling one ha that to say that the 'goal' is pleasure is not necessarily quite the same thin, as to say that it is virtue, as if to pursue pleasure and to pursue virtu were on a level. 7. Cicero's methods of exposition It is commonplace to observe that Cicero's methods of composin philosophical dialogues are in general very different from our other chie

(7 extant example, the dialogues of Plato, particularly in employing long statements of opposing views3 '. It has not so often been noticed that in Tusculans Cicero uses a method different from that of all his other dialogues. He professes to be adopting the Hellenistic practice known as a schola39 , which is very probably the correct term for what it was fashionable for a time among scholars to call the 'Hellenistic diatribe'40. This consists of a discourse on a philosophical topic provided by a member of the audience, in the imaginary setting of the Tuseulans the character often indicated in some modern editions by 'A' (see Intr.9) , with the intention of having it refuted, and with little or no intervention by any member of the audience. In Tuseulans though A speaks, he is a shadowy character, unlike the historical persons who play the minor roles in the near-monologues of De Amicitia and De Seneetute. In De Finibus 41 Cicero attempts to outline the history of this method, seeing its origins in the practice of the Greek sophists of the 5th-4th centuries, and tracing variations in its employment by later philosophets. In Fin. itself he says that in that treatise he will not follow the practice, which he states was that of the Academy in his own day, claiming at one point to adopt the question-and-answer method, but for the most part giving each participant a chance not merely to state a view baldly (like A in Tuse.) but to expound his view at length42 . The method of the sehola is however the one followed in the Tuseulans, though the 'disputations' are no doubt fictitious, and Cicero occasionally as it were stands back to comment on his use of this particular method even within the dialogue and not only in his prefatory remarks 43 , He is, too, conducting his 'schools' at a country house, presumably in the presence of a small group of friends. It is not possible to decide why Cicero chose this particular technique, but it may well be that, apart from an urge to seek some artistic variety44, he felt that having set out the views of competing schools (Stoic, Epicurean, and Peripatetic) in De Finibus, ending with a leaning towards Stoicism4s , he was prepared both to be more dogmatic, though still approaching each school critically, and at the same time was seeking so far as possible to look for the common ground which might be found at least on the central issues set out in the theses put forward for demoJition. It seems that in the especially gloomy political situation at the time he wrote Tusculans he saw to an extent not paralleled elsewhere the answer in philosophy as such, not in a rigid adherence to the tenets of one particular school. Among the most striking of the many examples of this in Tuseulans are the remarkable prose-hymn to philosophy in the prologue to ruse. v and the concluding pages of the same book. Even the Epicureans for all their alleged deficiences are on the side of the angels in maintaining INTRODUCTION

61 INIRODUCTION that the man is always happy because he can so overcome 3.dversities of all kinds that his life always achieves their ultimate good of being pleasurable. Cicero here takes full account of the Epicurean tradition of moderation in life-style. Though almost in the same context, as elsewhere in his writings, he indulges in rhetorical onslaughts on the goal of Pleasure as fit only for animals46 , here at least they are not entirely out of court, but used in an a fortiori argument: if even the Epicureans are content with so little in their actual living and also argue that the wise man is always happy. what of those who demand moral goodness as a component of the good life? Thus the tradition derived from Socrates and Plat047 is represented by the Stoics and Peripatetics. The latter concede so much to Virtue as sufficient for the fully happy life. even if reluctant to concede no place at all for other 'good' things, that they differ (as Academics argued) only in the matter of words, the use of the word 'good', from the Stoics who had recognised among the class of things 'indifferent' (Le. neither Virtue nor Vice) things 'preferred' (health, wealth, etc.) and their 'rejected' opposites. Connected with this elevation of philosophy in general, implicitly a1 the expense of oratory and political activity4ll, we find a slight bu1 significant change of attitude to his Greek predecessors. In Tusculans the emphasis passes from a declared intention to expound Greek philosophy for the benefit of the Roman public to an intention to create a Roman philosophical literature which could stand comparison with the Greek, a1 least at certain levels49 , an ambitious claim and one scarcely achievable given that all the sources were Greek, but indicative of Cicero's feelings a1 the time. In fact, so far as our evidence allows us to judge, it appears: not surprisingly, that the view put into Varro's mouthSO that those who wen interested in philosophy would prefer to read it in Greek represents whal actually happened. The evidence, that is, of the prologues to tht philosophical works and the many allusions in Cicero's letters of the timt do not establish more than that a small circle of Cicero'S friends showec interest in his work. Not until the early Christian writers, at a time wheI knowledge of Greek was diminishing in the Latin-speaking half of the Roman world, are their strong signs of their popularity. and that wa: considerable. nor was it to diminish for many centuries, though their ful range was not known to a wide readership in the Middle AgesSI • The method also allows to an even greater extent than elsewhere fo: the free use of illustrations from mythology, history, and poetry52 which art often more anecdotal elements than directly contributory to the argument This may be seen as an intentional lightening of the content after the mOf l austere and rigorous debates of Academica and De Finibus. Nor does j j

seem purely coincidental that in looking back to the Hellen:stic model Cicero allows his belief in the decline or death of political oratory as a feature of a free society to lead to a type of nO!l-political cratory or 'declamation' such as in an admittedly very different form was to flourish under the same title from the Augustan Age onwardsS3 • 8. Sources Since the philosophical views presented by Cicero are Greek, much effort has been expended on trying to identify the sources on which he drew. It is now widely recognised that little certainty resulted s4 • In Tusc. II and V there is little that an intelligent student of philosophy could not have acquired as a part of a general acquaintance with the main tenets of the chief Hellenistic schools, aided occasionally perhaps by handbooks summarising their viewsss . Nor should we over-look the influence on matter as well as form of the Greek type of philosophical declamation, the Ychola, referred to above, which as Greek parallels show, certainly supplied some of the illustrative anecdotes. Similarly, apart from Cicero's translations of passages from Plato's extant dialogues and his comments on the rendering of individual Greek words s6 , it is virtually impossible to know now closely Cicero adhered to Greek sources when he was reproducing them, though we have his wurd for it that he did not regard himself as a mere transiator S1 , It may be frustrating that we cannot answer these undoubtedly important questions with certainty, and so reconstruct large areas of lost Hellenistic writings, yet there seems to be an increasing readership of those who are content simply to enjoy the company of a man who moves easily and with some independence in the world of Greek thought. 9. The participants in the dialogue Since Pohlenz explored the question s8 , it has been clear that the initials M and A representing the main speaker and his interlocutor appear only spasmodically and inconsistently in the Mss, and were probably imported in about the sixth cemury. The introductory matter and personal references within the main discussions make it clear that M is Cicero, even if sometimes speaking as an advocate and not necessarily from personal conviction, but to save repeated cumbrous references to 'Cicero' and 'the anonymous interlocutor' I have retained the initials as a convenience in the text and commentary. 10. The lext In preparing the text of this edition I have again received the kind permission of the Loeb Trustees to base it on J. E. King's text in the Loeb Classical Library (1927, revised by the Loeb Editors, 1945). I have commented in the Notes where my departures from the Loeb text are more

10] INTRODUCTION than trivial. In my choice of readings, I have in general followed the tendency of most recent editors in preferring well-attested Mss readings, where not clearly insupportable, to emendations. M. Giusta's important edition came to my notice too late for me to take account of it in my text of Tusc. 1. Among its notable features are frequent ingenious rewritings of the received text. However, my own choice of readings in most relevant places has been determined by a conviction that in these books, especially Tusc. II, there is much casual writing, so that undoubted awkwardnesses are due to Cicero himself, and not to deficiencies in the transmission: his thought seems to run too fast for completely elegant or accurate expression59 • None the less I have benefited from Giusta's identification of some real difficulties in the received text.

(d

Notes to the Introduction eferences to Tusculans are by book and section only.

1. See Bibliography for fuller accounts of the main Hellenistic philosophical schools, od in the present series my Introduction to Tusculans I and M.R. Wright's Introduction to De 'inibus 3 and Paradoxa SlOicorum (forthcoming). I give notes as they occur on, less 'eIl-known or important philosophers. 2. On this theme cf. 2.17; 5.14,72-3, Plato Rep. 361E, Arist. Eth.Nic. 7.13.3. 3. Plato Rep. 361E where the contrast is simply with the 'unjust man'. but the tyrant ppears in Book 9 (58OC) as the type of the most unjust and most unhappy man. As a rendering of eudaimonia 'welfare' is tempting, but that has irrelevant associations in lodern society. Long prefers 'well-being'. 4. But cf. Fin. 2.64 for a Roman Epicurean who would have preferred medical help ,hen in pain! 5. Many theories are discussed in Tusculans 1. 6. Cf. 2.11, 43; 3.1-6, 84, 4.58, 83-4. 7. Cf. 1.115. 8. Hence the concentration on defining the summum bonum, the ultimate good, and he view of philosophy as 'the science of Jiving' Ac.pr. 23, Fin, 1.42: 2.85, 5.86, Varra ap, ~ugustine eiv.Dei. 19.1. cf. n. on 2.12. 9. Eth.Nic. 10.7, Met. 1.1. So despite certain appearances the contrast of Aristotle nd his followers with their interest in all kinds of knowledge with the Stoics can be xaggerated, despite the Stoic concentration, probably at least till Cicero's contemporary 'osidonius, on Virtue and morality. In the Stoically-inspired De Officiis Cicero treats the .ursuit even of 'curious' knowledge as natural, and necessary for the vita beata (Off. 1,13) nd the prime human characteristic (ib.18). 10. Ac.post. 13-14 shows this as a development of Cicero's later life. 11. It is perhaps mon.: accurate to say that the New Academy queried the grounds on ,hich others, especially the Stoics, argued for certain knowledge, but for practical purposes the IUtcome is the same: many of the arguments deployed e.g. in AcademicQ priora are directed at he fact of certainty, though some are concerned with the logical arguments used by the Stoics. 12. 5.38-9. The Greek aret~ translated as virtus or 'vin\.le', was not confined to purely noral qualities. Wisdom had traditionally been regarded as a virtue even when not granted upreme place, e.g. as one of the established four, wisrlom, jU5lice, (,(}urag'~, and self-restraint. n fact, Greek philosophy often makes big asslllT'ptions when sC'3king to f::qu~te arete in general lIith moral virtue (Norms pp. 150 1). 13. The view accepted and elaborated 1Jy Ciuro in TuscuiwlS III al:c. IV. It i~ a levelopment of the doctrines attributed to Socntes ': H virtue is knowledge and that nobody lIillingly (i.e. if he knows what is really good for hir. J does wrong. 14. After a full statement by Piso of the Peripatetic case, Cicero repeats Stoic lbjections (Fin. 5.79-85) on the grounds that they are more logical, and after a further ;tatement by Piso, Iea'!':!s his own convictions ~:, open question (ib.95-96). It is sometime:; .aid, wrongly, that he accepts the Peripatetic position. 15. Brand Inwood, Ethics and human action in early Sioicism (Oxford 1985) pp.l31 md 292-3 (n.19) discusses the change in Stoic thought and notes (pp. 140-1) that C. in Tusc. UO-ll was not alone in merging different and apparently incompatible views of the nature of :he soul. The agreement with Epicurus against others on the subject of love (4.70) is 16,

12]

NOTES: INTRODUCTION

expressed without enthusiasm. 17. Fin. 2.20-1 = Epicurus Kuriai Doxai 10, 2.96 for his letter when dying, 2.101 for his will (cf. Reid ad.loc.), and Tuse. 3.41-2 (ne quis me pUlet fingere, in case anyone should think I'm making it up) from the Peri lelous (cf. Athen. 7.280, D.L.I0.6). 18. 2.44, 3.46, cf. Fin. 1.26. 19. My fuller treatment of Epicureanism compared with Stoicism may come as a surprise, but in Tuse. II the emphasis on pain as a problem in Epicureanism means that it bulks larger than Stoicism, which gets cursory treatment. Further, it has often been assumed in expositions both ancient (Fin. 1.13, 3.2-3) and modern that Epicurean ethics are much the more straightforward. They are certainly simpler to expound, but they are not on that account without difficulties. 20. 2.15,16,44; 3.40, 49; 5.26. Fin. 1.41 is the fullest statement of the case, criticised in Fin. 2.85ff. (Fin. 2 is a sustained criticism of the Epicurean position and includes much material, both argument and illustration, used again in Tuse. II, sometimes in compressed form.) 21. 2.17,5.73, d. Fin. 2.88, 5.80. 22. Striker (Norms pp.166-7) points out that the Stoics' need to argue that Virtue is sufficient for happiness arose 'because the presupposition of their own as well as other contemporary philosophers seemed to demand that the final goal and standard of value for actions should be one and the same thing, which had to be happiness.' On this ambiguity in the concept of the relos see further below. I add, as Cicero frequently does, the importance of guartlnleed permanence, if and when attained, of the goal-cum-standard. 23. So with the early hedonist Eudoxus (Arist. Eth.Nic. 10.2.2) Speusippus rejected the opposition, but gets short shrift from Aristotle (Eth.Nic. 7.13.1-2). 24. So Reid on Fin. 1.41: 'the whole exposition of Torquatus is much more directed to prove that voluptas is the summum bonum than that dolor is summum malum.' But on a similar imbalance in Stoicism cf. Inwood (n.15) pp.168-·9. 25. 2.44, 5.73. 26. 5.95, Fin. 1.32,62. 27. Epicurus Ep.Men. 29-30. 28. 2.44, cf. Fin. 1.40 and the reply 2.94. 29. 5.117-8, cf. 2.67, Fin. 1.62. 30. In fact the Stoics did not admit degrees of good and evil, d. Fin. 3.21, 33--4, 43-8, NaLD. 1.6, Sen.ep. 79.8-9, D.L. 7.127. The Stoic 'paradox' that all sins are equal is familiar from its satirical treatment by Cicero in Mur. 61-3 and Horace sat. 1.3.80-98. 31. Cf. Striker's comment quoted in n. 22. She also brings in (p.149) what has to bl assumed as the Peripatetic 'goal', ?n ultimate perfection, as something different in kind frin: other schools' interpretation of the telos. Much has als() been written about the difficulties thai the Stoics had in trying to dev'>.lop their view, cf. e.g. Long, 'Carneades and the Stoic II'los (Phronesis 12, 1967, 59-90). 32. 2.17,5.26,73. Contrast 2.28 where only summum appears 33. 2.17, 5.31, Fin. 2.88, and 5.80 where Cicero treats as identical the two assertion' that pain can be ignored and that the wise man will find it pleasant. 34. D.L. 10.118. 35. At 5.75 Cicero in .::ffect advises Academic~ a.-.d Peripatetics to accept this view: a the Stoics claimed, the sapiens will be happy even in Phalaris' bull - his objection to Epicuru is to his illogicality. 36. 3.38. At Fin. 2.92 Metrodorus stands in for Epicurus. 37. Cf. n.30. 38. The comparison is often vitiated by a misunderstanding of Cicero's objectives, cf Douglas (1) and (2). For detailed study of a single dialogue d. the two articles in J RS ,.

NOTES: INTRODUCTION

[13

(1986) 33-46) (Mary Beard, 'Cicero and Divination: the formation of a Latin discourse') and 47-65 (M. Schofield, 'Cicero for and against divination'). 3~. See Fin. 2.1, Tusc. 1.7-8, 2.26, 3.81, Pis. 60, Fam. 9.22.5. R. Hirzel, Der Dialog (Leipzig 1895) 1.525-6 touches very briefly on the matter. 40. LCM 4.7 (1979) 145-6 (Jocelyn) and 7.1 (1982) 3-7 (Jocelyn), 7.6 (1982) 91-92 (Gottschalk), 8.6 (1983) 89-91 (1ocelyn). Jocelyn had the better of the argument in claiming that the term 'diatribe' has been much abused, but I do not agree that the schola is 'as mysterious an entity' as the diatribe (LCM 8.6 p.90), although the word of course had a wide range of meanings. 41. Cf. Fin. 2.1-2. 42. Fin. 1.29, 71; 2.3, 17. 43. Cf. the passages from Tusc. cited in n.39. 44. Beard and Schofield (n.38) offer interesting schemes to account for Cicero's variations of method, apart from the search for variety, but the differences cannot be explained, as Beard suggests, by a contrast between ethical topics. where Greek and Roman views could be in harmony, and the theological, where problems remained: Fin. and Tusc. are both ethical but quite different in method, and Schofield may be nearer the mark in suggesting a correspondence between consideration of the official views of the different schools (Fin., Nat.D.) and more popular sequels (Tusc. Div.). 45. Cf. n.14. 46. 5.73, cf. Ac.post. 6. 47. 5.119. 48. 2.5, 3.3,5.104. 49. Cf. e.g. Ac .post . 11, Fin. 1.10 as against the stronger professions of Tusc. 2.1-6.

There is a reversion after Tusc. and after the Ides of March, Div. 2.1,7. These developments

are traced by Bringmann (see Bibliography).

50. Ac.post. 4. Pohlenz (edn.praeLiv n.4) alleges numerous echoes of Tusc. in the

century and a half after Cicero's death. With commonplace ideas and Greek illustrations which

were certainly in use before Cicero's time indebtedness can only be conjectural. But while

direct references to the philosophical writings are surprisingly few in that period, references by

Seneca, Cons.Marc. 26.2 and Juvenal 10.183 to Pompey's illness in 50 B.C. (Tusc. 1.85)

cannot be older than Cicero, and Quintilian 1.10.19 quotes a few words from Tusc. 1.4 as

Cicero's.

51. The best known in the Middle Ages were am., sen., off., and TU5C. Even this

contrasts with almost total lack of acquaintance with the speeches and letters. The rhetorical

De Inventione was the most popular of all Cicero's works.

52. On the poetical quotations, all in the present work from Greek or;ginals, whether

by way of earlier Latin versions or adaptations, or Cicero's own versions (d. 2.26) see Jocelyn

(2). He notes that the verse passages 'pullulate' in Tusc. and finds tb;s 'odd' if Cicem's

method is Academic, as is explicitly stated. But this attempt to relate the practice ~o

particular schools creates two problems: Stoics, from Chrysippus onwards (on his extravagances

cf. D. L. 7.180-1) to Cicero's contemporary Diogenes (2.26), certainly quoted verse, yet in Fin.

3 no such quotations appear, strangely, accqding to Jocelyn. but evidently because Cicero was

making his exposition there, and his criticisms in Book 4, of Stoic ethics concentrate on their

liesthetically unattrtactivp use of tight syllogistic argument. As to the abundance of quotation

in Tusc., Jocelyn sees it as perhaps a reminder of their use in consolatory or epitaphic

speeches, but it is due to the schola-tradition: many of the examples (see Jocelyn p.87 on 2.60)

were already in that tradition. Fin. 2.2 shows that Academics as much as Stoics produced

discourses which could be classed as scholae, and Philo himself is cited (2.26) as quoting verse

'in the proper fashion' according to Cicero. For references to much relevant comment by

Jocelyn on individual passages see nn. ad.loc. On the use of anecdote cf. n. on 2.42.

53. CL my n. on L 7 ('declaim'). 54. Henry's completion (1934) of Dougan's edition shows a slight change of emphasis on this question, but A. Grilli is still confident that in Tusc. II we have little more than a transcription of Panaetius. . 55. E.g. the doxographies, catalogues of philosophical opinions, in 2.15, 5.84-5 and many examples elsewhere, with which perhaps should be included the Stoic definitions in 4.15ff. which can be exactly paralleled in D.L.7.111-116. That Poncelet (see Bibliography) was in some respects unduly censorious of Cicero, 56. though offering much intriguing detail, I have suggested in Douglas (1) 48~50 and (3) 34. 57. Fin. 1.6, Off. 1.6. 58. Hermes 46 (1911) 626ff. 59. See the n. on 2.3 ('from that there had arisen ... )

TUSCULAN DISPIITATIONS II

16]

TUSCULAl'l DISPUTATIONS 1I

1. Neoptolemus quidem apud Ennium philosophari sibi ait necesse esse, sed paucis: ego autem, Brute, necesse mihi quidem esse arbitror philosophari ~ nam quid possum, praesertim nihil agens, agere melius? sed non paucis, ut ille. Difficile est enim in philosophia pauca esse ei nota, cui non sint aut pleraque aut omnia: nam nee pauca nisi e multis eligi possunt nec qui pauca perceperit non idem reliqua eodem studio persequetur. 2. Sed tamen in vita occupata atque, ut Neoptolemi tum erat, militari pauca ipsa multum saepe prosunt et ferunt fructus, si non tantos, quanti el universa philosophia percipi possunt, tamen eos, quibus aliqua ex parte interdum aut cupiditate aut aegritudine aut metu liberemur~ velut ex ea disputatione, quae mihi nuper habita est in Tusculano magna videbatUl mortis effecta contemptio, quae non minimum valet ad animum mett liberandum: nam qui id, quod vitari non potest, metuit. is vivere animc quieto nullo modo potest; sed qui, non modo quia necesse est mori, verult etiam quia nihil habet mors quod sit horrendum, mortem non timet. magnum is sibi praesidium ad beatam vitam comparavit. 3. Quamquam non sumus ignari multos studiose contra esse dicturos quod vitare nullo modo potuimus, nisi nihil omnino scriberemus. Etenirr si orationes, quas nos multitudinis iudicio probari volebamus - popularis eS' enim illa facultas et effectus eloquentiae est audientium approbatio - sed s reperiebantur non nulli qui nihil laudarent nisi quod se imitari OOSS! confiderent, quemque sperandi sibi, eundem bene dicendi Lnen proponerent, et, cum obruerentur copia sententiarum atque verborum ieiunitatem et famem se malle quam ubertatem et copiam dicerent, undt erat exortum genus Atticorum Us ipsis, qui id sequi se profitebantur ignotum, qui iam conticuerunt paene ab ipso foro irrisi: quid futurun putamus, cum adiutore populo, quo utebamur antea, nunc minime nos ut posse videamus? 4. Est enim philosophia paucis contenta iudicibus, multitudinem consultl ipsa fugiens eique ipsi et suspecta et invisa, ut vel si quis universam veli vituperare, secundo id populo facere possit, vel si in earn, quam no maxime sequimur, conetur invadere, magna habere possit auxilia a

TUSCULAl"f DISPUT/\.'.fION3 II

(17

1. Neoptolemus in Ennius's play says that he has to study philosophy but only on a few points, for he does not approve of total commitment to it. I for my part, Brutus, think that I must study philosophy - for how can I occupy myself better, especially as I am unoccupied? - but not, like him, only on a few points. For it is difficult in philosophy for just a few things to be known to some one who does not know most things or everything. Those few things can only be selected from the many, nor will the man who has once grasped a few fail to pursue the rest with the same enthusiasm. 2. But still in a busy life, such as Neoptolemus's was, that of a soldier, those few things often are of great benefit and bear fruit, if not as great as can be gained from the whole of philosophy, still such as can free us to some extent on occasion from desire or mental distress or fear. For instance, the outcome of that discussion which I had just now at my Tusculan villa was great contempt for death, something which contributes substantially to freeing the mind from fear. Anyone who fears something inevitable cannot possibly live with a mind at peace, but the man who does not fear death not only because one is bound to die, but also because there is nothing to be dreaded in death, has won for himself a powerful means of ensuring a happy life. 3. All the same I am well aware that many people will criticise me strenuously - I couldn't have avoided that except by writing nothing at all. If my speeches for which I hoped to gain the approval of the people at large - that skill involves popular appeal and the success of eloquence lies in the approval of the audience - but if some people emerged who praised nothing except what they were sure they could imitate successfully themselves, and when they were drowned in a flood of thoughts and words, they said that they preferred a lean and hungry look to richness and abundance, and from that there had arisen the Attic style, with which those very people who claimed to follow it were unacquainted, and they have already fallen silent, ridiculed, you could say, by the forum itself - what do we suppose will happen now, when we realise that we cannot enjoy the support of the people which we used to have? 4. Philosophy is content with just a few judges, itself deliberately fleeing the multitude and suspected and loathed by that very body, so that whoever wants to attack philosophy as a whole can do it with popular support, or if he wants to make an onslaught on the particular philosophy which I follow,

18] TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS II reliquorum philosophorum disciplinis. Nos autem universae philosophiae vituperatoribus respondimus in Hortensio, pro Academia autem quae dicenda essent satis accurate in Academicis quattuor libris explicata arbritramur; sed tamen tantum abest ut scribi contra nos nolimus, ut id etiam maxime optemus; in ipsa enim Graecia philosophia tanto in honore numquam fuisset, nisi doetissimorum contentionibus dissensionibusque viguisset. 5. Quam ob rem hortor omnes, qui facere id possunt, ut huius quoque generis laudem iam languenti Graeciae eripiant et transferant in hane urbem, sicut reliquas omnes, quae quidem erant expetendae, studio atque. industria sua maiores nostri transtulerunt. Atque oratorum quidem laus ita dueta ab humili venit ad summum, ut iam, quod natura fert in omnibus fere rebus, senese at brevique tempore ad nihilum ventura videatur, philosophia nascatur Latinis quidem litteris ex his temporibus eamque nos adiuvemus, nosque ipsos redargui refellique patiamur. Quod ii ferunt animo iniquo, qui eertis quibusdam destinatisque sententiis quasi addicti et eonsecrati sunt eaque necessitate constricti, ut, etiam quae non probare soleant, ea cogantur constantiae causa defendere: nos, qui sequimur probabilia nec ultra quam ad id, quod veri simile occurrit, progredi possumus, et refellere sine pertinacia et refelli sine iracundia parati sumus. 6. Quod si haec studia tradueta erunt ad nostros, ne bibliothecis quidem Graecis egebimus, in quibus multitudo infinita librorum propter eorum est multitudinem, qui scripserunt; eadem enim dicuntur a multis, ex quo libris omnia referserunt: quod accidet edam nostris, si ad haec studia plures eonfluxerunt. Sed eos, si possumus, excitemus, qui liberaliter eruditi adhibita etiam disserendi elegantia ratione et via philosophantur. 7. Est enim quoddam genus eorum, qui se philosophos appellari volunt, quorum dicuntur esse Latini sane multi libri, quos non contemno equidem quippe quos numquam legerim; sed quia profitentur ipsi illi, qui eoS scribunt, se neque distincte neque distribute neque eleganter neque ornate scribere, lectionem sine ulla delectatione negligo. Quid enim dicant et quid senti ant ii, qui sunt ab ea disciplina, nemo ne mediocriter quidem doctus ignorat. Quam ob rem, quoniam quem ad modum dicant ipsi non laborant, cur legendi nisi ipsi inter se, qui idem sentiunt, non intelligo. 8. Nam ut Platonem reliquosque Socraticos et deinceps eos, qui ab hiS profeeti sunt, legunt omnes, etiam qui illa aut non approbant aut non

TUSCULAN DISPUTA TIO~;S

n

f1 q

he can have great assistance from the teachings of the other p:liloscpher5. But I have replied to the critics of philosophy as a whole in Hortensius, and what had to be said on behalf of the Academy 1 think J have expounded in sufficient detail in the four books of the Acaderftlca. None the less I am so far from being unwilling to be criticised that it is what I particularly want. In Greece itself philosophy would never have been honoured so highly if the controversies and disagreements of men of great learning had not given it vigour. 5. So I beg all of you who have the ability t to seize distinction in this genre too from the now enfeebled grasp of Greece and remove it to this city. just as our ancestors brought over by their energy and industry all the other kinds of distinction, at least those which were desirable. Reputation for oratory in particular was brought in this way from a low level and reached a peak, so that now, as is Nature's way with practically everything, it is growing old and seems likely soon to disappear altogether, while philosophy so far as Latin is concerned, is being born out of present circumstances, and we are assisting it and allow ourselves to be answered and refuted. This upsets those who are so to speak enslaved and dedicated to certain fixed and definite opinions, and are bound by a necessity which compels them actually to defend for consistency's sake positions of which they don't normally approve. But we who see what is likely and can advance only as far as what presents itself as probable, are ready to refute without aggressiveness and be refuted without losing our tempers. 6. So if these studies are brought over to the Romans, we shall not even need the Greek libraries in which there is an endless throng of books because of the throng of those who have written them. Many writers say the same things, and as a result they have stuffed the world with books. This will happen to the Romans too, if too many flood into these studies. But let us rouse up, if we can, those with a liberal education who philosophise methodically while also employing a correct style of discourse. 7. There is a class of people wanting to be called philosophers, who are said to have produced many books actually in Latin. For my part I don't despise them - I've never read them. But since those selfsame writers proclaim that what they write is neither systematic nor properly subdivided nor correct nor polished in style, I pass by reading what would bring no pleasure. What the adherents of that school say and believe, everyone with the slightest education knows. Since they themselves are unconcerned about how they express their views, I do not see why they need to be read except to each other by those who hold the same views. 8. For, just as Plato and the other Socratic writers and then those who descended from them are read by everybody, even those who disagree with

20] TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS II studiosissime consectantur, Epicurum autem et Metrodorum non fere praeter suos quisquam in manus sumit, sic hos Latinos ii soli legunt, qui illa recte dici putant. Nobis autem videtur, quidquid litteris mandetur, id commendari omnium eruditorum lectioni decere; nee, si id ipsi minus consequi possumus, idcirco minus id ita faciendum esse sentimus. 9. Itaque mihi Peripateticorum Academiaeque consuetudo· de omnibus rebus in contrarias partes disserendi non ob earn causam solum placuit, quod aliter non posset quid in quaque re veri simile esset inveniri, sed etiam quod esset ea maxima dicendi exercitatio; qua princeps usus est Aristoteles, deinde eum qui secuti sunt. Nostra autem memoria Philo, quem nos frequenter audivimus, instituit alio tempore rhetorum praecepta tradere, alio philosophorum: ad quam nos consuetudinem a familiaribus nostris adducti, in Tusculano, quod datum est temporis nobis, in eo consumpsimus. Itaque cum ante meridiem dictioni operam dedissemus, sicut pridie feceramus, post meridiem in Academiam descendimus, in qua disputationem habitam non quasi narrantes exponimus, sed eisdem fere verbis, ut actum disputatumque est. to. Est igitur ambulantibus ad hunc modum sermo ille nobis institutus et a tali quodam ductus exordio: A. Dici non potest quam sim hesterna disputatione tua delectatus vel potius adiutus; etsi enim mihi sum conscius numquam me nimis vitae cupidum fuisse, tamen interdum obiiciebatur animo metus quidam et dolor cogitanti fore ali quando finem huius lucis et amissionem omnium vitae commodorum. Hoc genere molestiae sic, mihi crede, sum liberatus, ut nihil minus curandum putem. 11. M. Minime mirum id quidem ~ nam efficit hoc philosophia: medetur animis, inanes sollicitudines detrahit, cupiditatibus liberat, pellit timores. Sed haec eius vis non idem potest apud omnes: tum valet multum, cum est idoneam complexa naturam. 'Fortes' enim non modo 'fortuna adiuvat', uf est in vetere proverbio, sed multo magis ratio, quae quibusdam quasi praeceptis confirmat vim fortitudinis. Te natura excelsum quenda11l videlicet et altum et humana despicientem genuit; itaque facile in animo forti contra mortem habita insedit oratio. Sed haec eadem num cens~ apud eos ipsos valere nisi admodum paucos, a quibus inventa, disputata conscripta sunt? Quotus enim quisque philosophorum invenitur qui sit ita l

'SCUt.AJ.Xf D1SPUTATIO~S II [21 their views or follow them with no great enthusiasm, but hardly anybody picks up Epicurus and Metrodorus except their own disciples, so the only readers of those Latin books are those who hold their contents to be correct. My own view is that whatever is committed to writing must be fit to be recommended for reading by all educated people: nor, if I myself cannot achieve that, do I think that there is any the less obligation on that account to do it like that. 9. So I have always favoured the practice of the Peripatetics and the Academy of debating all topics from opposite standpoints, not only because it was the only way of discovering in each case what was the more probable, but also because it was the most effective training in expression. Aristotle employed the method first, then his followers. Now in our own day Philo, whose lectures I attended, made it his practice to give instruction in rhetoric at one time, and in philosophy at another. I was persuaded by my friends to adopt this practice at my Tusculan villa, and passed the available time in it. So after we had devoted our efforts to oratory in the morning, as we had done the day before, we went down into my Academy in the afternoon. I am setting out the discussion that took place, not in narrative form, but in more or less the very words in which the discussion was conducted. 10. Well then, as we walked about, the conversation started like this with this kind of prologue: A. It's impossible to say how much pleasure or rather profit I gained from your discussion yesterday. Even if I am conscious that 1 have never clung to life excessively, still a sort of fear and pain sometimes presented itself to my mind when I reflected that eventually I would experience an ending of the light and a loss of all life's pleasures. Believe me, I have been so effectively freed from this kind of distress that I think nothing calls for less anxiety. 11. M. That is not at all surprising. It is what philosophy achieves. It heals the spirit, removes pointless worries, frees fl')l11 desires, drives away fears. But the power it has does not work equally with everybody. It is very effective whenever it takes to itself a suitable character. It is not only Fortune that 'favours the brave', as the old proverb has it, but much more it is Reason, which stabilises the power of courage by giving instructions, as it were. In you Nature has produced one high and lofty and contemptuous of human things. So a discourse against death easily found its home in a valiant spirit. But you surely don't suppose that these same arguments are effective with those very people, except just a few, by whom they have been thought up, discussed and recorded in writing. How few philosophers can be found whose characters, whose souls and way of

22] TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS II moratus t ita animo ac vita constitutus, ut ratio postulat? qui disciplinam suam non ostentationem scientiae, sed legem vitae putet? qui obtemperet ipse sibi et decretis suis pareat? 12. Videre licet alios tanta levitate et iactatione, ut iis fuerit non didicisse melius, alios pecuniae cupidos, gloriae non nullos, multos Iibidinum servos, ut cum eorum vita mirabiliter pugnet oratio; quod quidem mihi videtur esse turpissimum. Ut enim si grammaticum se professus quispiam barbare loquatur aut si absurde canat is, qui se haberi vetit musieum, hoc turpior sit, quod in eo ipso peccet, cuius profiteatur scientiam, sic. philosophus in vitae ratione peccans hoc turpior est, quod in officio,' cuius magister esse vult, labitur, artemque vitae professus delinquit in vita. A. Nonne verendum est igitur, si est ita ut dieis, ne philosophiam falsa gloria exornes? Quod est enim maius argumentum nihil earn prodesse quam quosdam perfectos philosophos turpiter vivere? 13. M. Nullum vero id quidem argumentum est: nam ut agri non ornne! frugiferi sunt, qui coluntur, falsumque illud Accii:

Probae etsi in segetem sunt deteriorem datae Fruges, tamen ipsae suapte natura enitent, sic amml non omnes culti fructum ferunt. Atque, ut in eodem simil verser, ut ager quamvis fertiUs sine cultura fructuosus esse non potest, sil sine doctrina animus. Ita est utraque res sine altera debilis. Cultun autem animi philosophia est: haec extrahit vitia radieitus et praepara animas ad satus accipiendos eaque mandat Us et, ut ita dicam, serit, qual adulta fructus uberrimos ferant. Agamus igitur, ut coepimus. Die, si vis de quo disputari velis. 14. A. Dolorem existimo maximum malorum omnium. M. Etiamne maiu quam dedecus? A. Non audeo id quidem dicere et me pudet tam cito d M. Magis esset pudendum, si in sententi. sententia esse deiectum. permaneres. Quid enim minus est dignum quam tibi peius quidquam videl dedecore, flagitio, turpitudine, quae ut effugias, quis est non modo no: recusandus, sed non ultro appetendus, subeundus, excipiendus dolor? A Ita prorsus existimo. Qua re ne sit sane summum malum dolor, malur certe est. M. Videsne igitur quantum breviter admonitus de dol oris terror deieceris? 15. A. Video plane, sed plus desidero. M. Experiar equidem, sed magn res est, animoque mihi opus est non repugnante. A. Habebis id quiderr Ut enim heri feci, sie nunc rationem quo ea me cumque ducet sequar.

TUSCUL~N D1SPUT~.TIONS

1I

life, are constituted as Reason demands, who think their own teaching not an empty display of learning but a rule of life, who listen to themselves and obey their own pronouncements! 12. You can see some so frivolous and vain that it would have been better for them not to have studied, others greedy for money, some for fame, many slaves to their ]usts, so that their words are wonderfully at odds with the way they live. I think that .is utterly shameful. If a man who claimed to teach grammar spoke ungrammatically, or if one w90 wanted to be regarded as a musician sang out of tune, it would be the more shameful because he blunders in the very thing of which he professes knowledge. In the same way a philosopher who is at fault in his way of life is the more shameful, because he falls down in the task of which he claims to be a master, and as a professor of the science of living is a failure in living. A. Then mustn't we be afraid, if it is as you say, that you are adorning philosophy with a spurious glory? What stronger proof is there that it is of no benefit than that some fully trained philosophers lead disgraceful lives? 13. M. But that is no proof. Just as not all cultivated fields are fertile, and Accius was wrong to say: 'Even if good seeds are sown in a poor soil, still by their own nature they crop splendidly' - so not all cultivated minds bear fruit. And, to keep up the same simile, just as a field however fertile cannot be fruitful without cultivation, neither can the soul without instruction. Each is powerless without the other. Now the cultivation of the soul is philosophy. It tears out vices by the roots and prepares the soul to receive the sowings, and commits to them and so to speak sows those seeds which will bear the most abundant crops on coming to maturity. So let us go on as we have begun. Tell me please what you want to have discussed. 14. A. I think that pain is the greatest of all evils. M. Even greater than dishonour? A. I don't venture to say that, and I feel ashamed at having been forced from my view so quickly. M. It would have been more shameful if you had stuck to it. Nothing could be less worthy of you than to think anything worse than dishonour, infamous behaviour, and wickedness. To escape these, any pain is not so much to be avoided as to be sought voluntarily, undergone and welcomed. A. That is exactly what I think. So, granted that pain is not the ultimate evil, it is certainly an evil. M. Well then, do you see how much of the fear of pain you have thrown overboard after just a brief hint? 15. A. Indeed I do, but I want more. M. I'll do my best, but it's a big task, and I need a mind that is open to conviction. A. That you shall have. Just as I did yesterday, so now I shall follow the argument wherever

24]

TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS II Primum igitur de imbecillitate multorum et de varUs disciplinis philosophorum loquar, quorum princeps et auctoritate et antiquitate, Socraticus Aristippus, non dubitavit summum malum dolorem dicere; deinde ad hanc enervatam muliebremque sententiam satis docilem se Epicurus praebuit; hunc post Rhodius Hieronymus vacare dolore summum bonum dixit: tantum in dolore duxit mali. Ceteri praeter Zenonem Aristonem, Pyrrhonem idem fere quod modo tu: malum illud quidem, sed alia peiora. 16. Ergo id, quod natura ipsa et quaedam generosa virtus statim respuit, ne esse dolorem summum malum diceres oppositoque dedecore sententia depellerere, in eo magistra vitae philosophia tot saecula permanet. Quod huic officium, quae laus, quod decus erit tand quod adipisci cum dolore corporis velit, qui dolorem summum malum sibi esse persuaserit? Quam porro quis ignominiam, quam turpitudinem non pertulerit, ut effugiat dolorem, si id summum malum esse decreverit? Quis autem non miser non modo tunc, cum premetur summis doloribus, si in iis est summum malum, sed etiam cum sciet id sibi posse evenire? et quis est cui non possit? Ita fit ut omnino nemo esse possit beat us. 17. Metrodorus quidem perfecte eum beatum putat, cui corpus bene constitutum sit et exploratum ita semper fore: quis autem est iste cui id exploratum possit esse? Epicurus vero ea dicit, ut mihi quidem risus captare videatur. Adfirmat enim quod am loco, si uratur sapiens, si crucietur t exspectas fortasse dum dicat, 'natietur, perferet, non succumbet': magna mehercule Iaus et eo ipso, per quem iuravi, Hercule digna, sed Epicuro, homine aspero et duro, non est hoc satis: in Phalaridis tauro si erit, dicet: 'Quam suave est. quam hoc non curol' Suave etiam? an parum est, si non amarum? At id quidem illi ipsi, qui dolorem malum esse negant, not: solent dicere, cuiquam suave esse cruciari: asperum, difficile, odiosullll contra naturam dicunt, nec tamen malum: hic, qui solum hoc malum dicil et malorum omnium extremum, sapientem censet id suave dicturum. 18. Ego a te non postulo, ut dolorem eisdem verbis adficias quibU Epicurus voluptatem, homo, ut scis, voluptarius. Ille dixerit sane idem ir Pb.alaridis tauro, quod, si esset in lectulo: ego tantam vim non tribU( sapientiae contra dolorem. Si fortis in perferendo, officio satis est; u laetetur etiam, non postulo; tristis enim res est sine dubio, aspera, amara

TUSCu"LAN DISPUTATIONS II [25 it leads me. M. First then let me speak of the feebleness of many philosophers of various schools. Aristippus the Socratic is first both in authority and in antiquity of those who have not hesitated to call pain the ultimate evil. Next, to this limp and womanish sentiment Epicurus showed himself responsive enough. After him Hieronymus of Rhodes said that freedom from pain was the ultimate good so much evil did he attribute to pain. All the rest, except Zeno, Aristo and Pyrrho, said pretty much the same as you did just now: pain is evil indeed, but other things are worse. 16. So, as to this doctrine which Nature itself and a kind of innate nobility immediately rejected, so that you could not assert that pain is the greatest evil, and when confronted with disgrace be forced to abandon your opinion - that rejection is something in which philosophy, our instructress in life, has been constant for so many ages. What obligation, what distinction, what honour will be so important to a man who has convinced himself that pain is the ultimate evil that he will be prepared to gain it at the cost of physical pain? Again, what shame, what baseness would he not accept so as to escape pain, if he had resolved that it was the greatest evil? Who is not wretched not only when actually oppressed by agonising pain, if the ultimate evil consists in that, but even when he knows it might befall him? And who is there to whom it could not befall? The result of this is that absolutely no one can be happy. 17. Metrodorus, it is true, thinks the man perfectly happy whose physical constitution is good and is assured that it will always be so. But who can have that assurance? Epicurus says such things that for my part I think he is trying to raise a laugh. For he says somewhere, that if the wise man is being burned, or tortured - you are probably waiting for him to say 'he will endure it, he will put up with it, he won't give in' a great triumph, by Hercules, and worthy of that very Hercules by whom I swore. But for Epicurus, that harsh and hard man, that is not enough. If he finds himself in Phalaris's bull, he will say 'How sweet this is! how unconcerned I am about itl' Actually 'sweet'? Isn't it enough that it isn't bitter? But those who deny that pain is an evil do not say that it is 'sweet' for anyone to be tortured. They say that it is harsh, tiresome, hateful, against nature - but still not evil. But Epicurus, who says that it is the only evil and the ultimate of all evils thinks that the wise man will call it 'sweet'. 18. I don't ask you to describe pain in the same terms as Epicurus describes pleasure: he was a man, as you know, devoted to pleasure. Suppose him to say the same in Phalaris's bull as he would in bed: I do not grant wisdom so much power against pain. If a man is brave in enduring it, that meets the call of duty. That he should actually enjoy

26] TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS II inimica naturae, ad patiendum tolerandumque difficilis. 19. Aspice Philoctetam, cui concedendum est gementi; ipsum enim Herculem viderat in Oeta magnitudine dolorum eiulantem. Nihil igitur hunc virum sagittae, quas ab Hercule acceperat, tum consolantur, cum E vi perino morsu venae viscerum Veneno imbutae taetros cruciatus cient.

Haque exclamat auxilium expetens, mori cupiens: Heu! quis salsis fluctibus mandet Me ex sub limo vertice saxi ? lam iam absumor: conficit animam V is volneris ulceris aestus. J

Difficile dictu videtur eum non in malo esse et magno quidem, qui ita c1amare cogatur. 20. Sed videamus Herculem ipsum, qui tum dolore frangebatur, cum immortalitatem ipsa morte quaerebat: quas hie voces apud Sophoclem in Trachiniis edit! cui cum Deianira sanguine Centauri tinctam tunicam induisset inhaesissetque ea visceribus, ait ille:

o multa dictu gravia,

perpessu aspera, Quae cor pore exanclata atque animo pertulif Nec mihi Iunonis terror implacabi/is Nee tantum invexit tristis Eurystheus mali, Quantum una vaecors Oenei partu edita. Haec me irretivit veste furiali inscium, Quae lateri inhaerens morsu lacerat viscera Urguensque graviter pulmonum hauri! spiritus: lam decolorem sanguinem omnem exsorbuit, Sic cor pus clade horribili absumptum extabuit: Ipse Uli gatus peste interemor textili. Hos non hostilis dextra, non Terra edita Moles Gigantum, non biformato impezu Centaurus ictus corpori inflixit meo, Non Graia vis, non barbara ulla immanitas, Non saeva terris gens relegata ultimis, Quas peragrans undique omnem ecferitaem expuli: Sed feminae vir, feminea interemor manu. Onate, vere hoc nomen usurpa patri,

TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS II [27 himself I do not ask. It is surely a sad matter, harsh, bitter, hostile to nature, and hard to bear and endure. 19. Look at Philoctetes, who must be forgiven when he groans: he had seen Hercules himself on Oeta howling with the intensity of his pain. So the arrows which he had received from Hercules were no consolation to him at the moment when 'the veins within his flesh, steeped in blood from the viper's bite, stir up foul torments', and so he cries out, appealing for help, as he wishes to die, 'Ah! who is to commit me to the salty waves from the high crag's peak? Now, now I am devoured. The power of the wound, the ulcer's fever destroy my soul.' It seems a hard saying that a man who is driven to cry out like that is not suffering an evil, and a great one too. 20. But let us consider Hercules himself, who was broken by pain at the very time when he was winning immortality by death itself. What sounds he utters in Sophocles' Trachiniae! When Deianeira had clothed him in the tunic dyed in the Centaur's blood, and it had sunk into his flesh, he says: '0 multitude of sufferings, heavy to relate, painful to suffer, which I have endured and borne in body and mind! Neither Juno's implacable frightfulness nor harsh Eurystheus brought so much woe upon me as one crazed woman, Oeneus' daughter. She has ensnared me unawares in this Fury's garment, which clings to my side, tears deep into my flesh with its teeth, and pressing heavily upon me, drains the breath from my lungs. Already it has sucked up all my pale blood. So my body has been consumed by the dreadful catastrophe and wasted away. I, even I, am being destroyed, entangled in this woven death. These blows no enemy's hand, no earth-born massive Giants, no Centaur attacking in double form has inflicted on my body, nor violence of Greeks, any barbarian savagery, or fierce tribe banished to the ends of the earth, but I, a man, am slain by a woman's female hand. My son, make this name truly yours for your

28]

TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS II

Ne me occidentem matris superet caritas. Huc adripe adme manibus abstractam piis. lam cernam mene an illam potiorem putes. 21. Perge, aude, nate, illacrima patris pestibus,

Miserere! Gentes nostras flebunt miserias.

Heu! virginalem me ore ploratum edere,

Quem vidit nemo ulli ingemescentem malo!

Ecfeminata virtus adflicta occidit.

Accede, nate, adsiste, miserandum apsice

Eviscerati corpus laceratum patris!

Videte, cuncti, tuque, caelestum sator,

lace, obsecro, in me vim coruscam fulminis,

Nunc, nunc dolorum anxiferi torquent vertices,

Nunc serpit ardor. 0 ante victrices manus!

22. 0 pectora, 0 terga, 0 lacertorum tori!

Vestrone pressu quondam Nemeaeus leo

Frendens efflavit graviter extremum halitum?

Haec dextra Lernam, taetra mactata excetra,

Pacavit, haec bicorporem adflixit manum,

Erymanthiam haec vastificam abiecit beluam,

Haec e Tartarea tenebrica abstractam plaga

Tricipitem eduxit Hydra generatum canem:

Haec interemit tortu multiplicabili

Draconem auriferam obtutu adservantem arborem:

Multa alia victrix nostra lustravit manus,

Nec qUisquam e nostris spolia cepit laudibus.

Possumusne nos contemnere dolorem, cum ipsum Herculem talll intoleranter dolere videamus? 23. Veniat Aeschylus, non poeta solum, sed etiam Pythagoreus; sic enilll accepimus. Quo modo fert apud eum Prometheus dolorem, quem excipit ob furtum Lemnium!

Unde ignis cluet mortalibus clam

Divisus: eum doctus Prometheus

Clepsisse dolo poenasque lovi

Fato expendisse supremo. Has igitur poenas pendens, adfixus ad Caucasum, dicit haec:

Titanum suboles, socia nostr; sanguinis,

TUSCUI...AN DISPUTATIONS II [29 father; let not your love for your mother defeat me as I die. With loyal hands seize her and drag her here to me; then I shall I know whether you prefer me or her. 21. Go, be brave, my son. Weep at your father's destruction. Pity me: the nations will lament my woes. Oh, that I should utter girlish laJllentations, when no one has ever seen me groaning at any distress. My courage is made a woman's and fails, beaten to the ground. Come, my son, stand near me. Gaze on the pitiful torn and mangled body of your father. Look, all of you, and do you, father of the gods, cast on me, I beg you, the flashing fire of your thunderbolt. Now, now the strangling peaks of pain torment me, now the burning creeps on. 0 hands once victorious, 22. 0 breast, 0 back, 0 my arms' sinews, was it once with your pressure that Nemea's lion, gnashing its teeth, breathed out its last painful gasp? Did this right hand bring peace to Lerna by slaying the foul serpent? Did this bring low the two-bodied band? Did this cast down the ravaging beast of Erymanthus? Did this seize and bring up from the shadowy realm of Tartarus the three-headed dog born of the Hydra? Did this destroy the many-coiled dragon which kept watchful guard over the gold-bearing tree? In many other enterprises my victorious hand has engaged, nor has any gained spoils at the expense of my fame.' Can we think little of pain when we see Hercules himself experiencing it with so little endurance? 23. Let Aeschylus step forward, not merely a poet, but a Pythagorean as well, or so we have been told. In his play, how does Prometheus bear the pain which he suffers for his theft at Lemnos 'whence it is said fire was distributed secretly to mortals; wise Prometheus stole it by a trick and was doomed to pay the penalty to highest Jupiter'? So, as he pays the penalty nailed to the Caucasus, he says: '0 race of Titans, partners in our blood, born of Heaven, see me tied

30]

TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS II

Generata Caelo, aspicite religatum asperis

V inctumque saxis, navem ut horrisono freto

Noctem paventes timidi adnectunt navitae.

Salurnius me sic infixit luppiter,

lovisque numen Mulciberi ascivit manus.

Hos ille cuneos fabrica crudeli inserens

Perrupit artus: qua miser sollertia

Transverberatus castrum hoc Furiarum incolo.

24. lam tertia me quoque funesto die

Tristi advolatu aduncis lacerans unguibus

lovEs satelles pastu dilaniat fero.

Tum iecore opimo farta et satiata adfatim

Clangorem fundit vastum et sublime avolans

Pinnata cauda nostrum adulat sanguinem.

Cum vero adesum inflatu renovatum est iecur

Tum rursus taetros avida se ad pastus refert.

Sic hanc custodem maesti cruciatus alo,

Quae me perenni vivum foedat miseria.

Namque. ut videlis vinclis constrictus lovis,

Arcere nequeo diram volucrem a pectore.

25. Sic me ipse viduus pestes excipio anxias,

Amore mortis terminum anquirens mali.

Sed longe a leta numine aspellor lovis.

Atque haec vetusta saeclis glomerata horridis

Lucti fica clades nostro in fixa est corpori,

E quo liquatae solis ardore excidunt

Guttae quae saxa adsidue instillant Caucasi.

1

1

Vix igitur posse videmur ita adfectum non miserum dicere, et, si hunc miserum, certe dolorem malum. 26. A. Tu quidem adhuc meam causam agis. Sed hoc mox videro. Interea unde isti versus? Non enim agnosco. M. Dicam hercle; eteniID recte requiris. Videsne abundare me otio? A. Quid tum? M. Fuisti saepe, credo, cum Athenis esses, in scholis philosophorum. A. Vero, aC libenter quidem. M. Animadvertebas igitur, etsi tum nemo erat admodulD copiosus, verum tamen versus ab his admisceri orationi. A. Ac multO! qu idem a Dionysio Stoico. M. Probe dicis. Sed is quasi dictata, nullo! delectu, nulla e1egantia. Philo ut propria et tecta poemata et loee adiungebat. Haque postquam adamavi hanc quasi senilem declamationerll, studiose equidem utor nostris poetis, sed, sicubi illi defecerunt, verti etia!11 multa de Graecis, ne quo ornamento in hoc genere disputationis carere1

TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS II [31 and bound to savage rocks, as timorous sailors, fearing the night on the dread-sounding sea, tie up their ships. Saturn's son, Jupiter, has impaled me thus, and Jupiter's power enlisted the hands of Mulciber. He broke through my limbs, driving these wedges with brutal workmanship. Pierced through by that skill of his, I dwell in misery in this fortress of the Furies. 24. 'Each alternate mournful day, with harsh winged approach, Jupiter's attendant tears me with hooked talons and mangles me to make its savage repast. Then stuffed and well sated with my rich liver, it utters a huge scream and, flying away aloft, with its feathered tail wipes off my blood. When my liver, so eaten away, has grown large and been renewed, then it returns aglin to its horrible pasture. So I feed it, the guard over my sad tonnent, which befouls me yet living with eternal wretchedness. For, as you see, constrained by Jupiter's fetters, I cannot keep the dread bird away from my breast. 25. So bereft of myself I suffer tormenting plagues, with longing for death seeking an end to my woe. But by Jupiter's power I am kept far from death, and this grievous misfortune, ancient, heaped up through dreadful ages, is implanted in my body, from which drops fall, melted by the heat of the sun, and drip constantly on the rocks of Caucasus.' I think we are hardly in a position to say that some one affected like that is not wretched, and if we call him wretched, certainly pain is an evil. 26. A. Up to now you are arguing my case, but I'll concern myself with this in a moment. Meanwhile, where are those verses from? I don't recognise them. M. I'll be happy to tell you: that is a proper question. You see I have a lot of free time? A. Well? M. When you were at Athens, you often attended the schools of the philosophers. A. Certainly, and I enjoyed it. M. Then you noticed that even if at that time therer was no one very fluent, all the same they included verses in their discourses. A. Yes, and Dionysius the Stoic included a great many. M. That's true. But he did it mechanically, at random and without taste. But Philo introduced verse-pieces as if they were original, and well-chosen and apt. So now that I have fallen in love with this sort of 'declamation of the elderly', I make a point of using Roman poets. But whenever they are lacking, I have produced my own extensive translations from the Greeks, so that Latin discourse should not lack any adornment in this type of discussion.

32] TUSCULAt~ DISPUTATIONS II Latina oratio. 27. Sed videsne poetae quid mali adferant? Lamentantes inducunt fortissimos viros, molliunt animos nostros, ita sunt deinde du1ces, ut non legantur modo, sed edam ediscantur. Sic ad malam domesticam disciplinam vitamque umbratilem et delicatam cum accesserunt etiam poetae, nervos omnes virtutis elidunt. Recte igitur a Platone eiiciuntur ex ea civitate, quam finxit ille cum optimos mores et optimum rei publicae statum exquireret. At vero nos, docti scilicet a Graecia, haec a pueritia et legimus et discimus, hanc eruditionem liberal em et doctrinam pu~amus. 28. Sed quid poetis irascimur? Virtutis magistri, philosophi, inventi sunt qui summum malum dolor em dicerent. At tu, adolescens, cum id tibi paullo ante dixisses videri, rogatus a me etiamne maius quam dedecus, verbo de sententia destitisti. Roga hoc idem Epicurum: maius dicet esse malum mediocrem dolorem quam maximum dedecus; in ipso enim dedecore mali nihil esse, nisi sequantur dolores. Quis igitur Epicurum sequitur dolor, cum hoc ipsum dicit, summum malum esse dolorem? quo dedecus maius a philosopho nullum exspecto. Qua re satis mihi dedisti, cum respondisti maius tibi videri malum dedecus quam dolorem. Hoc ipsum enim si tenebis, intelliges quam sit obsistendum dolori; nee tam quaerendum est dolor malumne sit quam firmandus animus ad doloreril ferendum. 29. Concludunt ratiunculas Stoici cur non sit malum, quasi de verbo, non de re laboretur. Quid me decipis, Zeno? Nam cum id, quod mihi horribile videtur, tum omnino malum negas esse, capior et scire cupio quo modo id, quod ego miserrimum existimem, ne malum quidem sit. - 'Nihil est,' inquit, 'malum nisi quod turpe atque vitiosum est.' Ad ineptias redis. Illud enim, quod me angebat, non eximis. Scio dolorem non esse nequitiam; desine id me docere; hoc doce, dole am necne doleam nihil interesse. - 'Numquam quidquam,' inquit lad beate quidem vivendum, quod est in una virtute positum, sed est tamen reiiciendum.' Cur? I Asperut'll est, contra naturam, difficile perpessu, triste, durum.' 30. Haec est copia verborum, quod omnes uno verba malum appellamus, id tot modis posse dicere. Definis tu mihi, non tollis dolorem, cum dids asperum, contra naturam, vix quod ferri tolerarique possit, nec mentiris, sed re succumbere non oportebat, verbis gloriantem. Nihil bonum nisi quod honestum, nihil malum nisi quod turpe: optare hoc quidem est, no~ docere. Illud et melius et verius, omnia, quae natura aspernetur, in mali!

TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS II [33 27. But do you see what harm the poets inflict? They introduce 'great heroes wailing, they enfeeble our souls, and on top of that are so agreeable that they are not only read but actually learned by heart. So when to bad home upbringing and a sheltered and dainty way of life the poets are added as well, they crush all the sinews of virtue. So Plato was right to expel them from the society which he framed in his search for the best character and the best political constitution. But we, pupils of course of Greece, read and learn off these things from childhood, and consider this to be liberal education and training. 28. But why are we so angry with the poets? Philosophers, the teachers of virtue, have been known to say that pain was the greatest evil. But you, my young friend, gave that as your opinion just now, but when I asked you if it was even greater than dishonour, you abandoned the idea at a word. Ask Epicurus that same question. He will say that a middling pain is a greater evil than the greatest dishonour, for there is no evil in dishonour as such unless pain follows. Well, what pain does Epicurus suffer when he makes that very statement, that pain is the greatest evil? I cannot imagine anything more dishonourable coming from a philosopher. So you satisfied me when you answered that you thought dishonour a greater evil than pain. If you cling to this point, you will realise how pain is to be resisted. Nor is it so important to enquire whether pain is an evil as to give the soul strength to endure it. 29. The Stoics produce little syllogisms to show why it is not a bad thing, as if the problem was about a word, not about substance. Why do you cheat me, Zeno? When you maintain' that what seems horrible is not evil at all, I am intrigued and want to know how what I consider the most wretched thing of all is not even a 'bad' thing. 'Nothing' he says 'is bad except what is base and immoral.' You're resorting to trifling. You're not disposing of the thing that was distressing me. I know pain is not wickedness. Stop proving that for me. Prove that it makes no difference whether I am in pain or not. 'Never any difference at all, that is, for the happy life, which consists in virtue alone, but it is still to be rejected.' Why? 'It is harsh, against Nature, difficult to endure, miserable, tough.' 30. That's a rich vocabulary, to have so many ways of saying what we call in a single word 'bad'. You are giving an account of pain for me, not doing away with it, when you call it harsh, against nature, scarcely to be borne or endured, and you are quite right, but you should not have given way on the substance while making much of verbal points. 'Nothing good except the morally right, nothing bad except the morally base.' That is wishful thinking, not demonstration. It is better and truer to say· that everything which Nature rejects belongs among bad things, what it accepts

34] TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS II esse: quae asciscat, in bonis. Hoc posito et verborum concertatione sublata tantum tamen excellet illud, quod recte amplexantur isti, quod honestum, quod rectum, quod decorum appellamus, quod idem interdum virtutis nomine amplectimur, ut omnia praeterea, quae bona corporis et fortunae putantur, perexigua et minuta videantur, nec malum ullum ne si in unum quidem locum collata omnia sint, cum turpitudinis malo comparanda. 31. Qua re si, ut initio concessisti, turpitudo est peius quam dolor, nihil est plane dolor; nam dum tibi turpe nee dignum viro videbitur gemere, eiulare, lamentari, frangi, debilitari dolore, dum honestas, dum dignitas, dum decus aderit, tuque in ea intuens te continebis, cedet profecto virtuti dolor, et animi inductione languescet; aut enim nulla virtus est aut contemnendus omnis dolor. Prudentiamne vis esse, sine qua ne intellegi quidem ulla virtus potest? Quid ergo? ea patieturne te quidquam facere nihil proficientem et frustra laborantem, an temperantia sinet te immoderate facere quidquam, an coli iustitia poterit ab homine propter vim doloris enuntiante commissa, prodente conscios, multa officia relinquente? 32. Quid? fortitudini comitibusque eius, magnitudini animi, gravitati, patientiae, rerum humanarum despicientiae quo modo respondebis? Adflictusne et iacens et lamentabili voce deplorans audieris: '0 viruro~ fortem'? Te vero ita adfectum ne virum quidem quisquam dixerit. Amittenda igitur fortitudo est aut sepeliendus dolor. Ecquid nescis igitur si quid de Corinthiis tuis amiseris, posse habere te reliquam supeUectilero sal vam, virtutem autem si unam amiseris, etsi amitti non potest virtus, sed si llnam confessus eris te non habere, nullam· esse te habiturum? 33. Num igitur fort em virum, num magno animo, num patientem, nuro gravem, num humana contemnentem potes dicere aut Philoctetam illum?- a te enim malo discedere; sed ille certe non fortis, qui iacet

in tecto humido Quod eiulatu, questu, gemitu, fremitibus Resonando mutum flebiles voces refert. Non ego dolorem dolorem esse nego, - cur enim fortitudo desideraretur? ~ sed eum opprimi dieo patientia, si modo est aliqua patientia: si nulla est, quid exornamus philosoophiam aut quid eius nomine gloriosi sumuS? Pungit dolor, vel fodiat sane: si nudus es, da iugulum: sin tectus Volcaniis annis, id est fortitudine, resiste. Haec enim te, nisi ita facies, custoS dignitatis relinquet et deseret.

TUSCULAl,\ DISPUTATIONS II [35 among the good. With this laid down and the dispute over words disposed of, the preeminence of that which your friends are right to embrace - what we call honourable, right, fitting and to which we also sometimes give the inclusive name of virtue - will even so be so great that all other things which are reckoned as goods of the body and of fortune appear tiny and trivial, nor is any evil either, not even if all evils were concentrated in a single place, to be compared to the evil of moral baseness. 31. So, if, as you granted at the outset, disgrace is a worse thing than pain, pain is simply nothing at all. So long as you think it disgraceful and unmanly to groan, wail, lament, be shattered and broken down by pain, so long, that is, as honour, nobility, good reputation are present, and contemplating them, you control yourself, surely pain will give ground to virtue, and grow feeble through the application of your mind. For either no Virtue exists or pain is to be made light of. Do you claim that Wisdom exists, without which it is impossible to understand what any Virtue is? Well then, will it allow you to do anything where you gain nothing and toil to no purpose? Or will Moderation allow you to do anything itnmoderately? Or can Justice be cultivated by a man who because of the violence of pain reveals secrets entrusted to him, betrays his associates, abandons many obligations? 32. Again, what answer will you give to Courage and its companions, greatness of spirit, seriousness, endurance, contempt for things human? Cast down, laid low, and lamenting with doleful voice, will you hear the words '0 valiant man!'? Nobody would even call you a man in that state. So courage must be abandoned or pain be buried. You can't be unaware that if you lose any of your Corinthian vases, you can have the rest of your property safe, but if you lose one virtue, even if a virtue can't be lost ­ but if you have once admitted that there is one you donlt have, you will have none. 33. Surely you donlt describe as brave, great-spirited, enduring, serious, contemptuous of things human, either Philoctetes in the play - I prefer to leave you out of this - but he is certainly not brave who lies 'in a dank hut which echoes with wailing, complaining, groaning and moaning, and so though dumb, repeats the melancholy sounds.' I don't deny that pain is pain - otherwise why should there be felt a need for courage? But I say that it is overcome by endurance if only there is such a thing as endurance: if there isn't, why do we sing the praises of philosophy, or why are we so boastful on its behalf? Pain stings, or grant that it positively stabs. If you are unarmed, offer your throat. But if protected by Vulcan's armour, that is, courage, fight back. Unless you do, this defender of your honour will abandon and desert you.

3Qj

HJSCULAN DISPUTA.u:0NS

34. Creturn quidem quidem sententia, ut iuventutem, venando Spartae vero pueri ad

11

leges, quas sive Iuppiter ;;ive Minos sanxit de Iovis poetae ferunt, itemque Lycurgi, laboribus erudiunt currendo, esuriendo sitiendo, algendo aestuando. aram sic verberibus accipiuntur,

Ut multus e visceribus sanguis exeat non numquam etiam, ut, cum ibi essem, audiebam, ad necem; quorum non modo nemo exclamavit umquam, sed ne ingemuit quidem. Quid ergo? hoc pueri possunt, viri non poterunt? et mos valet, ratio non valebit? 35. Interest aliquid inter laborem et dolorem. Sunt finitima omnino, sed tamen differt aliquid. Labor est functio quaedam vel animi vel corporis gravioris operis et muneris, dolor autem motus asper in corpore, alienus a sensibus. Haec duo Graeci illi, quorum copiosior est lingua quam nostra, uno nomine appellant; itaque industrios homines illi studiosos vel potius am antes doloris appellant, nos commodius laboriosos. Aliud est enim laborare, aliud dolere. 0 verborum inops inter dum , quibus abundare te semper putas, Graecia! Aliud, inquam, est dolere, aliud laborare. Cum varices secabantur C. Mario, dolebat; cum aestu magno ducebat agmen, laborabat. Est inter haec quaedam similitudo: consuetudo enim laborum perpessionem dolorum efficit faciliorem. 36. Itaque illi, qui Graeciae formam rerum publicarum dederunt, corpora iuvenum firmari labore voluerunt; quod Spartiatae edam in feminas transtulerunt, quae ceteris in urbibus mollissimo cultu tparietum umbris occuluntur. I Illi autem voluerunt nihil horum simile esse

apud Lacaenas virgines Quibus magis palaestra, Eurota, sol, pulvis, labor Militiae studio est quam fertilitas barbara. Ergo his laboriosis exercitationibus et dolor intercurrit non numquarn: impelluntur, feriuntur, abiiciuntur, cadunt, et ipse labor quasi callum quoddam obducit dolori. . 37. Militiam vero - nostram dico, non Spartiatarum, quorum procedit ad modum acies ac tibiam nec adhibetur ulla sine anapaestis pedibus hortatio nostri exercitus primum unde nomen habeant vides, deinde qui labor quantus agminis, ferre plus dimidiati mensis cibaria, ferre si quid ad usum velint, ferre vallum; nam scutum, gladium, galeam in onere nostri milites non plus numerant quam humeros, lacertos, manus; arma enim membra militis esse dicunt; quae quidem ita geruntur apte, ut, si usus ferat, abiectis oneribus, expeditis armis ut membris pugnare possint. Quid? exercitatio

TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS II [37 34. The laws of the Cretans, established by Jupiter, or by Minos in accordance with Jupiter's wishes, as the poets tell, and those of Lycurgus tOO, train the young men by making them toil, hunting and running. going hungry and thirsty, feeling cold and heat. At Sparta, in fact, boys are received at the altar with such blows that 'much blood flows from the flesh', sometimes even, as I heard when I was there, to the death. Not only did none of them ever cry out, none even groaned. Well, boys can do this, won't men be able to? Habit has the power: won't reason have it? 35. There is some difference between toil and pain. They are related of course, but there is a difference. Toil is the mental or physical discharge of a rather burdensome task or duty, while pain is a harsh movement in the body, offensive to the senses. These two things the Greeks, whose language is richer than ours, call by a single name. So they call hard-workers keen on, or rather lovers of, pain: we Romans more suitably call them 'toilers'. It is one thing to-toil, another to feel pain. 0 Greece, sometimes hard-up for words in which you think you always abound! When his varicose veins were being cut Gaius Marius was in pain. When he was leading his army in great heat, he toiled. But there is a kind of likeness between the two - familiarity with toil makes endurance of pain easier. 36. So those who shaped the constitutions of Greece wanted the bodies of their young men to be strengthened by toil, something in which the Spartans even involved theit women, who in other cities lead a soft life and 'are concealed in shadowy rooms', and they wanted nothing like that 'among the Laconian maidens, whose concern is rather the wrestling-ground, Eurotas, sun, dust, toil and warfare, than fertility fit for barbarians' . So while pain plays a part in these toilsome exercises, - they are pushed, struck, thrown down and fall - the actual toil draws a kind of hardened skin over the pain. 37. As for military affairs - I mean ours, not the Spartans', whose line advances to a musical measure and the pipe, and every cry of encouragement is expressed in the anapaestic metre. You see first from what source our armies derive their name (exercitus) , secondly the nature and extent of toil on the march - carrying provisions for more than a fortnight, carrying utensils they want, carrying a stake - our soldiers no more reckon sword, shield and helmet a burden than shoulders, arms and hands. Weapons, they say, are a soldier's limbs, and in fact they are worn in such a way that if occasion arises, the packs can be jettisoned, and with their weapons freed for action just like limbs, they can fight. Again,

38] TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS II legionum, quid? ille cursus, concursus, clamor quanti laboris est! Ex hos ille animus in proeliis paratus ad vulnera. Adduc pari animo inexercitatum militem, mulier videbitur. 38. Cur tantum interest inter novum et veterem 'exercitum quantum experti sumus? Aetas tironum plerumque melior, sed ferre laborem, contemnere vulnus consuetudo docet. Quin etiam videmus ex acie efferri saepe saucios et quidem rudem illum et inexercitatum quamvis levi ictu ploratus turpissimos edere: at vero ille exercitatus et vetus ob eamque rem fortior, medicum modo requirens a quo obligetur: o Patricoles, inquit, ad vos adveniens, auxilium et vestras manus

Peto, prius quam oppeto malam pestem mandatam hostili manu,

(Neque sanguis ullo potis est paeto profluens consistere,)

Sf qui sapientia magis vestra mors devitari potest.

Namque Aeseulapi liberorum saucii opplent porticus;

Non pOtest accedi. P. eerte Eurypylus hie quidem est. Hominem

exereitum!

39. Ubi tantum luctus continuatur, vide quam non flebiliter respondeat, rationem etiam adferat cur aequo animo sibi ferendum sit: E. Qui alteri exitium parat,

Eum scire oportet sibi paratam pestem ut participet parem. Abducet Patricoles, credo, ut collocet in cubili, ut vulnus obliget. quidem homo esset, sed nihil vidi minus. Quaerit enim quid actum sit:

Si

P. Eloquere, eloquere res Argivum proelio ut se sustinet. E. Non potest ecfari tan tum dictis, quantum factis suppetit I laborts. 1

Quiesce igitur et vulnus alliga. Aesopus.

Etiam si Eurypylus posset,non posset

E. Ubi fortuna Hectoris nostram acrem adem inclinatam ... et cetera explicat in dolore. Sic est enim intemperans militaris in forti viro gloria. Ergo haec veteranus miles facere poterit, doctus vir sapiensque non potedt? Ille vero melius ac non paullo quidem. 40. Sed adhuc de consuetudine exercitationis loquor, non dum de ratione et sapientia. Aniculae saepe inediam biduum aut triduum ferunt: subdue cibum unum diem athletae, Iovem Olympium, eum ipsum, cui se exercebit, implorabit, ferre non posse se clamabit. Consuetudinis magna vis est. Pernoctant venatores in nive in montibus; uri se patiuntur Indi; pugile!

TGSCUL).,l) DIS?Ul:ATIOi, all pleasure is derived from physica pleasure. 28. Those people: the Epicureans. 30. tbe teachers... : Aristus and Antiochus. Speusippus, Xenocrates and Polemo: these were successively heads of the Academy afte Plato. Our knowledge of their ethical teaching is scanty, and it may be that already by C.' time much had been obscured by the later developments of the Middle and New Academ) Here as elsewhere (e.g. §§ 39, 87), C. suggests that they shared Peripatetic views, but thi bel ief may reflect Antiochus' attempt to claim Peripatetic ethics for his so-called 'Olc Academy (Long pp.5-6, 112, 224-6, Brut. 118 with my n.). So the references to 'Peripatetic and the Old Academy' at §§ 7'), 82, 8S with their apparently contemporary relevance ar probably to Antiochus's position. resources: opes in the sense of military or political power and influence (L & S s. v.of LB.), so wider than 'wealth'. 31. positively: quidam in its intensifying sense.

32-36. C. had argued the Peripatelle view in De Finibus, but now advocates the Stoic vie~ claIming its ultimate origin in Plato. 32. De Finibus: the Fourth Book has C. as main speaker presenting objections to tt Stoic view set out by Cato in Book 3. AI! five books had been completed by June 45, ~ providing a terminus post quem at least for this part of Tuse. . 33. taking proceedings: agere cum can be as vague as 'deal with', but in this context Wi have the full legal force, OLD s. v.44. 1 1 live ... : passages such as this prompted M.L. Clarke, The Roman Mind (London, 195

1

COMMENTARY: TUSCfJLAl'J' DISPUTATIONS V

151]

164

to describe C. as showing 'an indifferenCe to consistency verging on irresponsibility.' ~ 34. Zeno... : C. ironically discounts Zeno's view as that of a foreigner, a 'parvenu in ~losophy t and a mere artisan engaged in manufacture (of words) - the doctrine is anyway ~atonic. Mention of Zeno's birthplace is unusual and unnecessary, and in fact though Athens ,as the great centre of the philosophical schools, probably only Socrates and Plato of the ~tstanding early figures, and slightly later Polemo and Epicurus (ef. § 109), were native .lthenians. But Citium in Cyprus was not merely not Athenian but thought of as Phoenician fin. 4.59). On the philosophical side, the 'Old Philosophy', antiqlUl or vetus philosophia, was i stock term for the Socratic-Platonic tradition (cf. Ac .post. 3 j from which most Hellenistic )bilosophers, from Zeno to Antiochus of Ascalon (but not Epicurus, cf. § 119) claimed jescent. That Zeno merely invented difficult terminology as his contribution to ethics was a 'ommon criticism, cf. on Tusc. 2.21. Gorgias: 470 D-E. C.'s rendering is close to the origInal, but he tInOS it necessary to !~plain that Plato's 'Great King' is king of Persia, and see below on 'the good .. .' Archelaus: king of Macedon 413-399 B.c. 35. the good... : Plato has the 'good' (masc.adj.) man and woman is happy (Gk. !udaimon, which has the same form for masc. and fem.). C. no doubt intended his bonos, beat os etc. to include both sexes a small but instructive example of the difficulty of rendering exactly even a simple passage like this. 36. Funeral Oration: = Menexenus, now called so from the character who persuades Plato's Socrates to recite a Funeral Oration which he claims to have been composed by Pericles' mistress Aspasia. Views differ as to how seriously it is intended. The passage quoted is Menex.. 247E-248A. and particularly: in Plato Gk. malista goes with 'will heed'. c.'s adjustment. whether intended or not, suggests a reference to the death of Tullia. that .old proverb: Gk. meden agan, 'do nothing in excess', in fact quoted by Plato immediately before C. begins his quotation. Plato: but the material and methods with which C. defends the Platonic thesis are Aristotelian and esp. Stoic, rather than Platonic. So in Tusc. 4.10-11 he claims the authority of Pythagoras and Plato for a bipartite division of the soul (ef. 2.47) as the 'fons of the discussion, but then states that he will use Stoic definitions of the emotions, and in treating bad emotional states as' due to intellectual error his exposition is almost entirely Stoic: for the Stoics their view was the logical consequence of their belief in the unity of the soul. sacred and reverend: strong language, for which C. offers the double apology quasi quodam. It is striking that the Emperor Augustus chose a title with such powerful and specific religious associations.

37-54. Life according to Nature 011 a scale: plants animals human beings: culminating In the wlsel virtuousl happy mall, armed against external misfortunes and emotional dlStllrbances. Further proofs tital Virtue is the only good thillg. and Cliticism of Peripatetic allowance of some pLace for other 'goods' in happmess 37. Nature: i.e what Stoic sources called kOine pilusis, to distinguish it from individual 'natures'. Nature in the former sense was seen as the creator or generator of the Universe and its contents, though our extant sources dwell rather on Zeno's metaphor of Nature as the artifex than on Nature as the parent, d. SV F 2.1132-5, Nal.D. 2.58. Because of the ambiguity of the Gk. phusis (on which Greek sources comment, e.g. D.L. 7.89), Latin often felt obliged to clarify by the addition of rerum, hominum, etc. (Poncelet p.1S1) but was by the same token able to use the single word, in effect with a capital letter, in such contexts as the present, and in general to personify Nature much more strongly than Greek commonly does. She wished ... : the idea of a scale or ladder (scala) of Nature is seen most clearly in

152]

COMMENTJL~Y: TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS V

Aristotle, esp. De Aniata (2.2.413c - 414 a, etc.). While there are hints here of SUChji hierarchy - animals have sensus, which plants lack, and all are perfect so far as is in ther power - the stress is more on the perfection or at least individuality of each kind, and C. en with the assertion that human beings hardly belong on the ladder at all, being akin only t God. (Fr. Solmsen, 'Antecedents of Aristotle's Psychology and Scale of Beings" Ai Ph 7~ 1955, 148-164, sees traces of the developed Aristotelian doctrine in the pre-Socratics ani Plato, but for Plato at least the emphasis is on the way the different characteristics of each ste! are combined in the human being and, in Tim. 69D 73A, located in the body). ' what had so arisen... : i.e. plants. The circumlocution is strange. While Latin had n, precise equivalent for Gk. phuta, C. can be briefer: at Fin. 5.10, NaLD. 2.36 stirpes alone i made to serve. seeds: not in the strict botanical sense, but the elements which determine tn characteristic products of various types of plant. 38. some hidden... : like moles, worms, etc. only: the emphasis in Latin is in the word-order: 'superior ought those things to b called ... '. shred: the Stoic idea, often expressed as the 'spark' of the fire which is God or th Un iverse: hence 'divine spark'.

God: sometimes the capital G seems inescapable.

39. Aristotle ... : cL § 30. as happy as possible: C. uses the superlative beatissimi as a way of presenting the Sto cas.e that there are no degrees of happiness. 40. three: cL § 24.

your friends: the Peripatetics.

the saying ... : a slightly different version in Plut. Apophth.Lac. 134F. That the t..

illustrations in this eloquent passage are clearly from Greek stock suggests a Greek origin f( more than the basic thought, perhaps a Stoic schola. coast: ships of course travel to coasts, yet the word is evocative of a mercantile wor whose interests cease at that point, producing in later centuries such European names ff countries as Ivory Coast, Gold Coast. which hangs on: apta in its lit. sense, 'fitted'. Shipwreck and loss of cargoes were substantial hazard in antiquity, and remained so until greatly diminished by the invention' steamshi ps. wither away .. .faiI: interarescere ... exslingui .. cadere, an example of the diminishing tri, as opposed to the common rhetorical device where the elements increase in length, all ti more effective when it occurs. So e.g. provo cons. 33. conlerruit, compulit, domuit. 41. impregnable: inexpugnabilis, first found here, later common both lit. and met. free from fear: we have heard all this before, cf. §§ 15-16. Tusc. III and IV have mu< on the same theme. Tusc. V contains much internal repetition, not to mention recall, oft! with identical phrasing and illustrations, of the earlier books and relevant parts of De Finibu bu t not only is this book intended to recapitulate and so reaffirm much of the preceding Book bu t its internal construction is careful. There are three stages, each marked off by a bri conversational exchange or 'interlude', each covered at greater length than the preceding. ar ea,ssyria ;8-625 B.C. Syria: as commonly for Assyria, cf. Hdt.7.63, OLD S.V. inscribed on his tomb: the reference is to one of the two versions cited by Reid (above), Imely that Sardanapallus' tomb was at Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, and the six-line epitaph , which C. gives the last two lines was known in a translation in Greek hexameters by hoerilus of Samos (late 5th cent. B.C.), cf. Athen. 12.39.529-530. Aristotle: not in the extant works, but these were not the ones generally known in the .ellenistic period when the anecdotal tradition represented here was taking shape. 102. when they recall how... : Le. as plunder. daylight...: a cliche no doubt originally from oratory, though widely borrowed, and here ppropriate to the 'declamatory' style. Cf. Pease on Nat.D. 3.81. 103. my friend: as the Greek orator most admired by C. (Brul. 35, 288, Or. 23). The lme story in Aelian VH 9.17, Pliny ep. 9.23.5, and (from C.) Val.Max. 8.7.4 ext. converse with himself: perhaps a particularly Stoic expression, cC. the ref. to Cato in Iff. 3.1.1, and Epictet. Diss.4.4.26. 104. Democritus: of Abdera in Thrace, 5th cent. B.C., best known for his version of tomk theory which was borrowed and developed by Epicurus. The story in D.L.9.36, and from C.) in VaJ.Max. 8.7.4 ext. 105. Heraclitus: of Ephesus, 6th cent. B.C., one of the Ionian physici, students of lature. Aristides: the subject of what is nowadays the best known of these stories, perhaps 'ecause it concerns the politics of 5th cent. Athens, cf. Plut. Arislid. 7. It is of course no oincidence that Musonius Rufus, writer of Stok discourses in the 1st cent. A.D., also ux~aposes Hermodorus and Aristides as examples of exile befalling the innocent. our own: Roman, alluding to C.'s own 'expulsion', though exile is incidental here, and lecomes the main theme in § 106. schOlarly leisure: doubly surprising, in that C. not only puts leisure above (political) lctivity, but suggests an interest in the study of Nature for which he is not conspicuous at any ime. But he is probably not thinking of the study of Nature for itself, but rather of its use to )uttress theological arguments, like those of Nal.D. 1 and II, alJd occasionally in Tusc. 1. 1 mean: dico is used parenthetically, so that the carrying on of the construction from the )receding words, here Abl. of comparison, hardly requires explanation or defence, Jespite DB ,d.loc., cf. Cad. 32 'cum istlus mulieris viro, fratre volui dicere' - 'brother, I meant to say'. ;r.e reading (ratrern quite reduces the impact of C.'s insinuation, CC. Austin ad.lor.. 106. should be despised ... : after contemnenda Mss have sicuti a, which with most edd. 1 prefer to delete rather than with Lundstrom (2) p.86) accept DH's secunda, 'even when favourable' . 107. Extremely... : a remarkable list, attesting the attraction of Athens as an intellectual centre, and in the origins of these philosophers the wide spread of Hellenistic culture: Xenocrates of Chalcedon, Crantor of Soli in Cilicia (the Old Academy); Arcesilas of Pitane in AeQlia, Lacydes of Cyrene (N. Africa) (Middle Academy); Aristotle of Stagira, Theophrastus of Eresus in Lesbos (Peripatetics); Zeno of Citium in Cyprus, Cleanthes from Assos on the coast of Asia minor near Lesbos (the earliest Stoics); Chrysippus of Soli, Antipater of Tarsus (the second-phase Stoa); Carneades fr.om Cyrene, Clitomachus from Carthage (the New Academy); Philo of Larissa, Antiochus of Ascalon (neo-Academic in transition to a. revived 'Old'

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Academy); Panaetius of Rhodes, Posidonius of Apamea in Syria (the later Stoa). But the argument is feeble. Such persons were, unlike exites, free to ret\.im home, and ?an:letius did so (OLD s.v.). 108. Teucer's words: possibly, though not certainly, from Pacuvius' play Te.ueer (ROL 2.302.) Socrates... : cf. Arrian Epic£. 1.9.1 and Pluto exi!. 600 F, but the phrase is attributed te others, the best known most probably being the Cynic Diogenes (D.L.6.63), and the idea occurs in famous passages of Marcus Aurelius e.g. 4.23, 6.44. Universan: cuias (ef. Gk. podapos) , an old-fashioned word, asks the question 'of whal nation (city, region, etc.)?' the answer expected being an adj. of nationality, etc. (Roman, Athenian); mundanus appears here for the first time and not again for centuries, so it is clearl) C.'s own invention to represent Gk. kosmopolites. T. Albucius: already to be found in Athens in 120 B. c., where he was ridiculed for hi~ philhellenism by the praetor Scaevola and his retinue (Fin. 1.9), he was exiled in 103 B.c. fOl extortion during his governorship of Sardinia. On his philhellenism and Epicureanism d. Brut 131, Nal.D. 1.93. Epicurus' rules: discouraged political activity as being a cause of emotional disturbance but Romans with Epicurean leanings, e.g. Cassius, the conspirator against Caesar, did no always conform. See D.P. Fowler in Griffin/Barnes 122-145. Epicurus: either Athenian-born or the son of Athenian parents from Samos (D.L.I0.I.) 109. Metrodorus: from Lampsacus. Damaratus... : it is uncertain how much of the tradition is legendary, which in some versions relates that he brought Corinthian craftsmen with him (Pliny N.H. 35.16.152), ct. M Grant, The Etruscans (London, 1980) p.125. Cypselus was tyrant of Corinth in the mid-7t1 cent. B.C. 110. emotions... : the subjects of Tuse. 1II and IV, but there the prescribed remedy i: Stok, the correction by Reason of the false opinions which cause, or indeed are, these menta distresses. Some people argue... : contrast Tuse. 1.46 for the view that all the sensations referred t< here are perceived by the mind with the sense-organs acting as channels or messengers. 112. Antipater: a native of Cyrene and a follower of the Cyrenaic philosophy 0 Aristippus of the same city, on which cf. Tuse. 2.15. Appius: App. Claudius, consul 306 and 297, censor in 312, famous for the creation 0 the Appian Way and the Appian aqueduct, and for his role in political affairs, e.g. in opposinl peace with Pyrrhus (c.280), cf. Cael.34. C. Drusus: brother of M. Drusus. who opposed C. Gracchl's (Brut. 109). V;:Ullax.8.7., refers to legal writings by Drusus. Cn. Aufidius: praetor in 108 B.C., cf. Fin. 5.54. in Greek:: a common practice even when the subject was Rome, partly as propagan~. directed towards the Greek world, partly because it was oft ~n easier to express oneself II Greek. In the late 50's B.C. C. was still complaining about the lack of polished histOrica writing in Latin, cf. De.or. 2.51-5, /egg. 1.6-7. . 113. Diodotus... : Brut 309 refers to his instructing C. in logic and 'many and vane' skill$'. His death in 59 B.C. is mentioned in All. 2.20.6, d. also Ac.pr. 115, NaLD 1.6 the Pytbagoreans: the school. noted for its success in determining the mathemati~a relationships of the various musical intervals, also tncouraged practical musicianshir. as a kin of group-therapy, cf lamb!. viLPyth. 110. Asclepiades: a follower of Menedemus of Eretria in Euboea (Strabo 9.18). On thi apparently minor school d. Guthrie 3.217. if wbat. .. : i.e. beg meals, like the parasites of Greek New Comedy. An odd remar~ implying, contrary to what one supposes C. to be arguing about povf:rty having no effect on th

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COMMENTARY: TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS V

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that the severest poverty can be supported only if one stoops to practices of which he FPproves. Has C. let slip something of what he really feels about the traditional iVDS01ations he is repeating? . 114. Democritus: for a tradi:!O:J t:'.H Dcmocritus blinded himself purposely cf. Fin j 87. !Ild other refs. in DH. at their feet: 'in front of their noses. I all infinity: an allusion to Democritus' belief in the infinity of space (cf. J. Barnes, The presocratic Philosophers (London, 1979) pp.59-61), which was followed by Epicurus (Lucr. 1.968-983). Homer: on the very ancient tradition of Homer's blindness cf. OCD s.v.3. On Homer as 1 'painter', Lucian Imag. 8, Athen. 182 A. 115. Anaxagoras...Democritus... : for the tradition cf. D.L.9.35. Tiresias: of Thebes, playing a weB-known role in the story of Oedipus. On the variant lCcounts of the causes of his blindness cf. OCD s. v. Polyphemus: but Od. 9.447ff. shows Polyphemus contrasting the ram's former freedom to go where it liked with its slowness now that it is carrying Odysseus under its belly. This is much less likely to be a variant version than a mere lapse of memory, whether C. 's or another's. 116. he heard hard things: C. plays on the ambiguity of male audire (Gk. kakos akollein) 'to hear badly' and 'to be ill-spoken of.' Our Epicureans: Epicurei is omitted or emended by some edd. but it seems to make an effective point. citharode: who sang to his own accompaniment on the lyre. by reading: a reminder that the words of ancient lyric were considered much more important than the accompanying music. 117. One... himseH: cf. § 103 fin.

a haven... : cf. Tusc. 2.67.

no feeling: the Epicurean belief, d. Tusc. 1.82ff.

Theodorus... : the point is that killing some one is no great matter if it can be brought

about by a tiny insect, the decoction of Spanish fly (cantharidine) being an extremely painful and usually fatal poison. For another story about Theodorus' response to Lysimachus' threat cf. Tusc. 1.102. Lysimachus was one of the bodyguard of Alexander the Great. He controlled Thrace and part of Asia Minor on Alexander's death. 118. Paulus... : Aemilius Paulus after defeating and capturing Perses of Macedon at Pydna in 168 B.c. Hieronymus: Tusc. 2.15n. 119. those philosophers... philosophers wbo descend ... : the Epicureans contrasted with Stoics and Peripatetics. 120. Cameades... : this leading Academic is see II as arbitrating between Stoics and Peripatetics (d. Tusc. 4.6), and, by his 'verdict' that they did not disagree on substance, pointing the way for Antiochus of Ascalon later to argue that the (original) Old Academy could be assimilated to the Peripatetics at least in ethics. 'advantages': cf. § 85 n. fThe first goods .. ') 121. I intend... : C. uses this device of referring to the written version of a fictitiotl