Tusculan Disputations

Epicureans cannot understand Greek, nor the Greeks Latin; now, they are deaf reciprocally as to each other’s language, and we are all truly deaf with regard to those innumerable languages which we do not understand. They do not hear the voice of the warper, but then, they do not hear the grating of a saw when it is setting, or the grunting of a hog when his throat is being cut, nor the roaring of the sea when they are desirous of rest. And if they should chance to be fond of singing, they ought, in the first place, to consider that many wise men lived happily before music was discovered; besides, they may have more pleasure in reading verses than in hearing them sung. Then, as I before referred the blind to the pleasures of hearing, so I may the deaf to the pleasures of sight. Moreover, whoever can converse with himself does not need the conversation of another. But suppose all these misfortunes to meet in one person: suppose him blind and deaf⁠—let him be afflicted with the sharpest pains of body, which, in the first place, generally of themselves make an end of him; still, should they continue so long, and the pain be so exquisite, that we should be unable to assign any reason for our being so afflicted⁠—still, why, good Gods! should we be under any difficulty? For there is a retreat at hand: death is that retreat⁠—a shelter where we shall forever be insensible. Theodorus said to Lysimachus, who threatened him with death, “It is a great matter, indeed, for you to have acquired the power of a Spanish fly!” When Perses entreated Paulus not to lead him in triumph, “That is a matter which you have in your own power,” said Paulus. I said many things about death in our first day’s disputation, when death was the subject; and not a little the next day, when I treated of pain; which things if you recollect, there can be no danger of your looking upon death as undesirable, or, at least, it will not be dreadful.

That custom which is common among the Grecians at their banquets should, in my opinion, be observed in life: Drink, say they, or leave the company. And rightly enough, for a guest should either enjoy the pleasure of drinking with others, or else not stay till he meets with affronts from those that are in liquor. Thus, those injuries of fortune which you cannot bear you should flee from.

This is the very same which is said by Epicurus and Hieronymus. Now, if those philosophers, whose opinion it is that virtue has no power of itself, and who say that the conduct which we denominate honorable and laudable is really nothing, and is only an empty circumstance set off with an unmeaning sound, can nevertheless maintain that a wise man is always happy, what, think you, may be done by the Socratic and Platonic philosophers? Some of these allow such superiority to the goods of the mind as quite to eclipse what concerns the body and all external circumstances. But others do not admit these to be goods; they make everything depend on the mind: whose disputes Carneades used, as a sort of honorary arbitrator, to determine. For, as what seemed goods to the Peripatetics were allowed to be advantages by the Stoics, and as the Peripatetics allowed no more to riches, good health, and other things of that sort than the Stoics, when these things were considered according to their reality, and not by mere names, his opinion was that there was no ground for disagreeing. Therefore, let the philosophers of other schools see how they can establish this point also. It is very agreeable to me that they make some professions worthy of being uttered by the mouth of a philosopher with regard to a wise man’s having always the means of living happily.

But as we are to depart in the morning, let us remember these five days’ discussions; though indeed I think I shall commit them to writing: for how can I better employ the leisure which I have, of whatever kind it is, and whatever it be owing to? And I will send these five books also to my friend Brutus, by whom I was not only incited to write on philosophy, but, I may say, provoked. And by so doing it is not easy to say what service I may be of to others. At all events, in my own various and acute afflictions, which surround me on all sides, I cannot find any better comfort for myself.

Endnotes

1. Archilochus was a native of Paros, and flourished about 714⁠–⁠676 BC. His poems were chiefly Iambics of bitter satire. Horace speaks of him as the inventor of Iambics, and calls himself his pupil.

   Parios ego primus Iambos
   Ostendi Latio, numeros animosque secutus
   Archilochi, non res et agentia verba Lycamben.

   Epistles I xix 25.

   And in another place he says,

   Archilochum proprio rabies armavit Iambo

   Ars Poetica 74.

   ↩

2. This was Livius Andronicus: he is supposed to have been a native of Tarentum, and he was made prisoner by the Romans, during their wars in Southern Italy; owing to which he became the slave of M. Livius Salinator. He wrote both comedies and tragedies, of which Cicero (Brutus 18) speaks very contemptuously, as “Livianæ fabulæ non satis dignæ quæ iterum legantur”⁠—not worth reading a second time. He also wrote a Latin Odyssey, and some hymns, and died probably about 221 BC. ↩

3. C. Fabius, surnamed Pictor, painted the temple of Salus, which the dictator C. Junius Brutus Bubulus dedicated 302 BC. The temple was destroyed by fire in the reign of Claudius. The painting is highly praised by Dionysius, xvi 6. ↩

4. For an account of the ancient Greek philosophers,