on, and enemies in a high degree to the peace of the mind, and a
tranquil life: for they introduce piercing and anxious cares, and afflict
and debilitate the mind through fear; they violently inflame our hearts
with exaggerated appetite; which is in reality an impotence of mind,
utterly irreconcilable with temperance and moderation, which we sometimes
call desire, and sometimes lust; and which, should it even attain the
object of its wishes, immediately becomes so elated, that it loses all its
resolution, and knows not what to pursue; so that he was in the right who
said, "that exaggerated pleasure was the very greatest of mistakes."
Virtue then alone can effect the cure of these evils.

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

XVII. Whoever, then, through moderation and constancy, is at rest in his
mind, and in calm possession of himself, so as neither to pine with care,
nor be dejected with fear, nor to be inflamed with desire, coveting
something greedily, nor relaxed by extravagant mirth,--such a man is that
identical wise man whom we are inquiring for, he is the happy man: to whom
nothing in this life seems intolerable enough to d