wheel, (that is a kind of torture in
use among the Greeks,) cannot attain to a completely happy life. He
nowhere, indeed, says so absolutely, but what he says amounts to the same
thing. Can I, then, find fault with him; after having allowed, that pains
of the body are evils, that the ruin of a man's fortunes is an evil, if he
should say that every good man is not happy, when all those things which
he reckons as evils may befal a good man? The same Theophrastus is found
fault with by all the books and schools of the philosophers, for
commending that sentence in his Callisthenes:

Fortune, not wisdom, rules the life of man.

They say, never did philosopher assert anything so languid. They are
right, indeed, in that: but I do not apprehend anything could be more
consistent: for if there are so many good things that depend on the body,
and so many foreign to it that depend on chance and fortune, is it
inconsistent to say that fortune, which governs everything, both what is
foreign and what belongs to the body, has greater power than counsel. Or
would we rather imitate Epicurus? who is often excellent in many things
which he speaks, but quite indifferent how consistent he may be, or how
much to the purpose he is speaking. He commends spare diet, and in that he
speaks as a philosopher; but it is for Socrates or Antisthenes to say so,
and not for one who confines all good to pleasure. He denies that any one
can live pleasantly unless he lives honestly, wisely, and justly. Nothing
is more dignified than this assertion, nothing more becoming a
philosopher, had he not measured this very expression of living honestly,
justly, and wisely, by pleasure. What could be better than to assert that
fortune interferes but little with a wise man? But does he talk thus, who
after he has said that pain is the greatest evil, or the only evil, might
himself be afflicted with the sharpest pains all over his body, even at
the time he is vaunting himself the most against fortune? And this very
thing, too, Metrodorus has said, but in better language: "I have
anticipated you, Fortune; I have caught you, and cut off every access, so
that you cannot possibly reach me." This would be excellent in the mouth
of Aristo the Chian, or Zeno the Stoic, who held nothing to be an evil but
what was base; but for you, Metrodorus, to anticipate the approaches of
fortune, who confine all that is good to your bowels and marrow,--for you
to say so, who define