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who followed him, dread and abhor pain in too weak a manner. The others
may go on to exaggerate the gravity and dignity of virtue, as usual; and
then, after they have extolled it to the skies, with the usual
extravagance of good orators, it is easy to reduce the other topics to
nothing by comparison, and to hold them up to contempt. They who think
that praise deserves to be sought after, even at the expense of pain, are
not at liberty to deny those men to be happy, who have obtained it. Though
they may be under some evils, yet this name of happy has a very wide
application.

XXXI. For even as trading is said to be lucrative, and farming
advantageous, not because the one never meets with any loss, nor the other
with any damage from the inclemency of the weather, but because they
succeed in general: so life may be properly called happy, not from its
being entirely made up of good things, but because it abounds with these
to a great and considerable degree. By this way of reasoning, then, a
happy life may attend virtue even to the moment of execution; nay, may
descend with her into Phalaris's bull, according to Aristotle, Xenocrates,
Speusippus, Polemon; and will not be gained over by any allurements to
forsake her. Of the same opinion will Calliphon and Diodorus be: for they
are both of them such friends to virtue, as to think that all things
should be discarded and far removed that are incompatible with it. The
rest seem to be more hampered with these doctrines, but yet they get clear
of them; such as Epicurus, Hieronymus, and whoever else thinks it worth
while to defend the deserted Carneades: for there is not one of them who
does not think the mind to be judge of those goods, and able sufficiently
to instruct him how to despise what has the appearance only of good or
evil. For what seems to you to be the case with Epicurus, is the case also
with Hieronymus and Carneades, and indeed with all the rest of them: for
who is there who is not sufficiently prepared against death and pain? I
will begin, with your leave, with him whom we call soft and voluptuous.
What! does he seem to you to be afraid of death or pain, when he calls the
day of his death happy; and who, when he is afflicted by the greatest
pains, silences them all by recollecting arguments of his own discovering?
And this is not done in such a manner as to give room for imagining that
he talks thus wildly from some sudden impulse: but his opinion of death
is, t