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.

XLI. 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 honourable 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.

XLII. 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.

THE END

FOOTNOTES

1 The following are the most important of the passages referred
to:--"Since I entered upon these philosophical inquiries, Varro has
given me notice of a valuable and honourable dedication of a work of
his to m