others which have been long and vigorously maintained. Some have accounted
pleasure the chief good; the chief of whom was Aristippus, who had been a
pupil of Socrates, and from whom the Cyrenaic school spring. After him
came Epicurus, whose school is now better known, though he does not
exactly agree with the Cyrenaics about pleasure itself. But Callipho
thought that pleasure and honour combined made up the chief good.
Hieronymus placed it in being free from all annoyance; Diodorus in this
state when combined with honour. Both these last men were Peripatetics. To
live honourably, enjoying those things which nature makes most dear to
man, was the definition both of the Old Academy, (as we may learn from the
writings of Polemo, who is highly approved of by Antiochus,) and of
Aristotle, and it is the one to which his friends appear now to come
nearest. Carneades also introduced a definition, (not because he approved
of it himself, but for the sake of opposition to the Stoics,) that the
chief good is to enjoy those things which nature has made man consider as
most desirable. But Zeno laid it down that that honourableness which
arises from conformity to nature is the chief good. And Zeno was the
founder and chief of the Stoic school.

XLIII. This now is plain enough, that all these chief goods which I have
mentioned have a chief evil corresponding to them, which is their exact
opposite. I now put it to you, whom shall I follow? only do not let any
one make me so ignorant and absurd a reply as, Any one, provided only that
you follow some one or other. Nothing more inconsiderate can be said: I
wish to follow the Stoics. Will Antiochus, (I do not say Aristotle, a man
almost, in my opinion, unrivalled as a philosopher, but will Antiochus)
give me leave? And he was called an Academic; but he would have been, with
very little alteration, something very like a Stoic. The matter shall now
be brought to a decision. For we must either give the wise man to the
Stoics or to the Old Academy. He cannot belong to both; for the contention
between them is not one about boundaries, but about the whole territory.
For the whole system of life depends on the definition of the chief good;
and those who differ on that point, differ about the whole system of life.
It is impossible, therefore, that those of both these schools should be
wise, since they differ so much from one another: but one of them only can
be so. If it be the disciple of Polemo,