ar? And if
his country be destroyed, cannot he grieve? That seems harsh, but Zeno
thinks it inevitable; for he considers nothing good except what is
honourable. But you do not think it true in the least, Antiochus. For you
admit that there are many good things besides honour, and many evils
besides baseness; and it is inevitable that the wise man must fear such
when coming, and grieve when they have come. But I ask when it was decided
by the Old Academy that they were to deny that the mind of the wise man
could be agitated or disturbed? They approved of intermediate states, and
asserted that there was a kind of natural mean in every agitation. We have
all read the treatise on Grief, by Crantor, a disciple of the Old Academy.
It is not large, but it is a golden book, and one, as Panaetius tells
Tubero, worth learning by heart. And these men used to say that those
agitations were very profitably given to our minds by nature; fear, in
order that we may take care; pity and melancholy they called the whetstone
of our clemency; and anger itself that of our courage. Whether they were
right or wrong we may consider another time. How it was that those stern
doctrines of yours forced their way into the Old Academy I do not know,
but I cannot bear them; not because they have anything in them
particularly disagreeable to me; for many of the marvellous doctrines of
the Stoics, which men call {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER XI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}, are derived from Socrates. But where
has Xenocrates or where has Aristotle touched these points? For you try to
make out the Stoics to be the same as these men. Would they ever say that
wise men were the only kings, the only rich, the only handsome men? that
everything everywhere belonged to the wise man? that no one was a consul,
or praetor, or general, or even, for aught I know, a quinquevir, but the
wise man? lastly, that he was the only citizen, the only free man? and
that all who are destitute of wisdom are foreigners, exiles, slaves, or
madmen? last of all, that the writings of Lycurgus and Solon and our
Twelve Tables are not laws? that there are even no cities or states except
those which are peopled by wise men? Now these maxims, O Lucullus, if you
agree with Antiochus, your own friend, must be defended by you as
zea