lously as the bulwarks of your city; but I am only bound to uphold them
with moderation, just as much as I think fit.

XLV. I have read in Clitomachus, that when Carneades and Diogenes the
Stoic were standing in the capitol before the senate, Aulus Albonus (who
was praetor at the time, in the consulship of Publius Scipio and Marcus
Marcellus, the same Albonus who was consul, Lucullus, with your own
grandfather, a learned man, as his own history shows, which is written in
Greek) said jestingly to Carneades--"I do not, O Carneades, seem to you to
be praetor because I am not wise, nor does this seem to be a city, nor do
the inhabitants seem to be citizens, for the same reason." And he
answered--"That is the Stoic doctrine." Aristotle or Xenocrates, whom
Antiochus wished to follow, would have had no doubt that he was praetor,
and Rome a city, and that it was inhabited by citizens. But our friend is,
as I said before, a manifest Stoic, though he talks a little nonsense.

But you are all afraid for me, lest I should descend to opinions, and
adopt and approve of something that I do not understand; which you would
be very sorry for me to do. What advice do you give me? Chrysippus often
testifies that there are three opinions only about the chief good which
can be defended; he cuts off and discards all the rest. He says that
either honour is the chief good, or pleasure, or both combined. For that
those who say that the chief good is to be free from all annoyance, shun
the unpopular name of pleasure, but hover about its neighbourhood. And
those also do the same who combine that freedom from annoyance with
honour. And those do not much differ from them who unite to honour the
chief advantages of nature. So he leaves three opinions which he thinks
may be maintained by probable arguments.

Be it so. Although I am not easily to be moved from the definition of
Polemo and the Peripatetics, and Antiochus, nor have I anything more
probable to bring forward. Still, I see how sweetly pleasure allures our
senses. I am inclined to agree with Epicurus or Aristippus. But virtue
recalls me, or rather leads me back with her hand; says that these are the
feelings of cattle, and that man is akin to the Deity. I may take a middle
course; so that, since Aristippus, as if we had no mind, defends nothing
but the body, and Zeno espouses the cause of the mind alone, as if we were
destitute of body, I may follow Callipho, whose opinion Carneades used to