y
men their friends, some their country, and very many indeed have utterly
undone themselves; so a vigorous and lofty mind is free from all care and
pain, since it despises death, which only places those who encounter it in
the same condition as that in which they were before they were born; and
it is so prepared for pain that it recollects that the very greatest are
terminated by death, and that slight pains have many intervals of rest,
and that we can master moderate ones, so as to bear them if they are
tolerable, and if not, we can depart with equanimity out of life, just as
out of a theatre, when it no longer pleases us. By all which
considerations it is understood that cowardice and idleness are not
blamed, and that courage and patience are not praised, for their own
sakes; but that the one line of conduct is rejected as the parent of pain,
and the other desired as the author of pleasure.

XVI. Justice remains to be mentioned, that I may not omit any virtue
whatever; but nearly the same things may be said respecting that. For, as
I have already shown that wisdom, temperance, and fortitude are connected
with pleasure in such a way that they cannot possibly be separated or
divided from it, so also we must consider that it is the case with
justice. Which not only never injures any one; but on the contrary always
nourishes something which tranquillizes the mind, partly by its own power
and nature, and partly by the hopes that nothing will be wanting of those
things which a nature not depraved may fairly derive.

Since rashness and lust and idleness always torture the mind, always make
it anxious, and are of a turbulent character, so too, wherever injustice
settles in any man's mind, it is turbulent from the mere fact of its
existence and presence there; and if it forms any plan, although it
executes it ever so secretly, still it never believes that what has been
done will be concealed for ever. For generally, when wicked men do
anything, first of all suspicion overtakes their actions; then the common
conversation and report of men; then the prosecutor and the judge; and
many even, as was the case when you were consul, have given information
against themselves. But if any men appear to themselves to be sufficiently
fenced round and protected from the consciousness of men, still they dread
the knowledge of the Gods, and think that those very anxieties by which
their minds are eaten up night and day, are inflicted upon th