guage, but who still employ no divisions and no
definitions; and who say themselves that they approve of those things
alone to which nature silently assents. Therefore, they discuss, without
any great degree of labour, matters which are not very obscure. And, on
this account, I am now prepared to listen eagerly to you, and to commit to
memory all the names which you give to those matters to which this
discussion refers. For, perhaps, I myself may some day have reason to
employ them too.

You, then, appear to me to be perfectly right, and to be acting in strict
accordance with our usual way of speaking, when you lay it down that there
are vices the exact opposites of virtues; for that which is blameable
(_vituperabile_) for its own sake, I think ought, from that very fact, to
be called a vice; and perhaps this verb, _vitupero_, is derived from
_vitium_. But if you had translated {~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~} by _malitia_,(46) then the usage
of the Latin language would have limited us to one particular vice; but,
as it is, all vice is opposed to all virtue by one generic opposite name.

XIII. Then he proceeded:--After these things, therefore, are thus laid
down, there follows a great contest, which has been handled by the
Peripatetics somewhat too gently, (for their method of arguing is not
sufficiently acute, owing to their ignorance of dialectics;) but your
Carneades has pressed the matter with great vigour and effect, displaying
in reference to it a most admirable skill in dialectics, and the most
consummate eloquence; because he has never ceased to contend throughout
the whole of this discussion, which turns upon what is good and what is
bad, that the controversy between the Stoics and Peripatetics is not one
of things, but only of names. But, to me, nothing appears so evident as
that the opinions of these two schools differ from one another far more as
to facts than to names; I mean to say, that there is much greater
difference between the Stoics and Peripatetics in principle than in
language. Forasmuch as the Peripatetics assert that everything which they
themselves call good, has a reference to living happily; but our school
does not think that a happy life necessarily embraces everything which is
worthy of any esteem.

But can anything be more certain than that, according to the principles of
tho