proper language? If
authority had influence with you, how was it that you preferred some
stranger to all of us and to Plato himself? especially while you were
desirous to be a chief man in the republic, and might have been
accomplished and equipped by us in a way to enable you to defend it to
your own great increase of dignity. For the means to such an end have been
investigated, described, marked down, and enjoined by us; and we have
written detailed accounts of the government of all republics, and their
descriptions, and constitutions, and changes,--and even of the laws, and
customs, and manners of all states. Moreover, how much eloquence, which is
the greatest ornament to leading men,--in which, indeed, we have heard that
you are very eminent,--might you have learnt, in addition to that which is
natural to you, from our records!" When they had said this, what answer
could you have made to such men? I would have entreated you, said he, who
had dictated their speech to them, to speak likewise for me, or else
rather to give me a little room to answer them myself, only that now I
prefer listening to you; and yet at another time I should be likely to
reply to them at the same time that I answer you.

XXIII. But if you were to answer truly, Cato, you would be forced to say
this--That you do not approve of those men, men of great genius and great
authority as they are. But that you have noticed that the things which, by
reason of their antiquity they have failed to see, have been thoroughly
comprehended by the Stoics, and that these latter have discussed the same
matters with more acuteness, and have also entertained more dignified and
courageous sentiments, inasmuch as, in the first place, they deny that
good health is to be desired, though they admit that it may be chosen; not
because to be well is a good, but because it is not to be utterly
disregarded, and yet that it does not appear to them of more value that it
does to those who do not hesitate to call it a good. And that you could
not endure that those ancients, those bearded men (as we are in the habit
of calling our own ancestors), should believe that the life of that man
who lived honourably, if he had also good health and a good reputation,
and was rich, was more desirable, better, and more to be sought for, than
that of him who was equally a good man in many respects, like the Alcmaeon
of Ennius--

Surrounded by disease, and exile sad,
And cruel want