themselves than from them. In the first place, Strato,
the pupil of Theophrastus, called himself a natural philosopher: and
though, in truth, he is an eminent man in that line, still most of what he
said was novel; and he said very little about morals. His pupil Lyco was
rich in eloquence, but very meagre in matter. Then his pupil Aristo was a
neat and elegant writer, but still he had not that dignity which we look
for in a great philosopher: he wrote a great deal, certainly, and in a
polished style; but, somehow or other, his writings do not carry any
weight. I pass over several, and among them that learned man and pleasant
writer, Hieronymus; and I do not know why I should call him a Peripatetic,
for he defined the chief good to be freedom from pain: and he who
disagrees with me about the chief good, disagrees with me about the whole
principle of philosophy. Critolaus wished to copy the ancients; and,
indeed, he comes nearest to them in dignity, and his eloquence is
preeminent: still he adheres to the ancient doctrine. Diodorus, his pupil,
adds to honourableness freedom from pain: he, too, clings to a theory of
his own; and, as he disagrees from them about the chief good, he is hardly
entitled to be called a Peripatetic. But my friend Antiochus seems to me
to pursue the opinions of the ancients with the greatest care; and he
shows that they coincided with the doctrines of Aristotle and Polemo.

VI. My young friend Lucius, therefore, acts prudently when he wishes
chiefly to be instructed about the chief good; for when this point is once
settled in philosophy, everything is settled. For in other matters, if
anything is passed over, or if we are ignorant of anything, the
inconvenience thus produced is no greater than the importance the matter
is of in which the omission has taken place; but if one is ignorant of
what is the chief good, one must necessarily be ignorant of the true
principles of life; and from this ignorance such great errors ensue that
they cannot tell to what port to betake themselves. But when one has
acquired a knowledge of the chief ends,--when one knows what is the chief
good and the chief evil,--then a proper path of life, and a proper
regulation of all the duties of life, is found out.

There is, therefore, an object to which everything may be referred; from
which a system of living happily, which is what every one desires, may be
discovered and adopted. But since there is a great division of opinio