they deserved to be
wished for, the question is,--how eagerly?

But, if I do not attribute more importance to them when I say that they
deserve to be wished for, than you do who say they only deserve to be
chosen, and if I do not value them more highly when I call them _bona_,
than you, when you speak of them as _producta_; then all these things must
inevitably be involved in obscurity, and put out of sight, and lost amid
the rays of virtue like stars in the sunbeams. But that life in which
there is any evil cannot be happy. Then a corn-field full of thick and
heavy ears of corn is not a corn-field if you see any tares anywhere; nor
is traffic gainful if, amid the greatest gains, you incur the most
trifling loss. Do we ever act on different principles in any circumstances
of life; and will you not judge of the whole from its greatest part? or is
there any doubt that virtue is so much the most important thing in all
human affairs, that it throws all the rest into the shade?

I will venture, then, to call the rest of the things which are in
accordance with nature, goods, and not to cheat them of their ancient
title, rather than go and hunt for some new name for them; and the dignity
of virtue I will put, as it were, in the other scale of the balance.
Believe me, that scale will outweigh both earth and sea; for the whole
always has its name from that which embraces its largest part, and is the
most widely diffused. We say that one man lives merrily. Is there, then,
an end of this merry life of his if he is for a moment a little poor?

But, in the case of that Marcus Crassus, who, Lucilius says, laughed once
in his life, the fact of his having done so did not deliver him from being
called {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}. They call Polycrates of Samos happy. Nothing had ever
happened to him which he did not like, except that he had thrown into the
sea a ring which he valued greatly; therefore he was unhappy as to that
one annoyance; but subsequently he was happy again when that same ring was
found in the belly of a fish. But he, if he was unwise (which he certainly
was, since he was a tyrant), was never happy; if he was wise he was not
miserable, even at the time when he was crucifi