great, that wherever virtue and
great, desirable, and praiseworthy exploits done by virtue are, there
misery and grief cannot be, but nevertheless labour and annoyance can be,
I do not hesitate to affirm that all wise men are always happy, but still,
that it is possible that one man may be more happy than another.

But this is exactly the assertion, Piso, said I, which you are bound to
prove over and over again; and if you establish it, then you may take with
you not only my young Cicero here, but me too. Then, said Quintus, it
appears to me that this has been sufficiently proved. I am glad, indeed,
that philosophy, the treasures of which I have been used to value above
the possession of everything else (so rich did it appear to me, that I
could ask of it whatever I desired to know in our studies),--I rejoice,
therefore, that it has been found more acute than all other arts, for it
was in acuteness that some people asserted that it was deficient. Not a
mite more so than ours, surely, said Pomponius, jestingly. But, seriously,
I have been very much pleased with what you have said; for what I did not
think could be expressed in Latin has been expressed by you, and that no
less clearly than by the Greeks, and in not less well adapted language.
But it is time to depart, if you please; and let us go to my house.

And when he had said this, as it appeared that we had discussed the
subject sufficiently, we all went into the town to the house of Pomponius.

THE TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS.

Introduction.

In the year A.U.C. 708, and the 62d year of Cicero's age, his daughter,
Tullia, died in childbed; and her loss afflicted Cicero to such a degree
that he abandoned all public business, and, leaving the city, retired to
Asterra, which was a country house that he had near Antium; where, after a
while, he devoted himself to philosophical studies, and, besides other
works, he published his Treatise de Finibus, and also this Treatise called
the Tusculan Disputations, of which Middleton gives this concise
description:--

"The first book teaches us how to contemn the terrors of death, and to
look upon it as a blessing rather than an evil;

"The second, to support pain and affliction with a manly fortitude;

"The third, to appease all our complaints and uneasinesses under the
accidents of life;

"The fourth, to moderate all our other passions;

"And the fifth explains the sufficiency of virtue to make men happy."