of soul, resolution, patience, and contempt for all worldly
things? Can you hear yourself called a great man, when you lie groveling,
dejected, and deploring your condition, with a lamentable voice; no one
would call you even a man, while in such a condition: you must therefore
either abandon all pretensions to courage, or else pain must be put out of
the question.

XIV. You know very well, that even though part of your Corinthian
furniture were gone, the remainder might be safe without that; but if you
lose one virtue (though virtue in reality cannot be lost), still if, I
say, you should acknowledge that you were deficient in one, you would be
stripped of all. Can you, then, call yourself a brave man, of a great
soul, endued with patience and steadiness above the frowns of fortune? or
Philoctetes? for I choose to instance him, rather than yourself, for he
certainly was not a brave man, who lay in his bed, which was watered with
his tears,

Whose groans, bewailings, and whose bitter cries,
With grief incessant rent the very skies.

I do not deny pain to be pain; for were that the case, in what would
courage consist? but I say it should be assuaged by patience, if there be
such a thing as patience: if there be no such thing, why do we speak so in
praise of philosophy? or why do we glory in its name? Does pain annoy us?
let it sting us to the heart: if you are without defensive armour, bare
your throat to it; but if you are secured by Vulcanian armour, that is to
say by resolution, resist it; should you fail to do so, that guardian of
your honour, your courage, will forsake and leave you.--By the laws of
Lycurgus, and by those which were given to the Cretans by Jupiter, or
which Minos established under the direction of Jupiter, as the poets say,
the youths of the state are trained by the practice of hunting, running,
enduring hunger and thirst, cold and heat. The boys at Sparta are scourged
so at the altars, that blood follows the lash in abundance, nay,
sometimes, as I used to hear when I was there, they are whipped even to
death; and yet not one of them was ever heard to cry out, or so much as
groan. What then? shall men not be able to bear what boys do? and shall
custom have such great force, and reason none at all?

XV. There is some difference betwixt labour and pain; they border upon one
another, but still there is a certain difference between them. Labour is a
certain exercise of the mind or body, i