not Priam say this? Does not Oedipus say this? Nay, all kings say it![1] For what else is tragedy than the perturbations (πάθη) of men who value externals exhibited in this kind of poetry? But if a man must learn by fiction that no external things which are independent of the will concern us, for my part I should like this fiction, by the aid of which I should live happily and undisturbed. But you must consider for yourselves what you wish.
What then does Chrysippus teach us? The reply is, to know that these things are not false, from which happiness comes and tranquillity arises. Take my books, and you will learn how true and conformable to nature are the things which make me free from perturbations. O great good fortune! O the great benefactor who points out the way! To Triptolemus all men have erected[2] temples and altars, because he gave us food by cultivation; but to hint who discovered truth and brought it to light and communicated it to all, not the truth which shows us how to live, but how to live well, who of you for this reason has built an altar, or a temple, or has dedicated a statue, or who worships God for this? Because the gods have given the vine, or wheat, we sacrifice to them: but because they have produced in the human mind that fruit by which they designed to show us the truth which relates to happiness, shall we not thank God for this?
against the academics.[3]
If a man, said Epictetus, opposes evident truths, it is not easy to find arguments by which we shall make him change his opinion. But this does not arise either from the
- ↑ So kings and such personages speak in the Greek tragedies. Compare what M. Antoninus (xi. 6) says of Tragedy.
- ↑ ἀνεστάκασιν. See the note of Schweig. on the use of this form of the verb.
- ↑ See Lecture V., The New Academy, Levin's Lectures Introductory to the Phoilsophical Writings of Cicero, Cambridge, 1871.
