when you lay it down that there are vices the exact opposites of virtues; for that which is blameable (vituperabile) for its own sake, I think ought, from that very fact, to be called a vice; and perhaps this verb, vitupero, is derived from vitium. But if you had translated κακία by malitia,[1] then the usage of the Latin language would have limited us to one particular vice; but, as it is, all vice is opposed to all virtue by one generic opposite name.
XIII. Then he proceeded:—After these things, therefore, are thus laid down, there follows a great contest, which has been handled by the Peripatetics somewhat too gently, (for their method of arguing is not sufficiently acute, owing to their ignorance of dialectics;) but your Carneades has pressed the matter with great vigour and effect, displaying in reference to it a most admirable skill in dialectics, and the most consummate eloquence; because he has never ceased to contend throughout the whole of this discussion, which turns upon what is good and what is bad, that the controversy between the Stoics and Peripatetics is not one of things, but only of names. But, to me, nothing appears so evident as that the opinions of these two schools differ from one another far more as to facts than to names; I mean to say, that there is much greater difference between the Stoics and Peripatetics in principle than in language. Forasmuch as the Peripatetics assert that everything which they themselves call good, has a reference to living happily; but our school does not think that a happy life necessarily embraces everything which is worthy of any esteem.
But can anything be more certain than that, according to the principles of those men who rank pain among the evils, a wise man cannot be happy when he is tormented on the rack? While the principles of those who do not consider pain among the evils, certainly compels us to allow that a happy life is preserved to a wise man among all torments. In truth, if those men endure pain with greater fortitude who suffer it in the cause of their country, than those who do so for any slighter object; then it is plain that it is opinion, and not nature, which makes the force of pain greater or less. Even that opinion of the Peripatetics is more than I can
- ↑ “Malitia, badness of quality . . . . especially malice, ill-will, spite, malevolence, artfulness, cunning, craft.”—Riddle and Arnold, Lat. Dict.
