are agreed as to facts, do we not prefer speaking in the ordinary manner? Let him teach me either that I shall be more prepared to despise money, if I reckon it only among things preferred, than if I count it among goods; and that I shall have more fortitude to endure pain if I call it bitter, and difficult to bear, and contrary to nature, than if I pronounce it an evil. Marcus Piso, my intimate, also was a very witty man, and used to ridicule the Stoics for their language on this topic: for what was he used to say? “You deny that riches are a good, but call them something to be preferred. What good do you do by that? do you diminish avarice? But if we mind words, then, in the first place, your expression, to be preferred, is longer than good.” “That has nothing to do with the matter.” “I dare say it has not, but still it is a more difficult expression. For I do not know what the word good is derived from; but the word preferred I suppose means that it is preferred to other things. That appears to me to be important.” Therefore, he insisted upon it, that more consequence was attributed to riches by Zeno, who placed them among things preferred, than by Aristotle, who admitted that they were a good. Still he did not say that they were a great good, but rather such an one as was to be despised and scorned in comparison of what was right and honourable, and never one to be greatly sought after. And altogether, he argued in this way, about all those expressions which had been altered by Zeno, both as to what he denied to be goods, and as to those things to which he referred the name of evil; saying that the first received from him a more joyful title than they did from us; and the latter a more gloomy one.
XXVII. Piso, then—a most excellent man, and, as you well know, a great friend of yours—used to argue in this manner. And now let us make an end of this, after we have just said a few additional words. For it would take a long time to reply to all your assertions.
For from the same tricks with words, originate all those kingdoms, and commands, and riches, and universal dominion which you say belong to the wise man. You say besides, that he alone is handsome, he alone is free, he alone is a citizen; and that everything which is the contrary of all these things belongs to the foolish man, who is also insane, as you assert
